In collaboration with South Jersey Ghost Research, the Gloucester County Historical Society is sponsoring a program that enables 25 people to join a paranormal investigation team analyzing a sprawling, 260-year-old Victorian mansion in the center of Woodbury.
The event takes place on Friday, October 9th from 8:00PM to 12:00AM. The cost is $25 dollars per person and registration is required. The location is the Hunter-Lawrence-Jessup House at 58 North Broad Street in Woodbury.
The building is the home of the Historical Society Museum. It has a disturbing history that hints at multiple possibilities of ghostings.
The structure was standing in 1777 when the defeated Hessian survivors of the battle of Redbank retreated into town, many of them horribly wounded and dying. Those soldiers camped in the house's yard. Just a hundred yards away they had commandeered the Friends Meethinghouse to use as their hospital. And the dead soldiers were buried in a makeshift cemetery directly next to the Hunter-Jessup house. In 1883 those bodies were dug up and reburied in Bridgeton.
In another traumatic era, the house was the home of families that owned enslaved African Americans who likely worked there as domestic servants as well as in the outside commercial labors of those prominent white families.
The three-story house has 20 rooms and creepy two-century old cellars. In 1979, the jawbone, several teeth, and limb bones were found buried directly beside the house while excavating for an addition. Examined by technicians at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, the bones were found to be those of an 18th-century female aged 15-16 who suffered from malnutrition at the time of her death. One suggestion was that she may have been an ill indentured servant who sat down against the wall of the house and died there. Another is that she was hastily buried in the same spot for reasons unknown.
Organization: Gloucester County Historical Society Museum
Google Maps: https://bit.ly/gchs-museum
Location GPS Map Coordinates: 39.83952,-75.15193
Free Parking on Hunter Street in the Gloucester County Historical Society lot or County justice Complex Parking Garage: https://bit.ly/woodbury-free-p...
Contact: museum@gchsnj.org | (856) 848-8531