Berkeley College. Established by Alyea Brick in East Orange in 1931 to offer business education to women, Berkeley College has evolved and expanded in the intervening seventy-plus years. It is now a multicampus coeducational institution offering associate and bachelor’s degrees as well as professional certification. Approximately forty-five hundred national and international students study at three Berkeley campuses in New Jersey (West Paterson/Little Falls, Paramus, and Woodbridge) and two in New York State (White Plains and Manhattan). Most students commute. Subject matter focuses on skills that are required in the business world. Berkeley students also prepare for their future careers through internships, and there is a placement program for graduates. Students can select from among ten majors, including traditional business competencies as well as fashion marketing, interior design, paralegal studies, and international business.
Berkeley Heights. 6.26-square-mile township in Union County. Berkeley Heights, along the Passaic River in the Watchung Mountains, is possibly named for the English proprietor Lord John Berkeley. The highest point in Union County, 560 feet above sea level, is located here.
The earliest inhabitants were the Lenape Indians. After the English founded Elizabethtown in 1664, many towns, including New Providence Township (originally Turkey), branched out in the area. The township’s western section was Berkeley Heights, a rural community slowly settled by English, German, French, and later Italian immigrants. In 1899, New Providence Borough was formed and separated from the township. In 1952 New Providence Township was officially renamed the township of Berkeley Heights.
In 1941 the Bell Telephone System established a research center, Bell Laboratories, now Lucent Technologies, in the Murray Hill section. In 1948 three Bell Labs scientists invented the transistor, which revolutionized the telecommunications world.
During the 1980s the Connell Company began developing a multitenanted office complex along Valley Road. Part of this property was previously occupied by Runnells Hospital, the county tuberculosis sanitarium. A new Runnells Specialized Hospital opened nearby in 1990.
After World War II the community experienced a building boom of single-family homes. By 2000 the population of 13,407 was 90 percent white. The median household income in 2000 was $107,716. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
Berlin Borough. 3.6-square-mile borough in central Camden County. Berlin shares antecedents with Berlin Township, known for more than one hundred years as Long-A-Coming, probably from the Indian lonaconing, "where many paths or waters meet.” The Great Egg Harbor River, one of the important early transportation routes, runs through the borough. Farming, lumbering, and charcoal burning were major occupations.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and until the advent of the Atlantic City Expressway, the White Horse Pike, the borough’s main street, served as the major route between Atlantic City, Camden, and Philadelphia. The arrival of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad in 1853 provided the area with its greatest population growth. In 1927 arguments over appropriations for schools, street lighting, and road improvements ignited a separation movement from Berlin Township, led by Dr. Frank O. Stem, later the borough’s first mayor.
The Berlin Canning Company, 1885-1912; the Berlin Ink and Color Works, 1890-1979; the Onlibest Hosiery Mill, established in 1928; and Baccelleri Brothers, manufacturers of fruit presses, established in 1930, were early industries. Today the borough is home to dozens of small businesses, including sheet metal and machine shop works, printing and computer services, asphalt and concrete companies, and distributors of a variety of materials, such as industrial equipment, waste paper, and janitorial supplies, all with less than one million dollars in annual revenue.
The residential community was about 94 percent white. The 2000 population was 6,149. Median household income in 2000 was $60,286. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
Berlin Township. 3.3-square-mile township in central Camden County. Originally known as Long-A-Coming, probably from the Indian lonaconing, "where many paths or waters meet,” Berlin Township is situated on the major route from Absecon to Philadelphia and became an important stage stop. Farming, lumbering, and charcoal burning provided good livings. Taverns, inns, and a sugar mill contributed sources of employment.
Berlin’s growth began after the Camden and Atlantic Railroad arrived in 1853. A station was erected, and a real estate company sold lots at auction. In 1867, the post office named the town Magnolia, but a new postmaster renamed it Berlin that same year. The reason for the choice of name is unknown.
Berlin was the county seat during the early years of Camden County’s existence and was incorporated as a separate entity from Waterford Township in 1910. Berlin Borough broke off from it in 1927, following a political dispute over funding.
The township remains largely rural, although there is an extensive strip of commercial and retail development along its Route 73 corridor.
The population in 2000 was 5,290, approximately 82 percent white and 12 percent black. The median household income in 2000 was $54,448. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
Bernard, Francis (b. July 7, 1712; d. June 16, 1779). Colonial governor. The son of the Rev. Francis Bernard and Margery (Winslow) Bernard of Brightwell, Oxfordshire, England, Francis Bernard received a master’s degree from Christ Church in 1736 and married Amelia Offley in 1741. He was appointed governor of New Jersey in 1758 and spent much of his energy trying to provide for his numerous children (at least twelve).
Bernard arrived in the colony in the midst of the French and Indian War, at a point when an Indian raid had killed approximately two dozen colonists. He stepped up security and attended a peace conference at Easton, Pennsylvania, with Indian and British representatives. Bernard was the royal governor who took relations with the Indians most seriously. He was transferred to Massachusetts in 1759, where he became caught up in the Stamp Act crisis and other disputes. Increasingly unpopular, he returned to England in 1769.
Bernards Township. 24.5-square-mile township in Somerset County. Settled circa 1710 by the Scots-Irish, the township’s focus is Basking Ridge, so named when flocks of wild turkeys were observed sunning themselves. The Presbyterian Church at the head of Finley Avenue, the main shopping district, dates from about 1717 but was rebuilt in 1839. Under the six-hundred-year-old oak are buried thirty-five veterans of the Revolutionary War. Nearby is the Brick Academy, now a museum, built in 1809 to house a school that prepared young men for Princeton. New Jersey governor Samuel Southard, U.S. senators William L. Dayton and Theodore Fre-linghuysen, and Commodore Robert F. Stockton studied there. William Alexander, Lord Stirling of Revolutionary War fame, lived on a splendid estate a mile from town (traces of which can be seen in Lord Stirling Park, Somerset County’s Environmental Center).
Formed by royal charter as Bernardston Township in 1760, the township was incorporated on February 21, 1798. Predominantly single-family residential, with considerable office development (including the former world headquarters of AT&T, now Lucent Technology) within the last two decades, Bernards includes Stone House, Mine Brook, Lyons (location of the thirteen-hundred-bed Veterans Affairs Medical Center), and Liberty Corner, settled 1722.
In 2000, the population of 24,575 was 89 percent white and 8 percent Asian. The 2000 median household income was $107,204. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
Bernardsville. 13.1-square-mile borough in Somerset County. First settled circa 1715, the borough was known as Vealtown until 1840, when it was renamed for Sir Francis Bernard, who had been the state’s royal governor from 1758 to 1760. A burst of activity in the 1840s saw the construction of impressive stone commercial buildings—Van Dorn’s Mill in 1843, now the centerpiece of the Franklin Corners Historic District in Bernards Township; Bunn’s Mill in 1844, now the borough hall; and the Old Stone Hotel in 1849, now a restaurant near Olcutt Square. When the railroad reached Bernardsville from Summit in 1872, the quiet countryside was again transformed, this time by well-heeled Manhattanites who foundit a perfect spot for their country estates. "Millionaires’ Mountain” was a world of palatial residences that by 1900 was reputed to be the second-wealthiest enclave in the nation. In the village itself lived a substantial foreign-born population that provided the chambermaids, gardeners, horse trainers, and kennel masters for the rich.
The borough, which broke from Bernards Township on April 29,1924, remains primarily residential today, with handsome estates, substantial homes, two country clubs, and a thriving business district clustered around Route 202. The population in 2000 of 7,345 was 94 percent white. The 2000 median household income was $104,162. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
Berra, Lawrence Peter "Yogi" (b. May 12, 1925). Baseball player. A longtime Montclair resident, Yogi Berra was one of baseball’s greatest catchers as a member of the New York Yankees from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. His accomplishments are legendary: during his eighteen-year tenure with the Yankees, he was a fifteen-time All-Star, a fourteen-time pennant winner, a three-time American League Most Valuable Player selection, and a record-setting ten-time World Series champion. Berra went on to serve as manager of both the New York Mets and the Yankees, and he was the first man in more than forty years to win pennants in different leagues (Yankees in 1964, Mets in 1973). Berra was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, the same year the Yankees retired his number 8 jersey, and he is a member of Major League Baseball’s All-Century Team. He currently serves on the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee and has collaborated on several books. Berra has become celebrated for wacky aphorisms, such as "It’s deja vu all over again” and "Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”
In 1996 Berra received an honorary doctorate from Montclair State University, and two years later the school named a baseball stadium after him. The campus now houses the Yogi Berra Museum andLearning Center, open since December 1998.
Bertholf, Guiliam (b. 1656; d. c. 1726). Reformed Dutch minister. Born in Sluis in the Dutch province of Zeeland, Guiliam Bertholf immigrated to New Jersey in 1684, where he settled in Acquackanonk (Passaic), joined the Reformed Dutch Church at Bergen (Jersey City), and took up the trade of cooper or barrelmaker. In 1691 he became voorleser (lay reader) and schoolmaster in Hackensack, performing the duties of voorleser also in Bergen, Acquackanonk, and elsewhere. His spiritual gifts were so remarkable that he was encouraged to return to the Netherlands for ordination. In 1693 he was ordained by the Clas-sis of Walcheren in Middelburg, Zeeland, and was subsequently assigned to Hackensack and Acquackanonk. Known to history as the "itinerating apostle of New Jersey,” he organized at least nine churches in New York and New Jersey and served in the pulpit of several of them over the course of his thirty-year ministry.
Bertholf was a Pietist whose main influence was the Dutch preacher Jacobus Koelman. A pivotal figure in the religious history of New York and New Jersey, he bridgedthe theologies and religious culture of Reformation Europe and the Great Awakening in America. In politics, he sided, as did many Pietists, with the Leislerians in Leisler’s Rebellion (1689-1691).
Bertrand Island. Bertrand Island was a beloved amusement park on Lake Hopat-cong in Mount Arlington. In 1908, Newark schoolteacher Louis Kraus gambled that people would take the long trip to Lake Hopat-cong, way off in northwestern New Jersey, for a summer vacation or a day at the beach. He bought a small triangle-shaped island named for former owner Charles Bertrand and began assembling a complex that would include a hotel, dance hall, beach, concessions, and amusements. Soon trolley service was available from as far away as Elizabeth, and Kraus’s family resort was booming. A waterside roller coaster, built in 1925, cemented Bertrand Island’s reputation as one of the great state amusement parks, and even though it never had more than two dozen rides, the park thrived on mostly local business for the next half century. Kraus sold Bertrand Island to Lorenzo D’Agostino in 1948 and his family ran it until 1983, when competition from megaparks and soaring land values forced Ray D’Agostino to shut it down. It left at least two lasting memories: Woody Allen used it for scenes in his 1983 film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and in 1937 New Jersey’s only Miss America, Bette Cooper, started out as Miss Bertrand Island.
Bessemer Trust. An asset management firm, Bessemer Trust was founded in 1907 by Henry Phipps, an associate of Andrew Carnegie, to handle the proceeds of Phipps’s $50 million share of the sale of Carnegie Steel. Phipps named the trust for the steel-making process that created his wealth. Bessemer Trust for years handled the money of the Phippses and related families and first began taking nonfamily clients in 1974. An overhaul of the company in the 1990s resulted in impressive growth. The company requires a minimum investment of $10 million. Bessemer Trust is a subsidiary of the Bessemer Group, which is headquartered in Wood-bridge.
Bethlehem. 20.60-square-mile township in northwestern Hunterdon County. Bethlehem may have been surveyed as early as 1725. The first European pioneers were Dutch, followed by Germans. Initially, the township covered one-third of Hunterdon County, an area that included Kingwood, Alexandria, Holland, Franklin, and Union townships and the boroughs of Bloomsbury, Milford, and Frenchtown, as well as portions of Clinton and Hampton Township. The Musconetcong River forms the township’s northern border and the river valley makes an exceptionally beautiful setting for farms.
As early as the mid-i700s iron was mined in the forested hills of southern Bethlehem, which also furnished wood for nearby iron furnaces. This Musconetcong Mountain area became known as Jugtown Mountain because of its concentration of distilleries that produced the applejack known as Jersey Lightning. The nearly mile-long railroad tunnel constructed under Musconetcong Mountain in the i870s was a significant engineering success. Near the end of the twentieth century, construction of Interstate Route 78 made Bethlehem an attractive location for commuters. When a large housing development threatened the beauty of the Musconetcong Valley in the late 1990s, Bethlehem residents responded forcefully and innovatively. They successfully blocked the project, laying the groundwork for farmland and open space preservation.
In 2000, 98 percent of the population of 3,820 was white. The median household income in 2000 was $88,048.
Beth Medrash Govoha. Beth Medrash Govoha, a religious college, was founded during World War II in Lakewood by rabbinical scholar Aaron Kotler (i892-i962). Kotler, a leader of the Orthodox branch of Judaism, modeled the school after the yeshivas (academies for the study of the Torah) of Europe. The students concentrated solely on the study of the Talmud and other religious writings. Accredited by the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools, the college is today one of the best-known yeshivas in the world. Beth Medrash Govoha is popularly known as the "Lakewood Yeshiva” and has branches in other cities.
Beverly. 0.57-square-mile city in Burlington County. Located along the Delaware River about three miles south of Burlington City, Beverly was originally known as Dunk’s Ferry. George Washington is believed to have planned several Continental Army engagements there during 1776. The earliest settlers were members of the Van Sciver, Perkins, Wilmerton, and Adams families. Originally part of larger Beverly Township, Beverly was in-corporatedas a borough in 1850 and asacityin i857. Numerous elegant homes were erected along Warren and Cooper streets, most of which still stand today. The early economy was largely mercantile, augmented in the 1870s by a major rope works and a hosiery manufacturer. The city has remained largely residential throughout its more recent history. During the i970s, traditional rope, wire, and textile concerns left the city, leaving it economically distressed. Large homes, many dating back to the i800s, make up the bulk of the housing stock.
In 2000, the population of 2,661 was 65 percent white and 29 percent black. The median household income in 2000 was $45,054.
Bicycling. Before i888, bicycling in New Jersey was a hazardous, acrobatic sport that featured a cycle with a five-foot-high front wheel and a foot-high rear wheel. The vehicle was difficult to mount, precarious to operate, and dangerous for inexperienced riders. Featured at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in i876, the cycle gained limited popularity among daring young men in "wheelmen’s” clubs, particularly in Essex County. By i885 the high-wheeler had extended into rural areas. The Hezekiah B. Smith Machine Company of Mount Holly edged the high-wheeler closer to general ridership in i884 when it began making a modified version that enabled its rider to sit over rear-wheel pedals, with a front wheel about half the size of the propelling wheel.
The two-wheeled "safety” bicycle revolutionized cycling. Introduced in i888, it featured two wheels each about thirty inches in diameter and was operated by pedals linked by chain to the rear wheel. Pneumatic tires replaced the solid rubber tires of old cycles, and a drop frame made the cycle feasible for long-skirted women. In appearance and basic operation the vehicle was in essence the same bicycle that is popular today.
Bird counts. Since 1900 the National Audubon Society has counted the number and species of birds during the Christmas season. This Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was started by Englewood ornithologist Frank M. Chapman as an alternative to the Christmas "Side Hunt,” when hunters would compete to see who could shoot the most birds. During the 101st CBC (2001) there were twenty-seven 177-square-mile CBC circles in New Jersey. The National Audubon Society collaborates with BirdSource and with the Great Backyard Bird Count project at the Cornell University Ornithology Laboratory. The nonaffiliated New Jersey Audubon Society also sponsors bird counts and publishes the results in its journal, Records of New Jersey Birds.
Rutgers University Bicycle Club, c. 1880.
The roads and lanes of 1895 scarcely permitted horses to gallop, much less bicycle riders to speed. Ruts caught the wheels and rocks imperiled every rider. Cyclists fell victim to mud and sand alike and they let their legislators know it. Spurred by cyclist rage, New Jersey lawmakers appropriated seventy-five thousand dollars in 1891 to start rebuilding the state’s roads—the first acknowledgment that the state was responsible for at least connecting roads.
The Cape May Bicycle Road Improvement Association spent thousands of dollars of its own money in the 1890s building bicycle paths beside the wretched roads. These extended first from Cape May to Goshen on the northwestern edge of town, then were quickly pushed through to Millville via Tuckerton. Because of traffic created by speeding visitors, Cape May imposed an eight-mile-per-hour speed limit. Young women cyclists, exulting in the freedom given them by bicycles, shed heavy corsets and wore shorter skirts. Shocked Cape May matrons formed the Anti-Bicycle Club to warn out-of-town girls that Cape May would not permit such immodesty. The female bike riders struck back in letters to the editor. They scoffed at the old-fashioned "antis” who affected "wasp waists, high necks, and trailing skirts.” A Cape May physician sided with the cyclers by declaring in a letter that "corsets fill more graves than whiskey.”
Young men inevitably raced with one another, earning the nickname "scorchers.” They raced initially in sanctioned events at county fairs, then competed in long over-the-road contests. New Jersey’s main race, and in cycling’s early years the nation’s premier cycling event, was the annual Irvington-Millburn race on Memorial Day. The course measured twenty-five miles. This annual contest ended in 1908.
New Jersey’s longest-running cycling event is the Somerville tour, so called because laws forbade cycle racing on town streets but permitted "tours” of a town. Somerville’s, begun in 1940 (but suspended during World War II), is run every year over a fifty-mile course. It is the oldest continuously run bicycle race in the country.
Inevitably, many racers became professionals, thanks to competitions at such places as the wooden track velodromes in Newark (opened in 1896) and Nutley (opened in the early 1930s). Both of the velodromes faded as World War II approached.
The feats of New Jersey’s great bicycling professionals are highlighted in the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame, opened in Somerville in 1986. Among New Jersey’s featured cyclists is Frank Kramer of Newark. He won his first national sprint championship in 1902, was world sprint champion in 1912, and holds eighteen United States championships. Kramer is believed by many to have been the greatest bicycle racer in history. Newspaper accounts reveal that in the 1920s cyclists were among the most revered, and best paid, professional athletes in the world.
Today New Jersey has over a dozen bicycle clubs that organize group rides and lobby for bike paths, which a number of towns have built.
Birds. New Jersey avifauna includes about 210 species of birds that nest in the state and roughly 130 more species that occur here only as migrants each year. When the tally of bird life includes other species that are rarities or accidentals, the New Jersey total approaches 450, truly an impressive richness. From north to south the physiographic provinces provide an overview of nesting species. The Kittatinny Mountains have such northern birds as the dark-eyed junco, magnolia warbler, and common raven. The Kittatinny Valley, with its wet meadows, provides breeding territory for American coot, common snipe, and sora rail. The elevations of the Highlands sustain populations of winter wren, northern goshawk, and yellow-bellied sapsucker. Southward, the Piedmont is particularly noted for such grassland birds as the bobolink, Savannah sparrow, and ring-necked pheasant (a very important game species). On the Coastal Plain, a myriad of shore species include the laughing gull, snowy egret, and willet. The Pinelands have relatively few nesting species, such as the pine warbler and common nighthawk. Most of the common breeding birds of New Jersey are widely distributed: American robin, gray catbird, mourning dove, and northern cardinal, for example. True city dwellers include the starling, pigeon, and house sparrow.
For many New Jersey observers, migration seasons are the highlights of the year, and the state has many spectacular concentration spots. At the Cape May peninsula, the fall migration of hawks, eagles, and falcons can total some fifty thousand birds of prey. There are also outstanding hawk flights along the state’s inland "mountains” (e.g., Montclair Hawk Watch on the first ridge of the Watchung Mountains and Sunrise Mountain Hawk Lookout on the Kittatinny ridge). Seabird migrations concentrate along our near shore zone, with hundreds of thousands of ocean birds passing. Counts are highest in autumn, and prime observation spots include Island Beach State Park and the shore at Avalon. The many ocean migrants include various sea ducks, cormorants, and loons. Songbird migrations are enjoyed throughout the state, spring and fall. Some of the best locations for land-bird concentrations are suburban and urban forested parks and other wooded preserves (e.g., the Princeton Institute Woods). During early May, the migration waves of brightly colored warbler species are especially exciting. Waterfowl movements are most significant in the fall, with many game species among the ducks, swans, and mergansers. These birds are attracted to numerous marshes, lakes, and swamps throughout the state.
Ornithological conservation concerns for New Jersey include rare and endangered species, grassland and wetland birds that are suffering habitat loss, and migrant species that are showing long-term population declines. The last group includes numerous deep-forested species (e.g., wood thrush), some of our wintering waterfowl, and many migrant sandpipers. New Jersey is fortunate in having many organizations involved in bird conservation and recreational uses, from bird-watching to hunting. An important umbrella group is the New Jersey Audubon Society and its affiliates. Contacts for fieldtrips can be found in most newspapers’ weekend sections, year-round. There are also many special bird-ing festivals during migration periods, particularly in coastal counties.
