FOUR Items for the action and consideration of members:  

1) As many of us as can make it will be meeting with the Facilities Committee on November 10, from 7-8 pm at Board Offices, at Round Valley School.  Please mark your calendars and ask me if you need directions or information.

2) The Educational Booklet is (finally) at the printer!  I hope to have copies to distribute at the state-wide biannual history conference (see below).  

3) The 1759 Vought House Inc., just received an invitation to join an effort to get National Landmark Status for period German American Homes. 

The letter is a PDF document:  invitationlandmarkstudy.pdf

Background: the school district has been required to file for State and National Register of Historic Places.  The Vought House was put on the State Register in Sept. 2007 and National Register Status for the ceilings is in process.  National Landmark Status is the highest level of recgnition, only about 3% of National Historic Registry properites.  National Park Service policy is so restrictive that in effect, no individual property can be listed unless it is identified as part of a thematic study such as the one being proposed.  Please give this some thought and post comments below or send an email.

4) The New Jersey Forum, a biannual state history conference is on Sat. November 22. 
My paper on the Vought family:  “Vital History:  What Two Generations of a Loyalist Family Reveals About the American Revolution” is on PANEL 6 Eighteenth-Century New Jersey Families from 2:00 - 3:45 pm (see the bottom of this page). 

The $40. registration fee incudes a Continental breakfast and full lunch.  Here’s the announcement and below that the program:

25th Annual History Conference
New Jersey Forum
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Trenton Marriott

The New Jersey Forum will feature 20 papers and presentations by leading scholars in New Jersey history. Speakers will discuss

the history of public health in the state;

efforts to preserve and protect the state’s historic landscapes;

the development of mature suburbs; and

• the roles of women, families, and slaves during New Jersey’s four centuries of recorded history. 

The morning speaker, Dr. Ian Burrow, will discuss the role of historical archaeology in generating new knowledge of the state’s history.  Our featured luncheon speaker, Dr. Kenneth T. Jackson, the Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University, will present a talk entitled, “If All the World Were New Jersey: Reflections on the Past and Future of the Garden State.”

This conference is sponsored by the historical divisions of the NJ Department of State: The NJ Historical Commission, the NJ State Archives, and the NJ State Museum. The conference program and registration form are available at:

www.newjerseyhistory.org

PROGRAM:

8:00 Registration, exhibits, continental breakfast

9:00 Morning Program

Welcoming Remarks: Marc Mappen, Executive Director, NJHC

Morning Address: Dr. Ian Burrow, Hunter Research:
Hands-On Our History!  Archaeological History in the Active Voice for New Jerseyans

10:15 – noon: Morning concurrent panels

PANEL 1: Hope, Fear and Pestilence: Public Health in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century New Jersey

Moderator: Karen Reeds, Princeton Research Forum

Newsprint, Fear, and the Cholera: A History of the 1832 Cholera Outbreaks in New Jersey
Margaret Charleroy, University of Minnesota
 
Death Unspoken: The Impact of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Jersey
Jennifer Harmsen, Hillsborough Middle School + Rutgers-NJIT History Department

Pestilence Across the Delaware: New Jersey and the Yellow Fever Epidemics of the 1790s
Sandra Moss, New Jersey Medical History Society

 

PANEL 2: Interpreting a Preserved Landscape: New Jersey Museums and Architecture

Moderator: Ron Emrich, Preservation New Jersey, Trenton

New Solutions for House Museums
Donna Ann Harris, Heritage Consulting, Inc.

Take Any Exit: The Colonial Revival in New Jersey
Harriette Hawkins, independent scholar

Telling the Straight Story: Truth & Fiction in Building Interpretation
Margaret Westfield, Westfield Architects

 

PANEL 3: Suburban Stories: Place and Race in Twentieth-Century New Jersey

Moderator: Howard Green, Public History Partners

Extremely Suburban: Narratives from 20th-Century Princeton
Michael H. Ebner, James D. Vail III Professor of History, Emeritus, Lake Forest College

African American Suburbanization and Racial Politics in Pre-World War II Montclair
Patricia Hampson, Rutgers University

A National “Black Brain Center” in Post-WWII Fort Monmouth, NJ
Melissa Ziobro, staff historian, U.S. Army **CECOM** Life Cycle Management Command, Fort Monmouth, NJ

12:00 Featured Luncheon Speaker and NJHC Awards – BALLROOM:

Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University:
If All the World Were New Jersey: Reflections on the Past and Future of the Garden State

2:00 – 3:45 Afternoon concurrent panels

PANEL 4: Parks and Bonapartes: Landscapes of 19th and 20th century New Jersey

Moderator:  Peter Mickulas, NJ Historical Commission

“He Will be a Bourgeois American and Spend his Fortune in Making Gardens”: A Preliminary Examination of Joseph Bonaparte’s Point Breeze Estate, Bordentown, New Jersey
Richard Veit, Department of History and Anthropology, Monmouth University

The Development of Branch Brook Park – America’s First County Park
Kathleen P. Galop, Esq., Preservation Possibilities, Summit, NJ

Morristown: A Cultural Landscape Study
Gillian Acheson, Department of Geography, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

 

PANEL 5: Revolutionary Women: Female Education and Political Activism in Early New Jersey
Moderator: Rhonda DiMascio, Alice Paul Institute, Mt. Laurel, NJ

“A More Accurate and Extensive Education than is Customary”:  Educational Opportunities for Women in Early Nineteenth-Century New Jersey
Lucia McMahon, William Paterson University

The Ladies of Trenton: Women’s Political and Public Activism in Revolutionary New Jersey
Catherine Hudak, Morris Hills High School, Rockaway, NJ

“Working for the Slave as a Mother would Work for her Children”: Abigail Goodwin and the Anti-slavery Movement in New Jersey
Bruce Scherer, Project Archivist/Librarian, Salem County Historical Society, Salem, NJ

 

PANEL 6: Eighteenth-Century New Jersey Families

Moderator: Maxine Lurie, Department of History, Seton Hall University

From London Publisher to American Farmer:  Benjamin Clarke and his Diary of East New Jersey
Robert Craig, Historic Preservation Office, NJ Department of Environmental Protection

Black and White Together? Slavery and Freedom in Upper Freehold Township from the Colonial Period to the Early Republic
Sue Kozel, Independent scholar

Vital History:  What Two Generations of a Loyalist Family Reveals About the American Revolution
Donald Sherblom, President, 1759 Vought House, Inc.

Members of the 1759 Vought House, Inc. would like to schedule a meeting with the Facilities Committee to discuss your disposal of the Vought family house and property. You may have been misinformed or simply unaware of several issues that need to be addressed:
There is nothing keeping you from moving forward with disposal of this property

• Disposal of this property is not linked to the Notice of Violation or any litigation or issues pending with the DEP, it cannot be used as a bargaining chip, nor can the disposal be controlled by any settlement with the DEP.  SHPO rules and decisions will control disposal of the property. (source: personal communication with Scott Brubaker, DEP)
• Any DEP fines that might be assessed in the future would NOT convey with this property, so the conveyance does not need to wait for settlement of that issue. (source: letter from Scott Brubaker)

How to move forward -

1. Write the required Historic Preservation easement, which became a requirement only in Sept. 2007 when it was placed on NJ Register of Historic Places (source: personal communication June 2006 with Dan Saunders, SHPO and Sept. 19th 2007 Letter from Dorothy Guzzo, Administrator of SHPO to Dr. Nastus re: administrative review of sales when “adequate restrictions or conditions are included to ensure the preservation of the property’s significant historic features” and personal communication with Dan Saunders 2008 re: what would be adequate, i.e. an historic preservation easement would be needed - note Dorothy Guzzo has moved on and Dan Saunders is the current SHPO Administrator)

2. Find out the current market value with the current archeological and environmental restrictions from 2005 and current condition and lack of amenities of the house and factoring in the as-yet-unwritten historic preservation easement. Get an appraisal from a licensed appraiser - that is the only way to get a sense of whether this has any real estate has any monetary value in today’s market.

3. Balance whatever monetary (quantitative) value this house may have against the qualitative value of other potential uses, such as conversion to a revolutionary war era house museum through private funds and public grants, and make a well-informed decision as to what would most benefit township residents year after year.

Reasons not to wait -

* This derelict structure is an eyesore, a potential vandal magnet and a financial drain on the school district. The mothballing and monitoring contract needs to be renewed, the roof has developed another leak, the door was found open earlier this fall, the potential for a lawsuit from personal injury persists. (ask Gus Tuschik about the door being open, Adam Wengryn about the roof, and a good lawyer about the liability)

* Hunterdon County’s most important historic site is slowly deteriorating, the ceilings are becoming covered with mold and the exterior is weathering. (I have “then” and “now” pictures we should probably include in the mailing)

Another reason to meet is that we need to know the current school district policy to include in our upcoming mailing to all Clinton Township residents on the historic significance of this house. From 2005 through 2007 school district policy was to simply give the house away. (source, letter from Walt Wilson to Clinton Twp. Council and public school board meeting in Spring 2007) Is it your intention now to move forward to an auction or is it now your policy to await resolution of the huge potential fines?