The Real Story of the Jersey Devil
Quick Answer
The Jersey Devil legend says that in 1735 a woman called Mother Leeds, pregnant with her thirteenth child, cursed it and gave birth to a winged creature that flew up the chimney into the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Historian Brian Regal has argued the story grew out of an 18th-century political and religious feud instead. Daniel Leeds was a real almanac publisher who broke with the Quakers, was publicly accused of serving the devil in 1700, and whose family became local villains. No colonial-era printed reference to a "Leeds Devil" has been found, and the Jersey Devil does not appear in print until the 20th century.
The Jersey Devil has a birth certificate, which is unusual for a monster. The story is specific: 1735, a woman named Mother Leeds, pregnant with a thirteenth child she did not want, saying let this one be the devil. The baby came out, changed shape, and went up the chimney.
Brian Regal went looking for a colonial document that mentions a Leeds Devil. He could not find one.
Daniel Leeds published an almanac
Leeds was real. He arrived in Burlington in 1677, joined the assembly in 1682, served as surveyor general, and in the 1690s acquired land at Great Egg Harbor that became Leeds Point, which is the exact spot the legend names.
He started an almanac in 1687 and the Quakers hated it. Too much astrology, too much pagan language, and they ordered it destroyed. He published The Temple of Wisdom the following year, drawing on the mystic Jacob Boehme, and the Philadelphia Meeting suppressed that too. In 1699 he fired back with a pamphlet attacking the Quakers directly. George Fox's circle answered him. In 1700 one response accused him outright of working for the devil.
Then he picked the losing side. Leeds backed Lord Cornbury, the Anglican governor who took office in 1702, against the local assembly. To his former community he was a turncoat, a heretic and a man the printed record had already called the devil's employee.
Regal's argument is that the family became the monster. Not a baby. The Leedses.
Three wyverns on the crest
Titan Leeds took over the almanac from his father and in 1728 added a family crest to it. The crest carried three wyverns, which are dragons with bat-like wings and a long tail.
Look at any description of the Jersey Devil and then look at a wyvern. The resemblance is not subtle. For years the Leeds almanac went into homes across South Jersey with a winged dragon printed on it, belonging to a family already denounced in print as the devil's own.
Franklin killed Titan Leeds in print
Benjamin Franklin launched Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732 and immediately went after the competition. In 1733 he printed a joke prediction that Titan Leeds would die on 17 October.
Leeds responded angrily in his own almanac, which is exactly what Franklin wanted. Franklin then announced that the real Titan Leeds was obviously dead, and that the abusive replies must be coming from his ghost. He kept the bit running for years. Titan Leeds died for real in 1738, at which point Franklin claimed vindication.
The traditional birth date of the Jersey Devil sits in the mid-1730s. So does the public spectacle of the most famous printer in America insisting, in print, that a man named Leeds was a supernatural entity.
The week of 16 January 1909
Whatever started it, the thing went off the rails in one week. Between 16 and 23 January 1909, newspapers across South Jersey and the Philadelphia area printed hundreds of reported encounters.
It began with unidentified hoofprints in snow. Then a trolley car in Haddon Heights was reportedly attacked, and a social club in Camden. Police in Camden and in Bristol, Pennsylvania fired on the creature and reported no effect whatsoever. Schools closed. Workers stayed home. Armed posses went into the pines. Sightings spread into Delaware and western Maryland. A large reward was supposedly on offer from the Philadelphia Zoo, though that appears to have been a rumor the papers enjoyed too much to check.
Gordon Stein later noted that the famous 1909 prints looked like a horse's hoof, and that a man eventually admitted faking some of them.
They did it to the living people too
The Pine Barrens had actual residents, and the respectable world turned them into monsters as well.
In the early twentieth century, eugenics studies described Pine Barrens people as congenital idiots and criminals. One came out of the work of Henry H. Goddard and Elizabeth Kite, whose Kallikak study is now a standard example of how bad science gets used. The Federal Writers' Project guidebook to New Jersey repeated the characterization in 1939, under a federal imprint.
Same woods, same move, two hundred years apart. A printing press, a respectable institution and a group of people who could be described rather than consulted. The Leedses got it in 1700. The Pineys got it in the century of the automobile.
Pineys now use the word about themselves on purpose, which is the usual ending for an insult that overstayed.
A kangaroo with glued-on wings
The Arch Street Museum in Philadelphia was failing. Its proprietor, T. F. Hopkins, told his publicist Norman Jeffries that without an attraction the place was finished.
Jeffries and an animal trainer friend named Jacob Hope bought a kangaroo from a circus. They glued artificial claws and bat wings onto it, announced they had captured the Jersey Devil, and put it on display. People paid.
Jeffries confessed about twenty years later. The museum had already got what it needed.
In 1982 a hockey team relocating to New Jersey ran a public naming poll and came out the Devils. A smear campaign against a colonial almanac publisher now has a home arena. The rest of America's cryptids never got that far, though Mothman has a statue.
Nobody believed any of them, so they believed in each other. Community is Resistance has the Jersey Devil holding hands with Mothman, Bigfoot, the frogman and the wendigo. It runs with the Mothman tee, and the rest of the paranormal collection is for everything else people made up and then got scared of.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Jersey Devil?
A winged creature said to live in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, usually described with a horse-like head, bat wings, hooves and a long tail. The legend holds that it was born in 1735 to a woman called Mother Leeds, who cursed her thirteenth child.
Where did the Jersey Devil legend come from?
Historian Brian Regal has argued it came out of colonial politics rather than a monstrous birth. Daniel Leeds was an almanac publisher at Leeds Point who broke with the Quakers over astrology and mysticism, had his work suppressed, attacked them in print, sided with the Anglican governor Lord Cornbury, and was accused in a 1700 pamphlet of working for the devil. Regal found no colonial-era printed reference to a Leeds Devil, and the Jersey Devil does not appear in print until the 20th century.
What does the Leeds family crest have to do with it?
Titan Leeds added a crest to the family almanac in 1728 showing three wyverns, which are winged dragons with long tails. They look a great deal like later descriptions of the Jersey Devil, and the almanac carried that image into homes throughout South Jersey.
What happened in January 1909?
A week-long panic. Between 16 and 23 January 1909, newspapers reported hundreds of sightings across South Jersey and the Philadelphia area. A trolley in Haddon Heights and a social club in Camden were said to be attacked, police in Camden and Bristol, Pennsylvania fired on the creature without effect, schools closed, workers stayed home, and armed groups searched the Pine Barrens. It started with hoofprints in snow, and a man later admitted faking some of them.
Was the Jersey Devil ever captured?
No. In 1909 a Philadelphia publicist named Norman Jeffries and an animal trainer named Jacob Hope bought a kangaroo from a circus, glued fake claws and bat wings to it, and exhibited it at the struggling Arch Street Museum as the captured Jersey Devil. Jeffries admitted the hoax roughly twenty years afterward.
Why are the New Jersey Devils called that?
A public naming poll. The team moved to New Jersey in 1982 after stints as the Kansas City Scouts and the Colorado Rockies, and the Devils name won the vote.
