Moll DeGrow (or Molly Rowe) lived during the early nineteenth century on Gully Road in the southern portion of Woodside, a northeastern New Jersey neighborhood between Belleville and Newark. Over the course of her life she developed a reputation in the community as the “Witch of Gully Road.” The road itself was originally a dry streambed used by indigenous Lenni-Lenape people to access the Passaic River that ran perpendicular to the trail. Gully Road was a sunken lane, once a stream leading to the river; water eroded the earth, creating the gully for which it was named. Its depressed elevation and dense surrounding foliage made it perpetually dark, which subsequently imparted its aura of mystery, a connotation that originated during the arrival of European colonists in the seventeenth century.
Residents of the area always considered Gully Road a haunted place. Unexplained phenomena, such as sudden deaths, mischievous activity, and especially ghost sightings, were often attributed to the mysterious and supernatural surroundings. Two ghost stories in particular have been preserved through oral history. The first story features a couple that lived on Gully Road who refused to leave their home when the community elected to broaden the path. Although the community pestered the couple with bribes and cajolery, the couple insisted that their home remain in its place. Soon benign pleas became violent threats, and a mob swarmed the house, smashing its windows and breaking its flimsy walls with the inhabitants still inside. The house collapsed and the couple died. Thereafter, their ghosts were seen on Gully Road searching for their lost home.
The second story tells of the ghost of a Tory spy during the American Revolution whom the community discovered observing Newark Bay harbor. He was hanged on a tree on Gully Road, and ever since his specter has roamed the path. Whether because of its depressed elevation—which might have eerily reminded one of a grave—its lack of sunlight, or only because of superstitious tales spun by the early American community, Gully Road retained a historical association with the macabre throughout the nineteenth century.
The property on which Moll DeGrow lived was allegedly owned by the Rowe family, and her actual name was said to be Molly Rowe. Over time, however, she acquired the pejorative names “Moll DeGrow” or “Old Moll,” as the community abhorred her miserly and solitary behavior. She lived alone in a house on the dark and gloomy road, and her sordid mythology quickly grew. She was accused of devil worship, witchcraft, and sorcery; anything bad that happened in the community was blamed on Moll DeGrow. Soured milk, failed crops, and other such unexplained phenomena were all attributed to the “Witch of Gully Road.” The community interpreted these strange occurrences as acts of revenge committed by Moll DeGrow as retribution for being alienated from the rest of society.
One story is particularly illustrative. When a family moved in near Moll DeGrow, the oldest son took offence at her rude behavior toward his mother and slighted her for the perceived transgression. That night, while the son was riding a horse through the woods, an evil black dog with glowing red eyes attacked him. The horse raced and reared, causing the son to hit his head on a low-lying branch, knocking him off the saddle and consequently killing him. The community found his lifeless body on the ground, but the horse and the dog were gone. Moll DeGrow was blamed.
As accounts of Moll DeGrow’s supposed terrorizing of Woodside accumulated, tensions mounted and the community grew increasingly intolerant of the witch’s behavior, whether actual or perceived. In 1844, Moll DeGrow was blamed for a rash of unexplained infant deaths, which sparked furious resentment against her. As was the case with the couple that refused to move, a mob stormed the witch’s home, intending to capture her and burn her at a stake. Upon breaking through her door, however, the irate gang of residents found Moll DeGrow dead, sitting in a rocking chair. Her stiff corpse swayed with a broad grin across her face, eyes wide open. The unsettling sight preserved the power of her mythology in the collective consciousness of the Woodside community after her death. Her body was one of the first interred in the bucolic Mount Pleasant Cemetery along the south side of Gully Road, which opened the same year she died. Her gravestone, which reads “Mary ‘Old Moll’ DeGrow,” still stands. Since her death, any open flame near the site of her home is said to extinguish suddenly; candles and hearth fires mysteriously fade.
In 1869, Woodside became an independent municipality, but was subsumed under Newark City authority in 1871 at the urging of the influential Erie and Lackawanna Rail Road Companies, which ran through Newark, just east of Gully Road. The city and state made improvements to Gully Road at the beginning of the twentieth century when Route 21 was constructed along the Passaic River: its sunken elevation was filled in, the dirt road was paved, and gas street lights were installed to brighten its historically dark and foreboding aura.
Gully Road was renamed Herbert Place after English novelist Henry William Herbert (1807–1858), who lived on Gully Road during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1859, however, in a depressed state, Herbert shot himself and was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, a fate consistent with the macabre history of Gully Road. Today, no one lives on Herbert Place. The homes of Moll DeGrow and the Woodside community are gone and the sites are littered with trash and wild foliage. But the roadside cemetery preserves its eerie aura, and the witch of Gully Road lives on in textual and oral history.
Ryan Donovan Purcell
See also Bell Witch; Bloody Mary or I Believe in Mary Worth; Cursing of Colonel Buck; Old Granny Tucker; Salem Witch Trials
Further Reading
Capo, Fran. 2011. True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained: Myths and Mysteries of New Jersey. Guilford, CT: Morris.
Hutcheson, Cory. 2011. “The Witch’s Ire.” New World Witchery website. http://newworldwitchery.com/tag/moll-degrow/. Accessed July 14, 2015.
Martinelli, Patricia A., and Charles A. Stansfield. 2004. Haunted New Jersey: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Garden State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
Schlosser, S. E. 2006. Spooky New Jersey: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore. Guilford, CT: Pequot Press.
DeGrow, Moll—Primary Document
C. G. Hine, “Old Moll DeGrow” (1909)
Legends about witches and ghosts are nearly universal, but they also vary in detail from locale to locale. C. G. Hine’s early twentieth-century book about the ghosts of Newark, New Jersey, wouldn’t be complete without mention of one of the most famous of New Jersey’s witches, Moll DeGrow. For Hine, the legend of Moll DeGrow was part of the larger fabric of horror along “dark and lonesome” Gully Road, which was haunted by the ghost of one of the original settlers, who died of exposure when a band of hooligans tore down his home.
OLD MOLL DEGROW.
Sixty years or so ago a stone wall ran from the bend of the Gully road, near the river diagonally to Belleville avenue, across the property now occupied by the cemetery. Beside this stone wall was buried the first person interred on the site of the cemetery—a noted witch, old Moll DeGrow, the fear of whose shade lent greatly to the terrors of the Gully seventy-five years ago.
This witch was used by the elders as a bugaboo to keep the children indoors after dark, and she appears to have been eminently useful and successful in this capacity. The Gully road was as black as a black hat on a moonless night, and one who ventured abroad at such a time never could tell when he or she might be grabbed by the powers of darkness. During the long Winter evenings these farmer and fisher folk were wont to amuse and scare themselves, as well as the children, by relating all manner of ghostly experiences. Mrs. Henry Davis recalls how, as a child, she used to crawl up to bed so terrified after an evening of witch stories that she could hardly move, her one thought being to get under the bed clothes as quickly as possible, where she would all but smother.
Under such circumstances the ghost of a witch was a powerful combination for evil, and particularly so when it was such a witch as old Moll, who was so much a terror to the neighborhood that there was talk of burning her in order to rid the community of her undesirable presence, but fortunately she died before this feeling culminated in a tragedy. Mrs. Henry Davis well remembers hearing her mother (a former Miss King) tell this as a fact.
BODY SNATCHING.
In the early days of the cemetery, when it was inclosed by a high wooden fence, there was considerable talk of body-snatching, and one of the men in charge of the grounds was strongly suspected.
Old Mrs. Holt walking down the Gully road one night saw, standing in the darkest shadow, an old fashioned undertaker’s wagon, and hearing voices of men, stepped back among the bushes out of harm’s way. Soon she saw three men against the night sky standing on the high ground of the cemetery. One carried a lantern while the other two had a long bundle shrouded in white. He with the lantern stopped on the ridge, while the others kept down the slope. Now they lifted their bundle to the top of the fence where one man steadied it while the other climbed over. When both were over the body was taken down and placed in the wagon. The man on the hill, whose voice Mrs. Holt recognized, called good-night to the men in the road and they responded as the wagon rapidly drove toward Newark.
THE DEVIL IN THE GULLY ROAD.
How John Thompson saw the Devil in the Gully road was once told by himself in a moment of great confidence, for ordinarily he would never speak of the adventure.
About ’68 or ’69 John worked for Mr. Melius on the River road, and it was noticed that when called on to drive down town after dusk for his employer he invariably went the long way round—Grafton and Washington avenues—and when coming back with Mr. M. he would shut his mouth the moment they entered within the dark precincts of the Gully and say never a word until they were well beyond the black shadow of its overhanging trees.
It seems that John was originally a river man and that he sailored under Captain Nichols, whose profanity was one of his notable points; he had a varied assortment of swear-words and a proficiency in their use that made the efforts of ordinary mortals pale into insignificance.
For some reason not explained the schooner was held up in Newark one day, and as the Captain lived in Belleville there was nothing for it but to walk home. John Thompson went along for, of course, neither one of the seamen thought much of the storm that was raging, even if the rain did come down in torrents which soaked them through.
It certainly did look dark and creepy to John as he peered into the black hole of the Gully road, and though he was himself a gentleman of color and matched up with a dark night first rate, he ever fancied daylight for such places, but the Captain went plunging on into the shadows and John could but follow.
The Captain had used up his stock of cuss-words, and while in the very darkest part of the tunnel commenced all over again and was going fine when a sudden, blinding flash of lightning discovered to John, who was in the rear, a third man walking between them and chuckling every time the Captain swore. Before the light went out John saw that the man was dressed like a parson and that his clothes appeared to be dry in spite of the heavy downpour. A second flash showed a most alarming state of things: the stranger was on fire, smoke or steam was escaping from every crevice, but still he chuckled as the Captain ripped out all manner of strange oaths, and did not seem to pay any attention to his own internal combustion; even in the dark his glee could be heard bubbling forth, nor could the pounding of the storm drown it. By this time the Captain’s attention was also attracted, and when a third flash enabled them to see that their unknown companion had hoofs their worst suspicions were realized and both men broke and ran for Belleville as fast as two pairs of scared legs could carry them, while the Devil laughed long and loud at their dismay.
Source: Hine, C. G. Woodside: The North End of Newark, N. J.—Its History, Legends and Ghost Stories. New York: Hines’ Annual, 1909.