The Jersey Devil

Join Kelli as she goes over New Jersey's most famous cryptozoological son - the Jersey Devil. Though the Jersey Devil was the devil-born son of the Leeds Family, not much is known about it; it lives in the Pine Barrens, it looks like a weird, winged amalgamation of animals, and it was once "caught" and put in a Philly museum in 1909 (spoiler: they painted a kangaroo with stripes).

But beneath the myth is a real history - who were the Leeds family, and why is there a story about them birthing a devil? What did they do - and who did they annoy enough - to warrant this story?

So let's dive back into colonial-era New Jersey history to hear how what politics, the Quakers, almanacs, and Ben Franklin have to do with the myth of the Jersey Devil.

Intro and Outro music credit:  @nedricmusic
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The Jersey Devil
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird. 

You’re walking through the old pine forests of southern New Jersey. It’s a cool, dark evening. You hear a strange noise coming from deep within the trees - you can’t see anything, but you get the strangest sensation that you’re being watched. Suddenly, you hear a shriek - you turn and run, vowing never to return. Did you get spooked in the woods? Or did you, perhaps, run into… the Jersey Devil?

For today’s episode, I want to jump into a story of a somewhat local legend and mythology - the Jersey Devil. Not the Hockey team. And believe it or not, the story of the Jersey Devil goes all the way back to the early 18th century, that’s the 1700s! It supposedly involves a woman who married an English colonial settler named Daniel Leeds. The two had 13 kids, but the last of them was born as the Jersey Devil - this weird-looking amalgamation of a dragon, horse, kangaroo, dog, bat thing. And probably other creatures. That’s the fun part about cryptozoological creatures - you never really know what they actually look like - you know, because they don’t exist - and the image can change over time!

Now the Jersey Devil is an interesting story steeped in both mythology and history, and one that’s captivated me ever since I moved to the Garden State from England, much like Mr. and Mrs. Leeds, actually.

Now for those of you who aren’t from Jersey, you might make fun of it for being the “armpit” of America. You might think that we’re all loud, that we talk like we’re from Staten Island and say things like coffee, water, and walk the dog, that we all go down the Jersey Shore in the summer, or that the whole state looks like the area around Newark Airport. Or its like the Sopranos everywhere. But if you know Jersey, then you know that it’s a great state with a bunch of different ecosystems. And as a mountainy, forest, goblin creature myself, one of my favorite areas to get lost in is the Pine Barrens - an historic coastal pineland forest that is home to a lot of wildlife, history, ghost towns… and of course the Jersey Devil himself.

So in today’s episode, we’re going to celebrate New Jersey and its famous cryptid. And in a fun turn of events, this story is not just a piece of mythology. There’s a real history here. And I’m not talking about a real devil - that part is obviously just myth. But that myth had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the politics surrounding the Leeds family. 

So to start, we’ll dive into the mythological story of the Jersey Devil. But then we’ll place this cryptid in historical context - where did the story really come from, and why was it created? Why did Mrs. Leeds become the mother of the devil? Why that family, in the Pine Barrens, in early colonial America?

So for those of you who assume Jersey is just great pizza, bagels, the Jersey Shore, the Parkway, and the Turnpike… hopefully the story of the Jersey Devil will give you a different picture of our beautiful, weird state and its place in early colonial America. This one’s for you, Jersey!

So let’s get started!
Cryptozoological Context
So let’s get the fun stuff done first. For those of you who are seasoned APHOUT veterans by now, I know what you might be thinking - but Kelli, don’t we always do historical context first? And to that I say… yes. Normally. But today I want to talk about the mythology first, because it’s a fun story.

So legend has it that in 1735, a witch known as Mother Leeds was pregnant with her 13th child. And upon finding out she was pregnant, she called out “Oh, let this one be the devil!” And since she was, you know, obviously a witch, that baby started to morph into a creature with a horse-like head, bat-like wings, claws, and hooves. Some stories suggest that happened in utero, but most say it happened after the baby boy was born. But regardless, the 13th Leeds child was a devil. 

Now my favorite Jersey Devil origin story, because there are several, goes a little something like this.

Once the child was born, it started sprouting its horns, claws, and wings. Its eyes glowed a deep, bloody red, and it let out an inhuman shriek. He looked towards his mother and attacked, ripping into her with his horrible claws, killing her. Because childbirth isn’t painful enough, I suppose. Poor woman has to be ripped apart by her devil child. I feel like there’s a good metaphor in there somewhere… But anyways, the devil then turned to the midwives in the room and pounced, ripping their limbs from their bodies, killing most of them. I mean, at least one has to survive to spread the story, right?

Now after making short work of the women in the birthing room at the Leeds family home, it burst through the door and confronted his father and siblings. The devil killed most of its family before roaring and escaping out the chimney, breaking it apart from the inside, so that the chimney was just a pile of rubble when he was done. He then flew away into the darkness of the Pine Barrens forest, where he’s lived ever since, and even to this day, terrorizes anyone who dares enter. What was once called the Leeds Devil has now earned the name Jersey Devil, and it’s a staple myth of our beautiful state.

Okay so… let’s break this story down.

Mother Leeds is painted here as a witch, an uncaring mother who was annoyed about being pregnant. We also have to look between the lines here to assume that those who spread this story about her must have thought her unchristian because a good, moral, Christian woman wouldn’t birth the devil’s child, right? It’s also interesting to see that she is the scapegoat, as the woman. When in reality, when we look at the history, it actually came about because of her husband, Daniel Leeds. But I’ll get to that later.

But other than the details I mentioned in that particular origin story, there really isn’t much more to say about the devil. He just… lives in the forest and is a general deterrent for anyone trying to explore. And he comes from the Leeds family. And that’s about it. So it’s not really so much about the devil, but the family he comes from.

But what makes this creature Jersey’s cherished mythological beast is the renewed interest in finding it over time. And this all spawns from the real birth of the Jersey Devil - the moment it was captured and put in a museum in 1909.
The Jersey Devil Captured
Now in 1909, a serious hunt was underway to find the devil. 

In some Philly newspapers, reports ran of, quote, “curious, hoof-prints made by some strange animal not yet classified by scientist or nature-faker” found in the snows around Bordentown, Mount Holly, and Leeds point - the last of which is where the Leeds family, which I’ll talk about in a bit, ended up settling down. And it’s in this 1909 article where we get the classic drawing of the Jersey Devil, that really doofy looking horse-headed creature with wings and skinny little legs and hoofs. The story took off, and the hunt was on - though it’s worth noting that the story itself was just a prank to bring in business to a struggling newspaper. But regardless, the Jersey Devil gained popularity. They even went so far as to “capture” the Jersey Devil - but it was just a kangaroo with stripes painted on it, and a pair of homemade wings strapped on his back. 

No, seriously.

They orchestrated a “hunt” by putting this poor thing in the woods and sending ten men in to go capture it. And once they did, it was put on display at a museum in Philly, the Ninth and Arch Street Dime Museum. And this is where the Jersey Devil was born.

Now after a while, it was made clear that this was all a hoax. So they hosed the poor kangaroo down to get all the painted stripes off. But the stunt had done its job, and now rumors of Jersey Devil sightings were all over south Jersey. As Brian Regal and Frank Esposito wrote in their book The Secret History of the Jersey Devil, quote, 
The notion of a demonic part-horse, part-bat dragon with hooves and claws, born of an occult-practicing human mother, struck a chord. People who had seen the creature in its cage, as well as those who never entered the museum, began to claim they had seen it in the wild. The twentieth century would see waves of sighting of twisted equine bodies moving menacingly through the woods, leaping over streams and houses, and engaging in a wide range of unnerving activities.

End quote.

So this, then, was the real origin of the Jersey Devil. At least a tangible one that spawned countless other sightings throughout the twentieth century and into the 21st. But we know that the Jersey Devil connects back to the Leeds family, originally Daniel Leeds and his wife. So let’s jump into the historical context to find out why the Leeds family is at the center of the Devil’s origin story.
Historical Context
Ok. So what *I* want to know is - who are the Leeds’ and why were they the target of a story about birthing the devil? Let’s look back into history to find out more about the Leeds family and the world they lived in.

Daniel Leeds was born in England, most likely in Leeds, in 1652. The family were originally Anglicans, an English sect of Christianity that came about as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII’s desire to get an annulment. But later, Daniel’s parents became Quakers.

The Quakers, so named because they were said to quake and shake with the Lord’s light, found themselves in the New World for similar reasons to the Puritans - they were looking for religious freedoms. But other than wanting a place to practice their religion in peace, they weren’t anything like the Puritans. And the two definitely didn’t get along.

What differentiates Quakers from other Christian sects is their belief that an individual can have a direct relationship with God without needing a spiritual liaison - so a priest or clergyman was not needed. Instead, they would look to their inner light - the one that makes them, uh, quake - to have that personal connection to god. Therefore, there isn’t a great emphasis on churches; you don’t need to attend church and listen to a preacher if you can instead have a personal conversation with God, right? So instead, they gather in meetinghouses. They don’t need fancy churches, they don’t need fancy things, there are no altars, they don’t sit in pews… many sit in circles, or squares, so they are all on the same level. Since everyone can have a personal connection with God, this can happen anywhere and everywhere.

This doesn’t sound too much like Christianity, does it? Well, although the Quakers began as a Christian sect, and we can trace that back to - you guessed it - the protestant reformation, today, some Quakers don’t consider themselves “Christians.” Some do. It just depends on who you’re talking to. But they come from a group known as the Society of Friends, which originated in the mid-17th century England.

And just one more note on the Quakers, because I read this passage in Regal and Esposito’s book and it’s too funny not to pass on to you. Quote:

[Since they rejected worldly things,] it was not uncommon for individual Quakers to walk down the street naked except for a dish over their private areas, or to walk into churches loudly exclaiming for people to reject earthly authority and seek God directly. This public behavior… [was] seen by others as scandalous. 

End quote.

You could see why the Quakers and Puritans might not have gotten along, right? I mean can you imagine some nude Quaker walking into a stuffy, morally righteous Puritan town and trying to convince them to walk out of the church? Hah! I’d have loved to watch that happen. 

Imagine that happening to Reverend Parris - of Salem Witch Trials fame - as he’s trying to control his flock with threats of Satan and witchcraft. And then nudist Joe the Quaker just waltzes in the room. Do you think they would have hanged him as a witch? And anyway, besides that fun image, the Puritans didn’t like the fact that the Quakers rejected the concept of preachers, and even supported women’s equality and rights for the indigenous. The Puritans were intensely patriarchal and very… well, if you didn’t live life in one specific way, you were an outsider and treated as such. Some outsiders, you may remember, were hanged at Salem. 

But anyways.

Daniel Leeds had a crisis in faith because of his parent’s change in beliefs, so he sought spiritual guidance. In this time, he read a lot of scientific revolution and early enlightenment literature, like the writings of Francis Bacon, who is best known for empiricism and the scientific method. Like Bacon, Daniel Leeds wanted to explore his relationship with God through a rational, scientific lens.  And before long, Daniel Leeds became a Quaker as well.

He moved to the colonies when many other Quakers left to escape religious persecution, arriving some time after 1677. He settled in Burlington, on the banks of the Delaware River, in what was called “West Jersey” at the time. It wasn’t too far from where William Penn would later found his Quaker city of brotherly love - Philly.

And here’s where things get interesting, and potentially where we can trace the root of why the Leeds family were associated with the Devil - Daniel Leeds, a product of the scientific revolution, felt compelled to engage in academic life in the colonies. And he did this primarily through the Leeds Almanac.

Leeds read extensively on science, theology, astrology, and more. So, to put his ideas on paper, he started writing the Leeds Almanac. It would spread his name amongst intellectual circles, be a useful document to the common man, and perhaps spread scientific revolution ideas throughout the colonies, as it was doing back in England and Europe more broadly. He saw varying levels of success, but there was one problem with the almanac - it contained astrology. Which upset some of his readers. Some Quakers, in particular, saw astrology to be pagan and of the occult. So any inclusion of this language in the almanac was met with censure - Quaker leaders were sent out to collect as many copies of the Leeds Almanac as possible and burn them.

But this didn’t stop Daniel Leeds; he wanted to bring the scientific revolution to the colonies, and more specifically New Jersey. He added significantly more content to it and continued to publish it. But, in a really salty move, he also published books satirizing and poking fun at the Quakers. This ended up not doing him any favors, politically. The Quakers labeled him “Satan’s Harbinger.”

It also didn’t help that Daniel Leeds sided with some very unpopular political figures, including Lord Cornbury, NJ’s first royal governor, who was very much disliked by the general population. 

Eventually, Daniel’s son Titan Leeds took over the almanac business, and he crossed paths with Benjamin Frankin. You know who Ben Franklin is, yeah? I don’t need to go on a long tangent about him? Good.

Ben Franklin wanted to make a name for himself in publishing - this was before his Founding Father days. So, to do this, he played against the Leeds family and their astrological almanac. Franklin published his own, the Poor Richard’s Almanac. It was called this, by the way, as a nod to Richard Saunders, an English doctor who published his own almanac back in London. Ben Franklin thought that if he called it the Poor Richard’s Almanac, he would appeal to a majority of readers and link back to his humble, Puritan upbringing.

But anyway, in his Poor Richards Almanac, Franklin claimed that astrological calculations shows Titan Leeds would die in 1733; it was an attempt to capitalize on the Leeds Almanac, while poking fun at his competitor. When Titan Leeds didn’t die in 1733, Franklin played it off that Titan Lee did die, and now his ghost was heckling him. Very silly, yes. But it worked - Franklin’s Almanac, thanks to this silly stunt, became the more popular of the two.

So Daniel and Titan Leeds, and by extension the whole Leeds family, were seen as pro-royalist, anti-Quaker, and controversial. Their family receded from the public eye. The Almanac was no longer published by the 1740s. Most, especially in the Quaker community, remembered Daniel Leeds and by extension the Leeds family as evil - Satan’s Harbinger, right? And all of that was not a great place for the Leeds family to be in when the American Revolution rolled around. By then, Daniel, Titan, and many other Leeds’ were dead… but the Leeds Devil would soon be reborn. And it was around this point that we get the famous story of the Jersey Devil, looking like he does. 

The design inspiration, by the way, comes from the Leeds family crest, which Titan Leeds put on the Leeds Almanac. It was a wyvern. You know, a winged dragon-looking thing. It’s not a dragon, wyverns are different creatures that have two legs. Dragons have four. But the crest clearly influenced the eventual depiction of the Jersey Devil. 

And stories about it carried on until the Jersey Devil was “caught’ in 1909, which is when sightings started to pick up. So it went from being talked about to being seen.

So although the Jersey Devil is a fun myth, New Jersey’s own cryptozoological contribution to the weird sightings of strange beasts, it is very much rooted in history. The Jersey Devil isn’t the demon-born 13th son of the Leeds Family, but a political creation that started with Daniel Leeds’ almanacs, his controversies against the Quakers, and Benjamin Franklin’s desire for printing dominance and relevance. And over time, as the Leeds family became more and more secluded, the only things that remained were their devilish legacy, which over time only blew up into the story we have today.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Jersey Devil. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!

You can also support me and the show on Patreon - just look up a popular history of unpopular things. Subscribe to APHOUT on YouTube and check out my the musician behind my intro and outro, you can find him everywhere as Nedric and Nedric Music. Links are in the description!

Be sure to follow my podcast, available wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.