The 1808 Hik­ing Trail from Bat­sto to Crow­ley­town on the Mul­li­ca Riv­er opened today. From a Face­book descrip­tion, it:

fol­lows a road that ran in part between Crow­ley­town – where the But­ton­wood Camp­ground is today – and Bat­sto Vil­lage more than 200 years ago. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail is lined with mas­sive, tow­er­ing Atlantic white cedars in sev­er­al places and cuts through Morde­cai Swamp afford­ing fan­tas­tic views deep into it. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail will pro­vide two new hik­ing loops from the Bat­sto Vis­i­tor Cen­ter: a 1.7 mile loop and a 7 mile loop via the Batona and oth­er con­nect­ing trails includ­ing the new Sand and Water Hik­ing Trail (0.9 miles, orange blazes) also open­ing on June 5.

Don’t believe the mileage: I was expect­ing a 1.7‑mile loop but end­ed up on a 7‑plus-mile out and back hike!

Here’s a thread on the always excel­lent NJPinebar­rens forum on the Morde­cai trail. The swamp was named after Morde­cai Andrews, one of the ear­li­est Quak­ers on the Atlantic side of South Jer­sey, a founder of the sea­port town of Tuck­er­ton in 1699.

Here’s a great arti­cle by Gabe Coia on Morde­cai’s busi­ness empire. He was among the first Eng­lish set­tlers in Lit­tle Egg Har­bor and went about extract­ing the lum­ber resources upriv­er on the Mul­li­ca. There’s some great descrip­tions of thousand-year-old trees the size of 20-story build­ings that were tak­en down by Andrews’s teams. Update: I thought the orig­i­nal roadbed of the trail was built as part of the log­ging enter­prise but Gabe Coia emailed me that the roadbed of the 1808 Trail was built by Bat­sto own­er Jesse Richards (in 1808, sur­prise!) and post­dates Andrews’s lum­ber busi­ness in the area.

Putting a  swamp and felling all of these mas­sive trees would have been a very labor-intensive under­tak­ing. Coia’s arti­cle men­tions Morde­cai’s ties to Bar­ba­dos: “The ships would return with pro­duce, rum, and oth­er goods to replen­ish sup­plies for the com­mu­ni­ty at Lit­tle Egg Har­bor.” The Caribbean island was the first eco­nom­ic break-out star in the British New World and it was the first place where Quak­erism spread like wild­fire out­side of the British Isles. It also boast­ed an econ­o­my built almost entire­ly on mas­sive slave-labor camps, where even indi­vid­ual Quak­ers some­times owned hun­dreds of slaves. Giv­en the well-documented trade, at least some of oth­er goods Morde­cai’s ships were prob­a­bly bring­ing back were kid­napped Africans. This would have been the labor who logged impen­e­tra­ble swamps.

Geneal­o­gy sites back up my sus­pi­cions. I looked Morde­cai Andrews and slaves and found this, about his son-in-law John Math­is, who took over much of his busi­ness:

The vir­gin for­est of the sur­round­ing area pro­vid­ed tim­ber for the ships which sup­port­ed suc­cess­ful fish­ing and trade ven­tures that became the foun­da­tions for Great John’s ambi­tious land acqui­si­tion pro­gram. Math­is schooners, one of which was cap­tained by his son Daniel, engaged in the West Indies trade, swap­ping South Jer­sey lum­ber for pro­duce and oth­er goods that enabled the Math­is farms to pros­per. By the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion he had four farms in oper­a­tion con­tain­ing about 5000 acres, which were worked and cleared by slaves. Was said to be an exten­sive slave hold­er and one of the ear­li­est mer­chant smug­glers. He became one of the largest land hold­ers and one of the wealth­i­est and most dis­tin­guished men of Lit­tle Egg Harbor.

John Math­is’s son (Morde­cai’s grand­son) Mica­jah was dis­owned by Friends for refus­ing to eman­ci­pate the fam­i­ly’s enslaved Africans (he “did not then coin­cide with the rest of his soci­ety” when it final­ly adopt­ed an anti­slav­ery stance in the 1770s). He must have recal­cu­lat­ed his options by the time New Jer­sey start­ed abol­ish­ing slav­ery and repent­ed and man­u­mit­ted every­one in time to be buried in the meet­ing­house ceme­tery, natch.

All-in-all, it’s weird how so many local his­to­ries paint ear­ly set­tlers were like some kind of Ingalls-family sub­sis­tence farm­ers, liv­ing in caves and eking out hard­scrab­ble lives in the wilder­ness. I’m sure there were rough patch­es, and don’t get me wrong: I like my hot show­er in the morn­ing and would­n’t want to swap lifestyles out­side of a few camp­ing week­ends a year. But in many cas­es these fam­i­lies plant­ed them­selves in aban­doned Lenape towns con­nect­ed by well-established Lenape trails with water access to inter­na­tion­al trade, amassed title to hun­dreds of acres of land because plagues and wars had dec­i­mat­ed the locals, exploit­ed non-renewable resources like thousand-year-old forests that were only now acces­si­ble because of enslaved labor brought from 4,000 miles away. (I’ve writ­ten before about how colo­nial Quak­ers made for­tunes out of oth­er’s wars.)

Insert record-scratch sound effect: but back to a pleas­ant ear­ly June after­noon. On today’s trip, the new­ly acces­si­ble path of the trail is beau­ti­ful and a must-visit trip for any nature-lover in South Jersey.

The start of the trail on the Bat­sto side. 

Trail-use mark­er at the Bat­sto end. 

Trail starts off very grassy — not many peo­ple have tram­pled down here yet! 

There are many plank bridges through­out the trail 

Com­pass the dog did­n’t always like the bridges and want­ed to walk in the muck instead. 

The cut­off for the Batona Trail loop (which we did not take) 

Beau­ti­ful swamps on both sides of the trail berm. 

A curved bridge across the creek that heads toward Crow­ley’s Landing. 

More pret­ty swamp and Atlantic cedars. 

A strange growth, one I saw elsewhere. 

A walk­ing bridge of logs. 

The trail mark­ers were well-placed and we nev­er felt lost. 

At the But­ton­wood Camp­ground, we cross 542 to go down to Crow­ley’s Land­ing and dip our toes in the Mul­li­ca River. 

The cool waters of the Mullica. 

(Post updat­ed var­i­ous times as I dug more into the Andrews/Mathis fam­i­ly tree.)