The working papers of one of New Jersey’s notable landscape architects, Joan Shapiro Greentree, are now open to researchers in the History Center’s reading room. Born in Brooklyn, Joan Shapiro (1929-2012) graduated high school at sixteen years old and briefly attended Alfred University before dropping out due to the lack of courses in her preferred field of study. Instead, she pursued independent study in landscape architecture at the State University of New York, Fairleigh Dickinson University, New York University, and the New York and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

As a self-taught landscape architect, Joan adopted the professional name “Greentree” and developed an architectural philosophy that centered around environmentalism and was reflected in her practice of working with the ecology specific to each site. This design aesthetic stressed the use of native plants in a manner consistent with a property’s topology, a practice that gained wider acceptance through the late 20th century.

Greentree became an award-winning landscape architect whose work featured prominently in private homes and businesses in New York, New Jersey, and Colorado. During her long career she oversaw projects for the San Francisco firm Lawrence Halperin and Associates, a number of public parks, and numerous private gardens. Joan became one of the first women accepted by the American Society of Landscape Architects. During the 1960s, she founded one of New Jersey’s first recycling centers.

Included with the Joan Shapiro Greentree papers are a significant collection of research notes and photographs related to Claude and Helen Habberstad that she collected with a neighbor and wildlife artist, Mary Pratt Champenois. The Habberstads were journalists and artists who built a series of arts and crafts style cottages in the 1930s, mostly in the Boonton and Parsippany area. Wanting to create affordable homes set in natural surroundings, Claude and Helen selected large parcels of land in Morris County where property was inexpensive. Each cottage was unique and included design features intended to maximize space while blending into the surrounding landscape.

Greentree and Champenois both owned Habberstad homes and, during the 1990s they pursued extensive research on their history, construction, and place within American architecture history. Their work resulted in numerous photographs documenting the homes, a series of oral histories taken by those who knew and worked with the Habberstads, as well as a number of speaking engagements and exhibits about the cottages. The finding aid to the Joan Shapiro Greentree Collection is available online, and the papers may be requested for use in the reading room.

Due to construction in the History Center during the week of November 11, 2024, the reading room will offer limited services. Some collections will be inaccessible and excessive noise is to be expected; therefore, researchers are advised to plan around these dates.

If you must visit between 11/11 and 11/15, please contact the History Center by Friday 11/8 with a list of any materials you need to refer to and we will endeavor to retrieve them prior to your visit.

One aspect of preserving New Jersey history involves identifying weaknesses in our collections. While reviewing materials related to the state’s military history, Archivist Jeff Moy noted a lack of detailed information on Picatinny Arsenal, which is one of Morris County’s most active and consequential installations. He contacted the base’s Engineering Historian, Jeff Ranu who graciously agreed to share copies of their newspapers, The Picatinny News and The Barrage that date from 1947 to 1958.

Published for the benefit of active duty military and civilian personnel, the bi-weekly newspaper reported on various aspects of work life at Picatinny. It is a good source of information for genealogists with family who once worked at the facility, as well as those studying American military history. The digitized issues of the Picatinny News and the Barrage are available online, and we will include additional years as they are made available to us.

Several of the History Center’s manuscript collections originate from active organizations who periodically transfer recently created records. Assistant Archivist, Katelyn Leffler processed a group of new additions to the Morris School District collection. The records contain nearly two centuries of information on education in Morris Township and Morristown including  documentation on the Board of Education, district schools, Morristown High School, as well as photographs and audiovisual material.

The Morris School District Records date from 1817 to 2013 and comprise 33.5 linear feet in over 60 boxes; the finding aid to the collection may be found here. Those interested in reviewing the collection should contact History Center staff in advance to make an appointment.

A portion of the History Center’s Vertical Files are currently in offsite storage and inaccessible while we await the installation of new shelving. Our most frequently used files — Family Surnames, Morris County, Morris Township, and Morristown — remain available to researchers.

Please contact a member of our staff with any questions regarding this collection, and to ensure that requested materials will be accessible on the day of your visit.

The Ford Family’s history in North America dates back to Andrew Ford’s emigration from England to Weymouth, Massachusetts in the 1640s, a community that he helped found before acquiring property in Plymouth colony with his wife, Ellinor Lovell. The first Fords to live in Morris County, New Jersey were Andrew’s grandson, John Ford, and his wife Elizabeth Freeman, who owned a large parcel of land two miles east of Morristown. John Ford built one of Morris County’s first iron forges with John Budd.

Jacob Ford, Jr. is perhaps best known to local residents for serving in the Revolutionary War and having built Ford Mansion in 1774, which his widow Theodosia Johnes Ford later offered to General George Washington for use as his headquarters during the winters of 1779 and 1780. Prior to his early death in 1777, Jacob was an iron forger, like his father, and he served as Eastern Battalion Commander of the Morris County Militia where in 1777 he successfully fought the British at the Battle of Princeton.

Various members of the Ford family owned large tracts of land in Morris County where they operated farms, iron forges, served as members of the clergy, fought in colonial and Revolutionary wars, and worked as land surveyors, school administrators and teachers, medical missionaries, nurses, and bankers. The Fords maintained connections to the Garden State for three centuries.

The Ford Family Papers may be viewed in the History Center Reading Room. Interested researchers should consult the online finding aid prior to contacting staff to schedule an appointment.

This iconic 1878 Second Empire-style structure located at 87 E. Main St in Chester, NJ, was originally built as a pharmacy for Dr. Smith English Hedges. Following his death in 1892, it passed to Alonzo Green who took over operation of the drugstore and leased the empty space to longtime business associate George E. Conover (1826-1875). Mr. Conover established the Conover Press here in 1898, and he would later operate a painting and wallpaper business from the same building, and ultimately a general store. For many years, George lived in the apartment above the business with his wife, Harriet “Hattie” Chapman Conover, and their son Herbert T. Conover.

In addition to operating the printing press, George partnered with Alonzo P. Green to organize the Chester Local Telephone Company, which connected two lines from the drug store to the train station at Muskrat. From 1901 to 1905 Green and Conover built this system out to the neighboring towns of Parker, German Valley, Middle Valley, Crestmoor, Vernoy, and Califon, before selling the business to Lebanon Telephone Company in 1910.

In Mr. Conover’s spare time, he played in the Chester Cornet Band, which appeared in parades at Chester, Newark, and Newton from 1915-1918. He also served on several civic boards, including Washington Camp No.8 and on the Chester Carnival Committee. George E. Conover died on October 8, 1942 at age 78, and was buried at Chester Congregational Cemetery; his wife Hattie Chapman Conover died in 1946. Both the general store and drug store closed after George Conover and Lon Green’s deaths in the 1940s; however, Hattie and George’s son Herbert took over operation of the Conover Press, which he ran until 1970.

Mr. Conover began publishing Conover’s Cash Store News in 1918 to promote his new general store, Conover’s Cash Store. During an era when many residents bought groceries on credit, the monthly news sheet heavily promoted “cash and carry” as a means of spending more of one’s money on products and less on interest payments. The News also featured  columns dedicated to local news, household hints, trivia and jokes, and a healthy amount of advertising for his grocery and printing businesses. One long-running series was Herbert T. Conover’s, “The Story of Chester” that recounted the town’s history from European settlement through the early 20th century, and it ran from the January 1920 through the July-August 1921 editions.

While it only ran for a few years, the news sheet offers insight into one successful early 20th c. Morris County business. The finding aid to Conover’s Cash Store News is available here, and researchers interested in viewing the collection may contact the History Center to request an appointment.

Due to scheduled maintenance, the History Center will offer limited services on Monday July 24th. Reading Room computers are unavailable all day, including access to our online catalogs, genealogical databases, digitized newspapers and photographs, and other online sources. Additionally, the book scanner and ScanPro microfilm readers will be inaccessible.

Ernest H. Tomlinson published the first issue of the Daily Record in 1900 with his wife, Mary Balderston Tomlinson. During those initial years, they operated from a small one-story wood frame building. At the time, Morristown only had weekly local newspapers so when the Tomlinsons provided daily news, entertainment, and sports coverage to the town’s merchants, retailers, and residents, their publication flourished.

A few years later, the Daily Record moved to a larger stone building on 55 Park Place opposite the Morristown Green where the news staff operated from for over 70 years. As the newspaper grew, Ernest hired additional employees and Mary assumed greater managerial control; both possessed years of journalism experience reporting on significant events in turn-of-the-century Trenton where they honed their skills covering the bustling industrial city and state capital.

Over the following decades, the Daily Record stayed in the Tomlinson Family with Mary and Ernest’s son, Norman, learning all aspects of the newspaper business when he was not in school until eventually taking over in 1919; his son, Norman, Jr. began working there in 1954 and assumed the role of Editor-Publisher in 1970, continuing in that role for twenty years. Amidst strong ad revenue and regional coverage that comprised much of Morris County, the Tomlinson family left the newspaper business in 1989 when they sold the Daily Record to Gannett.

The collection consists of several special editions of the newspaper, as well as three copies of unrelated publications, one artifact, and a commemorative booklet published for the Daily Record’s 75th anniversary in 1975. Other materials include anniversary editions as well as a special United States Bicentennial issue that details numerous historic Morris County sites and events pertaining to the American war for independence. A finding aid to the collection is available here, and individuals interested in accessing it should contact the History Center.