The Jersey Devil is the monster of the New Jersey Pine Barrens: a winged, hoofed creature with a horse-like head and a piercing scream, said to have been born to a woman named Leeds who cursed her thirteenth child. It is the state’s most famous legend, the namesake of its NHL team, and the subject of one of the strangest weeks in American newspaper history, when in January 1909 hundreds of people across South Jersey and Philadelphia reported seeing it or its tracks. Historians now trace the legend not to a monster birth but to a colonial feud between an almanac maker named Daniel Leeds and his Quaker neighbors.[1][2]
| Other names | The Leeds Devil (the older name); “Jersey Devil” appears in print only in the twentieth century |
|---|---|
| Region | The Pine Barrens (Pinelands) of southern New Jersey, especially around Leeds Point |
| Traditional origin | Born to “Mother Leeds” as her 13th child, usually dated 1735 |
| Typical description | Horse- or dog-like head, bat wings, hooves, forked tail, a loud scream |
| Most famous episode | The “Phenomenal Week” of 16–23 January 1909 |
| Best-known hoax | A painted kangaroo with fake wings exhibited in Philadelphia in 1909 |
| Historical roots | The Leeds family almanacs and their conflict with local Quakers |
The legend of Mother Leeds
In the most familiar version, set at Leeds Point in 1735, a woman known as Mother Leeds, worn out by twelve children, discovered she was pregnant again and cried, “Let this one be a devil!” The baby was born normally, but soon grew wings, a tail and claws, and flew up the chimney into the pines. Other versions move the story to the 1850s near Mays Landing, make Mother Leeds a witch, or make the devil himself the father.[1][2]
There are real Leeds behind the name. A Deborah Leeds and her husband, Japhet, lived in the area, and Japhet named twelve children in a will written in 1736, which is sometimes cited as the seed of the “thirteenth child” story. But no source from the period identifies any woman as “Mother Leeds” or records anything unusual about a birth.[1][2]
The real roots: Daniel Leeds and the Quakers
In The Secret History of the Jersey Devil (2018), the Kean University historians Brian Regal and Frank Esposito argue that the legend began with Daniel Leeds, an English-born surveyor who arrived in West Jersey around 1677 and joined the Quaker community at Burlington. In 1687 he began publishing an almanac that included astrology, which offended the local Quakers, who censored and destroyed it. After further clashes Leeds left the Quakers, joined the Church of England and wrote fierce pamphlets against his former brethren. The Quakers responded in kind; a 1700 tract accused him of working for the devil, and he was branded “Satan’s harbinger.”[1][2][3]
The feud continued into the next generation. Daniel’s son Titan Leeds took over the almanac in 1716 and from 1728 printed the family crest, which showed a winged, dragon-like wyvern, on its pages. His great rival was Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard’s Almanack competed for the same readers. In 1733 Franklin “predicted” Titan’s death that October, and when Titan protested that he was very much alive, Franklin joked that he must be a ghost, a joke he kept up even after Titan really died in 1738. Regal and Esposito suggest that a family repeatedly linked to Satan, a winged monster on its crest and a famous “undead” almanac maker gave South Jersey all the ingredients for a “Leeds Devil.”[1][3]
The Leeds Devil in the nineteenth century
By the nineteenth century the Leeds Devil was established in Pine Barrens folklore. Stories claimed that the naval hero Stephen Decatur fired a cannonball through it at a forge, and that Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte saw it while hunting near his estate at Bordentown around 1820, though historians have found nothing about either in their papers. Livestock killings in 1840 and 1841 were blamed on it. The first known printed mention came in 1859, in an Atlantic Monthly article on the folklore of the Pines. In 1893 the New York Sun reported a railroad engineer’s claim that the creature had attacked his train, and in 1905 the Trenton Times described a version that looked more like an ape than a dragon.[1][2]
The Phenomenal Week, January 1909
The Jersey Devil’s great moment came between 16 and 23 January 1909. In the space of a week, people across Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties, and across the river in Bristol, Pennsylvania, reported seeing a flying creature or finding strange hoofprints in the snow. Local historians have counted more than a thousand claimed witnesses. Among the most often repeated reports:[4]
- 16 January, Bristol, Pennsylvania. A patrolman said he fired at a screaming creature that flew off, and the town’s postmaster described a bird-like animal with a horse’s head. Residents found hoofprints in the snow.
- 18–19 January, Burlington County and Gloucester. Tracks appeared in yards, on rooftops and up trees in Burlington and nearby towns. In Gloucester, Nelson Evans and his wife said they watched the creature from their window for ten minutes at 2:30 a.m. Evans said it had a horse-like face, wings and hooves, and that when he shouted “Shoo!” it barked and flew away.
- 20–21 January. Posses searched around Haddonfield and Collingswood. A trolley in Clementon, a social club in Camden and the West Collingswood Fire Department all reported encounters. In Trenton, trolley drivers were armed.
- 22 January. A school in Mount Ephraim closed because no pupils came, and mills in Gloucester and Hainesport shut down because workers stayed home.
Philadelphia newspapers gave the story prominent coverage, and rumors spread that the Philadelphia Zoo had offered a $10,000 reward for the creature’s capture. Some towns imposed curfews and hunting parties combed the woods. Then the hoaxers moved in.[1][2]
The kangaroo in the dime museum
The publicist Norman Jeffries and an animal trainer named Jacob Hope bought a kangaroo from a circus, painted it, fitted it with fake wings and claws, and put it on display at the Ninth and Arch Street Dime Museum in Philadelphia as the captured Jersey Devil. Jeffries admitted the hoax about twenty years later. Another man later confessed to having made some of the 1909 hoofprints. By late January the newspapers were treating the whole affair as a joke, and the panic faded as quickly as it had begun.[1][2]
The sociologist Robert Bartholomew and the writer Peter Hassall have described the 1909 episode as a textbook case of mass hysteria driven by an existing regional legend. A story everyone already knew, a week of snow that showed every track, sensational newspaper coverage and the promise of a reward combined to turn ordinary sights and sounds into a monster.[1][5]
The Pine Barrens
The setting matters. The Pine Barrens, protected since 1978 as the Pinelands National Reserve, cover about 1.1 million acres, roughly a fifth of New Jersey. Their sandy soils support pitch pine and oak forests, cedar swamps and bogs, home to 43 threatened or endangered animal species and the rare Pine Barrens treefrog, and they sit over an aquifer estimated to hold 17.7 trillion gallons of water. Sparsely settled for much of their history, the Pines developed a reputation among outsiders as a remote, backward place: an ideal home for a devil.[2][6]
What explains the sightings?
- Mass hysteria and newspapers. The 1909 wave fits the pattern of a media-driven panic almost perfectly, with reports spreading outward as the coverage grew.[5]
- Hoaxes. The kangaroo exhibit and the faked tracks are documented. Other prints in the snow may have been made by hoaxers, or by ordinary animals whose tracks were distorted by melting and refreezing.
- Birds. Jeff Brunner of the Humane Society of New Jersey has suggested that wandering sandhill cranes, large, long-legged birds with loud, strange calls, could account for some sightings. Owls, herons and other large birds seen at night may explain others.[1]
- Screams in the woods. Foxes, owls and other animals produce startling screams at night, the kind of sound people often attribute to the Devil.
From devil to mascot
Over the twentieth century the Jersey Devil turned from a threat into a symbol of state pride. The New Jersey Devils hockey team, which moved from Colorado in 1982, took its name from a fan poll. Six Flags Great Adventure named a roller coaster after it, and books and films keep the legend alive. Like the Hodag and the Snallygaster, it is now a monster that a whole region enjoys claiming as its own.[1][2]
Our assessment
There is no evidence that a winged, hoofed creature lives in the Pine Barrens. There is good evidence for how the legend grew: a colonial family branded as the devil’s agents, a winged crest, a famous almanac feud, two centuries of local storytelling, and one wild week in 1909 when newspapers, snow and hoaxers made the story briefly come alive. As history, the Jersey Devil is far more interesting than as a monster.
References
- “Jersey Devil,” Wikipedia, citing B. Regal and F. J. Esposito (2018), H. C. Beck, Jersey Genesis (1983), R. E. Bartholomew (2015) and G. Tibballs (2006).
- Amy Briggs, “The Devil went down to … New Jersey?” National Geographic (27 October 2022).
- Brian Regal and Frank J. Esposito, The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created a Monster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).
- “The Jersey Devil,” Camden County history pages (DVRBS), compiling accounts of January 1909.
- Robert E. Bartholomew and Peter Hassall, A Colorful History of Popular Delusions (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2015).
- New Jersey Pinelands Commission, “Pinelands Facts” (2021).
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from historical sources. An earlier version described the Jersey Devil’s appearance and the Leeds story without sources, presenting the legend as more than 250 years old. It now explains the documented history of the legend, the 1909 episode and the known hoaxes. The illustration above is an artistic impression.