History Trading Cards

Would you be so brave? When Abraham Clark signed the Declaration of Independence along with the other representatives of the thirteen colonies, they put their very lives at risk for such a treasonous act. Clark taught himself law and became quite popular. He was called “the poor man’s councilor,” offering to defend poor men when they couldn’t afford a lawyer. When the residents of Rahway’s 5th Ward voted in 1864 to secede, they named their new community after Clark, while Roselle built a replica of his 18th century home. 

A highly regarded artist of the Hudson River School, Whittredge painted landscapes that hang in major museums and the Carter House, home of the Summit Historical Society. Whittredge moved to Summit in 1880, where he continued to paint for 30 years. He had traveled from the Great Plains to the Rockies in 1865 with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett, resulting in some of his most important work. “Whoever crossed the plains …could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence,” he wrote. 

This battle was the final major confrontation between American and Crown forces in the North. Had the British broken through the American line and vanquished Washington’s forces in Morristown, the war would have taken a very different turn. A month later, 6,000 French troops arrived in Rhode Island, providing desperately needed reinforcements. In 1781, memory of the losses at Springfield prevented the British from attacking the armies of Washington and Rochambeau on their march to Yorktown, Virginia, where they ultimately defeated the British. 

According to legend, with his troops tired and hungry after the Battle of the Short Hills, British General Cornwallis stopped at the Frazee house at the smell of baking bread. Cornwallis introduced himself and asked “Aunt Betty” if he could have some bread for his troops, to which she is said to have replied, “Sir, I give you this bread through fear, not in love.” Cornwallis is said to have then politely declined to take the bread. However, historical records indicate his troops plundered the property, taking tools, livestock, a hive and household goods. 

Born in 1702 in what is now Guinea, Caesar was captured and brought to America. He was sold as a slave to Isaac Drake to work his 111-acre Plainfield farm. Caesar, who like many slaves, had no last name, was freed in 1769. During the Revolutionary War, he was a teamster, driving supply wagons to troops stationed at the Blue Hills Fort and Camp in Plainfield in what is now Union County’s Green Brook Park. Soldiers from this garrison fought in The Battle of the Short Hills.

The Central Railroad of New Jersey played a major role in the development of Union County, from Elizabethport to Plainfield. Founded in 1831 as the Elizabethtown & Somerville Railroad, horse-drawn trains took passengers from Elizabeth to Elizabethport and the ferry to New York. The arrival of steam engines in 1839 coincided with the line reaching Plainfield. Through mergers, the CNJ continued expanding west and south, connecting to Somerville and out to Pennsylvania, along with the famous Blue Comet, which ran from the CNJ’s main terminal in Jersey City to Atlantic City.

More American soldiers died (11,000+) from the horrid conditions on the British Navy’s prison ships than in Revolutionary War battles (6,800). With more than 1,000 men crammed into a ship’s hold, every morning the dead would be carried up on deck and hauled ashore. If a captured soldier would renounce the Revolution —most refused—he could go free. Two sons of Abraham Clark, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, were prisoners on the HMS Jersey. The British offered to release them if Clark would swear allegiance to The Crown. He refused.

With crushing American defeats on Long Island and then Fort Lee, a group of men met at the Elizabethtown home of Isaac Arnett to consider their fate. But when the men agreed to side with the Crown, Hannah arose and castigated them—Isaac included—as traitors: “Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years, and through all of them I have been a true and loving wife; but… if you do this shameful thing, I will never own you again as my husband.” When she was done, the men reconsidered and vowed to continue their fight for Independence.

During the 1780 Battle of Springfield, American soldiers were running low on ammunition for their smoothbore muskets. Gunpowder and a lead ball would be wrapped in paper and then rammed down the barrel, with paper wadding holding everything tightly in place. On hearing the need for paper, the Rev. Caldwell rode to his church, grabbed a stack of hymnals written by Isaac Watts, and took the books to the soldiers to use the pages for wadding. As he did, he shouted, “Give ’em Watts, Boys!,” a battle cry that became famous and the basis for this painting

Born into one of New Jersey’s most prominent families, John Kean would ultimately take his place at the head of the family’s extensive holdings: The National State Bank, Elizabethtown Gas and Elizabethtown Water. He graduated Harvard Law School and practiced law in Newark. Soon after joining the NJ National Guard, President Wilson sent his troop into Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. When World War I broke out, Kean was sent to France, where he was severely wounded in the Battle of the Argonne Forest. It would take him nearly a year to recover.

A journalist and prolific author, MacKinlay Kantor received the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Andersonville. He was an early resident of Free Acres, a utopian community in Berkeley Heights, and during the Great Depression, was a tenant in the then privately owned Deacon Hetfield House in Mountainside. Kantor allowed his name to be used on a 1950s screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, one of the “Hollywood Ten” blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kantor then passed his payment to Trumbo to help him

From 1770, William Livingston resided in a stately home he named Liberty Hall. Livingston was elected New Jersey’s first governor in 1776. He persuasively urged the citizenry and legislature to support the War of Independence. During the war, he commanded the New Jersey militia. British commanders sought several times to capture or assassinate him. Livingston was a signer of the U.S. Constitution and an influential leader in the development of the new nation.

Nicaraguan-born artist Roberto de la Selva studied in Mexico. His work, influenced by that of Diego Rivera, is found in museums and private art collections. Although known for his bas relief, scenes and portraits carved in wood, during the 1920s he painted several murals on the walls in a home in the Deserted Village. These are the only known murals by De la Selva. He later returned to Mexico,  where he ultimately gave up his art and took a civil service job. At some point, the murals were covered by wallpaper and forgotten— until 1975, when removal of the wallpaper led to their discovery.

Thrust into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, America needed military equipment quickly. Linden’s General Motors plant went from Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles to fighter planes. GM paired with Grumman Aircraft Corp. and retooled the plant to build the Navy’s F4F “Wildcat,” while across the street, construction began on an airport to test the planes. More than 3,500 Wildcats were produced in Linden, with the Wildcat playing an integral role in aerial combat in the Pacific. After the war, the Rt. 1&9 plant returned to making cars—the last vehicle rolling off the assembly line in 2005. In Production.

Zora Neale Hurston—novelist, short story writer, folklorist, anthropologist—lived in Westfield during the early 1930s. Perhaps best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was originally from the South. Her studies brought her to Barnard College in New York, where she was the sole black student. While she made significant contributions to the Harlem Renaissance, writing about the African-American experience and racial divisions, her novels went relatively unrecognized by the world until Alice Walker’s essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” was published in 1975.

Tin Kettle Hill played a vital role in the Revolutionary War. Gen. George Washington stationed sentries on the 186-foot hill to warn of British troop advances. There were several, leading to the Battles of Springfield and Connecticut Farms. From 1903–1906, the Pennsylvania Railroad leveled Tin Kettle Hill, using the soil to build a new route to New York City. Not long after, the Rahway Valley Railroad built a line connecting Kenilworth to Summit. Passenger service on the RVR—it ran along the Kenilworth side of what would become Galloping Hill Golf Course—discontinued soon after the golf course opened in 1928. *

Peter Willcocks, an Englishman, with his wife Phebe and their five children, moved from Long Island to the Watchung Mountains in 1736, settling near the area known today as the Deserted Village of Feltville. Willcocks built a sawmill alongside the Blue Brook to produce lumber for settlers coming to farm the surrounding countryside. As trees were cut for lumber, the forest was cleared for farmland. While visitors to the Reservation today sometimes think they are walking in untouched virgin forest, most of the area was farmland and pastures well into the 1800s.

Born and raised in Westfield, Charles Addams drew cartoons for the high school’s literary magazine and later studied art. His cartoons were published in The New Yorker magazine for decades and also seen regularly in Collier’s and TV Guide. During World War II, Addams worked on animated training films for the U.S. Army. His most popular characters, the Addams Family, first drawn in 1938, appeared many times in The New Yorker and became the basis for the popular mid-1960s television series. The Addams Family was later reworked for feature films and adapted as a musical.

Aaron Miller was one of the earliest clockmakers in New Jersey. In 1747, he advertised in the New York Gazetteer that he not only sold “all sorts of clocks after the Dutch manner,” but if you needed a compass, chains for surveying, or bells of any size, he was your guy. In 1759, the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown hired him to make a clock for the church steeple, and while there is no record of his fee for making the clock, the church treasurer’s books noted Miller was paid L10.6.9 for carpentry and painting the clock face.

At the turn of the 20th century, investigative journalists, dubbed “muckrakers,” and crusading citizens, launched a movement demanding health standards for the food and drug industries. From
unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses to dangerous additives in drugs, the demand for reform was led by activists like Alice Lakey of Cranford, who met with Pres. Theodore Roosevelt to gain his support, and who organized more than a million women to write to Congress in support of what would ultimately become the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. For her groundbreaking work, Lakey was elected to the National Academy of Social Sciences.

Bestowed for conspicuous gallantry at the risk of life—beyond the call of duty—this medal is the highest award for valor in action by an individual in the U.S. Armed Services. Those from Union County honored are:

Civil War: William Brant, Jr., Third Battle of Petersburg; James Madison Drake, Battle of Port Walthall Junction; Rufus King, Jr., Battle of White Oak Swamp; Julian A. Scott, Battle of Lee’s Mill (Yorktown); John Williams, Battle Port Royal

Indian Campaigns: Theodore Schmidt, Chiricahua Mountains

World War I: Alan Louis Eggers & Thomas E. O’Shea, Le Catelet; Fred W. Stockham, Bois-de-Belleau

Vietnam War: Charles J. Watters, Dak To Province

Born two years before the invention of the photograph, Guillermo Thorn would grow up to see photography infiltrate every aspect of 19th-century life. Thorn gave up a brief career as a drawing and painting teacher and opened his first studio in Saugerties, NY, before moving to Plainfield in 1864. While he quickly established himself as a professional photographer, taking portraits and scenics of the area, his personal life was marred by tragedy. By 1870, disease claimed the lives of his wife, Alice, and their five children. He eventually remarried, with his later children becoming muses for his pictorial work.

As a Plainfield High School student, she was known as Peggy White. As a photojournalist, she became known to the world as Margaret Bourke-White. During World War II, she covered the  invasion of Russia, the liberation of Italy, and German concentration camps. She was the first female war correspondent permitted to work in combat zones. Her work was featured on the cover of Life magazine’s 1936 inaugural issue. Bourke-White pioneered the photo essay; her series on the Depression era rural South, mining in South Africa, Korean guerrilla warfare, American industry,
and portraits of world leaders are renowned.

Over the course of her life, Hazel Fields was a teacher, hospital dietician, corset saleswoman and housekeeper. In a 1980 interview, she discussed her life, recalling how black and white kids grew up as friends in Plainfield, but in high school, black and white female students were not permitted to swim together. She recalled her grandmother having been a slave in Virginia, her long commutes from Plainfield to New York in 1929, and an unforgettable train ride to North Carolina in a soot-filled Jim Crow car. As a member of the Women’s Achievement Club in Plainfield, she helped bring in prominent African Americans as speakers, including Adam Clayton Powell.

Alice Harding was a world-renowned horticulturalist and author, whose acclaimed garden at her Burnley Farm on the Fanwood-Plainfield border held an extraordinary collection of plants and flowers. Decorated by the French government for her horticultural accomplishments, Harding was a recognized authority on irises, lilacs and peonies. She wrote The Book of the Peony in 1917 and its smaller companion volume, Peonies in the Little Garden, in 1923. Her horticultural writing style was described as “engaging as a good novel.” A rose, an iris, French hybrid lilacs, a tree peony, and herbaceous peonies were named in her honor.