Round Eight — Substantive updates to existing wild-man/creature/escaped-animal entries

Round Eight — Substantive updates to existing wild-man/creature/escaped-animal entries

Research date: September 12, 2026. Lane G.

Continuing the pool left by round seven (lane E/E2), which stopped at 2 of 10 after a Chronicling America rate-limit standstill (leopard-red-bank-1926 and chimp-elizabeth-1926, already done; also bear-newark-1906 and beast-1887-camden, done in that same session — all four skipped per the brief). This session inherited a further, harder access problem: the shared WebSearch budget was already exhausted at session start, the Google Books API returned a daily-quota 429, HathiTrust (babel.hathitrust.org) returned Cloudflare “Just a moment” challenges, and the coordinator confirmed mid-session (after independent testing) that loc.gov’s JSON search does not reliably match indexed OCR text this session, that panewsarchive.psu.edu’s andtext parameter is fuzzy/OR-only (use phrasetext for real phrase matches), and that nyshistoricnewspapers.org, archive.org’s advancedsearch endpoint used as a full-text search, and fultonhistory.com were all unusable (403, JS-shell-only, or DNS-redirect-to-Fulton). Internet Archive book full text (archive.org/download/<id>/<id>_djvu.txt, following redirects) was confirmed working and became this session’s main tool.

Candidate pool and what was tried

Word counts measured first, thinnest read first: trenton-1878 (176w), hunterdon-county-1878 (188w), escaped-monkey-plainfield-1948 (210w), jericho-salem-county-1875 (213w), escaped-monkey-camden-1938 (220w), monkey-long-branch-1952 (229w), bear-bridgewater-1955 (242w), brazilian-cardinal-bridgewater-1942 (246w), bigfoot (307w), barnsboro-1882 (342w, already substantively expanded in round six — checked, correctly skipped), leeds-devil-carolina-bird-report-1887 (353w, already substantively expanded — checked, correctly skipped), general-clinton-s-treasure-1892 (422w), passaic-1887 (523w, already substantively expanded — checked, correctly skipped), society-max-bayonne-bull (554w, already well developed), ghost-of-mary-ann-forge (774w, already well developed but with an explicitly flagged open question about the site’s history).

Dead ends (tried, no usable find — logged so later lanes don’t repeat them)

escaped-monkey-plainfield-1948, escaped-monkey-camden-1938, monkey-long-branch-1952, bear-bridgewater-1955, brazilian-cardinal-bridgewater-1942 — all five are 1938–1955 local human-interest items from Somerset/Middlesex/Union/Monmouth County papers (Bridgewater/Somerville Courier-News, Camden Courier-Post, Plainfield Courier-News, Long Branch Daily Record). Searched Chronicling America (loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=...) for every distinctive named person in each entry (Robert Troisi; John T. S. Hunn; James W. Pierce + monkey; Esther Shoemaker; Louis Pompilio + Tarzan; Cosmo F. Casella) — zero true hits in any case; the “Pompilio” hit that did come back was an unrelated Cleveland Italian-American newspaper. Also searched panewsarchive.psu.edu with phrasetext for the same names plus street addresses (“724 Elm Street,” “220 Burns Street”) — zero true hits; Philadelphia’s Evening Public Ledger (PA archive’s closest paper to Camden) has no coverage past the early 1920s in that corpus, well before 1938. Checked Internet Archive for the ornithological journal Cassinia (Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, the natural home for a 1942 Hunn bird record) — only volumes through the 1910s are digitized there; nothing near 1942. Conclusion: no accessible free full-text source this session covers these five entries’ era/papers. Not improved.

trenton-1878, hunterdon-county-1878 — round seven already searched Chronicling America for “wild man” + Trenton and “wild man” + Hunterdon/plow/harrow without success. This session retried with dates=1878 filtering (confirmed, per the coordinator’s note, that this filter did not actually narrow results — identical result sets returned regardless of date parameter) and via panewsarchive.psu.edu (phrasetext=wild man + andtext=Hunterdon/Trenton) — no 1878 hits in either. Also checked Beck’s Fare to Midlands (1939, covers central NJ including Hunterdon and Trenton) via Internet Archive full text for “Hunterdon,” “Trenton,” “wild man,” “plow,” “harrow” — many Trenton/Hunterdon mentions, none about an 1878 wild-man report. Not improved.

jericho-salem-county-1875 — searched Chronicling America and panewsarchive.psu.edu for “wild man” + Jericho/Salem; one Chronicling America hit (Newberry Herald, S.C., Dec 1875) was opened only by title/state — not South Carolina-relevant to a New Jersey Salem County item and not pursued further given the access failure that followed (see below). Not improved.

bigfoot (Berkeley Township, 1979, Asbury Park Press) — 1979 falls outside Chronicling America’s coverage (ends 1963) and outside all working period-newspaper sources this session. Not improved.

society-max-bayonne-bull — likely 1963 Bayonne Times; same problem, no accessible archive. Not improved.

Access failure note (mid-pool)

Two consecutive Chronicling America item-level fetches (loc.gov/resource/.../?fo=json) returned Cloudflare “Just a moment” challenge pages (not the search endpoint, which kept returning 200s with JSON but, per the coordinator, without real OCR matching). Per the brief’s “stop after two consecutive 429s” rule, no further loc.gov item fetches were attempted after that pair; remaining research relied on panewsarchive.psu.edu and Internet Archive book text only.

Substantive updates delivered (2)

general-clinton-s-treasure-1892

Added: Henry Charlton Beck’s 1937 More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey (Internet Archive, moreforgottentow00beck, full djvu text openly downloadable) independently places a LeDuc family member at South Park 45 years after the 1892 report — Fire Warden Albert B. LeDuc, patrolling roughly 80,000 acres, described as 57 years old and a World War artillery veteran, thoroughly familiar with the trails around South Park and Apple Pie Hill (pp. 136–142). This does not identify Albert B. LeDuc as Constant LeDuc (the 1892 land promoter) or establish any specific relationship — the entry says so explicitly — but it is independent, dated evidence that “LeDuc” was a real, lasting family name attached to this exact obscure place, which argues against the possibility that the 1892 clipping’s central name is an invention or bad OCR guess. Also added, from Beck’s 1939 Fare to Midlands: Forgotten Towns of Central New Jersey (Internet Archive, faretomidlandsfo00beck, pp. 244–245), the documented June 1778 Hopewell council of war, where Washington’s generals discussed General Clinton’s actual retreat toward Sandy Hook via Monmouth Court House with a large baggage train, harassed by New Jersey militia — explicitly flagged in the entry as not placing Clinton anywhere near Paisley/South Park, but offered as the real historical episode that would make his name a plausible one for local buried-treasure folklore to borrow anywhere in the state. Updated factbox (added “LeDuc family at South Park” row and “Research checked: September 12, 2026”), added a new section, and expanded the sources note with both books’ full citations and Internet Archive links. Sources inspected: archive.org/download/moreforgottentow00beck/moreforgottentow00beck_djvu.txt (full text read; also grepped for “Paisley,” “South Park,” “LeDuc,” “Mary Ann,” “Barnsboro,” “Jessup” to check for other pool leads); archive.org/download/faretomidlandsfo00beck/faretomidlandsfo00beck_djvu.txt (full text grepped for “General Clinton,” “Hunterdon,” “Trenton,” “wild man”; the Clinton passage was read in full). Rejected leads: Woodward & Hageman’s 1883 History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Internet Archive historyofburling01wood/02wood) was checked in full for “LeDuc,” “Paisley,” “South Park,” “buried treasure” — no hits (the book predates the 1892 report and the LeDuc land promotion). Several other Beck titles (Jersey Genesis, The Roads of Home, Tales and Towns of Northern New Jersey) returned HTTP 401 (in-copyright, lending-only) and could not be read this session.

ghost-of-mary-ann-forge

Added: Beck’s 1937 More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey independently corroborates and adds to the site’s documented history beyond the undated newspaper feature already cited. It places Mary Ann Forge on an 1834 New Jersey stage-road map, on the route from Bordentown through Recklesstown, Fooltown, Penny Hill, Mary Ann Forge, Mount Misery and Old Half Way to Cedar Bridge; states plainly that by 1937 “Mary Ann is remembered only in a broken water gate,” matching the entry’s own description of a broken dam gate; and separately notes that slag with embedded charcoal can still be found at “Weymouth, Speedwell, Mary Ann, and other furnace sites” — physical, datable industrial debris independent of Beck’s newspaper feature. A later passage in the same book (Beck’s return visit to the area) records that a marked trail to Mary Ann Forge, Upper Mill and Lower Mill had since been signposted, which the author credits to public interest generated by his own earlier writing about the “forgotten towns.” Folded this into a new “A published guidebook, independent of the newspaper feature” section, distinguishing it clearly from the undated feature clipping that remains the entry’s primary source, and updated the factbox’s “Research checked” date to September 12, 2026. Sources inspected: archive.org/download/moreforgottentow00beck/moreforgottentow00beck_djvu.txt, the same download used for the Clinton-treasure entry above; the relevant passages (pp. 35, 83, 237, 287 per the book’s own index, located via grep and read in context) were read in full. Rejected leads: none specific to this entry beyond the general access failures logged above; no attempt was made to re-verify the existing Fenwick Manor PDF or HSP finding-aid citations already in the entry, since neither needed correction and re-fetching them was outside this session’s scope.

Entries considered and left alone as already adequately developed

barnsboro-1882, leeds-devil-carolina-bird-report-1887, passaic-1887, society-max-bayonne-bull — all already carry primary-source identification, figures, or corroboration from prior rounds; nothing found this session materially improves them, and none showed an obvious open thread worth chasing given the session’s access constraints.

Summary

2 of a possible 6 substantive updates delivered this session (general-clinton-s-treasure-1892, ghost-of-mary-ann-forge), both drawing on newly opened Internet Archive book sources not previously cited in either entry. The remaining 8 candidates in the assigned pool (trenton-1878, hunterdon-county-1878, jericho-salem-county-1875, the five 1938–1955 escaped-animal entries, and bigfoot/society-max-bayonne-bull) could not be improved this session: their source newspapers and years fall outside every newspaper-archive channel that was actually reachable today (Chronicling America returned no true hits for any of their distinguishing proper names or addresses; panewsarchive.psu.edu’s Pennsylvania corpus has no coverage of Camden/Bridgewater/Plainfield/Long Branch local news in the 1930s–1950s, or of 1878/1875 Trenton/Hunterdon/Jericho items; HathiTrust, Google Books, nyshistoricnewspapers.org, fultonhistory.com, netscape.bcls.lib.nj.us and WebSearch were all unavailable). A future session with fresh API quotas, or access to a paywalled NJ newspaper archive (newspapers.com Camden Courier-Post/Bridgewater Courier-News runs), would be far better positioned to close these out than another attempt through today’s channels.

Validation (root fact-check)

Independent adversarial re-check, September 12, 2026. Both Beck texts were downloaded again from the Internet Archive (moreforgottentow00beck_djvu.txt, 566 KB; faretomidlandsfo00beck_djvu.txt, 1.02 MB) and the cited passages located and read in context. Every Beck claim in both expansions is genuinely in the books.

general-clinton-s-treasure-1892 — verified. More Forgotten Towns, pp. 136–142, contains all of it: “the carryall of hard-working Albert B. LeDuc, who guards 80,000 acres from forest fires”; “Fire Warden LeDuc remembers his artillery service in the World War”; “We went on to South Park where Mr. LeDuc was waiting for us”; “a surprising agility for his fifty-seven years”; and the Apple Pie Hill trip. The index entry reads “LeDuc, Albert B., 136, 140, 141, 142.” Fare to Midlands, pp. 244–245, confirms the Hopewell council: “It was on June 24, 1778, that Washington assembled his best minds at the Hunt house for discussion of an attack on the British column… General Clinton, making slow progress because of a large quantity of baggage and the fact that the Jersey militia was ripping up every bridge it could, was heading for Sandy Hook by way of Monmouth Court House.” The expansion does not blur the two LeDucs: it says outright that no source establishes Albert B. LeDuc’s relationship, if any, to Constant LeDuc, and that the surname could be coincidence. That is the right call and it is stated clearly enough. One correction: the factbox row read “LeDuc family at South Park / Confirmed independently as late as 1937.” Beck attests one man, not a family, and “confirmed” overstates a surname match. Changed to “LeDuc name at South Park / Independently attested again in 1937.”

ghost-of-mary-ann-forge — verified, with a citation correction. All four passages are real, at the pages the book’s own index gives (“Mary Ann Forge, 35, 83, 237, 287”): the 1834 map route “through Bordentown, Recklesstown, Fooltown or Georgetown, Penny Hill, Mary Ann Forge, Mount Misery, and Old Half Way” (p. 83); “Mary Ann is remembered only in a broken water gate” (p. 83); slag “with chunks of charcoal deeply imbedded” at “Weymouth, Speedwell, Mary Ann, and other furnace sites” (p. 287); and “the trail to Mary Ann Forge, Upper Mill and Lower Mill, is marked now with directional signs that did not exist before we wrote about forgotten history there” (p. 237), which the entry correctly renders as Beck crediting his own earlier writing. Corrections made: (1) the source note cited “pp. 35, 83, 136–142, 237, 287” — pp. 136–142 is the South Park / Albert B. LeDuc chapter, which has nothing to do with Mary Ann Forge and was evidently carried over from the other entry’s citation. Removed. (2) The section opened by saying Beck’s book “covers Mary Ann Forge separately from the undated newspaper feature.” There is no Mary Ann chapter in the 1937 book; there are four passing mentions. Rewritten to say so, which is both accurate and a fairer measure of how much weight the corroboration can carry.

Recommend-drop: none. Neither expansion overstates its source once the two citation problems above are fixed.

Incidental find, passed on rather than used here. The same Beck chapter (p. 141) describes the buildings atop Apple Pie Hill as a hospital “called Pine Crest on the labels of the health water bottles,” attributed to the late Dr. William A. White of New York. That is independent corroboration for lane C’s curran-leduc-pine-crest-1912 entry, and has been added there with an explicit note that nothing connects White to Dr. Curran and that Beck’s Albert B. LeDuc is not identified with the 1912 Albert LeDuc.