By David Kilby, Managing Editor
CRANBURY — The Civil War exhibit at the Cranbury Museum on Park Place is the perfect complement to the new Civil War monument, which will be ceremonially dedicated tomorrow at 11 a.m. at Memorial Park.
The New Jersey Civil War History Association, the township of Cranbury and the Cranbury Historic and Preservation Society will be hosting the dedication.
The Cranbury Museum will have a special opening Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. as part of the monument dedication day activities and will feature its temporary Civil War exhibit, “Cranbury and the Civil War.” The first 50 people to visit the museum Saturday will receive an ice cream certificate to Gill’s and Berts on Main Street, Cranbury.
Also in celebration, the Cranbury Volunteer Fire Company will sell hamburgers, hot dogs and beverages, and Beck’s Band will play music from the Civil War era.
Also, the Cranbury Historic and Preservation Society will host a walking historic tour of Cranbury, and Civil War re-enactors will set up a Civil War-style encampment near the monument and camp overnight there.
The exhibit at the museum focuses on local veterans and events during the Civil War era. Letters, newspaper articles, photographs of local soldiers and other resources provide insight into how local volunteers and organizations made an important contribution to the war.
The exhibit also has items invented just before and after the Civil War to show the contrast, a timeline depicting major events in the war from 1862 to 1865 and general Civil War artifacts, such as cannon balls rifles and recreated Union uniforms. The artifacts come from the collection of the Cranbury Historic and Preservation Society, local collectors and Civil War enthusiasts.
Jerry Pevahouse, a member of the Cranbury Historic and Preservation Society, shared his knowledge of the Civil War with The Cranbury Press and gave a tour of the exhibit.
He said he began researching the Civil War in 1995 when he noticed how little people knew about Cranbury’s involvement in the war.
Several hundred local young men volunteered for many New Jersey volunteer regiments, Mr. Pevahouse said.
Two companies of men were raised in Cranbury during the summer of 1864, Company H of the 14th New Jersey Volunteers and Company B of the 28th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers. The 9th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers also had many volunteers from the area.
Altogether, local volunteers were involved in about 15 New Jersey regiments. Some also were in New York and Pennsylvania regiments due to an overflow of New Jersey volunteers.
”Local churches and community organizations supported the troops and their families by raising contributions and goods, which were sent to the troops in the field,” Mr. Pevahouse said. “The ladies of the Cranbury’s Soldiers Aid Society provided aid to local volunteers and their families.”
Among the items at the exhibit is a 12-pound solid cannon ball that would have been shot from a small field cannon during the Civil War.
”The United States wasn’t prepared for a war of this size,” Mr. Pevahouse said. “It was not a militaristic country before the Civil War.”
He said the Union only had 35,000 troops at the beginning of the war, and half of them were fighting Native Americans out west. By the end of the war, there were two million troops.
A monument to Monroe, South Brunswick and Cranbury soldiers was erected shortly after the war in 1866, and it was one of the first Civil War monuments in New Jersey.
”Since there were so few men in the army, President Lincoln requested volunteers from the states,” Mr. Pevahouse said. “That’s something people probably don’t know about the Civil War. Almost all soldiers were volunteers.”
He said local governments helped recruit and support the troops.
At the exhibit, people can learn the stories of local fallen soldiers such as William Walker, Capt. Symmes Stultz, Robert and Alfred Voorhees, Col. Joseph Miller McChesney, all from Cranbury, and Vanwinkle Griggs, of Jamesburg.
After fighting in the Civil War, Mr. Walker built the Cranbury School in 1896. A native of Canada, Mr. Walker was also the school’s first board president.
Col. McChesney rose through the ranks to become a captain of Company A of the 9th Regiment of the New Jersey Volunteers, then colonel of the First North Carolina Union Volunteers, then military governor of Washington, North Carolina, after the Union conquered the town.
He died in August of 1865 of a leg wound received in that same town.
Mr. Voorhees enlisted in the First New York Lincoln Calvary since there was an overflow of volunteers in New Jersey and is buried in Allentown.
He watched his brother, Robert, get killed in a skirmish in Upperville, Virginia, in the spring of 1863.
Mr. Griggs was captured July 9, 1864, and starved to death at the Danville, Virginia, prison.
”Cranbury had a significant presence in the Civil War,” Mr. Pevahouse said. “That’s what came out of my research.”
He said he made other families interested, and they discovered letters and articles written by or about their ancestors who fought in the war.
”Cranbury has always had interesting people,” Mr. Pevahouse said. “It’s always been that way and still is.”
Mr. Pevahouse said the citizens who volunteered were just normal working people who were “transformed overnight” into soldiers.
”At that time, the government was bottom up, not top down,” he said. “Soldiers had to be supported locally. Women had a significant role in that.”
”We wanted to present the Civil War from the view of a Cranbury resident,” said Lynn Lakner, chairwoman of the exhibit.
She went on to explain the composition of the timeline at the exhibit.
”Along the top of the timeline, you will see the general outline of the general battles and significant moments of the war and the deaths of Cranbury soldiers,” she said. “Along the bottom are excerpts from periodicals, such as the Hightstown Gazette, Harper’s Weekly and the American Agriculturalist (the magazine for farmers), along with letters from local Cranbury men.
”We wanted to tell the story of the war from a more personal view — what the soldiers were thinking, what the ladies aid groups were thinking while sending supplies to Clara Barton (who had taught in Hightstown before the war).”
She said she wanted to depict the transportation advantage the Union had with the Camden & Amboy Railroad and the Delaware & Raritan Canal along with other canals and railroads throughout the north that quickly moved supplies and men.
She said the exhibit has a series of research books for the serious Civil War buff, a diary from a prisoner of war and a speech given at the end of the war by the Rev. Joseph Symmes, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury, who suggested changing Cranberry’s name to Cranbury in 1857.
”A number of Cranbury residents were generous in allowing their artifacts to be shared with the public,” Ms. Lakner said.
The museum is open 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays or by special arrangement, and the Civil War exhibit, also free, will be open until July 9.

