Location Seed: Amacaron County, New Jersey.

Amacaron County, New Jersey – Google Docs

Amacaron County, New Jersey

Don’t bother; it’s not on the map.  It’s not on any of the maps, or at least the ones that are publicly available.  Turns out, somebody in the late 1930s went through the records under the guise of a Civil Works Administration program, and amended, altered, defaced, and in a couple of places outright replaced the relevant entries. And they did a thorough job; the only documents and maps left to the public that still mention the existence of Amacaron County between 1684 and 1785 escaped notice only because they had been misfiled previously.

What’s left is tantalizing.  The remaining records only vaguely describe Amacaron County, but it seems to have been somewhere near the border of present-day Burlington and Atlantic Counties in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.  Most of the old county is now part of the Wharton State Forest, and it was never heavily populated; the county ‘seat’ of Ungstead was barely a hamlet, and the population was mostly the descendants of displaced Swedish and Finnish colonists from the former New Sweden colony to the west.  There is a suggestion in the records that the latter, at least, were heavily encouraged to settle in the middle of the Pine Barrens — whether they wanted to, or not.

Continue reading Location Seed: Amacaron County, New Jersey.