By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Neil Breslau and his wife, Sharon, are self-described history buffs especially local history.
So when the Texas couple, who are visiting their son and his family in Lawrence, learned that the Lawrence Historical Society and the Lawrence Township Community Foundation were offering an afternoon’s worth of speakers on Lawrence history they decided to attend.
”We are just kind of interested in history. We thought we would go to the meeting. We learned a little bit. We are very interested in the old houses (on Main Street in the village of Lawrenceville),” Mr. Breslau said.
The event, billed as “People Places and Periods” and held Saturday afternoon at Lawrence High School, offered the audience some insight into Lawrence’s history whether it was viewing old photographs or learning how to preserve them, or learning about slavery and abolition in Lawrence Township or the history of the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood.
The Lawrence Township Community Foundation, which co-sponsored the event, holds an annual “community conversation,” said Jori Fahrenfeld, president of the nonprofit group. Its discussions have led to the creation of Sustainable Lawrence and the “Welcome to Lawrence” signs, she said.
”This is our ‘community conversation’ for this year,” Ms. Fahrenfeld said. “We want to bring the community together to discuss issues of importance to the community. This time, we decided to talk about who we are and to learn more about the history of Lawrence and what makes us ‘Lawrence.’”
Rider University and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which have campuses in Lawrence, set up exhibits to tell their histories and stories to visitors, and there was also an opportunity for residents to share their memories of Lawrence with an oral history interviewer.
Among the speakers was Dr. Brooke Hunter, who teaches history at Rider University and who outlined her findings on slavery and abolition in Lawrence Township.
Dr. Hunter said it was “impossible” to determine the exact number of slaves in Lawrence, because only black males between 16 and 50 years old and who were able to work were listed in the tax records. They were considered taxable property. However, this left out the women, children and older men.
U.S. Census Bureau records would have been the next best bet, Dr. Hunter said, but the records between 1790 and 1820 had been destroyed. Probate inventories would have offered some definitive answers, but not all of the records of wills have survived, she said.
Nevertheless, Lawrence was not a “slave society,” Dr. Hunter said. Based on the property tax list, the number of male slaves ranged from 27 in 1778 to 39 in 1799 but it was likely that there were more slaves, because the list did not include women, children or older men who were unable to work.
Slave-owners sometimes freed their slaves in their wills, she said. But true freedom came through the gradual abolition of slavery in New Jersey, beginning with children who were born after July 4, 1804. Boys who were born after that date to slave mothers were freed when they reached 25 years old, and women were freed when they turned 21.
Longtime resident Fred Vereen Jr. filled in visitors on the history of the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood and the development of the Eggerts Crossing Village affordable townhouse development. He moved to the neighborhood when he was 7 years old.
The streets in the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood, off Eggerts Crossing Road, were muddy in the winter and dusty in the summer, Mr. Vereen said. The houses were substandard, and families crowded into them. There was a lack of indoor plumbing, so they used outhouses which were placed 20 feet or so away from the well, he said.
”It was the worst area in Lawrence Township, but of course, I didn’t know that when I was small,” he said.
Mr. Vereen outlined the efforts of concerned township residents, led by the ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville and the Lawrence Road Presbyterian Church, to replace the substandard housing with new housing the Eggerts Crossing Village affordable housing development.
It took nearly 10 years to work through the process, which involved the purchase of the land at the end of Johnson Avenue and then rezoning the parcel for housing all in the face of stiff opposition from other residents, Mr. Vereen said. Eggerts Crossing Village opened its doors in 1974.
While lifelong resident Gary Hullfish displayed early photographs of the historic Village of Lawrenceville from his own collection, photographer and professional archivist Gary Saretzky explained how to preserve old photos. He advised using specific types of sleeves to store the photographs.
Light is very damaging to photographs, because it causes the inks to fade or to turn a different color, Mr. Saretzky said. Photographs also should be stored in dry, cool conditions which does not mean the attic or the cellar, but instead a bedroom closet.
Photographs can be destroyed by fire, obviously. But if they are kept in an album, rather than loose, they are less likely to be damaged, he said. Loose photographs are more likely to burn, and wet ones from the water used to extinguish a fire will stick together.
And Mr. Saretzky urged the audience to list the names of the people in a photograph on the back of it. Good labeling will ensure that photographs last for generations and that one’s descendants “won’t dispose of them or you,” he said.
Then, Barbara Ross offered an overview of the Delaware and Raritan Canal’s history. The canal was opened in 1834 and closed about 100 years later. The canal passes through Lawrence Township on its way from Bordentown to New Brunswick and ultimately Philadelphia and New York City.
There were five “bridge tenders’ houses” in Lawrence, but only two have survived one on Carnegie Road, off Brunswick Pike, and the house in Port Mercer, which is near the Mercer Mall. The other houses were located on Cherry Tree Lane, Bakers Basin Road and Brunswick Pike.
The bridge tender lived in the house with his family. It was his job to turn the bridge aside when a barge passed by on the canal, Ms. Ross said. She marveled at the number of people who lived in the four-room house at one time the bridge tender and his family, which generally included several children.
Douglas Sargent, who has served on the Lawrence Township Historic Preservation Advisory Committee, discussed historic houses in Lawrence, historic preservation efforts and the history of the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee.
Three surveys were conducted to compile a list of houses that have been placed on the township’s list of historic properties, Mr. Sargent said. Through those surveys, every structure of importance in Lawrence has been identified, he said.
Mr. Sargent also spoke about the village of Lawrenceville, whose houses span the architectural time periods of the colonial era to the Victorian era. The village, which lies on Route 206, was developed “in fits and spurts,” he said.
And finally, Township Historian Dennis Waters gave the audience an update on the development of Mercer Meadows formerly known as Mercer County Park Northwest, on the site of the former AT&T “pole farm” on Cold Soil and Keefe roads. It was used in overseas transmissions of telephone calls.
The county is in the process of installing walking paths in the park, and also building interpretive displays at the sites of the two AT&T buildings that have been demolished, Mr. Waters said. He expressed gratitude to Mercer County for helping to “bring history alive.”