People and incidents · New Lisbon, Pemberton Township

Annie O'Donnell's drowning near New Lisbon

Newspaper account read directly, confirming and sharpening the library's index summary

The Mount Holly News of March 23, 1909 reports that Mrs. Annie O'Donnell, of New Lisbon, drowned "yesterday afternoon" near her home on H. M. Black's cranberry bog, about a half mile up the stream from the picnic grounds, after a gust of wind is supposed to have swept her into the creek while she was drawing water; Coroner Seeds issued a burial certificate on the ground of accidental drowning.

An errand to the creek bank, in the paper's own words

The Mount Holly News for Tuesday, March 23, 1909, page 3, carried this item under "Local News": "Mrs. Annie O'Donnell, of New Lisbon, was drowned near her home yesterday afternoon. She lived with her husband, Patrick O'Donnell, in a small house on the cranberry bog of H. M. Black, about a half mile up the stream from the picnic grounds. She went to the creek to get a bucket of water. As she stooped to fill her bucket it is supposed a strong gust of wind swept her from her feet and threw her into the creek. Her husband went from the house a few minutes after the woman had gone to the creek and was surprised and shocked to see her dead body floating on the water. Coroner Seeds was summoned and issued a burial certificate on the ground of accidental drowning."

This is the paper's own printed account, not an indexer's paraphrase, and it confirms the Burlington County Library's summary of the New Jersey Mirror's coverage of the same death in essentially every particular: the wind supposition, the husband finding the body afloat, and Coroner Seeds's ruling of accidental drowning. It also supplies two things the index summary did not: the death fell on "yesterday afternoon" relative to the Tuesday paper, which is to say Monday, March 22, 1909, giving both a day and a time of day; and it locates the O'Donnells' house "about a half mile up the stream from the picnic grounds" on Black's bog, an anchor point the index record lacked.

The finding

Coroner Seeds's disposition, as the News reports it, is a burial certificate issued on the ground of accidental drowning — not an inquest verdict; no inquest, jury, or post-mortem is mentioned in this account either, and the paper gives no first name for Seeds. The News does not give O'Donnell's age or anything about the couple beyond their names and residence on Black's bog. Nothing here was confirmed against a census, burial, or vital record this session, and the "picnic grounds" referred to as a landmark have not themselves been located or dated.

What the item documents, now on the strength of the newspaper's own words rather than an index summary, is that a family was living in a small house out on a working cranberry bog near New Lisbon in 1909, drawing water from the creek beside it. The record does not say who owned or provided the house, how many other families were there, or anything else about the bog operation, so nothing broader about bog housing is asserted here.

Sources and research limits

The Mount Holly News (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.), March 23, 1909, page 3 — Full-page OCR text retrieved directly from the Library of Congress (Chronicling America / NDNP) and read September 13, 2026. This is the primary source for this entry; the quoted paragraph above reproduces the item as OCR rendered it, with only obvious OCR line-break duplication silently removed. No later issue was checked for a follow-up.
Burlington County Library System, New Jersey Mirror index — search for "O'Donnell" — Re-run and confirmed September 12, 2026: fifty results, of which hit 19 (accession 75241) is categorised "OBITUARIES," headlined "LOCAL BRIEFS.", New Jersey Mirror, March 24, 1909, page 3, column 1. Kept here as a second, independent paper's account of the same death, which agrees with the Mount Holly News on every point of substance; the database supplies an indexer's summary rather than the article's own wording, and the site provides no stable per-record link, so the search query above is given instead. Limits: the original Mirror microfilm was not consulted; and no independent record (census, cemetery, or genealogical) confirming Annie or Patrick O'Donnell's ages, origins, or later history, or identifying Coroner Seeds or H. M. Black, was located this session.