Friday, September 11, 2009

Can you believe it I'm actually going to post something.
I was just talking to Dad and he showed me some genealogy pages that went back to the 1700's on the Asay line. He said the pages listed Joseph Asay Sr as being born in a place called Asay Springs, NJ. I thought that since we do have some family living in that general area these days that it might be interesting to locate that 'town'.
So I looked it up on the internet and found the following article:
Asay Springs
Until recently, the photo and hand drawn map on this page were the only evidence I really had that this place even existed. A visitor to this site sent them to me asking if I'd heard of the place, which I had not, so this page was created in hopes that someone out there knew something else about it. Finally someone found an article in the Trenton Times from 22 Feb 1906, and from that provided us with the following information:
... Asay Springs may not refer to an area, but to actual springs that are located in the White Horse area of present day Hamilton, across the Crosswicks Creek from Bordentown. That approximate area is the former location of a house once known as the Asay-Cubberly house. It was the home of Isaac Asay (son of Joseph, I believe), from 1849-1858 and maybe longer. A good account of the area can be found in Louis Berger & Associates, Historic Sites, Trenton Complex Archaeology: Report 12, The Cultural Resource Group, Louis Berger and Associates, Inc., East Orange NJ, Prepared for the Federal Highway Administration and the New Jersey Department of Transportation, Bureau of Environmental Analysis, Trenton, 1998. (That's a long way of saying they had to study the area before they could build a new highway. If you have a recent map of NJ, you'll see the area is now pretty well covered by the intersection of I-295 and I-195.) The springs were tapped to provide water to Bordentown in 1906
Recently I was contacted by a descendant of Joseph Asay Sr., born in Asay Springs, in 1771. I have no information about his father or family. One of Joseph's sons went west. There is an Asay Town in southern Utah, as well as an Asay Creek near Hatch, Utah named after the family. The Asays helped settle Lovel, Wyoming.
Note the caption on the photo which indicates it was taken near this town somewhere.



















The map below gives the approximate location of the bridge in the above photo:






















http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~batsto/Towns/Asay/AsaySprings.html



I couldn't read the caption on the picture so I played around a little cropping and enlarging that part and this is what I got. Still hard to read but I get "Covered Bridge Near Asay Springs on the top line. I can't make out the other line. Maybe someone with younger eyes could read it better.






I'm also posting a new story on  http://princessesbunniesandmore.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

  1. It looks to me as if it says, "Crosswicks Creek," and then maybe a date. Thanks for the interesting genealogy info!

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  2. I am so glad to know that I have ties to New Jersey, because I have grown pretty fond of the place!

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