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The "Pineys"

Creator: Elizabeth S. Kite (author)
Date: October 4, 1913
Publication: The Survey
Source: Available at selected libraries

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Today morons; yesterday colonial outcasts, "disowned" Friends, land pirates, Hessians, Tory refugees, revelers from Joseph Bonaparte's court at Bordentown, and other sowers of wild oats

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Elizabeth S. Kite
Of the training school at Vineland, New Jersey

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Between the coastal plane and the fertile land east of the Delaware River lies 2,000 square miles of almost pure sand. Beginning in Monmouth County it extends southwest through Burlington, Ocean and Atlantic Counties. It was originally covered with a splendid growth of pines, interspersed with iron-producing bog lands. This primeval wealth of New Jersey was long ago exploited, and there was left only a scrubby growth that but slowly replaces the timber of the past, while modern science is turning the low hollows into marvelously productive cranberry bogs.

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In the heart of this region scattered in widely separated huts over miles of territory exists today a group of human beings so distinct in morals and manners as to excite curiosity and wonder in the mind of any outsider brought into contact with them. They are known as the "Pineys" or "Pine Rats" and are recognized as a distinct people by the normal communities living on the borders of their forests, although their manner of living arouses neither surprise nor interest, having always been taken quite as a matter of course. In fact the problem is a mixed one, intertwining and extending itself inward and outward from the country to the pines, from the pines to the country so that more than one old family is found to have in some of its branches an infusion of Piney blood. It is this fact which makes the problem not only complex but one of extreme delicacy, and gives it in a way the protection of its surroundings.

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Not a few of our "Pine Rat" friends for instance can be traced back directly to where they branch from excellent families, often of sturdy English stock. Others take their rise from religious communities of the North, while a great many are there without any explanation of their existence, their ancestral line soon disappearing in the mists of the past.

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The general opinion current regarding the Piney and his class, has been that he is what he is from environment, that surrounded with other conditions and "given a chance" he would come out "all right." That he is a "problem," that his presence tends to lower standards of living among the normal people who come in contact with him, is a universally recognized fact, but until recently it has been confidently hoped that through education and the opening up of the Pines, he would eventually become a normal citizen. Whether or not he is a being capable of such development or whether he has permanently fallen below that possibility, it is not the object of this paper to discuss. Nothing has been determined beyond what he is today and that he resembles several generations of ancestors.

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Meager but suggestive have been the results of research into history to find the origins of this degenerate group. Very faint are the traces which the Swedes, the original founders of New Jersey, left behind them. It was the English, and English of sturdy dissenting stock, mostly refugees from neighboring provinces, who with an admixture of French Huguenot exiles, peopled New Jersey. Desire for personal liberty was the dominating note of all the settlements that took root in her soil. Foremost among the sects who sought homes in the newly opened territory were the persecuted followers of George Fox, whose democratic principles, deeply imbued with religious ideals were so firmly rooted in all that makes for order and civic righteousness as to admirably fit them for expansion in the new world. They were men indeed who had shown themselves willing to die for their principles of equality -- but who greatly preferred to live in the cultivation and enjoyment of the peaceful arts of life. For this New Jersey alone of the colonies offered them an alluring outlook. Under the patronage of William Penn, the Society in West New Jersey began a career of democratic expansion that has no parallel in the annals of any other country.

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Outcasts of Religion

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But there is another side to the picture. In the organization of the Society of Friends, there is but one method of dealing with the persistent sinner. When a member proves incorrigible or when he commits some flagrant misdeed he is dismissed from their ranks. In this way they unconsciously throw upon society at large the responsibility of caring for what they themselves had failed to control.

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Particularly in the beginning of its career of material prosperity the society was severe and summary in its dealings with offenders. The early annals of all communities of Friends testify to this fact. In the province of New Jersey, it is certain that "disowned" youths, cast out by the society did in some cases betake themselves to the loose lives of the dwellers of the Pines.

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Outcasts from other religious communities also found shelter there, driven by the laws in force during the early period in east New Jersey. In this province thirteen offences were punishable by death -- among them theft, if incorrigible; burglary; rape, subject to the discretion of the court; gross and unnatural licentiousness. For the vice of un-chastity, there was imposed a fine of three or five months' imprisonment or ten stripes at the public whipping post if the fine was not paid. A marriage to be legal must be published three times, and must have the consent of the parents, masters or guardians. These laws were intended to uphold the high standard of social order by eliminating the persistent sinner by death, thus ridding not only their own, but all communities of the evil. The vicinity of the Pines, however, offered possibilities of escape with which even these stern laws could not cope.

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