The following comes from the New Jersey Pinelands. We thought you'd like it.
The Devil, You Say
Residents recount tales of the dark spirit of the Pinelands
By MARK TYLER
Staff Writer
When
milk mysteriously turns sour in secluded country kitchens, or campers in the
Pine Barrens hear unexplained noises - the Jersey Devil did it. That might not
be the best explanation, but it's as good as any other story, real or imagined,
that has helped preserve the state's oldest piece of folklore for at least 250
years.
Some southern New Jersey residents say they have even seen him.
Cate Bishop, an Ocean City homemaker in her 30s, clearly remembers an autumn night in 1973 when she came face-to-face with the Jersey Devil. Bishop and two girlfriends were walking a moonlit trail in Mays Landing on their way to a house party. They were late, so they decided to take a shortcut through the brush, she recalled.
"We heard something crashing around in the woods and then this little creature between 3-4 feet tall sprang out of the woods into a clearing," Bishop said. "To me it looked like a goat with dark fur, but jumped on its hind legs only. It had small horns like a young goat and little tiny wings on its back," she added.
The three girls, then all about 15 years old, bolted in the other direction and headed for paved streets. "As we would run past houses that had dogs, we would hear the dogs barking and then quiet again," Bishop said. "After we were a good distance past the houses, the dogs would start barking again." Bishop swears the Jersey Devil chased them to their friend's house that night. "I clearly saw it," she said. "Later, we talked about it and tried to convince ourselves that we hadn't seen it, but I guess I was the only one who believed."
Iola Gabriel, of Egg Harbor Township, had a somewhat different, but no less frightening, experience in 1934. Gabriel, 70, who grew up in Galloway Township, was a carefree second-grader playing in the Pomona Elementary School yard when she saw a hideous, devil-like creature.
"It's no laughing matter," Gabriel said. "He stood there on the road and looked at us." Gabriel's devil description was different. She said the fiend stood at least 6 feet tall to her young eyes. He was red with horns, she said. But before she could take a long look, her entire class rushed inside the building to tell their teachers. "I can picture him now," Gabriel said. "I've seen him."
The Myth
Legend has it that in 1735, Jane Leeds cursed the day she married Daniel Leeds, one of the first Atlantic County settlers. She bore him 12 children but wanted no more. So during the birth of their 13th child, she muttered a deal with the devil, witnessed by a midwife, spitefully trading the baby for escape from marriage and the return of her youth.
That creature, which, according to myths and legend, killed the midwife and flew up the chimney, has supposedly roamed the Pine Barrens ever since.
But who believes in legends?
Harry Leeds, a Galloway Township councilman and an 11th-generation descendant of Daniel Leeds, for one. So do thousands who saw something in 1909 during the famous third week of January.
"The myth is that he was a bad guy," Leeds said. "He was a decent guy who liked to help people." Leeds doesn't agree with evil accounts of the horse-headed, cloven-footed, bat-winged devil-creature known first as the "Leeds Devil."
"He was a good Democrat," Leeds quipped. "He would meet with the elected officials and keep them on the straight and narrow ... He warned them of their wrongdoings and that their greed and power would get them into trouble." Angus Gillespie, a professor of American studies and folklore at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus, says that the Jersey Devil and other historic tales will always thrive whether the masses believe them or not.
"A legend is a story believed by the teller to be true," Gillespie said. "Then we as listeners have a choice. We can either believe or disbelieve, but it's very hard to sit on the fence."
While some area residents are hooked on the Jersey Devil story, others randomly polled while visiting the Towne of Historic Smithville dismiss it as nonsense. "Pure fiction," said Ann Stetler of York, Pa. "I read a book about it. It was really funny." Her daughter, Galloway Township resident Sue Wolf, added, "You're not supposed to be caught on the road alone. He flies around peeping into second-floor bedroom windows - you've got to laugh."
The Jersey Devil - folklore, fact, or just plain fiction?
Leeds
A Family Name in Southern NJ
Press Staff Report
C.S. Leeds, former Atlantic City Mayor 1856-57
Bill Leeds grew up in a place where the very ground seemed to speak his name. Everywhere he looked in southern New Jersey, it was Leeds Point, Leedsville, the Leeds Devil, Jimmie Leeds Road (named after some ancestor or other.)
There were more Leedses in the local phone book than in all of New York City. All the resonance that 10 generations of one family can bring to a place, Bill Leeds can feel.
Bill Leeds is a member of a family that goes back 300 years in southern New Jersey. His grandfather's uncle was the first mayor of Atlantic City. His grandfather's great-grandfather was the first white inhabitant of Absecon Island. Two or three generations before that, the Leedses landed here - Bill thinks it was at Leeds Point - directly from England.
Atlantic County is the Leedses' Plymouth Rock. In 300 years, the family has grown and dispersed somewhat. Brothers, sisters, sons and daughters went off to Florida, Philadelphia and other places. But like his distant grandfather Jeremiah, Bill stayed on the island. Through the razing of the 30-foot beach dunes, the filling of the central swamps, the clearing of the bayside pine forest - Leeds stayed put, and can easily recall the old days.
"As a kid living here we were going all day every day," Leeds said. "We'd ride our bikes through the paths in the woods, up and down the hills. We'd get a gang together and spend a day."
"In the ocean, there was one thing we did that's only starting to come back. And that was, we'd ride the waves in canoes. We had a rack on the beach where you could leave your canoes - people didn't steal stuff then. Riding waves in canoes was like surfing to us."
Leeds is proud that in 80 years, several things about him haven't changed. Everyday, as he has since age 10, he still boats out to check his crab traps. And he still swims. "Almost nothing interferes with those plans," said his daughter Barry Dulany.
"He goes out in rain and storms. He's very methodical." He still eats lots of crab meat, and is perhaps the best crab picker in Atlantic County. For a recent informal family reunion, he spent eight hours picking four pounds of crab meat. And one more thing that hasn't changed about Bill Leeds: He still loves Absecon Island. "I have 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. It's safe to say I am approaching midlife. I am approaching it pretty fast. "
"But, I do the same now as I did 70 years ago - slower, maybe. You are just born and live day to day, and the next day is the same as the day before, and you don't notice the changes."
A Book on the Mother Leeds Legend
By G. PATRICK PAWLING
Staff Writer
Cynthia Lamb who wrote "Brigid's
Charge" about the Jersey Devil, talks about her book.
The
Jersey Devil's gone, escaped, over the fence. For more than two centuries it
belonged here and mostly stayed here, hidden in the darkness of superstition and
folklore, occasionally peering out from the Pine Barrens, sometimes emerging at
Halloween, its wings and horse-head silhouetted by the full moon.
Now a California woman is writing about the Jersey Devil, and she does it so well that soon the entire country may know. The legend is loose. Soon we'll hear about the Jersey Devil in Wyoming - stories of baying dogs, spoiled butter and a confused and jealous Bigfoot.
Who is this woman, and what right does she have to our legend?
She is Cynthia Lamb, and she is a direct descendent of Deborah Leeds, the woman accused by history and those who whisper at night of being the mother of the Jersey Devil - the Leeds Devil, as it was first called. Not only is Lamb of the blood of the Leeds family, one of the most prominent in New Jersey's history, she is also a former area resident. Because her father was in the Navy, she lived in many places. One was Atlantic City. Sitting at her grandmother's kitchen table in Absecon, she heard the stories of her family's devil. She listened well.
The book, her first, is called "Brigid's Charge." It is eerie, moving and difficult to be rid of, like a spell. The book tells the story of Deborah Smith, who traveled across the Atlantic from England in 1704 to marry Japhet Leeds, a man she had never met. That much is true.
Where do fiction and truth divide?
We'll allow Lamb to tell her own story, she needs no help there, but this much you already know, because it's legend: Deborah and Japhet have 12 children. Then comes a 13th. As the story goes, it was a difficult labor. Somehow the Devil was invoked. Within moments the newborn baby became a man-sized thing with green scales, the head of a horse, huge wings and a dragon's tale. It flew about the room breathing the noxious breath of hell as the midwife and the birth attendants dove to the floor. Then it flew out the window into history. Or maybe it was up the chimney.
How did such a story begin?
Legend concerns itself mostly with the Leeds Devil. But for many years, Lamb had wondered about Mother Leeds.What prompted the birth of such a story? What was truth and what was real? Was she thought to be a witch? History shows that she was a healer, so she probably would have been suspected of being a witch, too. And so the book is about the legend's mother, the woman, the person. It's about her and more. It uses the legend to get places, to say things about life and people and religion and things that matter. "For me the central theme is religious tolerance," Lamb said during a recent telephone interview. But even that explanation may be a disservice. It makes the book sound dry, stuffy. It isn't. It is history made alive. It's filled with the uncertainly, sadness, tension and joy that we call life. It's even a little saucy.
The book started with a classroom assignment about 10 years ago, when Lamb decided to take a serious shot at writing fiction. People liked what she wrote, so she started researching her family, looking for clues, reading old accounts, scouring the old Quaker journals kept by her relatives. Many of the characters are from history. Others are fictionalized.
Prominent name in history
Even from so far away in northern California, Lamb is a neighbor. Our backyard is filled with members of the Leeds family, Lamb's family, present and past. Daniel Leeds, father of Japhet (and, therefore, grandfather of the Leeds Devil) was the first surveyor-general of West Jersey. Jeremiah Leeds was the first white settler of Absecon Island. Chalkey Leeds was the first mayor of Atlantic City, and Robert Leeds was the city's first postmaster. Many members of the Leeds family remain in this area. Helen Mills is one. She's 80 and lives in Northfield, and she remembers hearing stories of the Leeds Devil when she was growing up in Leeds Point in Galloway Township.
"They always said it was not a bad devil, but they did try and scare us with it," said Mills. "But we were wise to it."
When legends are involved, coincidences have a way of making themselves known. Mills recalled that one of her sisters had 12 children. Then she had a 13th, like Mother Leeds, but the baby was stillborn.
And consider this:
Deborah Leeds was a healer, and when Lamb was working on the book, she was working as an AIDS caregiver. While researching the book, Lamb came back to this area for about a month, visiting the Burlington County Historical Society, the Atlantic City area, the Atlantic County Historical Society and, of course, Leeds Point. "That's where I have my earliest memories. It feels very much like home to me," she said. "I ended up wishing I could stay longer," she added. And so it will be with this book. People will visit, enjoy, learn and wish they too could stay longer. New Jersey may have lost part of its legend, but it has gained a fine book, a book that proves the Jersey Devil is real and is very much with us today. Read it and you'll see how.
Why the name Brigid's Charge for the title?
Brigid was a Celtic goddess worshipped in the 1700s by the Brigantines in England, Lamb said. She was in charge of mystical healing and was assimilated into Christianity by being made a saint in the Catholic church, she said. When female healers were run out of England for practicing what the Catholic church considered witchcraft, Mother Leeds accepted Brigid's charge to take her religious practices to the new world. She landed in Leeds Point and thus a legend was born.
Jersey Devil Cake
ADELAIDE PATTEN
For The Press
Claire Townsend of Elm, Winslow Township, had been searching for months for a recipe for Jersey Devil Cake. Her appeal for help from Recipe Box readers brought a quick response from Musie E. Kimley of Minotola, Buena Borough. The recipe she shares is from the "Atlantic County Cookbook," which was produced by the Atlantic County Cultural and Heritage Advisory Board in the late 1970s.
The cookbook is a compilation of favorite recipes contributed by county residents and reflect the hearty eating of those who had for centuries lived off the sea and land. Alice Watson of Villas, Lower Township, requested a recipe for Macaroni or Spaghetti Cake several months ago. We've received a recipe for Vermicelli Cake from L.M. Mazzotta of Wildwood.
Cake
3/4 cup boiling water
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup margarine
3 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups brown sugar
Icing
1/4 pound margarine
3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
3 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 to 1/2 cup evaporated milk
To make cake: Pour boiling water over chocolate. Stir over low heat until smooth and thick. Cool. Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Cream shortening with sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Blend in chocolate and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and milk alternately, beating after each addition. Pour into well-greased 9-inch pans. Bake in 350-degree oven 30 minutes.
To make icing: Blend butter, chocolate and vanilla. Add sugar alternately with evaporated milk until smooth. Add milk until spreadable.