13. Strolling Through History, Cemetery-Style

     The historic graveyards throughout Mercer County have a great many stories to tell -- and some can be found easily by visiting the Political Graveyard on-line. This fascinating resource is a work-in-progress - but, already, you can learn more about some of the leaders, the thinkers, and the movers/shakers who helped to shape our County and our Towns. Check it out.

12. Happy 175th to the Titusville Presbyterian Church

Glass slide image by A.L.Opdyke of Trenton, circa 1912,
scanned and uploaded by Rich Burton in a Flicker set of Titusville images.

 

Titusville's Presbyterian Church is still going strong with an active and engaged congregation intent on celebrating this year's anniversary in style. A new book "Shall We Gather...175 Years along the Delaware" is available through the church website. Happy Birthday! (Click on Rich Burton's name in the caption, above, to see more historic Titusville images from A. L. Opdyke.)

11. Around the World in Three Hundred and "Eighty Days"

Harriet Fisher entourage arriving at the Vendome, Paris France

         In 1909, seven years after the death of her husband, Harriet White Fisher - owner of the Fisher & Norris Eagle Anvil Works on Fair St., Trenton - piled her Italian maid, her butler/cook, a dog named Honk-Honk and her chauffeur (and nephew) Harold Fisher Brooks into her four-passenger Locomobile and set off to travel around the world. More than a year later, she returned triumphantly to 125 East Hanover St. in Trenton - the first woman (and entourage) in history to have successfully traveled around the world. Harriet documented some highlights of the trip a year later in her book A Woman’s World Tour in a Motor.

     More than 100 years later, a new exhibit at Ellarslie, the Trenton City Museum, shares even more information about the trip - from the chauffeur's perspective. Harold Brooks left his personal collection of photographs, diaries, artifacts and other ephemera about this trip to his grandchildren. One of them, retired Reynolds MS teacher Rebecca Urban has curated this exhibit Trenton Entourage Motors ‘Round the World in 1909 which opens this coming Saturday, June 22. Ms. Urban will also be presenting a slide show featuring her grandfather's photographs and taped reminisences at 2 pm on Sunday, June 30. (Click the exhibit title for more information.) 

Fisher Norris display, Machinery Hall Bldg.

     Her exploits may have captured the imagination of the world - but it was Harriet's business acumen and manufacturing leadership that earned her the respect of Victorian businessmen and political leaders. Wu Ting Fang, the Chinese diplomat who served as Chinese ambassador to the US, Minister of Foreign Affairs and, briefly, as Premier during the early years of the Republic of China, reportedly called her the most wonderful woman in America.

     Harriet was born into a wealthy Crawford County, PA, family in1869. She attended a classical seminary for young women and took finishing courses (in “music and lacework”) abroad. For some time she lived in Flushing, NY, where she served as vice president and treasurer of the Flushing hospital where she also built an infants’ ward. Then, in London in1898, she married Clark Fisher, owner and sole proprietor of the Fisher-Norris Anvil Works of Trenton. [Cptn. Clark Fisher also served for 13 years as Chief Engineer for the US Navy, including time during the Civil War with George Dewey.] Harriet was 29, Clark was 61; she moved from NY to his home at 125 E. Hanover Street in Trenton.

      A year later Clark was felled with a serious illness. Harriet immediately stepped in to handle the business. Clark recovered, but in 1903 the Fisher’s were involved in a train derailment near Menlo Park (Middlesex County) that almost crippled Harriet and left Clark with injuries that lead to his death. Twenty five years later, after being named to American Magazine’s “Hall of Fame,” she reflected on the many challenges of being a woman boss a man’s world.

10. Remembering Mrs. Hurst: Hamilton Twp's First Woman Safety Officer

     Elizabeth E. Cooper brought these terrific articles about her mother, Mrs. Mary Jane Hurst, to the Hamilton One Stop History Share event in May. Mrs. Hurst was Hamilton Township’s first female school safety officer, sworn in as a “Special Police Officer” in January, 1953 – one of the earliest women in the nation to have this position. This was big news in the region; newspapers and civic groups continued to follow Mrs. Hurst in her new career - as the great coverage in the article below (written two years after she was first appointed) shows. This was not Mrs. Hurst’s first ground-breaking role. For some time she also worked at the General Motors plant in Ewing as a "Rosie the Riveter," building airplanes during World War II.

 

          Hervey S. Moore, Jr., the Police Commissioner who appointed Mrs. Furst, is another interesting figure in Mercer history. Shortly after graduating law school 1941, he joined the Army. His service during World War II won him three bronze stars, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Campaign Medal, and the American Campaign Medal. He left active duty in 1946, but accepted a commission in the New Jersey National Guard. 



Hervey Studdiford Moore, Jr. as an enlisted man

 

           Moore, Jr., was mayor of Hamilton Township during 1954 and 1955, and the township’s police commissioner from 1952 to 1955. In 1955 he joined the Princeton law firm of Mason, Griffin & Moore as a partner just weeks after its founding. He headed the state's Selective Service during most of the Viet Name War years (1963 – 1973) before being named to the Mercer County Court bench in 1973 by NJ Gov. William T. Cahill. In 1980, Gov. Brendan T. Byrne named him to the state Superior Court where he served until his retirement at aged 70. Judge Moore was referred to by some attorneys at the time as "the father of civil law in Mercer," who insisted on professionalism, courtesy and civility in his courtroom.

 

 

     His father, Hervey S. Moore, Sr., was also an attorney. Moore, Sr. served in the NJ Assembly and founded the Trenton Lions Club in 1921. In 1916, he reportedly “…caused a sensation, both in society and in political circles…” by accusing his former partner in a real estate business of conspiring to kill him. [NYTimes, 10/12/1915,pg.20]

 

 

 

 

9. Making & Exploring History in Trenton

                 This coming weekend is a big one in Trenton: Art All Night, the 24 hour long extravaganza of arts in all forms, is making its own history, celebrating its 7th year of offering art-for-everyone this Saturday and Sunday, June 15-16. The day, a labor of love for ARTWORKS and a small army of passionate volunteers, takes place in the historic Roebling Wire Works factory building (above) and the adjacent Mill Yard Park.

                 Visitors to Trenton on Saturday, June 15, can make it a full day. The Cadwalader Heights Historic House and Garden Tour goes from noon until 5, and showcases some of the most beautiful and historic homes in that section of the city. This year 11 historic houses and several gardens will be featured in the tour (along with art displays and delicious deserts!) Among the houses open to the public will be 9 Belmont Circle (above) - the first home built in the Cadwalader Heights neighborhood by Frank Forrest Frederick, the director of New Jersey's School of Industrial Arts. 

8. Judge Robbins' History of Windsor

If you've passed through the charming village of Windsor, in Robbinsville Township, you'll note that not much has changed since Judge R.C. (Randall C.) Robbins wrote his 1901 "History of Windsor, N.J. and theMethodist Episcopal Church of Windsor, N.J." Allison Delarue, Princeton Class of '28, donated the pamphlet to the Firestone Library at Princeton University where he may have studied with Judge Robbins' grandson, Edmund Yard Robbins (b. 1867, Windsor, NJ.)

Edmund Yard Robbins

Alison Delarue, Princeton Class of '28, donated this pamphlet to Princeton's Firestone Library. Mr. Delarue may very well have studied under Edmund Robbins during his time at Princeton. Edmund had graduated from Princeton's class of 1889. Several years later he returned to the University after several years abroad studying "comparative philology" and Indo-Iranian linquistics in Germany. He was Princeton University's Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature until his retirement in the late 1930s.





Windsor's Methodist Church is still active today. Judge Robbins tells us that improvements to the Church in 1863 left the congregation seriously in debt until 1891 when the Ladies Aid Society proposed a Quilt-Making idea that raised enough money to pay off "all claims standing against the Church and parsonage"! (History of Windsor and...pg. 11)



7. CDV Cards and Early Photos

Carte de visite or CDV cards were a new form of calling card that featured tiny (about 2 ¼ “ x 3 ½ “) photographs of a person mounted on a slightly larger card. First popularized by photographer Louis Dodero of Marseilles, France in the early 1850s, the cards became enormously popular in Mercer County and throughout the United States during the Civil War.

 

This card by Hightstown photographer Richard R. Priest, features Civil War sailor Charles Mount. It’s featured in Richard Burton’s terrific Flicker set of CDVs featuring Trenton, Hightstown and other local residents in the later 1800s.

Richard did some terrific research on Chas. (Charles) Mount, and reports that the "Record of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War", 1876, by William Stryker, has Charles W. Mount mustering in on August 11, 1864 and mustering out on May 11, 1865. He also determined that the ship name printed on Mount’s sailor’s hat is probably the USS Canandaigua.

The sailor pictured is probably Charles W. Mount, youngest son of Ezekiel and Anne (Wright) Mount. Charles and his wife, Anna Williamson, raised their 5 children in Hightstown, NJ. He was hired as postmaster for the ETRA post office when it was created in 1890. [ETRA, a village in East Windsor that sprang up around Cosman’s mill. Originally called Scrabbletown or Milford, with the arrival of the post office, the town changed its name to ETRA – the initials of its most prominent resident at the time: Edward Taylor Riggs Applegate. For more about this village, see Kathleen M. Middleton’s excellent publication East WindsorLandmarks available online.]

 

6. The Gift of “Amateur” Historians - and Strawberry Hill



Image courtesy of Tom Glover

Admit it: there’s an astonishing army of curious, creative, investigative, and above all, generous history lovers out there who are researching, curating, and sharing a wealth of information out there. Mercer175 will be sharing the discoveries and research of many of those “amateur” (in the TRUE sense of the word: amateur = “lover of”) regional historians as the year goes on.

One of the best known in this area has to be Tom Glover, well-known columnist, Hamilton township (and environs!) historian, prolific blogger and a member of the Mercer175. Tom has thousands of regular fans who faithfully check out his Hamilton Scrapbook blog where he posts historic photos, old newspaper articles, ads and other fascinating tidbits related to Mercer County history – including this great map of “Strawberry Hill” – the Kuser family estate on top of Baldpate Mountain in Hopewell Township. Although the map isn’t dated, it has a lot of fascinating “clues” – including the location of Charles Lindbergh’s home. The Lindberghs escaped to England by 1936 following the kidnapping and death of their oldest child, and the sensational trial that followed. But that’s for another post!

For more information about “Strawberry Hill”, you can start with the articles in The Furrow (the newsletter by the Friends of Howell Living History Farm), and the Baldpate Mountain page on the new Mercer County Parks Commission website.  There’s also an interesting “outsider’s” write up on the park and the surrounding area on the NJ Skylands website.