Today’s Adventure is in good Old Cherry “The Thrill” Hill in South Jersey. In 1695, settlers formed the community of Waterford Township on these hallowed grounds.. which was one of the original townships of Gloucester County. It was a hot and steamy mill town and agricultural thoroughfare.
In 1844, the town voted to change the township under a brand-new shiny name, Delaware Township and became one with Camden County.
Throughout the 19th Century, farms and mills were scattered everywhere. Most of Cherry Hill’s produce was grown for Camden’s finest, Campbell’s Soup.
By the 20th Century, farmland was being sold off to create neighborhood developments. Some even furnished by John Wanamaker’s.
Old Racetrack Postcard.
After the Great Depression, land was still cheap in Delaware Township. The Garden State Race Track built-in the 1940’s became known World-Wide. The Cherry Hill Inn, Rickshaw Inn, and Latin Casino soon opened and became huge attractions. The Cherry Hill Mall opened in 1960 and soon after, the name was changed to what we know it as….. Cherry Hill.
Here are some great points of interest to seek out in Cherry Hill:
•Colestown Cemetery
Located at the intersection of Church Road and Kings Highway
One of the founding family’s.. Browning.. as in Browning Road.
Colestown is an extremely old cemetery. The first recorded burial was in 1684, according to the historical marker placed out front of the cemetery. The gatehouse dates back to 1858. Many of Cherry Hill’s founding fathers can be found buried here.
A descendant of the Coles family. Founding father.
Colestown was named after Samuel Coles, who had settled in the area in 1685.
Cemetery Entrance at Colestown.
Interesting fact, one side of the gatehouse was used as a chapel for funeral services, and the other side was the living quarters for the caretaker of the cemetery.
She’s a beauty.
Below, the chapel gatehouse, is a vault once used as a winter holding room for the corpses that could not be buried in the frozen ground. Hey, they didn’t have construction equipment in that time.
The gatehouse was placed on the National Historic Registry in 1975.
•Barclay Farmstead
430 Suffolk Drive
In the heart of the bustling and busy, Cherry Hill township, sits this splendid brick-beauty frozen in time.
Barclay Farmstead.
The house was built in 1816 by Joseph Thorne, a Quaker farmer. In 1826, Joseph W. Cooper, a sixth-generation descendant of the founder of Camden and the owner of Camden’s busy Cooper’s Ferry, acquired the 168-acre property as a vacation home. Cooper wanted to escape Camden’s hot summer days.
Eventually, “Chestnut Grove Farm,” as it came to be known, was passed along to Joseph Cooper’s great-granddaughter, Helen Champion Barclay. Hence, the Barclay Homestead name.
Wood bridge leading to nature trails.
A portion of the trail, next to the stream.
More beautiful trails.
Boardwalk over marsh area.
The farm has a small orchard and open for tours throughout the year. There is also a wonderful playground for children and an exquisite trail system just behind the Barclay property. It’s a great exploring place for kids and adults alike.
The Barclay homestead was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 26, 1978.
•Bonnie’s Bridge
This wonderful 18th century artifact located at 350 Wayland Rd., in someone’s front-yard!!!
Bonnie’s Bridge.
Bonnie’s Bridge according to historians may predate the year of 1795. It is believed it was a bridge used as part of an old road system that once graced the Cherry Hill landscape.
The bridge is named after Bonnie Cocchairaley. She purchased the home in 1962 because of the bridge. It took her 16 years and two historians, to try to uncover the history of this beauty.
In 1984, Bonnie’s Bridge was listed in the National Register of Historic Sites.
• Scarborough Covered Bridge
Covered Bridge Road
Scarborough Covered Bridge.
This two-lane covered bridge stands exquisitely in the Barclay Farms neighborhood. The bridge was named after Bob Scarborough. It was created to connect another subdivision over a tributary of Cooper River. It opened to traffic in 1959 and considered a historic structure in the Cherry Hill community.
There is also a small park area, near the bridge, called Scarborough Park. It sits along the north branch territory and is a natural wonder.
•Croft Farm
Borton’s Mill Road
Sign at Croft Farmstead.
The Croft Farm.
This 80 acre site was once a working farm and mill.The grounds and trails are centered around the farmhouse. The original section constructed in 1753. The site is now home to the Cherry Hill Arts Center.
Croft farm was used to house runaway slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Thomas Evans would hide the slaves in the attic. The following morning, they’d be taken along their journey towards Mt. Holly, another huge stop in the Underground Railroad.
Evans pond was named after the Quaker family and adjoins the Croft farm property.
Evans Pond.
Records show that Josiah Evans, another member of the Evans family and noted Quaker, arranged to buy the freedom, from bounty hunters, of two fugitive slaves, Joshua Sadler and Jefferson Fisher.
Stream near Evans Pond.
Both men remained at the mill, working to repay Evans for his kindness. Sadler went on to become the leader of a small settlement of freed slaves who established “Sadlertown” in what is now Haddon Township.
Saddler’s Woods a popular hiking spot and has some of the oldest trees, in the state of New Jersey, is all that remains of Joshua Saddler’s founding negro settlement. It truly is a great place to explore and Yummy has written about it before.
•Cherry Hill Cherry Blossoms
Chapel Avenue
The Cherry Hill blossoms.
Last, but not least, another point of interest to seek out in Cherry Hill are its Cherry Blossoms. These pink poignant perfect beauties grace Chapel Avenue every spring. They are a true spectacle to see and every year, it gets better and better.
Hope you enjoyed our little Cherry Hill tour. Until our next adventure, my friends!
-Yummygal
Sources: Waymarking, Cherry Hill Township, Philadelphia Inquirer, NJ Wildlife trails, National Historic Registry, West Jersey History Project, Wikipedia, Barclay Farmstead, Cherry Hill, NJ: A Brief History, NJ.com.
South Jersey History & Adventures 
While I was reading your post, I kept asking myself as to why the place was called Cherry Hill. The answer came at the very end, CHERRY blossoms! lol Happy Labor Day,YG!
I believe it was called Cherry Hill before the cherry trees were planted.
My understanding is that the name came from the trees which were present at the Cherry Hill Inn, which overlooked the site that became the Cherry Hill Mall. The Inn and the trees are long gone, and an AMC Lowes movie multiplex (bleh) is currently on that site.
The cherry blossom trees along Chapel Avenue are nice, but they were a later addition, well after the town’s name was changed.
The cherry trees were on a farm on Haddonfield Road. The farm was called Cherry Hill and when the Inn was built on the site of the former farm, the Inn was called the Cherry Hill Inn after the farm. Eventually, the name of the town was changed also.
One of the Browning family members owned a farm on the hill at what is now Route 38 and Haddonfield Road called the Cherry Hill Inn. After constructing the race track, Eugene Mori purchased the site and constructed a hotel and named it the Cherry Hill Inn using the same name as the farm. The developers of the new shopping mall across the street chose the same name for the new mall.
The last piece of the puzzle is that New Jersey already had a Delaware Township in Hunterton County and therefore the growing township could not get it’s own named post office. It was this that triggered the name change process.
It was in 1954 that Gene Mori built/opened the Chery Hill Inn on what had been Cherry Hill farm owned by Abraham Browning ( ~1800’s) . Mori also built Cherry Hill Estates and Cherry Hill Apts long before the Mall was ever dreamed of.
As an aside: Gene Mori (Garden State racetrack fame) & Jimmy Cinelli (Cinelli’s Country House) were old buds who once made a bet that required the loser to buy a Cadillac for the winner. Cinelli lost the bet, but refused to buy Mori the car. As payback, Mori told Cinelli, sitting in his Country House restaurant, that he was going to “build an Inn on that hill over there with the cherry tress and drive you out of business.” The rest in indeed history.
I love your website. I too, like you, love to explore and find things close to home and abroad, but close to home is really, really cool. You are giving me a lot of ideas for places to go see. Keep having fun doing what you are doing and keep sharing for folks like me.
Thank you, David!
Loved the walk down memory lane, thank you.
You got it, Linda.
I have a special spot in my heart for covered bridges…. very nice. I also like looking through old cemeteries — our long life is something many before us didn’t enjoy.
Thanks Bill. I was perusing through your recent posts and some of your photos and stories are incredible and inspiring. I subscribe to you blog via WordPress feed, but I end up missing a lot. Going to go and sign up for email notifications right now!
thanks !
Not sure if you saw this one, but in my hunt for the perfect root-beer we stopped here, just outside of Philly in New Jersey.
http://bwthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/if-elvis-likes-it/
I didn’t see this post, but this is in Cherry Hill the town I wrote about today with the covered bridge! I was here at Weber’s about 2 weeks ago before taking our son to his first movie. That is hilarious! Btw, I looked for email notifications and didn’t see on your page. Bummer. Lol.
what a great time for you!
That is some fine root-beer 🙂
Love the colors for the Scarborough Covered Bridge shot. Gorgeous!
It’s great to see a covered bridge in South Jersey.
Thank you, thank you for your lovely post and for all the pictures! I especially love the ones of the Colestown Cemetery and the Scarborough covered bridge. They bring back so many memories of my beautiful hometown.
didn’t know there were so many covered bridges out your way. you sure do a lot of research … or fake it convincingly. either way, it’s fun — thanks.
I’ve been reading your adventures and it’s amazing how you uncover all the information about
those places. Anyway I’ve always wondered what the story was behind Lake Lonnie in Delran. These days it’s overgrown but there’s sort of a happy feeling about the place on the times I’ve walked around there. There are indications it was a thriving recreation spot at one time and the lake was much larger (more full of water). Do you have any history on it?
Saddler Town, I grew up in Westmont. My brother Bill served the courier Post to the people of Saddler Town. I would help if the paper was big or the weather bad. I enjoy reading about your adventures. I did post comments about Sea Breeze, went there as a child. my brother is gone now. some of the people of Saddler town came to pay their respects. Thanks for the memories. AnnaMae
AnnaMae what an awesome story! Thank you for sharing about yourself and your brother!
Thanks for mentioning the Chapel Avenue Cherry Blossoms. I grew up on Chapel, right near Cooperlanding Rd. Every year there was a Cherry Blossom parade from Chapel and Haddonfield Rd. all the way to the end of Chapel, near the Cherry Hill Skating Rink. It was a spectacle and we looked forward to it every year. Cherry Hill should bring it back.
my buddy and me used to sneek up to the barclay homestead bk in the early 60s, before it was a historic site, the very old caretaker or farm hand lived there by himself, the place was a mess, broken windows,junk all around, we would sneek up only so far and dogs would start barking, and running at us,and out would would come who we would call “old man barclay”, yelling “git outta here”!! and we wold run like hell, bk over that little bridge over the creek, through the woods to our bikes, back to delivering the rest of our paper route, good times bk then
We used to go there too in the 70 s. Levi was his name. He actually came out with a gun, you are right, the place was a shambles. Somehow we went over there another time and Levi let us in the place. He lived there and it was so dirty and rundown in there, he lived with his dog who was bitten with fleas, his sheets on the bed were filthy. We actually helped him clean up and washed his sheets. We felt so bad for him. Don’t know if he had family or anything but that poor man could not take care of himself and never should have been living alone!
I just found this site, and it brought back memories of my first “real” kiss, in 8th grade under that covered bridge with Ann Marie, who at 68 years old is just as pretty as she was in 1961. I now live in SW Ohio and have fond memories of growing up in Barclay Farm. Thanks for the memory jog!!
Thank you for the photos and the history! You should also know that Bonnie Cocchairaley was the director of Barclay Farmstead back in the day. She was lovely to work with. More on Bonnie’s Bridge is at http://articles.philly.com/1986-07-02/news/26097438_1_stream-historic-sites-drainage-ditch .
I was born and raised here in the former Delaware Township. Now Cherry Hill. I lived on the West side on Kenilworth Ave. My father lived here for many, many years when it was known as South Merchantville. My mother Anna (Repici) Long lived and worked on the farm on Old Cuthbert Road. The farm was across the road from the Circle A Ranch in Deer Park. Albie Clements used to run it. Sally Starr and other cowboys/ cowgirls would come there to entertain. Oh, our family has so many wonderful memories. We have fun going down memory lane once in awhile and talking about the good old days.
I grew up in Cherry hill and lived on10 acres that was once called Headacre .My family owned a kennel and the home was circa “Amityville horror” . It dated back to the 1800s. On its property is now 17 homes-Buttonwood estates and the JCC. I love & miss Cherry hill.