Hike #1370; Freehold to Englishtown

 

11/4/20 Freehold to Englishtown with Ken Zaruni, Kirk Rohn, and Jennifer Bee

This next trip would be a point to point between Freehold and Englishtown, something like I had done over a year prior I suppose it was, but this time covering a very different route between the two towns. They would overlap a bit and visit some of the same sites, but we'd also do a lot of different stuff.

I think for this one we must have met up by the Wallgreens or something in Englishtown and then shuttled cars to the start point, and for that I know we were right in town Freehold. We parked on the edge of Throckmorton Street.
I wanted to start the hike by heading through town a bit to get some then and now photo compilations. I had gathered a few of them since my previous visit, and figured I would set them up this time, so the start of it was focusing around getting those

First, I had an historic 1957 image showing the Pennsylvania Railroad in downtown Freehold New Jersey, compared to the same scene on our 2020 hike.

This odd spot is one of the longest active grade crossings in New Jersey, over a busy intersection in the middle of town.

Originally started in 1867, this became part of the Freehold and Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad Company in 1879. From Freehold west, it remains active, but from Freehold east it is abandoned, and part is Freehold and Jamesburg Rail Trail in Allaire State Park, and beyond it is Edgar Felix Memorial Bikeway.

I had hiked most of this line to the east of this point, and eventually I would like to continue to finish it to the west, although it's active. West, it passes through Monmouth Battlefield, and then on through Englishtown. To the east, I did a hike back in 2008 where we traced it as closely as possible from Freehold all the way to the Manasquan area. It's just abandoned to Farmingdale, but trail beyond.

Pennsylvania Railroad station in Freehold NJ, historic 1940s image compared to the same scene on our 2020 hike.

The tracks are still active from the west into Freehold, but become abandoned shortly to the east. Farther on, the former Freehold and Jamesburg Railroad is now a trail through Allaire State Park, and east of there the Edgar Felix Memorial Bikeway.

Across from this station, the tracks cross through the town in a very odd manner, over a long stretch of street.

I set up the compilations at the old station in town, and we headed onto the tracks.

From Throckmorton, we followed the tracks east, on a segment I'd not walked since 2008, and turned off at Hudson Street where there used to be a junction with the Jersey Central line.

The line was completed as the Monmouth County Agricultural Railroad about 1880, and became part of the Central Railroad of New Jersey system. It remained in service 1973 when the first section was abandoned. The entire remainder of the branch was abandoned in 1983.

Henry Hudson Trail follows the Seashore Branch to the north of Matawan/Aberdeen, and this branch south from Matawan, opened in 2006. In 2020, land on the line was acquired that will extend the trail into downtown Freehold and presumably past the historic station that still stands, and that was our next stop.

I had several old photos of the CNJ station in Freehold, and so when we continued to the north to Jackson Street where we reached that old station, I tried setting them all up. I couldn't get all of the angles I wanted, but I did get several of them. The last time I was there, we were able to walk under the awnings, but this time the chain link fence around it blocked us from seeing the whole thing.

The railroad bed north from the station was not yet trail, but we were able to get on some of it. We walked up 1st Street to Liberty Street and got on a little piece of Liberty Park Trail, then cut into the woods to the left onto the old tracks that are still in place.

I took this one in 2008

We made our way through the mess, with rails still in place, until we reached East main Street.

From there, the rail bed was Henry Hudson Trail, and was clear. We started walking the paved trail to the north for a ways. We crossed Dutch Lane Road and ignored several side paths I have yet to check out, and then turned left when we got to East Freehold Road. We followed this road west and across Rt 79. Immediately on the other side of that was Opatut Park. We headed downhill and started walking field perimeter to the south, where there were soccar fields and such. Then, in the woods in the distance, it looked as though there was an abandoned house. Of course, we had to have a look. We bushwhacked into the woods and made our way to the front of the place. We had to wait a little bit because I seem to recall there were employees or something in view at first. The house was a pretty big old white house, left totally full of the possessions of its former occupants.

It was deteriorating badly. The one side of it was missing a wall altogether, and the roof was beginning to bow out. It wouldn't be long before moisture would get the better of this place.

We checked out all the rooms, except Ken waited outside.
It had an enormous tree out front, and someone spray painted "this is my grandma's house" on the front of it.
It's a very old frame house and not beyond repair just yet, but it's getting there. It'll likely be demolished. I would suspect the municipality has probably purchased it.
Beyond the main house, there were some practically destroyed out buildings and lots of other stuff just sitting around like campers and such.
After having a look around, we left and made our way out to the trail system that runs closely parallel with it. I had figured on doing a lot of meandering on this one and cover all of the trails.

We got on the first mowed trail around the park from there, weaved out near private homes, then back out to the Opatut fields. Another mowed trail took us into the overgrown fields yet again, and we followed that back to the main fields.
We continued on field edges until we reached a paved trail section near a parking lot. From there, we turned left on the pavement only to another clear grassy field on the left, and then followed yet another mowed trail through those woods.
This one took us right back to the open fields, and back to the paved trail. We turned left again, and then one more grassy mowed trail broke off to the left again. We followed this one too, way south through woods, and then it too returned to the grassy area near the paved trail.

We headed to the north, and the paved trail brought us back out to Freehold Road. We turned left briefly, and then left again on Robertsville Road.
Eventually, there will be some sort of connection out of Opatut Park to the next bits of park land, but even though I think it was in public ownership already I wasn't sure, so we went around on the road.
Robersville Road took us south, and then there was a wide paved trail to the right along the edges of fields. We crossed the road and followed the trail segment that ran closest to the road to the south. We soon came to the entrance to Lake Topanemus Park to the right, where we entered.

At this point. McGellairds Brook passed along the left side and the trails were on the right. There were several large Sycamores and a lot of people walking around.
Soon, we reached the huge Lake Topanemus. This was once a major ice harvesting lake in the days before refrigeration.

It was really a pretty nice little park, and it even had checkers boards painted into the walkways with little rounds of trees used for game pieces.
A wedge from a cut tree was painted up like a slice of watermelon.
We also goofed off on playground equipment like dinosaur things and such.
I believe we continued on to the main dam for Lake Topanemus at Pond Road, crossed the dam, and then bushwhacked to the right along the south side of McGellaird's Brook.
This was easy at first, but then got to be a bit of a chore as we headed out toward Waterworks Road.
There might have been some sort of milling and such in here as it looked like a former pond area.

We turned left on Waterworks Road uphill, and then turned right on Schibanoff Lane. This took us out to Route 9 where we got snacks at a mini mart, then cut directly into Monmouth Battlefield State Park beyond the commuter lot. We turned left into the battlefield at the historic Craig House.

The Craig House was home to John and Ann Craig and their three children during the time of the battle, and it served as a military hospital to the British army.

The house was built in two phases.

The first section was built by Samuel Craig in 1746. The one and a half story Dutch style frame house was a modest home, but used only few years by Samuel until his death. The property reverted to his father, Archibald Craig, who bequeathed it to Samuel’s son, John Jr. upon his death in 1751.

At the time, the fourteen year old John Jr. was not legally allowed to own land. The property was used by farming tenants until John Jr. turned 21 in 1758.

About 1770, John Jr. built the three bay, two story, side-hall plan Georgian style addition which today appears to be the main portion of the house.

Several other barns and out buildings for various farming purposes were included in the property and added during the time. John Jr. left to fight with the local Militia when the Revolution broke out.

When news of the battle reached Ann, who was at home with the children, the family fled to Freehold, leaving the house vacant.

Legend has it that she dropped the family silver in the well, and that the British drank it dry and discovered it, then took it with them.

With the house vacant, it was there to use as a field hospital for the wounded.

Of 30,000 soldiers engaged in battle, 501 of them perished. With temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it is believed that about half of them died of heat stroke rather than wounds.

John Jr. survived the war, and upon his death in 1824, divided the lands among his children.

After that, the land passed through other owners and the Craig House was used as a poor tenant farm. Much of the internal wood paneling was burned by the poor farmers for heat.

The Green Acres Program was instated and Monmouth Battlefield was among the first preserved under the plan, if not the very first.

The Craig House was preserved in 1965. We continued to walk the field edges and onto trails that eventually took us to the entrance road at the Central Region Supply area for state parks. We walked out the road to Freehold-Englishtown Road, then turned right under the Freehold and Jamesburg Railroad underpass on Wemrock Road. We followed Wemrock along the orchards to the south for a while, because there was a wide area for walking.

While we were along the road, Jen was coming to meet up and saw us along the side. She pulled over, and I directed her to meet us at the Wemrock Orchards building at the intersection of Wemrock Road and Route 33.
Tomasello Winery has a tasting room in there, and I planned to do the tasting and get something to go for the rest of the hike.
We walked to the end of the road, and Jen got permission to park her car around back, and she could come back and get it later.
In fact, I thinks she was able to buy other stuff that they'd leave out for her as well for later. Very nice people there.
We went in and had a really nice discussion with the guy that was working the tasting room.
I got myself a bottle of the 2018 Vintage Port, which was quite tasty.

When we left, we headed up 33 a bit, then turned right into Monmouth Battlefield State Park again. We walked off trail through the mowed lands and past the big pond, then out to the Visitor Center.
It was covid crazy time, so we didn't bother with going in the building and looking at museum stuff much here. Instead, we made our way from the office onto the trail system directly across, through the Pasonage Lot, and then north beneath the Freehold and Jamesburg Railroad again. A brief jog on Englishtown Freehold Road again and into the woods on the other side brought us to the former Thompson-Taylor Farm.

We went straight on the rail from here to the north and over a bridge across Weamaconk Creek. There's an old house just to the right of the trail, and I started to run over there to see it, but opted to just go back.

The old Thompson-Taylor House was a lovely old farm house that has only recently collapsed to the point where maybe one or two rooms can be entered. It reportedly had secret compartments that were used in the "underground railroad" to help escaped slaves. It was built in the early to mid 1800s, but it is now quite literally beyond saving. I'm not sure if any components of it are salvageable.
When I first found it collapsed, it had fallen directly into the trail on my last visit. I reported it, and apparently no one even knew that the house had literally collapsed right into the trail.

We exited the woods and entered the enormous fields, where I planned on hiking some of the paths I'd not done on some of the previous hikes. We hung a left through the fields at the first turn.

This brought us to the historic Sutfin-Herbert House, originally built in the 1730s and added on in 1820s and 1840s. Many historic homes served as war hospitals during the Battle of Monmouth.
It was sad that this one was in such rough shape as well. I understand that these thing take funding, but there has to be a better way. I'd gladly live in one of these places and do programs and hikes regularly, but this one no longer has electric either.
We continued along the field through the former Sutfin Farm up the middle, and then cut to the right when we started to approach to the Old Tennant Cemetery.
I'd gone through this way the last time I did a hike through the area as well. 

It's a really nice scene, and quite a large cemetery. We walked into it from the northwest end of Monmouth Battlefield State Park, and then headed toward the church, the Tennant Meeting House.
It was built in the early 1700s by a scotch Presbyterian congregation organized in 1692.
The original section of the building is said to have been constructed in the 1730's, and it was added upon to its current size by 1751.
The building in Cemetery takes her name from two brothers who were prominent preachers here in the 1700s.
During the Battle of Monmouth, like others in the battlefield, the building served as a temporary Military Hospital, along with other local homes.

We walked out of the place onto Church Lane straight, and when that hit Englishtown-Freehold Road, we cut direct across into the Manalapan Recreation fields.
There area  lot of trails that meander through this, and we took a more direct route the previous time we went out there. This time, we went onto more of the paths, and then followed along one more section of fields after those paths ended. We came out at a cul de sac on McDonald Way, then followed back streets back to where we were parked.

This was definitely an interesting day, and by the time it ended, there was still at least two more variations of this hike I could do that would incorporate slightly different routes between the two towns.