There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

225 Pages·2009·4.09 MB·English

by  Marc Mappen

There’s
More
to
New Jersey
Than
the
Sopranos
also by marc mappen
Witches and Historians: Interpretations ofSalem (editor)
Jerseyana: The Underside ofNew Jersey History
Murders and Spies,Lovers and Lies: Settling the Great Controversies
ofAmerican History
Encyclopedia ofNew Jersey (coedited with Maxine N.Lurie)
Methane in
the Millstone River
iTn Rhockeingrhaem’s• Billy
Sunday visits the Trenton state
More
legislature •Charles Fort’s Forteanisms •
Molly Pitcher of Monmouth • “The Ghostly
Sphynx of Metedeconk”•Mastodon in Sussex County
to
• Congressman John Beatty • Edward I. Edwards,
Newton A. K. Bugbee, and applejack • General
New Jersey
UlyssesS.Grantand JuliaDentGrant of Burling-
ton • “To a City Sending Him Advertisements” •
Grovers Mill and the Martian invasion • Alice
Than
Huyler Ramsey of Hackensack • U-boats in
New Jersey • Hannah Caldwell of Union
the
Township • Hobart “Hobey” Baker and
Joyce Kilmer • Captain Emilio Carranza in
Sopranos
the Pine Barrens • Luther Baldwin, captain of a
Passaic River garbage scow • Captain Robert
Princeton
Stockton of the USS • Mabel
and Warren Eaton of Bloomfield •Cher
Ami, U.S. Army pigeon from New
Marc Mappen
Jersey • Major John André,
author of “The Cow Chace” •
Annie Moses and Frank Butler of Nutley
• “pleasant with Grasse and Flowers, and
goodly Trees” • Corporal Charles Hopkins of
Boonton • Mary Ann Smith of Newark •
Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Tenafly • Ellis Parker of
Burlington County • Francis Hopkinson of Bordentown •
Al Capone in Atlantic City • General Edward Settle Godfrey
of Cookstown, Burlington County • Monsieur Jean Pierre
Blanchard • “Shoeless Joe” Jackson plays in Hackensack •
Myrtle B. Eyler of the New Jersey State Industrial School
Morro Castle
for Girls • George W. Rogers aboard the •
CaptainHenrySawyerof Cape May • Reverend James
Caldwell of Elizabethtown • Stephen Crane in rivergate books
AsburyPark•WilliamFrederickAllen an imprint of
of South Orange • Colonel rutgers university press
Robert Gibbon Johnson
new brunswick, new jersey,
of Salem
and london
County
•News-
papers
Second p aperback print ing,2009
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Mappen,Marc.There’s more to New Jersey than the Sopranos / Marc Mappen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978–0–8135–4586–8 (pbk. : alk.paper)
1. New Jersey—History. I. Title.
F134.M126 2009
974.9—dc22
2008048066
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the
British Library.
The quotation from August Kleinzahler in chapter one is from the book Cutty One
Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places,Gently Explained(New York:Farrar,Straus
& Giroux,2004).
“New Jersey Hall ofFame Speech”by Bruce Springsteen.Copyright © 2008Bruce
Springsteen.Reprinted by permission.International copyright secured.All rights
reserved.
Copyright © 2009by Marc Mappen
All rights reserved
No part ofthis book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical,or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.Please contact Rutgers University
Press,100Joyce Kilmer Avenue,Piscataway,NJ 08854–8099.The only exception to
this prohibition is “fair use”as defined by U.S.copyright law.
Visit our Web site:http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
this book is dedicated to the wonderful New Jersey history
community, which includes, among others, museum staff, historical-
society members, volunteers, genealogists, reenactors, K–12 teachers,
university faculty,archivists,archeologists,independent scholars,historic
preservationists, and just plain history buffs, all of whom have come to
regard our state’s heritage as an important and fun field ofstudy and seek
to introduce their fellow citizens to that heritage.

contents
Introduction • ix
1 • How We Got to Where We Are • 1
2 • When Prehistoric Elephants Roamed New Jersey • 15
3 • New Jersey Was Paradise • 18
4 • Move Over,Betsy Ross • 22
5 • Good Golly,Miss Molly • 27
6 • The Caldwell Murder Case • 38
7 • “The Cow Chace” • 42
8 • Classical Gas • 46
9 • The Congressman’s Cold • 49
10 • The First Flight • 54
11 • John Adams’s Ass • 58
12 • Man Eats Tomato and Lives! • 62
13 • Explosion on the USS Princeton • 66
14 • Two New Jersey Soldiers in Confederate Prisons • 70
15 • General Grant Skips the Theater • 78
16 • The Jersey General and the Secret of Custer’s Last Stand • 81
17 • Poor Mary Smith • 90
18 • Mrs.Stanton Steps Out in Tenafly • 93
19 • It’s About Time • 97
20 • Leprosy in the Laundry • 100
21 • Stephen Crane Gets into Trouble • 105
22 • The Ghostly Sphynx of Metedeconk • 108
vii
23 • Annie Oakley Lived in Nutley,New Jersey • 112
24 • Scandal at the Girls’Reform School • 116
25 • Alice Goes for a Drive • 120
26 • Billy Sunday Came to Trenton on Monday • 124
27 • Ezra Pound Insults Newark • 127
28 • Cher Ami • 131
29 • The Poet,the Athlete,and the War to End All Wars • 135
30 • The Applejack Campaign • 139
31 • Swan Song for Shoeless Joe • 143
32 • The Tragic Fall of the Mexican Lindbergh • 146
33 • On the Boardwalk with Al Capone • 149
34 • TheMorro CastleMystery • 153
35 • The Rise and Fall of a Great Detective • 156
36 • Mommy Was a Commie • 159
37 • The Martian Invasion • 162
38 • When New Jersey Was a Nazi Target • 168
39 • Teleporting Penguin Lands in New Jersey • 171
40 • The Serpent in the Garden State:
A Brief History of Corruption • 175
Postscript:How to Write an Encyclopedia of New Jersey
in Nine Easy Years • 190
Suggestions for Further Reading • 197
Index • 205
viii Contents
introduction
An American tourist on vacation in Europe stopped at a restaurant in
Gdansk,Poland,where she struck up a conversation with a local at the
next table.“Where do you come from?” he asked. When she said she
was from New Jersey, he replied with a smile of recognition, “Ah,
Sopranos!”
Even for fans of that show (myself included),it is a bit disheartening
that the first thing that pops into the mind of people around the world
when they hear the name of our state is that television series about a dys-
functional crime family,set against a bleak and violent landscape.
New Jersey is actually an interesting little state,with quite a rich his-
tory of contributions to the modern world. Consider some of New Jer-
sey’s famous firsts. The phonograph, electric light, and movies were
invented here, thanks to Thomas Edison. Also invented or improved in
the Garden State were transistors, drive-in movies, Teflon, and decaf-
feinated coffee.
Two New Jersey engineers, John Roebling and his son Washington
Roebling,designed and oversaw the construction ofthe Brooklyn Bridge,
a marvel when it opened in 1883.
The first successful submarine, the first intercollegiate football
game, the first baseball game played with modern rules all happened
here.Atlantic City contributed saltwater taffy and the boardwalk to the
world.
The first almost-complete dinosaur fossil was unearthed in New Jer-
sey,and named the Hadrosaurus,in honor of the town of Haddonfield,
where it was found.
The echo ofthe Big Bang—the cosmic event that marked the birth of
our universe some 13.7billion years ago—was first identified by scientists
from Bell Labs in Murray Hill.
The state has been home to world-famous celebrities.My list of the
top ten,in no particular order are:
ix