Folklore and media · Pasadena, near Mount Misery

Peggy Clevenger, the Witch of the Pines

Death reported in 1857 newspaper notices (known through a secondary source) · Witch tales are folklore

Peggy Clevenger became the Pine Barrens’ best-known witch in folklore; 1857 New Jersey Mirror notices, known here through a secondary source, report that a woman called Mrs. Clevenger died when her cabin burned.

The 1857 newspaper notices

A 2018 post from the Astonishing Legends podcast quotes two December 1857 items from the New Jersey Mirror. The first ran on December 10. It reported that a cabin on the Old Shore Road, about halfway between Mount Misery and Cedar Bridge, had burned one night the week before, and that Mrs. Clevenger died in the fire. According to the post, the notice called her Mother Clevenger, said she was elderly and lived alone, and said she was well known to travelers on that road. It also reported that a night or two before the fire, her hogs were poisoned and her horse’s throat was cut, and it hinted that the fire had been set on purpose.

A week later, on December 17, the paper printed a letter from J. W. Cox. Cox wrote that he had looked into the matter, including talking with her children, and was convinced no one else was involved. In his view the fire started in the chimney or fireplace. So the two notices do not agree on the cause, and no one was charged. The original 1857 issues were not examined for this entry, so everything in this section depends on the post’s quotations.

The legend that grew around her

Folklore about Clevenger is better known than the newspaper record. The Astonishing Legends post prints lines it says come from John McPhee’s book The Pine Barrens. In them, Pineys put salt over their doors to keep the witch away. She could turn into a rabbit: a dog chasing a rabbit saw it leap through a window, and Peggy was standing there instead. A man who threw a rock at a lizard found Peggy in its place, and she slapped him. She was said to live at Pasadena, five miles east of Mount Misery, and to own a stocking full of gold. After the fire, no gold turned up in the ruins.

Stockton University’s South Jersey Culture & History Center lists tales of Clevenger as the Witch of the Pines among the Pine Barrens lore that anthropologist Herbert Halpert collected in the 1930s and 1940s. That shows when the witch stories were being told. It does not show whether anyone told them while she was alive.

Sources and research limits

Tess Pfeifle, “The Witch of the Pine Barrens,” Astonishing Legends, January 8, 2018 — Read September 11, 2026. It is the source for the December 10 and December 17, 1857 New Jersey Mirror items and their content, and for the folklore lines it credits to McPhee. The post also says she lived with a husband, William, and ran a stagecoach inn “in the late 1800s,” which cannot be right given her 1857 death, so those details are left out here. Neither the 1857 issues nor McPhee’s book was examined.
“Pine Barrens: Life and Legends,” South Jersey Culture & History Center, Stockton University — Read for its statement that Halpert’s 1930s–40s collection included tales of Clevenger. It is a short announcement of an exhibition catalogue.