Pine BarrensField Notes

People and communities

Rebecca Steward and Gouldtown

Documented history · Complete 1877 memoir reproduced

A Gouldtown woman's letters, writing, work and family journeys survive in the memorial volume her son Theophilus published in 1877. Read the whole book here, then use the map to place its two identifiable Cumberland County settings.

Read the complete book

Our local copy includes the title pages, all five biographical chapters, Rebecca's letters and writings, contributions by relatives and church leaders, the digitized illustrations, and Project Gutenberg's source and license notes. The transcription retains its original spelling and period language.

Open the illustrated full textDownload plain text

Project Gutenberg ebook 38383 is the source of this transcription. The scanned 1877 volume can be used to check its page images when a transcription or quotation matters.

Where to start in the memoir

  1. Chapter I, ancestry and parents — Theophilus introduces Gouldtown, its businesses and institutions, then recounts family origins. The family tradition about its first settlers is his account, not a resolved genealogy.
  2. Chapter II, birth and home — Rebecca's childhood log house, field and wood work, intermittent schooling, marriage to James Steward and their decision to move from town to country. James's nine years at the Cumberland Nail and Iron Works appear here.
  3. Chapter III, wife, mother, writer — Household life and the first selection of Rebecca's writing and letters.
  4. Chapter IV, adult children — The 1874 New Bern journey, 1875 letters about illness, farm work, travel and family news, and her final illness.
  5. Chapter V and the later contributions — Theophilus's retrospective, then recollections and writing supplied by other relatives and AME leaders.

What her letters let us see

Rebecca's January 9, 1875 letter to her daughter Alice moves from abdominal pain to preparing dinner on a hog-killing day and an account of Alice's pigeon. A June 26 letter mentions a sick son-in-law, a tiring New York trip, a factory closed by heat and the coming corn harvest. A July letter says the harvest had been hard on her. These passages show household management, farm seasons and family care in the same days. The factory is not named, and the letter does not establish that Rebecca worked there.

Her April 1874 trip with her sister Tamson Cuff to New Bern, North Carolina, and later visits to Brooklyn and Philadelphia show family ties beyond Gouldtown. Theophilus selected and arranged the letters around a devotional account of her life; printed omissions and his commentary matter when reading them as historical evidence.

Places in the book

This map distinguishes a community reference point from a surviving building associated with James's employer. It does not locate Rebecca's childhood home, the couple's later house, the 1846 church building or a grave. The memoir gives no usable address for those places.

  1. Locality point, not a house or church

    The book places Rebecca's birth and later family life in Gouldtown. The marker is the USGS place-name reference point.

  2. Surviving office of the Nail Works complex

    Chapter II says James worked nine years at the works before their marriage. This is the surviving office at City Park's entrance; the memoir does not say he worked inside this building.

The markers help readers orient themselves. The Nail House's interior access and opening hours have not been verified; check locally before traveling.

Reading the source carefully

Theophilus describes Gouldtown as having a church, school, blacksmith, wheelwright, stores and post office in the 1870s. His description of Rebecca's childhood, roughly half a century earlier, says a small schoolhouse also served as a church. Those are different periods; neither description identifies present-day parcels. He says James and Rebecca first lived in town, bought and sold a village home, then moved to the country as their children were born. Their exact addresses remain unknown from this book.

Rebecca's own letters and essays are the strongest evidence for her words, but the printed selections still passed through her son's editorial choices. Claims about precise building sites, family counts and earlier ancestry would benefit from comparison with deeds, census records, church minutes and the original manuscripts if they survive.

Sources and map method

  1. T. G. Steward, Memoirs of Mrs. Rebecca Steward (1877), especially chapters I–IV; complete transcription and illustrations reproduced above. The original letters and a printed copy were not compared against the transcription.
  2. New Jersey Historic Trust, Cumberland Nail Mill and Iron Works Office, identifies the surviving office and places it at Bridgeton City Park's entrance; City of Bridgeton history describes its building phases.
  3. OpenStreetMap's Nail House feature supplies the modern building coordinate used here; USGS GNIS feature 876690 supplies the Gouldtown community coordinate. These modern markers are not historical surveys of the Steward family's movements.