The True History of the Lizzie Lincoln House

Ask any resident of Exeter Township, and they'll tell you the most famous haunted house in the area is the Lizzie Lincoln house-- an abandoned 19th century structure that beckons spook-seekers from behind a rusting fence festooned with "No Trespassing" signs. The legend of Lizzie Lincoln is so famous around Berks County that it has found a home in numerous books about Pennsylvania ghost stories and has been listed on dozens of websites. The Lizzie Lincoln house has even attracted paranormal research teams from places far and wide; in 1999, the South Jersey Ghost Researchers conducted an investigation there, with two of the team members claiming to have seen the apparition of a young woman.

Of course, anyone who believes in the legend will insist that this must have been the ghost of Lizzie Lincoln herself who, according to local folklore, died tragically after falling down the stairs. In some versions of the story Lizzie's death is accidental-- but most versions of the story maintain that Lizzie was pushed down the stairs by an ill-tempered husband. At any rate, the legend became so popular that the owner of the property, attempting to cash in on the "ghost tour" craze, turned the house into a Halloween attraction.

As is so often the case with haunted houses, much of what has been written about the gloomy brick house between Baumstown and Birdsboro is complete nonsense (to see what I mean, read my article on the equally infamous Amity Hall). In the case of Lizzie Lincoln, even the incomparable Charles Adams-- an Exeter Township native, no less-- muddied the waters when he stated to the Reading Eagle that, while no one was ever murdered in the house, a woman did die from natural causes inside the home many years ago, though her name wasn't Lizzie. According to Adams, the woman in question was most likely a maid or housekeeper who, presumably, died of natural causes.

The Early History of the Property


While many local historians refer to the vacant Federal-style brick structure as the Boardman House or the Boardman Farm (after the family who occupied the home for several decades), the house dates back to the mid-19th century, when it was built for Isaac Huyett (1793-1848) and his wife, Mary. Mary Myerly Huyett passed away on October 5, 1876. The following month the Huyett estate, consisting of eight acres, was purchased for $2,000 by John Huyett.

This, however, should not be confused with the John Huyett who was one of Isaac and Mary's ten children. John died at the age of 26 in 1856. In fact, out of the ten Huyett children, six were short-lived: Leah Harriet (died in infancy, circa 1826), Christiana (1835-1839), John (1830-1856), Levi (1842-1881), Ephraim (1844-1883), and Franklin (1847-1864). It is probable that a few of these young Huyetts died in the house, but since the date of the house's construction is unknown, it's impossible to state with any degree of certainty. At any rate, the description of the alleged female apparition allegedly seen by the South Jersey Ghost Researchers fits none of these former inhabitants.

Not long afterward the property changed hands from the Huyetts to the Seitzingers, and from the Seitzingers to the Boardmans, and here's where things begin to get interesting.

Mary Agnes Souder was the wife of Alexander H. Boardman, of Camden, New Jersey, and the cousin of William W. Seitzinger, the coal baron millionaire from Reading. Alexander Boardman, as some Berks Countians know, was the man who invented the famous Atlantic City boardwalk. Alexander, known then to his friends as "Aleck", came up with the idea in 1870, when he was young man working as a conductor on the Camden & Atlantic Railroad. After he had made a name for himself in Atlantic City, Boardman-- who was something of a debonair Don Juan-like figure, married Mary Agnes, a wealthy widow from Berks County, and promptly took his spot among local high society. He lived the rest of his life in comfort and ease, passing away in February of 1901 at the age of 60.

Mary Agnes inherited the Huyett property in 1864 from Franklin Seitzinger. At the time, Mary Agnes was married to her first husband, Alexander Newbold. Records indicate this marriage produced a daughter, who married an Orris Rosenbaum and relocated to Seattle. Of this daughter very little is know.

Mary Agnes married Alexander Boardman in 1876 and the couple divided their time between homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, not to mention deluxe hotel suites they rented by the season in Asbury Park and Ocean City. They eventually had a son, Horace, who grew up in Camden and attended school at the prestigious West Jersey Academy in Bridgeton. Horace would later go on to become a successful attorney.

Like most rich folks, Mary Agnes and her husband added to their wealth and real estate portfolio not through hard and honest work, but by suing the pants off whomever they could-- including their own neighbors. To demonstrate the type of people they were, in 1896 the couple brought a lawsuit against Daniel Hoffee, accusing the neighbor of stealing hay and straw from their Exeter property, even though they spent the better part of the year living out of state and probably had enough money to buy all the straw in the township. When Mary Agnes' millionaire cousin, William W. Seitzinger, died in 1900, she discovered that he had left her out of his will entirely. She wasted no time leaving Camden and traveling to Berks County to claim the chunk of the Seitzinger estate to which she believed she was entitled. Her attorney attempted to prove that Seitzinger was non compos mentis when he made out his will. The case went to trial, with a jury ultimately ruling against Mary Agnes Boardman.

The Story of Horace and Geraldine


After Alexander Boardman's death in 1901, Mary Agnes and her son, Horace, occupied the home that would later come to be known as as the Lizzie Lincoln House. Their tenure in Exeter Township would be short and sporadic; Horace married the following year and moved back to New Jersey, while Mary Agnes Souder Newbold Boardman passed away in Cape May on October 16, 1906, from complications arising from paralysis.

Even after the death of Mary Agnes, the house in Berks County would remain untenanted for long periods of time. Horace only lived at the house a few months a year, preferring to spend the majority of his time in New Jersey. He maintained possession of the Lizzie Lincoln house until his death in 1972.

Some have speculated that the female apparition reportedly seen from time to time in Exeter Township is that of Horace's first wife, Geraldine, who died in 1919 under mysterious circumstances. Shortly before her death, Geraldine filed suit against Horace for desertion and adultery. According to court documents, Geraldine alleged that she had been forced to relocate to California for health reasons, and that during her recovery Horace had begun having an extramarital affair with a woman named Georgiana Briant. Horace denied these accusations, and argued that it was Geraldine who had "acted indecorously with young men" while in California. Nonetheless, Horace and Georgiana were married just months after Geraldine passed away. In 1953, Horace married his third wife, Mildred Brown Walzer, a native of Millville, New Jersey.

Interestingly, these seedy details appear to have been the inspiration behind the "official" Lizzie Lincoln narrative, as given by those who worked at the Lizzie Lincoln house during its tenure as a Halloween attraction. This version of the legend states that Lizzie's husband-- a womanizing attorney from Philadelphia-- threw her down the stairs after she confronted him about his affair with a housemaid. The dates, details and locations don't mesh, of course-- the wife's name was Geraldine, not Lizzie, and she died in California, not Pennsylvania. And Horace, as far as I can tell, never practiced law in Philadelphia. Perhaps the reason why Geraldine's death is considered mysterious by some is because the nature of her health problems were a closely-held family secret and her funeral, which was held in Camden, was conducted in private.



The Origins of a Ghost Story


In 1977, new owners Scott Zabower and Robert Baker moved into the Lizzie Lincoln house. Author Charles Adams said in a January, 2019, Reading Eagle article, that Zabower and Baker both reported seeing and hearing doors opening and closing by themselves. In addition, lights and appliances would turn on and off under their own power, and a "misty form" was "often seen coming down a staircase". Zabower and Baker seem to be the first persons to report this sort of ghostly phenomena. However, in March of 2018, Zabower left a comment on a blog post written about the Lizzie Lincoln house, claiming that he had never experienced anything out of the ordinary:

I hate to bust your bubble but I lived in that house for four years. The person that lived with me was always freaked out and I never experienced anything. The name was not Lizzie Lincoln but it was Lizzie Boardman who was married to a Attorney and wore very large hats. I loved that house and I think all of what is said about it is mostly fabricated. I lived there in the seventies and early eighties.

This seems to suggest that someone wasn't telling the truth in the January, 2019 Reading Eagle article, although it remains unclear whether this person was Charles Adams, Scott Zabower or Robert Baker. Since Adams is the only one who stands to profit from the infamy of the Lizzie Lincoln legend (which he wrote about in his 1982 book, Ghost Stories of Berks County: Book 1), my guess is that it was him.

At any rate, from the time Baker and Zabower occupied the house up to the present day, countless witnesses claim to have experienced some sort of paranormal activity in the vicinity of the Lizzie Lincoln house. Most often, these supposedly supernatural occurrences involve strange sounds and odors, unexplained nausea, feelings of dizziness and light-headedness, and general aura of danger and discomfort.

History, however, seems to suggest that there may be a more natural explanation for this phenomena, and this explanation-- oddly enough-- centers around the very man who turned the vacant farmhouse into a Halloween attraction.

The Toxic Tale of the Deadbeat Landfill Owner



Ever since 1989, the Lizzie Lincoln house has been under the ownership of AVM Nursery, one of several local business entities owned by now-deceased businessman Donald L. Peifer and his partner, Harold C. Hart. After graduating together from Delaware Valley College in 1947, Peifer and Hart opened Buddies Nursery. Peifer's various businesses included Exeter Associates, the AVM Nursery Corp., Landfill Associates and F.R. & S. Landfill, which was located just a few feet east of the Lizzie Lincoln house, also on a parcel of land that had been owned by the Huyetts and the Boardmans.

And just like the Boardman family, Peifer spend a great deal of time in courtrooms. The primary difference is that, unlike the Boardmans, Donald Peifer was usually the defendant.

Peifer's troubles with the law began in 1970, when he applied for permits to operate two landfills. When the Department of Environmental Resources refused to issue the permits (a DER geologist had concluded that the site near the Lizzie Lincoln house was unsuitable for use as a solid waste disposal site), Peifer decided that he would simply operate the landfills without a license.

In October of 1976, DER officials grew concerned after an Exeter Township police officer, Paul Douglas, alerted the agency to Peifer's illegal activities. Douglas had been instructed by township supervisors to conduct an investigation of Peifer after several local residents living near the landfill became sick. During his investigation, Douglas discovered that trucks carrying liquid waste and toxic chemicals from as far away as West Chester were using the landfill as a dump site. One newspaper article reported that residents of the area complained about "gagging on the lacquer-like odors from greenish-gray liquids", while another article reported that people living nearby frequently awoke during the night with a "choking, burning sensation". These liquids seeped into the creek behind the Lizzie Lincoln house and into the Schuylkill River. Another newspaper reporter visited the site and observed "no fewer than five huge tractor-trailers" dumping waste at the landfill in a single span of twenty minutes.

After much legal wrangling, the DER ruled in December of 1976 that Peifer could continue operating the landfill under one conditions-- that he submit an environmental protection plan within 90 days. This decisions raised a howl of protest from neighbors, and an emergency meeting of the township Board of Supervisors was held. Many of the supervisors, who were on friendly terms with Peifer and Hart, said that nothing could be done (even though state law granted the township authority to levy fines for illegal dumping). When asked why the state was doing nothing to curb Peifer's illegal activities, one government official told the Pottstown Mercury that "Peiffer [sic] has more pull in Harrisburg than any of us do".

Equally as upset as the residents of Exeter Township were the residents of Pottstown. Located just seven miles downriver, the chemicals released into the Schuykill River by the landfill were contaminating Pottstown's water supply. Dr. Maurice Goddard, secretary of the DER, dispatched a team of field officers to Exeter Township to further investigate these complaints. In addition to industrial chemical waste, DER officials also detected high levels of raw sewage in the tiny stream behind the Lizzie Lincoln house. They traced this raw sewage to broken pipes in the nearby Sunset Manor housing development-- another business venture of Donald L. Peifer.

While most residents of Exeter Township signed a petition demanding a halt to the illegal dumping, it was soon discovered that not a single resident of Sunset Manor had signed it, and an investigative journalist from the Mercury later discovered that Peifer had threatened reprisals if any of his tenants affixed their names to the petition.

When a second township meeting about the illegal landfill was held in January, only one of the supervisors attended. Also attending that meeting was Henry Markofski, Peifer's lawyer. The residents of Exeter Township, meanwhile, obtained the legal services of Jerome Smith. A legal document was then delivered to Peifer by the DER; not only did he refuse to sign the legal document-- he tore it up as soon as it was handed to him.

A week later, when a binding order endorsed by Pennsylvania Attorney General Robert P. Kane was hand-delivered to Peifer ordering him to shut down the landfill, it appeared that the residents of Exeter Township finally had reason to rejoice. Their celebration would be in vain, however; once again Peifer thumbed his nose at authority, and the illegal dumping continued.

Naturally, no one was suprised when the DER's deadline came and went without Peifer bringing his illegal toxic waste site up to government standards. At the monthly meeting of the township Citizen's Committee in August, one resident, Sidney Harwitz, complained to township supervisors that, not only was the landfill still operating in defiance of the law, it had actually increased in size, having spread to within 300 feet of Red Lane. When the supervisors once again failed to hold Peifer accountable for his actions, the residents took their case to Washington, this time bringing their complaint to the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency.



Donald L. Peifer: The Biggest Sleazeball in Berks County History?



On April 26, 1978, Deputy U.S. Marshal James Duross, accompanied by a team of DER officials, entered Peifer's property armed with a search warrant authorizing him to obtain water and soil samples. According to court transcripts, Peifer greeted the federal law enforcement official by declaring, "So this is the big Marshal!" He then read over warrant, declared it invalid, and shoved it into his pocket. He then threatened the U.S. marshal, telling him that no samples would be allowed to be taken and that, if Duross tried, he and the DER officials would "not be permitted to leave the property". When the team commenced collecting samples, Peifer ordered one of his employees, David Hart, to park his truck across the road, thereby preventing them from leaving. Marshal Duross contacted the State Police, and Peifer was arrested. After a six-day trial, a jury convicted defendant of knowingly and willfully obstructing, resisting and opposing an officer of the United States.

In 1985 the landfill was finally shut down-- at least on paper. Two years later, the Allentown Morning Call reported that Peifer was still conducting business illegally from a trailer on the property. The EPA obtained access warrants in order to determine if there was underground pollution and, once again, Peifer attempted to prevent the gathering of samples at his landfill. On Feb. 8, 1986, the DER finally came down hard on Peifer, fining his company $323,500 for repeatedly violating state environmental law. Three years later Peifer purchased the four acres adjoining the landfill, upon which the Lizzie Lincoln house stands, and the abandoned property was turned into a Halloween attraction.

Peifer's other business, Buddies Nursery, continued to flourish. But on August 3, 1998, the Department of Environmental Protection cited the nursery for illegally burying "composted sewage sludge", which eventually polluted Molasses Creek. According to the DEP, a majority of soil samples taken from the nursery failed fecal coliform bacteria standards. Peifer passed away twenty-two days later, at the age of 78.

However, things weren't entirely bleak for Peifer during his final years. In 1992, the Delaware Valley College Alumni Association presented the lawless landfill owner with its prestigious National Farm School Award, handed out to those who have made a "significant contribution in his/her chosen field" and have participated actively in the community. Apparently, there weren't too many Del Val alums paying attention to Berks County happenings in those days, otherwise they would have realized that this is kind of like the National Association of Vegetarians giving a lifetime achievement award to Jeffrey Dahmer.

Today, the landfill that sits behind the Lizzie Lincoln house is owned and operated by the J.P. Mascaro company, and its name has been changed to the Pioneer Crossing Landfill. The company founded by Hart and Peifer, AVM Nursery, has been kept in the family, though they have not made any statements about the future of the Lizzie Lincoln house.

But as for the house's colorful past, one thing seems certain: Stories of paranormal phenomena didn't seem to circulate until after Peifer's landfill had already become a public health nuisance. In other words, if you visited the Lizzie Lincoln house and happened to experience feelings of dizziness and nausea, the true culprit was probably not a poor young woman who met her demise at the bottom of a staircase-- the true culprit was most likely toxic waste.







Sources/Further Reading:

Historical and Biographical Annals of Berks County, Pennsylvania. Morton L. Montgomery. 1909.
Reading Times, Nov. 28, 1876.
Reading Times, April 3, 1896.
Reading Times, Dec. 18, 1900.
Camden Courier-Post, Feb. 19, 1901.
Philadelphia Times, Oct. 27, 1901.
Philadelphia Inquirer, July 25, 1917.
Harrisburg Evening News, March 17, 1920.
Pottstown Mercury, March 14, 1953.
Pottstown Mercury, Dec. 1, 1976.
Pottstown Mercury, Dec. 2, 1976.
Pottstown Mercury, Dec. 9, 1976.
Pottstown Mercury, Dec. 15, 1976.
Pottstown Mercury, Dec. 22, 1976.
Pottstown Mercury, Jan. 22, 1977.
Pottstown Mercury, Jan. 28 1977.
Pottstown Mercury, Feb. 10, 1977.
Pottstown Mercury, Aug. 10, 1977.
United States of America v. Donald L. Peifer, Crim. No. 78-202
Allentown Morning Call, Feb. 8, 1986.
Allentown Morning Call, Dec. 10, 1987.
Allentown Morning Call, Oct. 21, 1992.
Lancaster New Era, Aug. 8, 1998.