Cemetery Tour and Tales from Morgan
Wow. What a week for the Historical Society of South Amboy (HSSA). First, there was the Historical Cemetery Tour held at Christ Church Cemetery on October 24th. This was followed by the HSSA's monthly meeting on October 27th and finally a presentation, "History and Tales from Morgan, NJ" conducted October 28th at the Sayreville Senior Citizen Center.
This Historical Cemetery Tour was the second one hosted by the HSSA with the first occurring in 2014. The tour began with some details about Christ Church and the creation of the cemetery leading up to the first character presentation. In all, the HSSA had eight actors who researched their respective characters and time periods. The tours began at 5:00 PM and started every half hour with the last tour commencing at 7 PM. Each tour averaged close to one hour. The characters represented during the tour included the following:
William S. Dey
John Proctor
Helen Applegate
Howard Littell
Jacob Sprague
Samuel Parisen
Benjamin and Amelia Howell
Alfred T. Kerr
If you were lucky enough to attend, you would have heard some interesting details about the life of each character along with facts about the times they lived as well as some history about the area. For those that paid attention, you may have also heard some gossip such as the Mechanicsville chicken story. To me, there was much interest in the tour as there were well over 300 attendees and still more that came after the last tour had started and were turned away. Kudos to all the HSSA members who represented a character for their depth of details and their ability to convey the nature of said characters. I can't wait to see what they will do for 2016.
The other major event was the, "History and Tales from Morgan, NJ" as presented by Verne James, Morgan Historian and creator of the Morgan Blog: http://www.morgan-nj.org This was jointly hosted by the Sayreville Historical Society and the Historical Society of South Amboy and was conducted at the Sayreville Senior Center on October 28th. This was extremely well attended, as there was almost no parking left in the lot at the Sayreville Senior Center. Verne James was a great presenter who you could immediately tell had a strong passion for his subject matter. While not presenting, there were a number of other organizations, authors, historians and history/genealogy enthusiasts represented in the audience, such as the Madison Township Historical Society and South River Historical & Preservation Society.
Verne did an outstanding job keeping everyone's interest by presenting information regarding the Morgan area, the Morgan family and segued into so many other interesting topics. Wow, who knew that the Morgan family had over 500 acres of land in this area? Verne's presentation included facts about land topography, the original proprietors of Middlesex County, the Stevens Family, the Camden and Amboy Railroad, commerce along the Cheesequake Creek, etc. Verne had numerous pictures, historical maps and facts that all couldn't be covered in a single session. Do I hear a session two in the works for sometime in the future? If not, you can always check out his Morgan Blog; which covers much of the information that was presented October 28th.
A special thanks for Verne for coming back to NJ to enlighten us all with a pretty thorough history lesson. I don't think I mentioned that Verne hasn't been a resident in this area for over 30 years and I believe lives out in California. That is quite a testament to his passion for this subject as he continues to research and document information related to Morgan, NJ. Thanks also to both historical societies for hosting the event and making it available for free to attendees.
