By Mary Ellen Day, Special Writer
It was a special day on July 26 for Manville resident Jane Quigley as it was her 100th birthday. Ms. Quigley celebrated this milestone with family, friends and neighbors.
Ms. Quigley’s niece Rose Jamieson and her caregiver Nona gave a birthday party at her North Fifth Avenue house. A birthday banner hung outside on the house with Mylar 100 birthday balloons.
”I think she can’t believe it. It is really nice,” Ms. Jamieson said.
Born in Mongo, Indiana, Ms. Quigley was one of three children, two girls and a boy.
In New Jersey, her family lived in Neshanic but when her father became postmaster in Manville the family moved here in the early 1920s. Ms. Quigley graduated from eighth grade in 1926 and went to Bound Brook High School. After graduating from high school, Ms. Quigley went to Newark City Hospital with Ms. Jamieson’s aunt, her mother’s sister Antoinette Avella.
By the time of World War II, Ms. Quigley joined the Women’s Army Nurse Corps and went to England on the Queen Mary. She was in England for two years of active duty as a nurse at the 121st Army Station Hospital. After her two years of service, Ms. Quigley came back on the Queen Mary and, she has told Ms. Jamieson that she sat in the same exact seat that she did when going to England two years prior.
Ms. Quigley did a third year in the Army, then went into nursing in Brooklyn before returning to Manville and working as a pediatrics nurse at Somerset Hospital. She then went into private duty nursing.
Ms. Quigley also worked as a nurse at the Eastern Star Nursing Home in Bridgewater. Both of her parents were registered nurses, and her brother, George, owned the Quigley Bike Shop on North Main in Manville.
Ms. Jamieson said her aunt was the “Most fantastic seamstress. She made beautiful clothes and she taught me to sew. She made beautiful doll clothes as she was a knitter and she made beautiful clothes for the Ginny doll.”
Ms. Quigley also did beadwork and was a gardener. Ms. Jamieson said her aunt could “Rattle off the Latin names for the plants in the garden, genuses and species. She did all kinds of fancy baking and freezing food, freezing berries, and making jellies and jams.”
Ms. Quigley was also very involved in her church, Emmanuel Baptist on Washington Avenue. She always made the flower arrangements on Sundays.
”She had a lot of projects going on the fire,” laughed Ms. Jamieson.
Ms. Quigley is also a Member of the George Taylor Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Nona has been Ms. Quigley’s caretaker for almost thirteen years and said Ms. Quigley “Is the best family and you can’t find this kind of kind people. Rose comes here every week and she is my mom and Jane is just wonderful. She is a kind woman and loves flowers and she has a beautiful smile. I told her yesterday, ‘Tomorrow you will be 100. Today you are 99,’ and she smiled. This morning I hugged and I kissed her and said, ‘Jane can you believe you are 100, one century?’ and she just smiled.”
There was plenty of food, cake and flowers that guests brought for the birthday girl as she loves flowers.
Ms. Quigley sat in her wheelchair with birthday balloons attached wearing her silver tiara as many visitors arrived to wish her a happy birthday.
As a visitor wished her Happy 100th Birthday, she smiled and said “So that’s what they tell me.”

