Friendship, Bozarth’s Mill, and Eagle

Route through the pines

Beck placed Eagle on a rise roughly three miles from Speedwell and five from Chatsworth. From Chatsworth he followed the improved road past the Duke’s Bridge/Jones’ Mill turn toward Speedwell, then crossed a field of Indian grass into a narrow drained woods road. Confusing intersections beyond One Mile Run led him south to Friendship Bogs, a cranberry settlement of unpainted workers’ houses above broad bogs.

Between Friendship and Sandy Ridge he encountered Bozarth’s Mill: foundation stones, fire-charred timber, a mill ruin, and a sawdust mound estimated at more than 50 feet high. The route crossed the Jersey Central near High Crossing. About a quarter mile away stood the weathered Carranza monument, surrounded by deteriorated wreath frames. Because sand prevented following the tracks directly, the trail looped to Harris Station, then used another overgrown branch near a spring.

Eagle was marked by buttonwood trees, grass climbing a knoll, deep cellar-like excavations believed to be the former tavern/hotel, orchard trees, fence remains, household fragments, and no residents. Beck linked its tavern to the freight route from Harrisville’s paper mill to Harris Station. Warner Hargrove, who had accompanied earlier explorations, supplied some of that local history. The article’s photographs were by Jack Sperry.

The people behind the abandoned mill

Tabernacle Historical Society’s Sandy Ridge research places William Theodore Bozarth and his son Freemont in the local economy through the 1920 census: William managed cranberry farms while Freemont worked in a sawmill. The society links that evidence with Beck’s description of the abandoned operation near High Crossing. Its chronology places Beck’s visit in September 1933. Rick Franzen, Notes on Sandy Ridge.

The same research preserves later residents’ memories that blueberry growers removed sawdust from the old piles for their plants. These recollections explain how a conspicuous industrial remnant could diminish without a new building occupying the site. They are retrospective evidence, not measurements made while the mill operated. Census occupations support the family’s involvement in milling, but do not alone prove the exact mill parcel or its closing year.