Fullwidth – Page 119 – GOODSPEED HISTORIES

Joseph Sergeant and Jane Quick

April 18, 2014 By Marfy Goodspeed in Delaware Twp, Families, Larison, Sergeant 1 Comment Tags: Pauch Farm, slavery

This is the next article in my series on the history of the Pauch farm in Delaware Township. In the previous post,¹ Charles Sergeant had sold the old Richard Green farm to John R. Opdycke in 1805, and moved to the farm owned by Opdycke’s father, Samuel Opdycke. John Opdycke had no need for the Green farm. He had married in 1803 and was living in Kingwood on land that came from his wife’s family. Why did Opdycke make this swap? I suspect he wanted to close out his father’s estate, and this was one way to do it. Or, perhaps Sergeant knew how eager Opdycke was to settle matters and proposed a swap instead of an outright purchase.

Were the Sergeants English or German?

April 16, 2014 By Marfy Goodspeed in Delaware Twp, Families, Sergeant 3 Comments

Turns out even the family could not agree.

I’ve been baffled by the genealogy of this family, finding it impossible to be certain about their origins. In the process of researching the next chapter in the history of the Pauch farm, I came upon two conflicting sources for this question.

New Jersey’s Covered Bridges

April 12, 2014 By Marfy Goodspeed in Delaware Twp, Hunterdon, In My Library 3 Comments Tags: bridges

Richard J. Garlipp, Jr. New Jersey’s Covered Bridges, Images of America, Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

New Jersey's Covered Bridges by Richard J. Garlipp, Jr. — New Jersey’s Covered Bridges by Richard J. Garlipp, Jr.

If you’ve ever had first hand knowledge of a story in the newspaper, chances are you’ve said to yourself, “the reporter got it wrong.” This also happens with books, including this one. Mr. Garlipp has long been a student of the history of covered bridges, and has undertaken a large and under-reported subject. But Arcadia books are not held to a very high standard and do not engage in fact-checking, so the results are sometimes a disappointing mixture of fact and fantasy. History is challenging, and mistakes are all too easy to make, as I have often learned to my dismay. I just wish this book had been better.