“Bird’s Woods”, where “The slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem like a lane into Heaven that leads from a dream”, should have had a Sidney Lanier to immortalize its cool and delicious depths. It was the picnic resort of many a Sunday school, but picnics in the early days were simple affairs and did not call for changes that seriously marred the beauty of the forest. The growth was almost wholly pine and hemlock, and the balsam-laden air is refreshing even yet to think of. A few swings and a sheltered platform, where lunch was served, were the only attempts of man to improve on the situation.
Second river with its babbling waters, the ruins of the old paint mill, and the old dam, with its waterfall at the woods’ end, all combined with the forest to lend enchantment and to a child furnished possibilities for entertainment that were inexhaustible. How well I remember the rush of small feet when the Sunday school children reached the entrance to the woods, and how they spread out like a fan through its coverts of mystery, each one intent on finding something new or re-discovering some old friendly spot.
The Waterfall On Second River At Bird’s Woods. Picture taken in 1903, before all the beauty of the region had been destroyed.
Then the woods were full of sound, and I can still recall the infectious laugh of Mr. Hine, who, as superintendent of the school and chief promoter of jollity, urged the children on to a full enjoyment of the occasion and his call to a stray robin that might at the moment be voicing his approval of the place, “That’s right, old fellow. Go it!” and then he would whistle to the bird in the tree in a way that started him all over again. We will never see the like of “Bird’s Woods” again.
NAMES OF FORMER DWELLERS ON MURPHY’S LANE.
As nearly as can now be recalled the line of houses on Murphy’s lane was in the following order: Joseph Johns (later John Tyner), William T. Wauters (later John Beardsley), John Murphy, Thomas Murphy, James Murphy, Pat Murphy (the chief ingredients of “Murphytown”), Bill “Whitehead” Bennett, N. J. Crane and Alfred Keen (on the corner of the old Bloomfield road).
The Shields Guards was, before the Civil War, one of the institutions of Murphy’s lane. The armory in which the guns and accoutrements, loaned by the state, were stored, was situated some distance back from Charlie Van Riper’s house, near the present Mt. Prospect avenue. There were many Irishmen in the neighborhood and they formed this company as a rival to the Continental Blues, which numbered Belleville’s best among its members.