Two years after New Jersey ratified its Gradual Emancipation Act, and forty years prior to an official declaration by New Jersey to outlaw slavery, newly freed slaves settled a radically different, unprecedented community in Skunk Hollow.
Skunk Hollow Marker, photo by Bill Coughlin, http://www.hmdb.org
In 1806, Jack Earnest, a freed slave, exchanged $87.50 for five acres near what is now Alpine, New Jersey.
Find out why it’s not the skunks that smell.
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Footnotes Since the Wilderness 