Used to be fun to play in the woods and fields there when I was a kid. Loved to look up to the once-standing Mercer Oak and imagine the battles. I’da climbed it but no branches were low enough.
Now they are just taking a once wonderful place and turning it into a future slum. Once the Institute was a place to look up to, with Einstien walking past our house most nice days, down the once quiet Mercer Street. Now it seems the Institute is just another liberal climate change hack ‘think’ tank.
Once upon a time some of the trees - along the old trolly line and before that routes the soldiers used - had carvings in the bark from long gone people with hundreds of year old dates. A magical woods - but hurricanes in the 1950s took most of those trees.
The Quaker Meeting house - just behind ours - had blood stained bench covers from the wounded soldiers who lay on them. Robert Stockton is burried there somewhere in the cemetary beneath one of the old slate markers.
That was most interesting. Thank you for posting your unique childhood memories. It gives a very personal insight into the area of the battlefield. I really enjoyed reading your comment.