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Woodward & Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties. 1883 Red Lion is a small hamlet in the southwest part of the township, where there is a tavern by Jacob Abrams, store by Franklin E. Allen, one blacksmith-shop and four or five dwellings. Beaverville is a hamlet of a school-house and four or five dwellings, about two miles south of Vincentown. Retreat is situated two and a quarter mile southeast of Vincentown, on the road to Sooy’s tavern, and on both sides of the Rancocas Creek, and at one time was a thriving manufacturing village, turning out large quantities of cotton goods. The place derived its name from the fact that during the Revolutionary war, when Bridgetown (now Mount Holly) was occupied by the British, the forge at Birmingham being close by, the proprietor was compelled to move his works into the pine wilds, where he could continue making cannon-balls for the Continental army in safety, and called his place of concealment New Retreat. The cotton-mills at this place were operated until 1842, when the trade policy of Congress crippled and closed them up, with several others throughout the country. There is nothing left now to mark the location of the factory except a few old pilings and the old dam and flood gates. But very few of the buildings connected with the factory remain. The old store has been converted to a Baptist mission. The fine old mansion, occupied by the Boltons, Howells, and Cushmans, bears but little traces of its once noted genuine hospitality. The large tract of land once belonging with the place passed into the hands of Charles Bispham, of Mount Holly, who has cleared up a large farm on what was formerly known as the “Great Briar Swamp.” In 1858, James Branson organized a Methodist Episcopal Sunday-school in the old school house, upon the site of which a new school-house was built, and the old one converted into a Methodist Church.
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