The New Jersey History Podcast

A woman in white searches the New Jersey surf for her lost lover. In this episode of The New Jersey History Podcast, an original historical fiction vignette opens Stephen Crane’s “The Ghostly Sphinx of Metedeconk.” Hear Crane’s haunting tale, explore the history of Brick Township and Mantoloking, and consider a theory about where his mysterious house stood. Then discover the real story of Captain Henry Goodsell, whose remains washed ashore on New Jersey beaches and were identified through genetic genealogy in 2025—the remarkable case that inspired the opening fiction.

You can find Goodsell's story here: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/nx-s1-5409062/sea-captain-new-jersey-remains-19th-century-identified

And Crane's story here: https://www.stripersonline.com/surftalk/topic/193014-the-ghostly-sphinx-of-the-metedeconk/

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What makes a place haunted? Inspired by a passage from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this episode explores the connection between ghost stories and continuity: the people who remember a place and pass its stories on. We travel through New Jersey’s colonial settlements, Revolutionary battlefields, Cape May and Asbury Park, the Morro Castle and other shipwrecks, and the story of Tillie Smith in Hackettstown. We also consider why Lenape spiritual traditions cannot simply be folded into European ghost lore. This episode sets the stage for October mini-sodes exploring individual apparent hauntings—and asks what people believed they encountered when they thought they saw a ghost.

Email me for collaboration and to be a guest on the podcast [email protected]

Forget Salem. New Jersey had its own witchcraft law, accusations, legends—and even a supposed witch trial reported in Benjamin Franklin’s newspaper.

In this episode of The New Jersey History Podcast, we enter the unseen world of colonial New Jersey, where an iron horseshoe guarded a barn against witches, demons and the Devil—and a dry udder could be interpreted as evidence of a curse.

We examine the biblical and European beliefs behind New Jersey’s 1668 witchcraft law; the story of Abigail Sharp, who sued a neighbor after he accused her of flying at night, appearing as a cat and bewitching his horse; and the 1730 Mount Holly “witch trial,” now generally understood as satire rather than a documented trial.

Then we follow witch folklore beyond the colonial courtroom to Mary Moore, the legendary “Witch of Edison,” and Margaret “Peggy” Clevenger, the so-called Witch of the Pine Barrens.

This is a story about witchcraft, the Devil, accusations, and the uneasy place where documented New Jersey history becomes folklore.

I'm looking for guests to have on the show. If you think you're interesting, email me [email protected]

Thumbnail generated by ChatGPT, using an 1816 facsimile of a woodcut from "The Newes of Scotland," 1591.

Knights, horses, jousting, falconry, and royal feasts are usually associated with medieval Europe. But this is a New Jersey story. Step beyond the castle walls and discover the history, animals, training, and unseen work that keep a medieval world alive in the Garden State.

Be on the lookout for the follow-up episode on New Jersey around 1100-1400.

I'm actively seeking podcast guests, so if you think you're interesting, email me- [email protected]

Episode thumbnail generated using ChatGPT

Two summers, two hundred years apart, finally come together.

In 1776, a Loyalist merchant’s son and a Lenape boy cross the Delaware into revolutionary Philadelphia, where the words of Thomas Paine and the promise—and contradictions—of American liberty change them both. In 1976, two friends planning to sneak off to Asbury Park in search of Bruce Springsteen discover something even more compelling inside Indian Joe’s bay-front home.

Featuring the Lenape, Common Sense, colonial New Jersey, the Battle of Monmouth, the Jersey Shore and a final journey into 2026, this concluding chapter asks how history survives—and who ultimately tells its stories.

Sponsored by Journey to Real Foods, a New Jersey-based company offering seasoning mixes for homemade dips and sauces. My promotional link is here: https://journeytorealfood.com/shop/?wpam_id=3 Any of my proceeds will be donated to Rescue Ridge animal shelter in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

Interested in appearing on The New Jersey History Podcast? Email [email protected] and tell me why you would make an interesting guest.

For more New Jersey history, nostalgia, Italian-American culture, and comedy, follow The New Jersey History Project on Instagram.

The summer of 1976 settles into its rhythm at the Jersey Shore. A morning walk, an old family pizzeria, a grandfather's house frozen in another era, and a conversation between two new friends begin revealing histories neither boy fully understands.

As the Kid learns that his friend's family can trace its New Jersey roots through slavery in Newark, he shares the story of his own Campobasso immigrant family, whose story in Newark began in the 1880s before they built a life from the stone of the Palisades. Neither boy realizes just how closely their families' histories have crossed.

Meanwhile, Mom is getting ready for a weekend at the Latin Casino and a night with her beloved Engelbert Humperdinck. But down the Shore, another singer is becoming harder and harder to ignore: a Jersey guy named Bruce Springsteen.

So who wins the summer of '76: Engelbert or Bruce?

Set against pizza parlors, beach days, family stories, Newark memories, Bicentennial America, the Latin Casino, and the music of Bruce Springsteen, Bicentennial Summer continues its journey through a New Jersey where the past is never quite as far away as it seems.

The New Jersey History Podcast blends historical fiction, New Jersey history, family memory, and 1970s nostalgia in a story unfolding between the Jersey Shore of 1976 and Revolutionary New Jersey in 1776.

This is part of our ongoing foodways series. Pizza is a New Jersey tradition, but how did it first reach the Jersey Shore? Most people know the story of boardwalk pizza. But what if pizza arrived at the Shore farther inland first, years before it became a seaside staple? Join The New Jersey History Podcast as we explore the surprising origins of pizza in Ocean County, Italian-American settlement, and the forgotten history that may rewrite how we think about one of New Jersey's favorite foods. And it's very personal for me.

Does anyone remember the places we talked about?

Email me, or drop a comment: [email protected]

Join me as I tell you the story of an old railroad worker who pointed new immigrants away from the tenements of NYC and North Jersey, and toward the sandy soil of South Jersey.

In this episode of The New Jersey History Podcast, we uncover the remarkable story of Hammonton, New Jersey, where Sicilian immigrants established the oldest continuously running Italian-American feast in the United States, decades before the famous Feast of San Gennaro, and whose labor propelled the blueberry to its status as the state fruit.

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Two boys — one English, one Lenape — set out on a merchant's errand through the New Jersey Pine Barrens, carrying a satchel whose contents neither of them understands. Along the way, they stop at Indian Stage, a quiet landing on the Metedeconk River, and at Brotherton, the first Native American reservation in the colonies (and US). Neither boy has any idea how far this errand is about to take them, or what they'll find waiting at the end of the road. A story about the places that connect people — and the history that happens around them, before anyone knows it's happening.

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Before Trenton. Before Princeton. Before Washington's retreat across New Jersey. Before the Declaration of Independence.

On June 29, 1776, the American Revolution may have fought its first engagement in New Jersey at Turtle Gut Inlet, a forgotten waterway near present-day Wildwood Crest.

In this special 250th anniversary episode of The New Jersey History Podcast, we begin with a fictional vignette inspired by the location before exploring the true story of the American brig Nancy, British warships, John Barry, the desperate effort to save precious gunpowder, and the dramatic explosion that marked one of the earliest Revolutionary War actions connected to New Jersey.

Was Turtle Gut Inlet the first Revolutionary War battle in New Jersey? Historians debate the terminology, but its place in New Jersey's Revolutionary story is undeniable.

Join me as I uncover one of the Garden State's most overlooked Revolutionary War stories.

Also, I am now accepting listener submissions. Email me: njhistorypodcast@gmail.,com