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Gaslight News December 2015 Historical Society of Riverton vol. XXXXV, no. 5 (#163) Founded 1970 Riverton, NJ 08077 Incorporated 1978 Digging Up History in Riverton (Pt. 3) Dem bones, dem bones, Extending back to at least the Archaic period seventeenth century, from the settlement dem dry bones in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (8000-1000 period forward. The Colonial Assembly, B.C.), man has exploited the spring runs of while sitting in session at Burlington during anadromous fish like shad and sturgeon as May and June 1765, passed the first regula- they travel up the Delaware River and its tions after numerous complaints from the tributaries to spawning grounds. Indigenous citizenry. The act set forth requirements for people living proximate to the river and the size of net mesh, along with obligating the streams used a variety of methods to catch owners of fixed nets, fish weirs, and other Remember last the fish, ranging from spears to weirs and types of traps to immediately remove them year’s news story nets. In shallow water, spears served to im- from the river. In 1782, the Pennsylvania about bones discov- pale the fish. More elaborate traps, known as State Legislature passed an act to authorize ered in Riverton during weirs, would channel the fish into a small New Jersey officials to police all fisheries excavation for a area where they could be caught by hand or along the Delaware River. swimming pool? impaled by spear or arrow. Natives in canoes Last January, we learned the would use nets thrown from their craft to As is the nature of law, fishery regulations unsettling truth from Paul Schopp that human remains encompass a school of fish. Women and increased through time, including issuing along Riverton’s waterfront children, along with an annual license to have been found before. some men, would operate a fishery. By In Part 3 of this serial article 1834, over 30 com- Paul traces the development then clean and pro- of Riverton’s shad fishery. cess the fish, which mercial fisheries lined usually involved the Delaware River’s smoking them as a eastern shore from the preservative method. Pennsauken Creek Open this Gaslight down to Delaware News as a PDF file on English settlers Bay. Additional fisher- rivertonhistory.com wasted no time in "The Shad (Clupea Sapidissima)" by Shermon Foote Denton, Jan. ies operated on the and all of the blue 1896, First Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, highlighted underlined terms adding riverine fish Game, and Forests of the State of New York, p130. Pennsylvania side be- become links to more content. to their diets. By the low Philadelphia. As mid-eighteenth century, landowners with a general rule, the adjacent landowner also In this issue property and farms along the Delaware and controlled any given fishery, but generally DIGGING UP HISTORY IN its tributaries included fishery rights as an rented out the fishery to an operator, usually RIVERTON asset associated with their tenured holdings. from the Kensington section of Philadelphia. - PAUL W. SCHOPP 1 Notices for land sales in local weekly newspa- Names like Rice, Faunce, and Cramp are KEN FRANK’S JAPANESE BEETLE LECTURE pers often included the term “valuable Shad often found in historical documents related - JMC 1 fishery” in the property’s description. Shad to fisheries. The Rices and Faunces were RECAP OF MAGGIE was the primary food fish caught during the related families. WORSDALE’S SHOW spring spawning runs. - JMC 4 The first fishery along Riverton’s riverfront MEMBERSHIP DUES AND Europeans operated unregulated fisheries appears to date to the second half of the DONATION APPEAL FORM along the Delaware River beginning in the ENCLOSED See DIGGING on 2 ② THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF RIVERTON DIGGING from 1 and with force and strong hand and by the violence & threatening aforesaid now detains eighteenth century. Known as the Cinnamin- and holds the possession of the said piece of son (with spelling variations) Fishery, begun land and fishery...whereof the said complain- by William Cox and listed as one of assets ants say that the said John Rice, Jacob Rice Forensic anthropologist Donna offered for sale by Sarah Cox, William’s and John P. Rice are guilty of a forcible entry Fontana scrapes away dirt widow in 1769. Andrew Anderson purchased from bones discovered in and detainer of the said premises.” Riverton in October 2014 in the Cinnaminson Farm and Fishery along the this 6abc news story complete Delaware River from Sarah Cox. As noted in The Rice trio went on to compound their with video. the previous installment, when Andrew died, PHOTO CREDIT: WPVI TV ACTION NEWS assault when they “...then and there fished… his widow, Elizabeth Toy Anderson, received for fish and the fish to wit, ten thousand a half-interest in all shad, two hundred of her late hus- thousand herring, band’s real estate, and two hundred with the remaining sturgeon of great fishery & moiety devised to cabin along value to wit, of mud flats Andrew’s nieces, the value of two The fishery was here before Keziah, Catharine thousand dollars.” there was a Riverton as this and Anna. detail from a 1847 map attests. Given the number Having the Cin- of fisheries lying naminson Fishery’s downriver from the Greeting HSR Members, ownership split Cinnaminson Fish- An HSR ARCHIVES& between two sepa- ery that also fished MUSEUM update: rate parties created the spring spawning We have started to stage our manifold problems space in the basement of the run, the reported Library by painting, hanging and caused numer- haul by the Rices is drapes on windows, foraging ous pleadings and an amazing amount for second-hand furniture, counter-pleadings and putting down an area of fish for about a carpet. before the New one-week period or With the cancellation of the Jersey Supreme so at the end of Library’s Candlelight House Court. John Rice March. Tour, scheduled for Decem- held a deed for the fishery dated 26 Decem- ber 5th, we shall resume work on it in January. ber 1821, granted to him by Benjamin Coxe, Curiously, a jury found the Rice family NOT Some folks who have ven- who obtained it from Isaiah Toy, acting as Guilty due to their holding a deed granting tured downstairs to the base- a lateral heir to Elizabeth Toy Anderson them a moiety in the fishery; they had the ment for the weekly RFL Bispham’s estate. Meanwhile, Joseph M. used book sale have had an right to be there, despite the complainant’s early sneak-peak at our work Bispham claimed a right of possession due protests to the contrary. -in-progress. to his father’s intestacy. This development For the past few weeks our foreshadowed a clash over ownership of the Presumably, Isaiah Toy forgave them for editor John McCormick has attached a sale of HSR mugs Cinnaminson fishery. he finally gained full title to the fishery and to that Sunday afternoon continued to lease it to the Rice family. Riverton custom. In a case of forcible entry and detainer - Phyllis Rodgers before the New Jersey Supreme Court in In 1841, Toy caught the Rice fishermen 1826, Joseph M. Bispham, Elizabeth B. using gill nets, which the state laws strictly Moffett, and Ann Myers claimed that John forbid. He took up his shotgun and pursued Rice, Jacob Rice and John P. Rice “…by a number of fishermen, pushing their empty violence and threatening to kill, maim and boats away from shore and cutting their nets. beat the said parties in possession, entered Toy then directed the Rices and their fisher- into and upon a certain piece of land and men off his land and advertised for new fishery situate in the Township of Chester management to operate the fishery in the 6 aforesaid commonly called and known by September 1842 edition of Philadelphia’s the name of the Cenimenson [sic] fishery, Public Ledger: with apologies to Thos. Nast THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF RIVERTON ③ was likely the last fishery operation in 1907: typical gill net In the next and final installment of this series, Mr. Schopp will discuss the Toy found new operators among the Faunce A commercial fishery still operates in Lam- old farmhouses that once stood on the riverfront, but family, who continued to run the fishery into bertville, representing the very last of a tradi- disappeared as Riverton the early twentieth century, when pollution tion that stretches back at least 250 years began to flower. prevented the fish from moving upriver to along the Delaware River. He will also summarize the their ancestral spawning ground. possible scenarios on how - article and images by PAUL W. SCHOPP the human remains came to Walter Bowen, publisher of Riverton’s The be buried near Second and New Era weekly newspaper, captured what Howard streets. We told extent to which Henry A. Dreer played a part in readers in mounting a propaganda campaign that fought against October government efforts to contain the Japanese beetle about destruction is not as well known. Kenneth Frank, the When early efforts to contain the spread of the Philadelphia Japanese beetle failed, Henry Dreer’s influence physician who managed to keep the very nursery plants which were contacted us the source of the scourge exempt from quarantine last summer and embargo measures and deflect attention to corn instead. concerning Ken Frank wrote later that he his interest in Kenneth Frank addresses the room as his Ken was informative and entertaining and elicited particularly enjoyed the recol- researching wife Sue looks on laughter from the assembled scientists when he lections of Master Gardener Japanese compared the people who ignored the warnings of Jeannie Francis who retold beetles.

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