Harrisville, Martha Furnace and map review — October 1, 2026

Harrisville

The Pinelands Commission timeline dates the first McCartyville paper mill to 1832. The Commission’s cultural resource plan gives 1832–1835, lists rags, rope, scrap paper and salt hay as inputs, and places the mill in a regional paper industry. The date range is more useful than treating 1832 and 1834 as contradictory opening dates.
The Commission’s Take Ten guide, pp. 26–27, describes brown wrapping paper and paraphrases an August 1877 site survey with the equipment inventory. This is an official retrospective account of the survey; the original 1877 document was not inspected.
The Commission’s history identifies Harrisville as a former McCartyville locality spanning Washington and Bass River townships, with sawmill and paper-mill history. Ben Ruset’s local synthesis remains the source for the Harris family, foreclosure, Camp Lyon and 1914 fire. Original deeds, camp records and contemporary fire reporting remain open leads.

Hagley’s finding aid for accession 0339 gives the ownership sequence, two-sided daybook/diary structure, 360 named people, missing wage accounts, uncertain Caleb Earl attribution and manuscript provenance. Its digital archive link exists, but individual manuscript pages were not reviewed.
The New Jersey Historical Society guide for MG 452 identifies the typescript author as unknown and dates closure to 1844. The Pinelands Commission naming guide identifies Martha Pond as a remnant of the works’ water system.

Harrisville’s two existing pins disagreed by more than 100 m while both claimed site precision. Both now use the USGS GNIS locality coordinate. That coordinate documents the named place, not a surveyed mill footprint.
Martha’s existing pin is near a GNIS populated-place point, but neither coordinate proves a furnace footprint. The previous basis incorrectly described their separation as about 10 m; it is about 60 m. Both Martha pins now use locality precision. The place pin links to the diary story.
A text result list now exposes filtered pins and related stories to keyboard users and helps distinguish coincident place and entry markers.