West Orange today has a wealth of parks and green space contributing greatly to the quality of life of its residents. Among these gems is Degnan Park on Pleasant Valley Way. Here you can enjoy a game of tennis, watch your children on the playground, and take in the scenic beauty of Lake Vincent. The lake, known for generations as Vincent’s Pond, plays a role in the historic roots of Pleasantdale as a farming community, as well as in the fond memories of young people growing up in West Orange through the decades.

The source of Lake Vincent is the West Branch of the Rahway River which runs through the valley between the first and second mountains. This branch rises in Verona, runs through Pleasantdale, feeds the Orange Reservoir in the South Mountain reservation, and continues its journey through the town of Millburn. It eventually joins with the East Branch of the Rahway River, and flows southeast toward Staten Island. As it makes its way through West Orange it is fed by numerous small streams that flow into it, draining the region, yet in Pleasantdale it is hardly more than a quiet brook that goes unnoticed by most.

Early settlers coming into the Orange area were drawn to the Pleasantdale valley for its fertile farming land. The river offered the clean water needed by these families and their livestock. Maps of West Orange from the early 1800s show how farmsteads were carved out of the valley; with the family homes built on the west side of Pleasant Valley Way (on the upward slope of the second mountain), and farmlands for the same family to the east side of the road. In this way, all the families had access to the river running through their farms.

The Vincent family was among those early farm families. Thomas Vincent was born in England in 1791. According to family lore, he came to America as a British soldier in the War of 1812, and stayed on when he was discharged. He married Martha Reynolds in upstate New York, and then moved to New York City. Around 1835 the family came to West Orange settling on the land that encompasses Degnan Park today. The couple had thirteen children, many of whom married into other early Pleasantdale families including the Maynards, Shaffers, Williams, and DeCamps.

The Vincents built a large home to house their growing family which came to be known as “Vincenthurst”.  (see photograph) It stood in the midst of a large orchard, across the road from Degnan Park.  The house was still standing in the 1930s, but was torn down to make way for the veteran’s barracks built to house the soldiers returning from World War II.  (This author lived in “the barracks” as a very young child).

The Vincents were exceptionally successful farmers, eventually holding more than 1,000 acres of land in West Orange and Livingston Townships. Vincent’s Market on Main Street in Orange was established to sell the farm products of the second generation of the family. At the main farmstead on Pleasant Valley Way the riverbed was widened to create Vincent’s Pond. From the mid-1800s through the early 1900s the Pond was a vital part of the Vincent farm establishment, providing drinking water for the livestock, including a fair number of horses and a considerable dairy herd.

My grandfather, Walter Vincent, was the great grandson of the original Thomas Vincent. He grew up on a dairy farm established by John Vincent, his grandfather, along the river at the present day junction of Pleasant Valley Way and Route 280. In 1920, Walter built a home for his own family up the hill from this location, on Belle Terre Road. At this point, my father’s memories of Vincent Pond take over this story. Dad (Walter Vincent, Jr.) was born in 1926, growing up on Belle Terre Road during the Depression. He remembers that the Vincent farms in Pleasantdale were disappearing by this time; much of the farmland of the early families had to be given up to the town during the Depression when taxes exceeded the ability to pay. Vincent’s Pond and its surrounding acreage were still in the family when Dad was born, but by the time he was a teenager it had become “town land”.

My father has many wonderful memories of the good times he had at Vincent’s Pond with his friends during the years of the Depression, before so many were called to serve in World War II. Among this close-knit group of boyhood friends were Ron Roberts, George Will, Matt Benson, Alton Davis, and Jack Derney – all from the Pleasantdale/Eagle Rock Ave. section of West Orange. The friends spent countless hours at the Pond, arriving in the morning and staying most of the day on many a winter Saturday. The young teens spent the time skating and playing “whip”, a human chain of skaters where the first in line skates backward in a circle, and the one(s) at the end of the chain are “whipped” off at high speed across the Pond.  Some of the boys were into playing ice hockey; others tried feats of daring such as jumping over barrels on the ice. Louie Stein, a particularly good skater, stands out in my father’s memory as being able to hurl himself over several barrels at a time. (The Stein family lived in the old Vincent homestead at this time, as Dad recalls).  

Despite the Depression, everyone seemed to have a pair of skates – handing them down from one child to the next as they outgrew them. At night the younger boys and girls would head home, and the older teens gathered at the Pond. They skated and socialized by the light and warmth of fires. In those days, when winters were generally colder than today, there was almost always skating before Thanksgiving, and continuing into the spring. Whenever the snow fell, it was certain that someone would be out the next day to clear off the Pond – it was just too much good fun not to have the Pond ready for skating!  Inevitably there were a few times when someone fell through the ice, but there was little danger of drowning as the water was not very deep.

Good times at Vincent’s Pond didn’t end with the spring thaw. Rather, it was time to get out the fishing pole , store-bought or home-made. The Pond was open to anyone to use, and was a popular spot for fishing. About 3 acres in size, the Pond offered an abundance of carp for the skillful, or patient, fisherman. But, even if no fish were caught, just being at the Pond, enjoying the freedom of a weekend day out-of-doors was reward enough.  Swimming was not something done at Vincent’s Pond; the water was muddy and shallow. But the local boys knew that just down the brook a ways (heading toward Mount Pleasant Ave.) a swimming hole could be found, and great fun could be had there on a hot summer afternoon after chores were done.

By 1943, the boys were off to war. Sadly, a fair number of Pleasantdale soldiers and sailors didn’t return. Those who did came back as young men, eager to start families. They had put their happy boyhood days at the Pond far behind them. On a recent sunny spring day I headed over to Degnan Park and took a seat on a bench overlooking Lake Vincent. Thinking about my father’s stories, I could almost hear the laughter and shouts of children young and old finding real joy in the midst of the Depression in something as simple as an afternoon at Vincent’s Pond.  

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