Jersey Devil
In South Jersey and Philadelphia folklore in the United States, the Jersey Devil, also known as the Leeds Devil, is a legendary creature, or cryptid, said to inhabit the forests of the Pine Barrens in South Jersey. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many variations. The common description is that of a bipedal kangaroo-like or wyvern-like creature with a horse- or goat-like head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked or barbed tail. It is also said that it has a strange elongated body and a thick tail. It has been reported to move quickly and is often described as emitting a high-pitched "blood-curdling scream".
Origin of the legend
Mother Leeds's 13th child
The popular legend of the Jersey Devil or Leeds Devil is dated variously, and is almost invariably attached to "The Pines", or the South Jersey Pine Barrens, and sometimes specifically Leeds Point within the Pine Barrens. The devil's mother is usually a woman named Leeds, or "Mother Leeds" of Burlington, but other names such as the Shourds have occasionally been forwarded.According to one précis, in 1735, a woman named Leeds had twelve children and, after discovering she was pregnant for the thirteenth time, cursed the child in frustration, declaring, "Let the child be the devil!". The child, though born normally, immediately grew wings, a tail, and claws after birth and flew out to the Pine Barrens.
According to some, the child transformed into a creature with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail. Growling and screaming, the child beat everyone with its tail before flying up the chimney and heading into the pines. In some versions of the tale, Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child's father was the devil himself. Some versions of the legend also state that local clergymen subsequently attempted to exorcise the creature from the Pine Barrens.
In a different telling, localized not at Leeds Point but at Esteville, near Mays Landing, a Mrs. Leeds became pregnant around 1855 and rejected her baby, wishing a stork would deliver a devil. Thus a winged devil was born and flew out the window; it would intermittently return but the mother would shoo it away.
The Leeds family
Before the early 1900s, the Jersey Devil was referred to as the Leeds Devil or the Devil of Leeds, either in connection with the local Leeds family or the eponymous Leeds Point in South Jersey."Mother Leeds" has been identified by some as the real-life Deborah Leeds, on grounds that Deborah Leeds's husband, Japhet Leeds, named twelve children in the will he wrote during 1736, which is compatible with the legend. Deborah and Japhet Leeds also lived in the Leeds Point section of what is now Atlantic County, New Jersey, which is commonly the location of the Jersey Devil story.
Brian Regal, a historian of science at Kean University, theorizes that the story of Mother Leeds, rather than being based on a single historical person alone, originated from the reputation of the local prominent Leeds family in the southern portion of the colonial-era Province of New Jersey, where religious-political disputes became the subject of folklore and gossip among the local population. Regal contends that folk legends concerning these historical disputes evolved through the years and ultimately resulted in the modern popular legend of the Jersey Devil during the early 20th century. Regal contends that "colonial-era political intrigue" involving early New Jersey politicians, Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin's rival almanac publisher Daniel Leeds resulted in the Leeds family being described as "monsters", and it was Daniel Leeds's negative description as the "Leeds Devil", rather than any actual creature, that created the legend of the Jersey Devil.
Much like the Mother Leeds of the Jersey Devil myth, Daniel Leeds's third wife had given birth to nine children, a large number of children even for the time. Leeds's second wife and first daughter had both died during childbirth. Leeds and his family were prominent in the South Jersey and Pine Barrens area. As a royal surveyor with strong allegiance to the British crown, Leeds had surveyed and acquired land in the Egg Harbor area, located within the Pine Barrens. Leeds's sons and family inherited the land, and it is now known as Leeds Point, one of the areas in the Pine Barrens currently most associated with the Jersey Devil legend and alleged Jersey Devil sightings.
Starting in the 17th century, English Quakers established settlements in Southern Jersey, the region in which the Pine Barrens are located. Daniel Leeds, a Quaker and a prominent figure in pre-Revolutionary colonial southern New Jersey, was ostracized by his Quaker congregation after publishing almanacs in 1687 containing astrological symbols and writings. Leeds's fellow Quakers deemed the astrology in these almanacs as too "pagan" or blasphemous, and the almanacs were censored and destroyed by the local Quaker community.
In response to and despite this censorship, Leeds continued to publish even more esoteric astrological Christian writings and became increasingly fascinated with Christian occultism, Christian mysticism, cosmology, demonology and angelology, and natural magic. In the 1690s, after his almanacs and writings were further censored as blasphemous or heretical by the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, Leeds continued to dispute with the Quaker community, converting to Anglicanism and publishing anti-Quaker tracts criticizing Quaker theology and accusing Quakers of being anti-monarchists. In the ensuing dispute between Leeds and the southern New Jersey Quakers over Leeds's accusations, Leeds was endorsed by the much-maligned British royal governor of New Jersey, Lord Cornbury, who was despised by the Quaker communities. Leeds also served as a counselor to Lord Cornbury at this time. Considering Leeds as a traitor for aiding the Crown and rejecting Quaker beliefs, the Quaker Burlington Meeting of southern New Jersey subsequently dismissed Leeds as "evil". In 1700, the local South Jersey Quaker community retaliated against Leeds's anti-Quaker tracts with their own tract, Satan’s Harbinger Encountered … Being Something by Way of Answer to Daniel Leeds, which publicly
accused Leeds of working for the devil.
In 1716, Daniel Leeds's son, Titan Leeds, inherited his father's almanac business, which continued to use astrological content and eventually competed with Benjamin Franklin's popular Poor Richard's Almanack. The competition between the two men intensified when, in 1733, Franklin satirically used astrology in his almanac to predict Titan Leeds's death in October of that same year. Though Franklin's prediction was intended as a joke at his competitor's expense and a means to boost almanac sales, Titan Leeds was apparently offended at the death prediction, publishing a public admonition of Franklin as a "fool" and a "liar". In a published response, Franklin mocked Titan Leeds's outrage and humorously suggested that, in fact, Titan Leeds had died in accordance with the earlier prediction and was thus writing his almanacs as a ghost, resurrected from the grave to haunt and torment Franklin. Franklin continued to jokingly refer to Titan Leeds as a "ghost" even after Titan Leeds's actual death in 1738. Daniel Leeds's blasphemous and occultist reputation and his pro-monarchy stance in the largely anti-monarchist colonial south of New Jersey, combined with Benjamin Franklin's later continuous depiction of his son Titan Leeds as a ghost, may have originated or contributed to the local folk legend of a so-called "Leeds Devil" lurking in the Pine Barrens.
In 1728, Titan Leeds began to include the Leeds family crest on the masthead of his almanacs. The Leeds family crest depicted a wyvern, a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature that stands upright on two clawed feet. Regal notes that the wyvern on the Leeds family crest is reminiscent of the popular descriptions of the Jersey Devil. The inclusion of this family crest on Leeds's almanacs may have further contributed to the Leeds family's poor reputation among locals and possibly influenced the popular descriptions of the Leeds Devil or Jersey Devil. The fearsome appearance of the crest's wyvern and the increasing animosity among local South Jersey residents towards royalty, aristocracy, and nobility may have helped facilitate the legend of the Leeds Devil and the association of the Leeds family with "devils" and "monsters".
The Leeds Devil
Regal notes that, by the late 18th century and the early 19th century at the latest, the "Leeds Devil" had become an ubiquitous legendary monster or ghost story in present-day South Jersey. In the early to mid-19th century, stories continued to circulate in southern New Jersey of the Leeds Devil, a "monster wandering the Pine Barrens." An oral tradition of "Leeds Devil" monster/ghost stories became well-established in the Pine Barrens area.Although the "Leeds Devil" legend has existed since the 18th century, Regal states that the more modern depiction of the Jersey Devil, as well as the now pervasive "Jersey Devil" name, first became truly standardized in current form during the early 20th century:
During the pre-Revolutionary period, the Leeds family, who called the Pine Barrens home, soured its relationship with the Quaker majority... The Quakers saw no hurry to give their former fellow religionist an easy time in circles of gossip. His wives had all died, as had several children. His son Titan stood accused by Benjamin Franklin of being a ghost... The family crest had winged dragons on it. In a time when thoughts of independence were being born, these issues made the Leeds family political and religious monsters. From all this over time the legend of the Leeds Devil was born. References to the 'Jersey Devil' do not appear in newspapers or other printed material until the twentieth century. The first major flap came in 1909. It is from these sightings that the popular image of the creature—batlike wings, horse head, claws, and general air of a dragon—became standardized.
Indeed, many references to a "Leeds Devil" or "Devil of Leeds" appear in earlier printed material prior to the widespread usage of the "Jersey Devil" name. During 1859, the Atlantic Monthly published an article detailing the Leeds Devil folk tales popular among Pine Barren residents A newspaper from 1887 describes sightings of a winged creature, referred to as "the Devil of Leeds", allegedly spotted near the Pine Barrens and well known among the local populace of Burlington County, New Jersey:
Whenever he went near it, it would give a most unearthly yell that frightened the dogs. It whipped at every dog on the place. "That thing," said the colonel, "is not a bird nor an animal, but it is the Leeds devil, according to the description, and it was born over in Evesham, Burlington County, a hundred years ago. There is no mistake about it. I never saw the horrible critter myself, but I can remember well when it was roaming around in Evesham woods fifty years ago, and when it was hunted by men and dogs and shot at by the best marksmen there were in all South Jersey but could not be killed. There isn't a family in Burlington or any of the adjoining counties that does not know of the Leeds devil, and it was the bugaboo to frighten children with when I was a boy.