Guests attend a 1950s meeting of the West Milford Historical Society. Seated, from left, are Robert MacLaury, newsman Howard Ball and Leslie Post. Ken Hirsch stands at right. (File photo by Ann Genader)
It soon will be 70 years since eight people, curious about their ancestors and how they lived, met around a dining room table at a historic Westbrook Road farmhouse, shared family stories and exchanged information.
This was the beginning of the West Milford Historical Society, which later branched out to include people from other municipalities and counties and became known as the North Jersey Highlands Historical Society.
The first meeting of West Milford Historical Society in 1954 was at a house owned by Ken and Elva Hirsch on Westbrook near the intersection of Ridge Road.
The people who attended, who were interested in gathering their personal family histories, had experienced many fruitless contacts with libraries and county and state historical societies and were resolved that little of the information they sought was available.
Hirsch invited people to meet at his home to form a society to gather the answers they were seeking.
In inviting people to the meeting, he said was taking the advice of Henry Beck, a noted folklorist. Among the prospective members who attended the first meeting were Leslie Post, Jennie VanderStad Sweetman, Vincent Struble, Gilbert Terhune Jr., Hans Widman, Ella Card and James Norman.
I was there to take photos for newspapers and joined the society as a charter member soon afterward.
Sweetman, the last living member of the group at that first meeting, died in December at age 92. She was the daughter of John VanderStad and Elizabeth Van Eck and was married to the late Tunis Sweetman Sr.
Sweetman and I were lifelong friends. Our education from kindergarten through eighth-grade graduation was in two-room rural schoolhouses; she at Oak Ridge School and me at Echo Lake.
Then we went to Butler High School with students from other West Milford rural schoolhouses. At the high school, West Milford students joined others from Butler, Bloomingdale, Riverdale, Pequannock, Kinnelon, Jefferson, Ringwood and Wanaque.
Sweetman and I always were enthusiastic about history and writing. We started covering meetings and other news for area newspapers after we graduated from high school. At first, she wrote for the Paterson Evening News and I was with the Paterson Morning Call.
We both went on to write for most newspapers that covered towns in Passaic, Morris and Sussex counties. We often sat together when we covered meetings for the various newspapers.
Chartered in 1957
The West Milford Historical Society was officially chartered April 24, 1957, with the signatures of James Norman, Jennie VanderStad, Thomas P. Byrnes, Mary Schmidt, Horace Chamberlain, Floyd Struble and Kenneth Hirsch.
The new society embarked on a series of activities designed to bring out local and family history that might be buried in people’s minds.
A West Milford Township Historical Society exhibit at the Community Fire Company annual fair at the fairgrounds on Green Pond Road in 1954 attracted great interest and the society continued to return with historical exhibits each year until the final season of the fair.
Changing the exhibit theme annually brought out many artifacts and much information and importantly gained new society members who wanted to aid in the search for information about their ancestors.
Exhibits and lectures in schools and libraries and before local groups brought more interest, and people of all ages became involved in the study of the early settlers. One of the most memorable public activities held by the West Milford Historical Society was a two-day re-enactment of a 1857 stagecoach trip along Hamburg Turnpike from Paterson to Deckertown (now Sussex).
It was natural for James Norman to come up with the stage re-enactment idea. In 1939, he had accepted an appointment by President Franklin Roosevelt as postmaster of the Newfoundland Post Office. He took great pride in his appointment.
Norman obtained a U.S. government contract to carry the mail between each of the post offices along the way during the re-enactment.
Leslie Post, who joined the historical society in its infancy, delivered mail from Newfoundland Post Office as far as the corner of Union Valley Road, Greenwood Lake Turnpike (County Route 511) and Lakeside Road.
In its early days, the West Milford Post Office did not provide home-delivery service. People living in the West Milford Village area, along Union Valley Road, including Pinecliff Lake, Greenbrook Estates, Wallisch Estates, all received their mail with a Newfoundland Post Office address.
Stagecoach re-enactment
For the re-enactment, the stagecoach, horses and driver were provided by hobbyists. Members of the historical society dressed in vintage clothing and rode on the stage as it traveled the route, with an overnight stopover in Newfoundland.
I was a member of the West Milford Historical Society from the time of the earliest meetings but could not ride on the stagecoach with June Buresh, Elva Hirsch and others wearing period costumes, as I working as a first-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Pompton Lakes.
The stage traveled along Hamburg Turnpike on a morning during a school day, passing Lincoln School. Principal Chris Stager was very excited about the event and encouraged teachers to take their students to the roadside to see firsthand as the coach passed by on Hamburg Turnpike and we did.
Norman traced his family back to the sixth generation and was the direct descendant of John Norman, an iron manufacturer who owned 10 acres of land from Sparta to Milton in the middle of the 18th century. His mother was a descendant of a Dutch family dating back to the 1600s in North Jersey.
He remembered times as a child when he often went to his grandfather’s house to sit around a table with others all weekend long to hear shared stories.
Although the entire Norman family came from an area in Jefferson Township known as “Little Russia,” he was born in Newark and the first Newfoundland area he knew was in 1932 when his family settled on Clinton Road. After he grew up, he worked at various machine shops before his appointment as postmaster.
A longtime community leader, Norman was one of the organizers of the Community Fire Company of Newfoundland and Oak Ridge. He served as a local air raid warden during World War II.
After retirement, in answer to a request by the late Mayor Charles Slawinski, he started the Highlands Senior Citizens Group in Newfoundland. With a large attendance for some time, it is no longer in existence.
Norman worked with Dr. Arthur Zampella at the Idylease building and was involved in the unsuccessful effort to construct Lakecrest Community Hospital on property next to Idylease donated by Dr. Zampella for that purpose.
After his wife died, Norman moved to Colorado to live with his son and died there.
Archaeological projects
Hirsch said in his 25th anniversary report of the founding of West Milford Historical Society that it had become evident that the main historical activity of the area revolved around the iron industry.
In spring 1961, the society initiated a series of ambitious archaeological projects at the sites of some of the lost or forgotten ironworks of the region. This began with a thorough and comprehensive dig at Pater Hasenclaver’s Middle Forge and continued during 15 years with projects at Bloomingdale Furnace, Canistear Bloomery, Long Pond Iron Works, Ringwood Furnace and elsewhere.
I remember a dig at the site of Oak Ridge Reservoir at a time of a drought, when the water level was low. I took press photos with my speed graphic. We were all in mud almost up to our knees but the late Mayor Wilbur Fredericks, a dedicated historian, and others continued to burrow in the muck until they came up with artifacts.
Another important contribution of the history group that continued when the society became North Jersey Highlands Historical Society was the quarterly publication of The Highlander magazine. Widely acclaimed by historians, it had subscribers throughout the United States and Canada. It was first published in October 1957 by Leslie Post as a society newsletter with a report of the group’s activities and short articles on local history.
After Post retired as a rural mail carrier for the Newfoundland Post Office, he lived in Vermont. Later, he was living with his daughter in Arizona in 2000. After he suffered a stroke, he was hospitalized while doctors tried six different blood pressure medicines before one was found to control his blood pressure.
One of the side effects left by the stroke was that his feet and ankles swelled during the day when he was active. Later, he could walk more than two miles around his neighborhood every morning.
He joined the Kiwanis Club, attended its meetings and helped with fundraising. He also became active in the Family Genealogical Society of Arizona. His early days with West Milford Historical Society and the historical adventures he was part of with the society always remained among his most cherished memories.
The original society agenda moved on, with the initial goals mushrooming into wider horizons and projects. Membership of the West Milford Historical Society grew much too large for home meetings to continue.
Without a headquarters, the group started meeting at Ringwood Manor. People from other towns showed interest and were willing to work at preserving history for all North Jersey.
It is a rewarding tribute to the West Milford pioneers who first saw the need to establish a group to preserve local history and to see the growth and accomplishments by those who carried on the work.
A research library devoted to the early iron industry has been established by the society at the manor. Contact North Jersey Highlands Historical Society at P.O. Box 248, Ringwood, NJ or send email to info@northjerseyhistory.org
To contact Ann Genader, send email to anngenader@gmail.com