The first full week of almost every August since 1938 has meant one thing: the Middlesex County Fair.
The fair was founded by the Milltown Grange as a successor to its Flower and Crop Show. At the time, the grange was about to become the East Brunswick Grange, having moved to a new Grange Hall there.
The grange established a nonprofit organization, the Middlesex County Fair Association, whose mission was :
• to hold an agricultural fair of an educational nature,
• to advance the agricultural and industrial interests of Middlesex County,
• to encourage better relationships between rural and urban people, and
• to maintain higher standards in homemaking practices.
The first fair drew 2,000 people who paid a 10-cent admission fee. Receipts totaled $1,079, and the association wound up with a $140.80 profit.
Since then, the association has remained committed to the annual tradition.
While the association receives no state or county funding, the fair is recognized by the state Board of Agriculture as the agricultural fair of Middlesex County, according to association President Barbara Foerter.
The original trustees of the Middlesex Fair Association had to be members of the East Brunswick Grange, an agricultural organization comprising mostly farmers, which was located at what is now the Raritan Valley YMCA, at the corner of Dunhams Corner Road and Ryders Lane.
Fred Gauntt, who was master of the grange, appointed H. Earl Propst as the first fair chairman and Fred C. Heyl as secretary-treasurer.
The fair continued on the grange’s grounds until World War II, when the government requested that all state and county fairs be canceled to preserve resources for the war effort.
After the war, continuation of the fair was threatened because the grange no longer wished to sponsor it. After much debate, however, it agreed to let it continue on grange property with another sponsor.
Heyl, the secretary-treasurer of the fair, and his wife, Helen, went to Russell Herbert and Joseph J. Smith of the Middlesex County Board of Agriculture to seek board sponsorship. The board agreed on the condition that the fair would not cost it any money. Herbert and Smith then funded the fair through personal loans to the fair association.
Heyl remained secretary-treasurer until he died in 1956. Edgar Renk was the president of the fair association from 1955 until his death in 1983. Herbert continued to serve the fair each year after 1938 and was fair manager from 1955 to 1979, when he retired.
In 1961, during Herbert’s reign as manager, the association purchased Scott Farm on Cranbury Road in East Brunswick to create a permanent Middlesex County fairgrounds. It took another four years to get the necessary approvals and prepare the site, so the fair was not held there until 1965.
Grace M. Auer, former fair association president, has been involved with the fair every year since its inception, and is the only known person to have attended every fair as well as the early Flower and Crop shows. Though she has relinquished the president’s position to Foerter, she remains an active member of the fair association.
The fair continued to grow over the years, and the fairgrounds now contain permanent buildings and structures, including a meeting place for the fair association and for the county Board of Agriculture, as well as a 4-H building. The grounds are also used for East Brunswick youth soccer and football games.
The fair expanded from five to seven days in 1991 because of increasing costs and the potential of not meeting expenses in the event of several days of rain.
— Paul Godino