Since its establishment in 1683, Perth Amboy has been a progressive and welcoming community. Residents have consistently made a stand for equality--in the 1920s, riots at a local KKK meeting ousted the Klan for good, and the nation's first African American vote was cast here by Thomas Mundy Peterson. Another Perth Amboy first was Dr. Solomon Andrews's flight over the town in 1863. Since 1853, the Eagleswood School has hosted lectures from figures like Henry David Thoreau. In 1968, the Perth Amboy basketball team swept the state championship. These and Perth Amboy's other fascinating stories and characters are chronicled by local author Katherine Massopust.
Perth Amboy, New Jersey, has undergone significant changes since it was settled by Europeans in 1651. It is a constantly evolving community, as seen in its famous waterfront, architecture, and industries that have developed throughout the years.
Perth Amboy, New Jersey-purchased from Native Americans by European settlers in 1651-began its life as a colonial seaport, becoming the tidewater terminus of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1876. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the city developed into an industrial giant, with over one hundred factories supporting the local economy. In Perth Amboy, Joan Seguine-LeVine explores the many dimensions of her hometown during its industrial era. The city's people, architecture, waterfront, and various industries of yesteryear are uncovered in vivid detail through over two hundred vintage photographs accompanied by thoughtful and comprehensive captions. Perth Amboy's historical significance is revealed, and many lifetime residents of the city will be surprised to learn how many national precedents were set in this harbor community.
South Amboy, a celebration of the people and places of this key Central New Jersey community, is a fascinating look back in time at the city's early days. Through a variety of vintage images combined with insightful text, travel to the waterfront, railroad, and bustling business district of South Amboy's past. As 1998 marks the 200th anniversary of the city's organization, weeping revitalization and development are under way, and it is an ideal time to reflect upon South Amboy's beginnings. Included in South Amboy are photographs of the old city hall, prominent local businesses, long forgotten schools, and an earlier and very different Broadway. South Amboy has always been a transportation hub, from a stop in revolutionary days on the route from New York to Philadelphia, to its current role of shuttling commuters throughout the area. Life in South Amboy is shown in all aspects, from social to civic activities, from the taverns to the firehouses, and from houses of worship to the city's hospital. The historic images featured, most of which have never been published, are largely from the private collections of South Amboy residents.
New Jersey is celebrated for its strong communities built across religious and ethnic lines as one of the nation's most diverse states. The state, though, was not immune to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the first half of the twentieth century. Former vaudevillians Arthur H. Bell and his wife used the tactics of public theater to advertise and recruit for the organization. At a massive riot in Perth Amboy, thousands of immigrants besieged a few hundred Klansmen, tossed them out of building windows, burned their cars and ran them out of town. The allying of pro-Nazi German Bund groups and the Klan in the lead-up to World War II marked the end of the Klan's foothold. Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.
The dramatic story of a founding father, his illegitimate son, and the tragedy of their conflict during the American Revolution—from the acclaimed author of The Lincolns. Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America’s founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness—even his grandfatherly appearance—are legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin’s biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William’s release, while his father, to the world’s astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America’s most distinguished families. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America. “The history of loyalist William Franklin and his famous father has been told before but not as fully or as well as it is by Daniel Mark Epstein in The Loyal Son. Mr. Epstein, a biographer and poet, has done a lot of fresh research and invests his narrative with literary grace and judicious sympathy for both father and son.”—The Wall Street Journal
