Henry Charlton Beck (May 26, 1902 – January 16, 1965)[1][3] was an author, journalist, historian, ordained Episcopal minister[1] and folklorist.

[4][5] He chronicled vignettes and anecdotal remembrances about such quaint—and often vanished—New Jersey locales as Ong's Hat, Penny Pot, Recklesstown, Apple Pie Hill, Calico, Varmintown, Pickle's Mountain, and Owltown.

[8] In addition to working at the Camden Courier-Post, Beck held an editorial position at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

[11][12] While employed as a reporter at the Courier-Post in the early 1930s, he began to write about small southern New Jersey towns.

[13] A January 1937 review in The New York Times explained: Mr. Beck, a Camden editor, set out one day to find a place whose name had long been merely laughed at—Ong’s Hat.

And lest it be thought that I am facetious, Mr. Beck himself applies the terms “unspoiled by the world outside, entirely uncontaminated” to the finely-drawn old — and they are almost all old in years — men and women who people the banks of southern New Jersey’s Mullica River, the setting of his book.

These villages are as I know them and as these people know them.”[16]A 1967 posthumous biographical profile of Beck noted, "His knowledge of the state made him the logical choice to be editor of Rutgers University Press for a brief tenure (1945–1947).

Despite his writing's focus on the past, Beck was keen to link events long ago with the present to demonstrate that across centuries, much human behavior does not change.

In his story "Fairfield, Fairton, New England Crossroads," from Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, Beck described an 18th century colonial-era clash between an existing community and new arrivals.

The sudden mingling of these people, those who had been Puritans seeking a new kind of freedom, and West Jersey colonists, resenting in some measure the intrusion, provided an atmosphere charged with all sorts of lightning.

Devices and trickery, often looked upon as the modern legacy of politics, were employed in all forms during those early days.

He taught in a one-room school, labored as a young Camden newspaperman, won state-wide fame as a folklorist.

He was the first to write extensively about the state, and he wrote with such warmth and enthusiasm that at least two generations of people who believe in New Jersey fell under his spell and owe an enduring debt to him.