title: Folklife resources in New Jersey
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New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State Trenton, N.J. 1985 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data &R no Hs B>3i Bartis, Peter. Folklife resources in New Jersey. Includes index. 1. Folklore—Archival resources—New Jersey. 2. Folklore—Library resources—New Jersey. 3. New Jersey —Social life and customs—Archival resources—New Jersey. 4. New Jersey—Social life and customs—Library resources —New Jersey. 5. New Jersey—History—Societies, etc.— Directories. 6. New Jersey—Museums—Directories. I. Cohen, David Steven, 1943- . II. Dowd, Gregory, 1956- . III. Title. GR110.N5B37 1985 398\025’749 84-24158 New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State INTRODUCTION Folklife Resources in New Jersey reports the findings of a questionnaire survey begun in 1981 as a cooperative project of the American Folklife Center and the New Jersey Historical Commission. It is one of a series of resource surveys initiated by the Center to assemble a broad spectrum of information for citizens and cultural agencies engaged in the study, preservation, and presentation of traditional culture. The project sought to discover and identify New Jersey folklife materials in New Jersey institutions. Not within the scope of this survey are private collections, New Jersey collections in out-of-state institutions, and collections in New Jersey representing life and tradition outside the state. However, there are notable collections outside the state, such as Herbert Halpert's collection of Pine Barrens folktales and folksongs in the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music; the New Jersey wildfowl decoy collection in Vermont's Shelburne Museum; and the folksong collections and documentation from the 1983-84 Pinelands Folklife Project in the Archive of Folk Culture of the American Folklife Center. We gathered information with a questionnaire developed by the American Folklife Center and tailored to the special needs and characteristics of New Jersey by the staff of the Historical Commission. An accompanying cover letter described the American Folklife Center and the New Jersey Historical Commission's Folklife Program. It also explained the project and provided the following definition of folklife adapted from Public Law 94-201, which created the American Folklife Center: "American folklife" means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional. Expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as customs, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pagentry, and handicraft. Folk or "traditional" expressions are not learned through the mass media and they stand apart from the fine arts. Generally they are learned orally, by imitation, or in performance. The format of the base questionnaire was encouraged by the Center, which recognizes the need to work closely with agencies familiar with regional culture and to produce 2 uniform reports so that researchers may readily locate and compare folklife resources from state to state. Similar surveys have been previously conducted in Arizona, New York, and Rhode Island. One distinctive feature of the New Jersey questionnaire was the frequent use of local examples to illuminate categories. For example, the category ’’traditional watercraft and related equipment” was illustrated by ’’sneakboxes, garveys, dugouts, riggings.” The questionnaire was divided into the following categories: 1. Traditional artifacts a. Folk architecture (such as Dutch farmhouses, pattern brickwork houses, barns, outbuildings, and shanties) b. Traditional furnishings (such as country furniture, baskets, handmade toys, food utensils, redware, stoneware, and Native-American pottery) c. Homespun clothing, traditional ornaments, and grooming articles d. Traditional watercraft and related equipment (such as sneakboxes, garveys, dugouts, rigging)—model and full size e. Agricultural equipment (such as plows, scythes, and siths) f. Tools and implements pertaining to traditional occupations (such as shipwrights’ and blacksmiths’ tools) g. Hunting, trapping, fishings and clamming equipment h. Religious items, structures, shrines, and secular symbolic artifacts (such as icons, amulets, and charms) i. Musical instruments j. Artistic and decorative items 1. Textiles and needlework (quilts, samplers, coverlets, embroidery, etc.) 2. Folk paintings and graphics (by itinerant and/or untutored artists) 3. Folk sculpture and carvings (whittling, scrimshaw, decoys, etc.) 4. Ethnic arts 5. Other 2. Folk songs, folk music, and folk dance (unpublished collections only) a. Folksongs (such as ballads, worksongs, children’s songs, ethnic songs, religious and sacred music) b. Traditional instrumental music (such as collections of fiddle tunes and ethnic music) c. Regional and ethnic dance 3. Verbal arts (unpublished collections only) 3 a. Tales, legends, myths, place name stories, monologues and toasts, jokes, and humorous anecdotes b. Personal experience narratives and oral histories c. Other verbal arts such as collections of proverbs, riddles, poetic recitations and folk speech (regional expressions and local language) 4. Traditional customs and beliefs (unpublished collections only) a. Regional and ethnic folk medicine (herbal, magical, and other traditional practices) b. Religious, community, or town customs, festivals, historic activities, and other traditions (such as saints’ and name day celebrations, blessings of the fleet, bake-offs, homecomings, market days) c. Old sayings, beliefs, and practices about birth, life, death, health, and weather d. Recipients were encouraged to include as much information as possible. We clarified or expanded many returns with telephone calls. In addition, calls to selected nonresponding institutions assured us that no important collections were omitted. In a few exceptional cases a researcher visited an institution whose collections were unusually large or when the task of responding was cumbersome. Many institutions returned pamphlets and brochures, which were used in writing the entries. As a result of these techniques we had a much higher rate of return than is usual in passive mail surveys. This survey report contains 172 entries; institutions not listed either did not respond or had no relevant holdings. 4 Gregory Dowd contributed significantly to the final compilation and preparation of entries, while serving as a graduate student intern from Princeton University. Jamie Griffin, a student from Douglass College, Kathleen Condon, Doris Craig, Sebastian LoCurto, and Brett Topping of the American Folklife Center, and Mary Murrin and Lee Parks of the New Jersey Historical Commission assisted during various phases. Howard Green, Research Director at the Commission, supplied helpful advice, and Judith Morello typed the manuscript. We updated the information in this directory during the summer of 1984. Although we are providing the most up-to-date information possible, we encourage readers to check hours of operation prior to visiting. We have done our best to include all appropriate organizations, and we are especially grateful to the many staffers, volunteers, librarians, archivists, and other colleagues whose willing completion of the questionnaire made this report as informative as it is. David S. Cohen Peter T. Bartis New Jersey Historical Commission American Folklife Center RESOURCES 1 Abram Demaree Homestead Old Hook and Schraalenburgh Roads Closter 07624 (201) 385-7309 Open the first Sunday of the month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This red sandstone, Dutch structure was built in two stages: the west wing before 1769 and the main house in 1809. On the grounds is a clapboard barn, built in 1825. Most of the furnishings are Victorian. During the spring and fall, the Abram Demaree Homestead Society celebrates Americana Day. 2 Allentown and Upper-Freehold Historical Society 76 North Main Street P.O. Box 328 Allentown 08501 (609) 259-7502 The society’s office is open on the last Monday of each month, except July and August. The society operates a museum on the third floor of the public library, open Tuesday through Saturday during library hours, which vary. The society’s most extensive effort in recent years has been to establish a collection of slides and prints of 226 historic houses. It also maintains a grist mill, which once belonged to the town’s namesake, Nathan Allen, and the old Episcopal cemetery, the stones of which the society has cataloged. The society has a number of locally manufactured rush- and cane-bottomed chairs from the late nineteenth century, when Allentown was a major chairmaking center. In the fall, the society conducts tours; in the spring it celebrates a strawberry festival. 6 Two window displays—one on the history of lighting devices and the other on the chairmakers of Allentown—have recently been produced by the society. 3 American Labor Museum Botto House National Landmark 83 Norwood Street Haledon 07508 (201) 595-7953 The office is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Located in the home of the Pietro Botto family, the site of rallies during the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike, the museum specializes in the culture of work, with a special focus on Paterson. Haledon is a streetcar suburb with large Italian, German, and Frisian populations, and these ethnic groups are reflected in the museum’s collection. The Botto House has a bocci court and a traditional Italian garden, including a grape arbor. The museum collection includes handmade garden tools, ethnic cooking utensils, hatmaking tools, winemaking equipment, and equipment used for food processing and preserving. The museum also has silk quilts made by women mill workers, handcrafted trousseau articles brought from Europe, and a landscape of the Alps region in Italy painted from memory by a member of the Botto family. There is also a collection of photographs of May Day outings, workers’ picnics, ethnic association meetings, bocci and card playing, company sporting events, work in the Paterson silk industry, and crafts, such as shoemaking. The museum has a collection of family recipes representing the diverse ethnic groups in Paterson’s workforce and three oral histories tape-recorded in 1983, containing remembrances and songs about the 1913 strike. The American Labor Museum has produced two major exhibitions—"For Bread and Butter: The 1913 Paterson Silk Strike” (1982) and "Life and Times in Silk City" (1984). It also published A Slice of the Earth: The Story of the American Labor Museum (1982). 4 Archaelogical Research Center Seton Hall University Museum South Orange 07079 (201) 761-9543 Exhibition area open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; research center open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and by appointment Located on the campus of Seton Hall University (Humanities Building), the center has a collection of Lenape and prehistoric Indian artifacts excavated from archeological sites in New Jersey. The collection includes measured drawings of prehistoric Indian house patterns, a model of a Delaware Indian Big House made by Reuben Wilson of Dewey, Oklahoma, a six-foot fragment of a historic-period dugout canoe, and several petroglyphs (carved figures on rocks). Within its collection of prehistoric implements and tools are hoes, millstones, pestles, pottery sherds, reconstructed pottery vessels, projectile points, and net sinkers. Religious artifacts include effigy faces on pendants, on ceramic pots, on 7 cobblestones, and on tobacco pipes, as well as grave offerings dating from prehistoric to early historic times. The center has copies of some 120 archeological reports, monographs, and cultural resource surveys prepared by the center and a library of archeological and ethnographic publications pertaining to the Indians of New Jersey and surrounding states. The center has sponsored two major conferences—the "Delaware Indian Symposium," held in 1972, the proceedings of which were published in A Delaware Indian Symposium , Herbert C. Kraft, ed. (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974), and "Lenape Indians: Retrospect and Prospect," held in 1981, the proceedings of which are in press. 5 Amey’s Mount Preservation Society RD 1, Box 528 Juliustown-Mt. Holly Road Columbus 08022 (609) 261-3415 No regular schedule. The society seeks to preserve the historic beauty of the Arney’s Mount area and the local structures built of native stone. Although the society is not a repository as such, it has access to an early banked farmhouse and a Quaker meeting house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These two structures were built of fieldstone in the eighteenth century. Nearby are other colonial houses made of sandstone taken from the mount. 6 Atlantic County Historical Society 907 Shore Road P.O. Box 301 Somers Point 08244 (609) 927-5218 Open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Closed holidays. Although the society’s holdings emphasize Atlantic County and southern New Jersey, they also include items from northern New Jersey. Atlantic County’s maritime traditions are reflected in the society’s collection of ship models. These include ten half-models of local sailing craft, nine full-rigged models of Colonial and Early National period vessels, and several miniature models of ships that plied the Great Egg Harbor River. Photographs and sketches of ships, houses, and other Atlantic County structures can also be found in the collection. The society’s other maritime possessions include a scrimshaw powder horn, a full-sized pond box, shipwright’s tools, glass floats, net sinkers, Indian fishing hooks, a harpoon, and a violin made from a lobster claw. The society also owns a zither harp, a dulcimer, a melodeon, and an accordion. The society possesses many examples of traditional textiles and needlework, including 8 homespun blankets, embroidered bookmarks, patchwork and applique quilts, a jacquard coverlet, and twenty-seven samplers. Miscellaneous artifacts, such as scythes, a wooden hay fork, a carved apple dryer, folk paintings, and children’s games and toys, are also reported by the society. Among the society’s unpublished materials are manuscript accounts of local legends and letters referring to lovefeasts, camp meetings, and other ceremonies. Diaries and ships’ logs are contained in the collection, most notably the log book of the Francis Helen , which includes descriptions of fiddling and dancing by the officers and crew. 7 Barclay Farmstead 820 Mercer Street Cherry Hill 08002 (609) 795-6225 Open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and by appointment. This Quaker farmstead occupies a 32-acre site in the heart of Cherry Hill; 8 acres are under cultivation. The farm has a kitchen garden, a Federal brick farmhouse, a spring house, a corn crib, and a blacksmith shop. The farmhouse has country furniture in the kitchen and open-hearth cooking implements. Agricultural equipment includes a wooden moldboard plow, rakes, harrows, scythes, and a cradle. The farm also has a complete collection of butchering equipment, a complete blacksmith tool collection, and carpentry tools. 8 Barnegat Historical Society P.O. Box 381 Barnegat 08005 (609) 698-1483 Open Friday and Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. between the second week in June and the second week in September. The society owns two saltbox houses, a barbershop, a butcher shop, a corn crib, and an outhouse. Its collection includes Quaker clothing, a Barnegat friendship quilt 1840-1850, a sampler, a sneakbox model, farming tools, glassmaking tools, clam rakes, oyster baskets, stick-up decoys, and a folk painting of the Quaker meeting house in Barnegat. The society also owns sea-captain log books and photographs of seafaring life, rescue boats, old houses, and local stores. In 1981 the society published Out of the Past - A Pictorial History of Barnegat, New Jersey. 9 9 Barnegat Light Historical Society 5th & Boulevard Barnegat Light 08006 No telephone Located in what was once a one-room schoolhouse, the museum has fishing and clamming equipment and a collection of photographs depicting Barnegat’s lighthouse and life saving stations. The society cultivates a seashore garden on the museum grounds and participates in the annual blessing of the fleet. 10 Batsto Village State Historic Site RD 4 Hammonton 08037 (609) 561-3262 Open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving. The site of an old New Jersey iron furnace, Batsto Village features New Jersey white cedar houses, reconstructed craft shops of weavers, candle-makers, wood-carvers, chair- makers, potters, and blacksmiths, an eighteenth-century ore boat, southern New Jersey glass, and a reconstructed eighteenth-century grist mill. The museum has a manuscript collection. 11 Belleville Historical Society Belleville Public Library 221 Washington Avenue Belleville 07109 (201) 759-9200 Open in the winter on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Open in the summer from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Monday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Closed Sundays. The one item of interest to folklorists is an unpublished manuscript, Richard Shafter’s "A History of Belleville" c. 1940, which contains a chapter on Belleville folklore. The library owns abridgements of the work. 10 12 Bergen Community Museum of Art and Science Ridgewood and Fairview Avenues Paramus 07562 (201) 265-1248 Open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The museum possesses a collection of Native-American artifacts. 13 Bergen County Historical Society 1209 Main Street, P.O. Box 55 River Edge 07661 (201) 487-1739 Open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Open Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The society’s collection of books and manuscripts is kept at the Johnson Public Library, 274 Main Street, Hackensack, which is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The society’s collection of artifacts is kept in the Steuben House, a gambrel-roofed sandstone structure, which is owned by the state of New Jersey. Also on the grounds are the late nineteenth-century Westervlet Barn, the Demarest House, and the Campbell- Christie House. The artifacts on display are primarily of local manufacture and use. Included among the period furnishings are: a kas made of cherry wood c. 1775 attributed to Matthew Egerton of New Brunswick, a Hackensack Valley cupboard with reeded borders, typical of local cabinetwork, signed ’’Auryansen,” numerous locally made chairs with distinctive urn finials, including a child’s high chair, and an oak settle c. 1750 with a tall back that opens up into a closet for curing meat. Examples of local pottery include a collection of slip¬ decorated pie dishes made in River Edge by George Wolfkiel (1805-1867). The society's collection of antique dolls and toys includes a wax doll c. 1700 named Betsy, which was sent c. 1765 to the family of Dr. John Redmond Coxe of Trenton by their grandmother in England. The society's textile collection contains antique clothing, pictorial coverlets produced by local weavers using the jacquard mechanism, and local quilts, including several friendship quilts, a storybook applique quilt dated 1880, an applique quilt made by Betsy Haring in 1859, and a Centennial quilt with medallion-like images of George and Martha Washington. The society also reports an Indian dug-out canoe unearthed in Hackensack in 1868, a hand-painted sign with a portrait of Thomas Jefferson dated 1802 from John A. Hopper's Tavern, two anonymous folk portraits, one of Gretje Ackerman Westerman c. 1810 and the other of Johanna B. Romaine c. 1860, and an 1830 watercolor of ’’Goddess Flora” by Margaret Van Wagoner Demarest. The society also owns four carved Dutch spoon boards, a painted document box, metalwork, needlework, and accessories of everyday life in earlier times. 11 14 Bergen County Office of Cultural and Historic Affairs 355 Main Street, Room 101 Hackensack 07601 (201) 646-2882 Open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The office holds both manuscript and photographic materials from two surveys that it has completed, one of historic sites and the other of stone houses. It maintains files relating to cultural resources, including ethnic and historic topics. A published guide to historic sites is also available. 15 Bergenfield Free Public Library 50 West Clinton Avenue Bergenfield 07621 (201) 384-2765 Open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday (except July and August) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The library reported the following items: a booklet of old-time tales printed in 1934 for Bergenfield's fortieth anniversary, oral histories tape-recorded in 1963, and an account book of the Cooper chair factory from the spring 1864. 16 Bergenfield Museum Society South Summit Street and Palisade Avenue Bergenfield 07621 (201) 395-4599 By appointment only. The emphasis of this collection is on Cooper and Hackensack chairs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Complementing these chairs are a wooden needle used in making rush seats and a manuscript lecture on Cooper chairs. The society also owns G. Wolfkiel slipware, strawberry baskets c. 1830, a wooden rake, carpenter's tools, lace, samplers, embroidery, and quilts. The society has access to a rooster weathervane cut from sheet metal. 12 17 Blauvelt-Demarest Foundation Hiram Blauvelt Wildlife Museum 637 Kinderkamack Road Oradell 07649 (201) 262-1354 Museum open Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and by appointment. Although the foundation concentrates primarily on wildlife preservation, it also owns a collection of items of interest to folklorists. The Demarest House was built c. 1678. It is furnished with local artifacts from the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Of particular interest are the pewter items, the several folk portraits from the 1820s, a pallet for picking dried flowers, a cookie mold, and one of the oldest dated chairs in New Jersey. The foundation also owns and maintains the Old French Cemetery located in New Milford. 18 Bordentown Historical Society P.O. Box 182 Bordentown 08505 (609) 298-1740 Open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Open Friday from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m; and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The society owns the furnishings of the Gilder House, a typical English yeoman’s house built c. 1740. The Gilder House itself is owned by the city of Bordentown. The society has a collection of folk furniture, including a Ware chair on loan from Luciene Lejambre, a New Jersey chest on frame made in Crosswicks, an eighteenth- century ladderback armchair with a corn-husk seat, a ladderback chair with sausage turnings, and New Jersey fanback Windsor chairs. They also report a fireback from the Atsion Furnace. The society’s textile collection includes two samplers made by Ann Poinsett of Bordentown, a sampler by Sarah Burtis, another by Sarah Aaronsons, and a fifth by Hester Schuyler of Bordentown, several woven coverlets, and a friendship quilt known as the Fahrenstock quilt. The society also has two pastoral paintings by Susan Waters, a self- taught Quaker artist. The society's library has one oral history interview, the business records of a pharmacist, a book of weather conditions in the nineteenth century, the log book of a yacht captain, and old photographs of boat building, fire companies, parades, local architecture, and a nineteenth-century carriage-maker's workshop. 13 19 Boxwood Hall: Historic House Museum 1073 East Jersey Street Elizabeth 07201 (201) 648-4540 Open Wednesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 6 p.m. Open Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 1 to 6 p.m.; and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. A National Historic Landmark maintained by the state of New Jersey, Boxwood Hall has fine furnishings from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Besides the three portraits by an itinerant artist from the 1820s, the museum owns patchwork and applique quilts, coverlets, and a sampler. 20 Brookdale Community College Lincroft 07738 (201) 842-1900 Open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Sunday. The college has assembled a set of six audio-visual learning packages for architecture students. These slides and cassette tapes display and describe six historic buildings still standing in Monmouth County: the Allen House, Clinton’s Headquarters, the Conover Farm c. 1732, the Holmes-Hendrickson House, Marlpit Hall, and the Spy House. 21 Buccleuch Mansion George Street and College Avenue Buccleuch Park New Brunswick 08901 Mailing Address: Louise Miller 25 Shelly Drive Somerset 08873 (201) 846-1063 (201) 745-5094 Open Saturday and Sunday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., between the last Sunday in May and the last Sunday in October. Out of season visits and tours by appointment. A modified Georgian structure built in 1739, and a state and national historical site, Buccleuch Mansion shelters a collection of textiles, paintings, and furnishings by local New Brunswick artisans and artists. The curators of the mansion report a textile collection, including patched, signature, 14 and Victorian crazy quilts, trapunto, blue-and-white overshot coverlets, and handmade lace. There is also a craft room containing spinning wheels, carders, and pleaters. The sixteen-room mansion is fully furnished; many of the items were made by New Brunswick craftsmen. Among these are a table with Matthew Egerton, Jr.’s label, a tall mahogany clock case attributed to Egerton with clock works by the silversmith Peter Leupp, and other pieces by Oliver Parsell and Enos Woodruff. Within the mansion are folk paintings from the Hatfield Smith Collection, including three pastel portraits, possibly by Micah Williams, one portrait by Henry Sanderson, and a number of portraits by unknown artists. The mansion also owns a hand-painted banner depicting Noah’s ark with words in Hebrew, which is on loan to the Jewish Museum in New York City. Miscellaneous artifacts include a few carpenter’s tools, two zithers, and a hair wreath. 22 Burlington County Cultural and Heritage Commission The Mansion at Smithville Smithville Jacksonville Road Mount Holly 08060 (609) 261-5068 Mailing Address: c/o 49 Rancocas Road Mount Holly 08060 Office open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mansion tour and museum open Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., April through November. The commission is located at the Smithville historic site, a factory village featuring Victorian artifacts, formal gardens, and exhibits. The collection includes foundry and surveying tools, old photographs of local scenes, three high-wheeled, Star bicycles made at Smithville, and records of the H. B. Smith Machine Company, which produced woodworking machinery. 23 Burlington County Historical Society 457 High Street Burlington 08016 (609) 386-4773 Open Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Delia Biddle Pugh Library also open Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to noon. Although the society specializes in genealogical research, it has a large, uncataloged manuscript collection. Descriptions of Pinelands customs can be found in the diary c. 1880-c. 1910 of Grace Moore, a Burlington County school teacher who worked in the Pine Barrens. The society also owns handwritten cookbooks, one of which contains remedies for various ailments. 15 The society has slipware and earthenware, a photograph of shad fishermen at work, samplers, and a Burlington County quilt collection, which includes pieced, applique, presentation, and everyday quilts. 24 Califon Historical Society P.O. Box 374 Califon 07830 (201) 832-7138 Open by appointment. The society owns stoneware as well as the wooden sign of the town’s first post office. The society has tape-recorded oral histories. It has sponsored a number of exhibits, including one on the Califon Basket Company from 1889 to the present. 25 Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission Hopkins House 250 Park Drive Haddon Township 08108 (609) 858-0067 Open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed weekends and holidays. The commission, a county governmental agency, has a collection of manuscripts. Among these are the Mickle family papers—2,000 pages of unpublished but indexed documents which cover 300 years of family history and contain information about Camden County traditions. 26 Camden County Historical Society Park Boulevard and Euclid Avenue Camden 08103 (609) 964-3333 Visiting hours: Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Monday through Thursday from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Office hours: Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Group tours by appointment. Pomona Hall was the home of a prominent Quaker family of the Delaware Valley. It was built in 1726 by Joseph Cooper, Jr., with an addition in 1788 by Marmaduke Cooper. An example of eighteenth-century residential architecture in the simplified Georgian style, its furnishings are primarily of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Exhibits include the tools of early hand crafts displayed in shops (blacksmith, carpenter, candle-maker, cobbler, cooper, and weaver), early American glass, lighting 16 devices, fire-fighting equipment, toys, eighteenth-and nineteenth-century military and industrial artifacts of southern New Jersey, ethnic exhibits, and changing exhibitions. The library contains approximately 19,000 books and pamphlets, as well as maps, deeds, slides, photographs, and genealogical material relating to Camden County and New Jersey. Newspapers of this geographic area dating from 1800 to 1947 are also preserved. 27 Canal Society of New Jersey MacCulloch Hall P.O. Box 737 Morristown 07960 (201) 233-9752 Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., April 15 through December 30. Closed for occasional special events held in Waterloo Village. The museum of the Canal Society is housed at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, New Jersey. The society maintains a collection of artifacts from New Jersey canal sites, as well as photographs, paintings, and models of canals and canal boats. The society publishes the journal The Tow-Path Finder. 28 Cape May County Historical and Genealogical Society DN 707 Route 9 Cape May Court House 08210 (609) 465-3535 The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., April through mid- June, and from mid-September through December; also open on Monday from mid-June through mid-September. The library is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed major holidays. The society is located in the John Holmes House, a Federal period farmhouse and barn. The bedroom and kitchen contain colonial furniture and open-hearth cooking implements, including redware pottery. The society possesses a variety of tools from the salt marsh- hay, cedar-shingle, mining, shipbuilding, and whaling industries. They also have a collection of forty locally-made duck decoys and two sneakboxes. They have Native American artifacts, quilts, samplers, coverlets, some scrimshaw, a dulcimer, violins, flutes, and a concertina. Their manuscript collection includes diaries, account books, ledgers, and ship’s logs. They also have a collection of tintypes, daguerreotypes, stereopticons, and photographs of shipbuilding, shingle mining, and other subjects. 17 29 Cedar Grove Historical Society Cedar Grove Public Library Cedar Grove 07009 (201) 239-5171 Collection available by appointment only. The collection of the Cedar Grove Historical Society includes traditional furnishings, agricultural and harness-making tools from the nineteenth century, and a file documenting local lore and history. The society offers a slide show of old homes and interiors. Two of these homes are national historic sites: the Jacobus House and the Personett House. Both are brown sandstone structures. The latter has a large fireplace with a separate Dutch oven; it has been restored and refurnished. A booklet on Cedar Grove’s history is available through the society. 30 Chester Historical Society P.O. Box 376 Chester 07930 (201) 879-7740 The museum was open for the Bicentennial and closed in 1978. Although the museum is closed, the society still works to photograph and preserve Chester’s 250 colonial, early American, and Victorian buildings, four of which are on the National Register of Historic Places. The society also has tape-recorded oral histories. The collection is in storage at the Williamson School in Chester, New Jersey. 31 Clinton Historical Museum Village 56 Main Street Box 5005 Clinton 08809 (201) 735-4101 Open Monday through Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., April through October. During the rest of the year, only the antique shop and offices are open. This reconstructed and restored museum village is an interpretation of rural, northwestern New Jersey life in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. It sponsors a concert series, craft day, and harvest jubilee. The main museum, a water-powered mill built in 1763, has four floors of exhibits. These include a Lenape Indian scene, an eighteenth-century kitchen, a milk room, the shops of a cooper, a cobbler, and a carpenter, and the milling operation itself. Among other structures in the village are a complete blacksmith shop, a nineteenth-century stone crusher, and lime kilns. The village also displays early lighting devices and implements used in spinning, weaving, and logging. 18 32 Collingswood-Newton Historical Society c/o Collingswood Public Library Haddon and Frazer Avenues Collingswood 08108 (609) 858-0649 The public library is open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., September through mid-June. Closed Saturdays during the summer. Although the society does not have its own office, parts of its collections are on permanent display in the New Jersey room of the library. Among these items are portraits by the intinerant painter Raphael Senseman, local pottery, and examples of southern New Jersey glass. Both the library and the society are working together to assemble a collection of local historical materials. One such file contains pictures of the town’s fiftieth anniversary, of its fireman’s parades, and of other festivals. In one tape-recorded interview a local resident describes a visit by the Jersey Devil. 33 Colonial Burlington Foundation, Inc. 213 Wood Street and 214 High Street Burlington 08016 (609) 386-0733 Open by appointment. The foundation has custody of the Revell House, built in 1685. The foundation maintains an extensive boxwood herb garden on the Revell House grounds. 34 The Craig House Monmouth Battlefield State Park RD #1 Freehold 07728 (201) 462-9616 Open on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Craig House is a Colonial New Jersey farmhouse and barn in a natural setting. The house is not fully furnished, but reports hand tools and cooking implements. It is a state-owned historic site. 19 35 Cranbury Historical and Preservation Society 4 Park Place Cranbury 08512 (609) 655-3736 Open Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Located in a house built in 1834, the museum is furnished with items primarily from the nineteenth century. On permanent exhibit are collections of agricultural, leather¬ working, and blacksmith’s tools. The museum also has Native American artifacts found near Cranbury, bottles from J.S. Silver Bros. & Co., and approximately fifteen personal narratives and oral histories. The society annually exhibits dolls, quilts, glassware, etc., all of which are loaned by local residents or are from the museum collection. 36 Culver Brook Restoration Foundation P.O. Box 447, Broad Street Branchville 07826 (201) 948-6662 The museum is open spring through fall at various hours; contact the foundation for details. The foundation is open Wednesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The foundation maintains a completely furnished blacksmith and wheelwright’s shop c. 1895, which includes a wagon made by a local wheelwright. It also possesses a log cabin c. 1790, an oral history collection, and two unpublished local histories—one of a farm and horse show and the other of a floating religious service held on Culver’s Lake. 37 Cumberland County Historical Society P.O. Box 16 Greenwich 08323 (609)455-4055 (609)451-8454 Open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. April 1 through mid-December. Closed Sunday during July, August, November, and December. The society owns the Gibbon House, a London-style town house with Flemish bond brickwork, and a Swedish log cabin built in 1650 as a granary. They also own two wood- frame barns in town. Their collection of furnishings includes a room full of Ware chairs, artifacts from the Ware family, a 1730 kitchen with a beehive oven, redware, stoneware, and some baskets. Their textile collection includes homespun blankets, linen sheets, quilts, coverlets, and samplers, including some made by young girls. Their craft room has spinning wheels and looms used in teaching demonstrations for school children. They also have toys, dolls, a melodeon, and a cylinder music box. 20 In one of the barns is a collection of horse-drawn farm equipment, including plows, cultivators, and planters. They also possess marsh horseshoes from the salt-hay industry, scythes, a wooden rake, and a horse-drawn sleigh. The tool collection includes those of shipbuilders, carpenters, basket-makers, and blacksmiths. There is also a collection of southern New Jersey glass and glass-making tools. The society has the John DuBois Maritime Collection, a full-size batteau, a railbird boat with poles, and the ship’s figurehead from a 1797 wreck. Their library has daybooks, diaries, wills, inventories, and photographs of vehicles, factories, homes, and oyster boats. 38 Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area Bushkill, Pennsylvania 18324 (717) 588-8637 Headquarters open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. Although the headquarters are in Pennsylvania, many of the items of interest to folklorists are found on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, particularly in the historic village of Millbrook. Demonstrations by contemporary craftsmen at work are given in Millbrook, Peter’s Valley, and Slateford Farm in July and August. These include weaving, slate cutting, blacksmithing, and pottery making. During the first weekend in October, Millbrook is the setting for thirty or more such demonstrations. The recreation area also maintains over one hundred historic houses, including six Dutch farmhouses from the eighteenth century. 39 Deserted Village at Allaire, Inc. Allaire State Park Post Office Farmingdale 07727 (201) 938-2253 Open April 15 to September 15. A nineteenth-century reconstructed ironworks, the village holds a variety of nineteenth-century tools and machines, including some early iron plows. Among the household goods which furnish the village are baskets, quilts, New Jersey country furniture, and a redware and stoneware collection. A church from the early Free Church Movement still stands. The village manages a farm market, celebrates J.P. Alan Day, and sponsors demonstrations in blacksmithing, tinsmithing, and country woodworking. 21 40 The Dey Mansion 199 Totowa Road Wayne 07470 (201) 696-1776 Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving. The Dey Mansion is a Georgian house built c. 1740. It was Washington’s headquarters twice during the Revolutionary War. The museum also has a reconstructed barn made of old materials and a two-room plantation house. 