In this sweeping tour of New Jersey's burial sites from the seventeenth century through the dawn of the twenty-first, readers will discover how headstones are much more than place markers for the deceased. From the earliest memorials that were once used by Native Americans, to some of the elaborate structures of the present day, historians Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied use grave ...
An estimated 40 percent of Americans descended from an Ellis Island immigrant - as many as 100 million people - but until now there was no comprehensive guide for researching these early ancestors. This book offers family historians: • Tips and strategies for using the popular Ellis Island online database, which 60,000 users visit every day • Advice on overcoming searches that come ...
Using vintage photographs, interviews and archival material, this text tells the story of a remarkable American neighbourhood, Newark's old First Ward. Boasting the nation's fifth largest Italian population, the First Ward was a quintessential urban community.
The first definitive documentary of this tragic event along one of the country's most beautiful rivers. August 18-20, 1955: Three terrifying days and nights still remembered with awe in the Delaware River valley. Record-breaking rainfall from hurricanes Connie and Diane abruptly ended a withering drought, but the relief was short-lived. It was soon overshadowed by terror and ...
"Villages have disappeared even from the maps, the vestiges described by Beck having been obliterated by the bulldozer or the attrition of time. Only this book remains, a labor of love, to tell their stories." --Chicago Tribune Long regarded as folklife classics, Henry Charlton Beck's books are vivid re-creations of the back roads, small towns, and legends that give New Jersey its special ...
Harry C. Dorer roamed New Jersey for four decades from 1920 until 1954 with his boxy Speed Graphic camera, capturing for a weekly newspaper the images of what is now a vanished landscape. From the state's cities and villages to its rural areas to the then-mysterious Pine Barrens and the fishing fleets at the Jersey Shore, Dorer amassed hundreds of images that revealed the region's ...
Deep in the heart of southern New Jersey lies an area of some 96,000 acres of sprawling wilderness. It is the famous Wharton Tract which the state of New Jersey purchased in 1954 for a watershed, game preserve, and park. Many people know and love these wooded acres. Each year, people by the thousands visit Batsto Village, once the center of the iron industry that thrived on the tract more than a ...
In 1898, a rustic picnic ground on the New Jersey Palisades overlooking the Hudson River and Manhattan began a transformation into one of the greatest amusement parks in the world. Its attractions over the course of nearly seventy-five years of operation reflected the popular culture of a changing nation: from the turn-of-the-century high-diving horses of the twenties to the rock 'n' roll shows of ...