THE
HUNTERDON COUNTY NEWS |
TITLE: TEWKSBURY TURNING 255 celebration planned
The Tewksbury Historical Society will celebrate Tewksbury Township’s 255th anniversary with an Open House on Sunday, March 21, 2010 from 11 am to 3 pm at its Headquarters 60 Water Street in Mountainville. There is no snow date. The public is invited to celebrate with refreshments and to view some of the Society’s new acquisitions and exhibits as well as historical items either donated to or purchased by the Society, including post cards, maps, aerial photos showing parts of Tewksbury in the 1940s and 1950, tax and assessment records from the 1940s-1960, Board of Education records and oral history interviews. In addition there are scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings compiled by longtime Oldwick residents Mabel Stryker and the Waldron sisters that provide detailed glimpses into many events that occurred in Tewksbury as well as about public figures during those times, including James B. Duke and Doris Duke, the Lindberg kidnapping and Hauptman trial, former President Calvin Coolidge and more.
The Society will display some recently donated collections, including the originals notes and papers of Freeman Leigh, author of Historic Notes on Fairmount, NJ, which covers the history of Upper and Lower Fairmount as well as other parts of Tewksbury, with its famous and infamous people of the early 1900s. The book is available for sale - $ 15 for softcover and $ 25 for hardcover. Also on display will be many tools and records from the late David Jeffrey’s collection. Mr. Jeffrey served as the 2nd President of the Historical Society, from 1992 to 1995.
He was an avid collector of material and artifacts on the histories of Cokesbury and Mountainville. He acquired many items from longtime Mountainville resident Meta Potter, some of which the Society became the recipient of through Mr. Jeffrey’s family donations. Also on display will be newly acquired photos, deeds and papers donated by the Clarence Dillon Public Library to the Society. These items had belonged to the late Township Historian Norman Wittwer and were in the Library’s files as part of the Anne O’Brien collection, a former Bedminster Historian. The Library graciously donated the originals to the Society while culling its collection of material. The Society is very grateful to have these items back in Tewksbury and extends its thanks and appreciation to the Dillon Library.
In addition, Society archivist Jean Rinehart has compiled an extensive documenting of all of Tewksbury’s church and cemetery records that visitors may view in paper form, with the goal of placing these records on the Society’s website for searching.
Attendees will be able to watch video oral history interviews recorded in 2008 and 2009 with several Tewksbury families, including the Lindabury’s and Betts and Harris Smith.
Membership in the Society is open to all - $ 15 for an individual and $ 25 for a family, with those whose family settled in Tewksbury prior to 1900 eligible for honorary membership to ensure the Township’s longtime families remain a part of the history and founding of the Township.It was the recent recipient of two original sets of school desks from the Farmersville School and past recipient of the Dr. Oliver Barnet desk and a toy collection, both from the Waldron sisters in Oldwick. It received two grants from the Hunterdon County Cultural & Heritage Commission, one to restore the only known original map of a branch of the Rockabye Baby Railroad and the second to help restore the Stryker Dollhouse, the only known replica of a Victorian House in Oldwick, built by a then resident of Basking Ridge for Mabel and Will Stryker.
The Society is incorporated as a non-profit corporation under the laws of New Jersey and as a 501c3 organization under the Internal Revenue Service. The Society has been raising funds to take it into the future and assist in acquiring/building a headquarters for an archives and museum.
For more information call (908) 832-6734, email at tewksburyhistory@earthlink.net or log on to www.tewksburyhistory.net.