Two Elizabeths Chapter 5

Elizabeth and John did not actively pursue the establishment of what was to become the busy little town of Haddonfield. That was made almost inevitable by other events beyond her control.
The first was when the General Assembly of West Jersey, seated at Burlington, decreed in 1681 that a road would be constructed between Perth Amboy and Salem along the path of the Indian trails that wended their way through the thick forest. Ten men from Salem and ten from Burlington were enlisted to do the work, and although in places it was little more than a bridle path, land travel between the north and the south was then possible, and although travel by boat between Salem and Burlinton was quite easy on the Delaware River, the road connected other smaller settlements in the interior, including my town of Woodbury (settled in the 1680’s), Swedesboro, Mickleton and others. The road between Woodbury and Salem remains a two lane road that follows pretty closely the original route, and many of the oldest buildings in the area are located along the road.
It also passed quite closly to Elizabeth Haddon’s property. Where it crossed the Cooper River happened to be at the limit of its navigability, so it happened that goods shipped by boat from Philadelphia and headed to settlers along the highway passed through that particular location. It was a natural center of commerce on a small scale.
West Jersey has been called the first Quaker colony by some historians, in spite of early settlements by the Swedes in Swedesboro and Salem. This was a result of the purchase of most of the land by two Quakers in England in the late 1600’s. One of them became insolvent, and a couple years later, when the other one died, the whole property was put in trust, administered by none other than William Penn. Among his other talents and accomplishments, he turned out to be quite the real estate agent as well. He divided the land into 1,000 parcels, and sold them to his Quaker acquaintances, including John Haddon, who ended up buying several, eventually.
Elizabeth made two return trips to England, and on her return from the second, she brought a deed for an acre of land along King’s Highway, as a gift to the community, and for the purpose of building a Meeting House. The combined effect of the area being a social center, as well as a center of commerce, made its development as a prominent town inevitable, as soon various merchants and tradesmen set up shop along King’s Highway to take advantage of the traffic and visibility.
Elizabeth and John built a larger house, with the expectation that John Haddon would eventually bring the rest of the family to live. But that never happened. Elizabeth served as the secretary of the Meeting for the remainder of her life, over forty years. She also managed the estate, and continued until her death to tend to the sickly or the needy in her vicinity, often daily.
John Estaugh managed his father=in-laws land holdings here, and continued to do missionary work on occasion. It was on one of these missions, to the Caribbean island of Tortola, that he became ill while attending a funeral in the rain, and died within a couple of days.
No words can describe her affection for, and attachment to him better than her own. She prefaced the publication of his last sermon with these words:

Since it pleased Divine Providence so highly to favor me with being the near companion of this dear worthy, I must give some small account of him. Few, if any in the married state, ever lived in sweeter harmony than we did. He was a pattern of moderation in all things ; not lifted up in any enjoyments, nor cast down at disappointments. A man endowed with many good gifts, which rendered him very agreeable to his friends, and much more to me, his wife, to whom his memory is most dear and precious.''