The Eastern Village Association will hold an exhibit to feature the farm’s history on Tuesday at the Municipal Building.
By: Joseph Harvie
A more than 300-year-old spinning wheel that converted wool to yarn, pictures dating back to the early 1900s and a cannon ball from the Revolutionary War era are just some of the pieces in an exhibit that will be held at the Municipal Building on Tuesday evening.
The free exhibit, sponsored by the Eastern Villages Association, will feature photos and artifacts from the 200-acre Van Dyke farm on Davidsons Mill Road. The photo exhibit will be held all day Tuesday at the Municipal Building and the artifacts will be on display from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. so EVA members can be present at the exhibit.
Residents of the eastern section of town near its border with East Brunswick and Monroe formed EVA, whose main purpose is to save the farm, the historic house on it and what they say is a nearby slave cemetery, from development.
In addition, a family burial plot also may be on the farm and could contain the remains of a Revolutionary War soldier, John Vandike, who fought in the Middlesex County Militia.
The farm is now owned by Walter Pulda, of Piscataway, but Joe Morris of the Morris Co., of Rutherford, has a contract to purchase the property.
Mr. Morris has plans on file in the township Planning Department to build 76 houses on the site. In November 2004, he approached the township to change the zoning of the property from rural residential to an industrial zone so that three warehouses could be built on the site, a proposal that was rejected by the council.
Mr. Morris has filed an application with the New Jersey Farmland Preservation Program to preserve the farm, according to a spokeswoman from the state Department of Environmental Protection. The application was filed as a way to get an asking price for the farm. The state would not release what the asking price is.
William Klimowicz, a founding member of EVA, said he recently met with Arthur Van Dyke, who was the last Van Dyke family member to live in the house. The home was in the Van Dyke family from 1688 until it was sold to the Pulda family in 1957. Mr. Van Dyke gave him several items to put on display.
Among the artifacts is a spinning wheel for wool that came over when the Van Dykes immigrated to America in the late 1600s.
"Mr. Van Dyke told us that he thinks it came over from Holland with the family," Mr. Klimowicz said. "He said when he was on the farm in the 1920s he asked his family how old it was and they didn’t know."
Also on display will be old bottles, including one for Chase Phillips Milk of Magnesia. Mr. Klimowicz said that several of the other bottles were for hair tonic. In addition, one of the bottles was brown and was hand-blown.
"A lot of times they were digging up the yard to plant things and they would find these bottles buried in the ground," Mr. Klimowicz said.
Mr. Van Dyke also gave Mr. Klimowicz a small cannon ball, which was about 1½ inches in diameter and weighs about a pound.
"I didn’t believe it was a cannon ball because it was so small so I started doing research on it and discovered that the cannons used in the Revolutionary War shot balls of all different sizes," Mr. Klimowicz said.
Also on display are several tools from the farm including a pocket knife, a meat cleaver, wool shears and a pulley for lifting hay bales, all hand-forged out of metal.
Mr. Klimowicz said that after the presentation is done at the Municipal Building, EVA wants to take the display on the road so it can be seen at different events in the township.
"We want to bring it around and get more people aware of the farm and how much history is in it," Mr. Klimowicz said.