Mortonson–Van Leer Log Cabin, also known as Schorn Log Cabin, is a historic cabin and one of the last historical dwellings in

Swedesboro, New Jersey Swedesboro is a borough within Gloucester County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 2,711, its highest decennial count ever and an inc ...

, United States. It stands on the grounds of the cemetery of the Trinity Church. It is one of the oldest original log cabins of early Swedish-Finnish architecture in the United States.

History

17th century

The Mortonson–Van Leer Log Cabin was originally built along the north bank of the

Raccoon River The Raccoon River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 26, 2011 tributary of the Des Moines River in central Iowa in the United States. As measured using the long ...

by Morton Mortenson, a Swedish-Finnish man who arrived in the Delaware Valley, at that time part of the colony of

New Sweden New Sweden () was a colony of the Swedish Empire between 1638 and 1655 along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a g ...

, in May 1654. Mortenson's great-grandson, John Morton, would go on to sign the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another state or failed state, or are breaka ...

as a

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

delegate. The cabin consists of one small room with no windows and a single door and its walls are made of cedar logs and lime mortar caulk. The cabin was owned by a local Bernardhus Van Leer, a notable physician, and later by the Van Leer family, who were noted in the anti-slavery cause. Prior to and during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, the Van Leer family used the Log Cabin as a station for the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses used by freedom seekers to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery ...

to help slaves escape to free negro communities. The Van Leers also built nearby villages for freed slaves and financially supported the Underground Railroad. The cabin had strong ties to

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...

and

Episcopalian Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protes ...

communities at the time. The cabin is recorded as a friendly trading post for Native Americans. Originally located along Raccoon Creek on the Morton Homestead, the cabin was donated to Gloucester County Historical Society by the Schorn family. In 1989, the cabin was relocated modestly, so that is now based behind the cemetery at Trinity Episcopal Church in Swedesboro.

Architecture

The cabin is an example of the typical Swedish-Finnish cabin architecture, utilizing notched logs which overlapped corners, brought to the area upon the settlement of the

Colony.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mortonson-Van Leer Log Cabin American Anti-Slavery Society Finnish-American culture in New Jersey Finnish-American history Historic American Buildings Survey in New Jersey Houses on the Underground Railroad New Sweden Swedish-American history Swedish American culture in New Jersey Van Leer family Underground Railroad locations

History

17th century

Architecture

See also

References

External links