Alfred Gaskill and the Pine Barrens' first state forest reserves

Building the first reserves

New Jersey's Forest Park Reservation Commission began buying woodland under a 1905 law. Its Second Annual Report, covering the year ending October 31, 1906 and issued in 1907, records that the Commission held 970.59 acres at the start of that fiscal year — 373.59 acres in Weymouth Township, Atlantic County, and 597 acres in Bass River Township, Burlington County — and had since added roughly 1,100 acres adjoining the Bass River tract plus contracts for about 500 acres in Blairstown Township, Warren County, bringing total holdings to about 2,600 acres. The report calls the Bass River parcel, then known as the Tuckerton reserve, the largest yet acquired and names Samuel Budd Allen as its caretaker. The same volume carries an essay, “The Forest Crop of New Jersey,” by-lined “Alfred Gaskill, Forester.” The administrative report itself is signed by Henry B. Kummel as executive officer and William H. Chew as secretary, not by Gaskill, and it shows that these first purchases were made before the 1907 appointment his obituaries describe — so the entry does not credit the earliest acquisitions to him personally.

Growth under his direction

The Commission's Eighth Annual Report, for the year ending October 31, 1912 and printed in 1913, shows the reserves grown substantially. Its roster page lists “Alfred Gaskill, Trenton, Forester and Secretary,” and he co-signs its letter of transmittal as secretary beneath Kummel. The report tabulates six named tracts — the Mays Landing (373 acres, Atlantic County), Bass River (1,633), Lebanon (3,498), Mount Laurel (20) and Penn (2,764) reserves in Burlington County, and the Edward C. Stokes Reserve (5,432 acres) in Sussex County, well north of the Pine Barrens — and states that “the State reserves aggregate 13,720 acres.” That is separate from about 25,000 acres of other woodland that state foresters had been directing for several years. The report frames this work within a broader campaign against wildfire: it records 26,291 acres burned statewide in 1912 against 64,404 acres in 1911, with losses falling from $86,940 to $21,501, and offers those numbers as evidence of “how efficient the present forest fire service is.” It notes the improvement showed in practically every county, “an indication that the improvement is not local, but universal.”

Career arc and later years

Two professional obituaries, both published in October 1950, summarize Gaskill's career. The Journal of Forestry notice, headed “Alfred Gaskill (1861–1950),” says he was elected a member of the Society of American Foresters in 1902, trained at the Biltmore Forest School, Harvard and the University of Munich, was appointed to the old U.S. Bureau of Forestry in June 1899 and there studied red fir in western Washington and coast redwood in California, and prepared a nationwide study of forest-fire records and a report on the hardwood lumber industry in the southern Alleghenies. It says he was “appointed state forester of New Jersey in 1907,” served in that capacity and later as director of the New Jersey Department of Conservation and Development “until his retirement in 1922,” and “initiated New Jersey's state forest system, reforestation programs, and forest fire protection organization.” It is the only source opened here that gives a death date: September 6, 1950, “at his home in Brandon, Vt.”

American Forests, in a shorter notice the same month headed “First State Forester of New Jersey Dies,” supplies the description of him as New Jersey's first State Forester and dates his appointment as first director of the newly created Department of Conservation and Development to July 1, 1915. It adds that he took an active part in promoting municipal and county shade-tree care statewide and that he “retired on account of ill health and made his home at Lake Dunmore, Brandon, Vermont, until his death.” It gives no date, reporting only that word had “just been received of the recent death.” A Find a Grave memorial for Alfred Gaskill (1861–1950) records burial at Pine Hill Cemetery in Brandon, Rutland County, Vermont; it carries only the two years, not a full date.

What the record doesn't establish

Neither notice states a cause of death. The Journal of Forestry reports only that he died at his Brandon home on September 6, 1950; American Forests gives neither a date nor a place of death, saying only that Lake Dunmore in Brandon was where he had made his home until he died. The Find a Grave memorial adds nothing beyond the burial place and the years. No contemporary newspaper account of his death was located for this entry; full-text newspaper searching was largely unavailable on the date of this check, so the absence of such an account is a limit of the search, not evidence about the circumstances.

This entry therefore makes no claim about how Gaskill died. Where an account of a death cannot be traced to a record actually opened, it is left out rather than reported at second hand and disclaimed.