Macculloch, George Perrott (b. Dec. 15, 1775; d. Dec. 1, 1858). "Father of the Morris Canal.” George Perrott Macculloch was born in Bombay, India. In 1804 he married Louisa Martha Edwina Sanderson, who would bear him two children. In 1822, while fishing on Lake Hopatcong, he envisioned a plan to connect Pennsylvania’s coal mines with the industrial cities of New Jersey, utilizing the waters of Lake Hopatcong, the state’s largest lake, to fill the artificial waterway. Because a rival canal, the Delaware and Raritan, was being proposed, the state was reluctant to fund his dream. Convinced that a canal across northern New Jersey would be profitable, he lobbied prominent North Jersey industrialists to underwrite the construction. In December 1824 Macculloch and a group of investors formed the Morris Canal and Banking Company to privately fund the project. Macculloch obtained the services of Ephraim Beach, the engineer of the Erie Canal, to be chief engineer of the Morris Canal. Construction began in 1825, and in 1831 the canal was completed from Phillipsburg to Newark; by 1836, it was extended to Jersey City, on the Hudson River. Macculloch was also the first president of the Morris County Agricultural Society, dedicated to the improvement of farming in the region. The elegant Federal-style mansion on what was once part of his twenty-six-acre farm in Morristown is now a popular museum.
George P. Macculloch.
Macculloch, Louisa Martha Edwina Sanderson (b. 1785; d. Dec. 28,1863). Philanthropist. Married August 17,1804, Louisa Macculloch emigrated from London, England, in 1806, with her husband, George Perrot Macculloch, who developed the Morris Canal, and two children. Having settled in Morristown, she helped run Macculloch’s Academy and to found Saint Peter’s Church and several charities. She died in Morristown after thirty-three years as First Directress of the Female Charitable Society, which survives today as the Family Service of Morris County.
Louisa E. Macculloch.
Macculloch Hall. Located in Morris-town, Macculloch Hall is a Federal-style brick mansion built in 1819 for George Perrot Macculloch, best known as the "Father of the Morris Canal.” The elegant manor house was home to five generations of his descendants. The surrounding property was a twenty-six-acre working farm until 1888. In 1949, Morris-town millionaire W. Parsons Todd purchased the house and the remaining three acres of land to create a museum to exhibit his personal collection of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century antiques. Today the mansion and gardens are open to the public. The museum is also renowned for a major
McDonnell, Joseph Patrick. (b.Mar. 27, 1847; d. Jan. 20, 1906). Labor leader and journalist. Joseph P. McDonnell was born in Dublin, Ireland. He joined an Irish nationalist group while attending college, and in 1868, he moved to London. He was recruited by Karl Marx to serve as corresponding secretary for Ireland for the International Work-ingmen’s Association (IWA); later, McDonnell was transferred to New York. He and his new bride, Mary McEvatt, sailed to America in 1872. There McDonnell met labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers and Peter J. McGuire, and his main interest changed from socialism to labor reform. He became the editor of the New York Labor Standard.
As a founder of the International Labor Union, McDonnell went to Paterson to assist textile workers on strike at the Adams mill in 1878. There, he established the Paterson Labor Standard, which he published for the rest of his life. His editorials in support of the strikers cost him a $500 fine. In 1880, he spent sixty days in jail for slander after writing about unsafe working conditions at a local brickyard. Upon his release, "an immense throng of … operatives from the mills” of Paterson and a brass band "greeted him with unbounded enthusiasm.” McDonnell was a founder of the New Jersey State Federation of Trades and Labor Unions in 1883; for fifteen years, he was its chairman. The federation worked to elect legislators sympathetic to labor reform, and was instrumental in passing laws to restrict child labor, create industrial safety standards, and limit manufacturing workers to a fifty-five-hour workweek. Largely through McDonnell’s work, New Jersey in 1887 became the first state to make Labor Day a holiday. He also founded the Paterson Trades Assembly in 1884, the Paterson Typographical Union in 1886, worked with the American Federation of Labor, and was the first chairman of the National Labor Press Association.
Macfadden, Bernarr (b. Aug. 16,1868; d. Oct. 12, 1955). An unflagging self-promoter, Bernarr Macfadden was an influential force in tabloid journalism, and popularized health and fitness regimens. Macfadden’s participation in wrestling as an adolescent in Illinois led to an interest in diet and physical culture. He remained a health fanatic throughout his life, renowned for walking barefoot from his Englewood mansion to his office in Manhattan, among other extravagant behaviors. Macfadden’s obsession led him into publishing, first with Physical Culture magazine, which featured his body and emphasized the virtue of fasting.Macfadden launched True Story magazine in 1919, which heralded a new genre of "B” publications featuring sensational and sometimes made-up stories. By 1928 True Story reached a circulation of two million. Macfadden made a fortune with True Story and enhanced his media reach with similarly packaged magazines and the New York Graphic, a tabloid newspaper that obtained a peak circulation of 350,000 in 1929, but suffered substantial declines with the onset of the Depression.
Macfadden may have hoped his media empire could propel him to the presidency. In 1929 alone he commissioned three biographies of himself. With the Depression, however, his political prospects diminished as his publishing empire shrank. Macfadden’s efforts to develop middle-class housing in Hackensack, Bergenfield, and New Milford failed and his personal life grew increasingly turbulent and eccentric. (Macfadden had four failed marriages.) Macfadden lost a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1936. His campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Florida in 1940 also failed. His finances became increasingly chaotic, and he was forced to relinquish control of Macfadden Publications in 1941. Into his eighties Macfadden earned often derisive public attention as he continued to conduct public fasts and pursue the sport of parachuting. He was also known for his affairs with younger women. By the time he died in Jersey City in 1955, Macfadden had become a laughingstock in the major media. However, scholars have been increasingly interested in Macfadden’s emphasis on physical fitness, a healthy sex life, male domesticity, and the virtues of suburban living. In each of these realms, Macfadden’s preoccupations foreshadowed those of millions of Americans. With his second wife, Mary Williamson Macfadden, he had seven children who survived him.
McGreevey, James Edward (b. Aug. 6, 1957). Lawyer and governor. Born in Jersey City, James Edward McGreevey was the oldest child of Veronica, a registered nurse, and Jack McGreevey, a Marine Corps veteran and trucking company employee. Jim grew up in Carteret, attending Saint Joseph’s High School in Metuchen. He then entered Columbia University and received his B.A. degree in 1978, majoring in political science and economics. McGreevey graduated from Georgetown University with a law degree in 1981, and was admitted to the bar in the same year. He received a master’s degree in education from Harvard University in 1982.
Returning to New Jersey, McGreevey volunteered in Democratic election campaigns and became an assistant Middlesex County prosecutor. From 1983 to 1984 he worked as a staff attorney in the assembly Democratic majority office, and in 1985 and 1986 he was executive director of the New Jersey State Parole Board. McGreevey was active in local civic organizations during these years, and from 1987 to 1991 he worked for Merck as an attorney and lobbyist.
In November 1989 McGreevey was elected to a two-year term in the assembly, representing the Amboys, Sayreville, South River, and Woodbridge in Middlesex County. In 1991 he ran for mayor of Woodbridge Township against the incumbent Democratic mayor, who had been charged with bribery, and two other candidates. With the backing of Middlesex County Democratic leaders, McGreevey secured 34 percent of the popular vote, enough to become the youngest mayor in Woodbridge history. He was reelected to subsequent four-year terms as mayor by landslide margins in 1995 and 1999. While serving as mayor, McGreevey was also elected to represent his district in the State Senate, serving from 1994 to 1998. He was active in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, chaired the New Jersey Democratic Leadership Council, and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Cancer Advisory Board.
McGreevey first gained statewide recognition during his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 1997. At the outset, incumbent Gov. Christine Todd Whitman was widely assumed to be a shoo-in for reelection. McGreevey became the Democratic nominee by edging out his principal opponent, Rep. Robert Andrews, by fewer than ten thousand votes in a primary that saw county organizations back different candidates. In the general election, McGreevey argued that Governor Whitman had neglected the state’s high automobile insurance costs and property taxes, and this campaign carried him to within 26,000 votes of victory.
His unexpectedly narrow 1997 general election loss established McGreevey as the favorite for the 2001 Democratic nomination. He withstood an effort by Sen. Robert Torricelli to seize the Democratic nomination in June 2000, and won the June 2001 primary without significant opposition. On November 6, 2001, McGreevey was elected to a four-year term as New Jersey’s fifty-first governor, winning 56 percent of the two-party general election vote against the Republican candidate, Jersey City mayor Bret Schundler. McGreevey assumed office on January 15, 2002.
He was married to Dina Matos McGreevey in 2000, and their daughter, Jacqueline Matos, was born on December 7, 2001. McGreevey has a second daughter, Morag Veronica, from a previous marriage.
McGuire Air Force Base. The air base located twenty miles southeast of Trenton, near Wrightstown, was established by the U.S. Army as Rudd Field on Fort Dix property in 1937. Later known as Fort Dix Army Air Base, it was subsequently renamed McGuire Air Force Base in 1949 in honor of Thomas B. McGuire, a World War II flying ace and native of Ridgewood.
During World War II, the base played a significant role in the airlifting of troops and supplies overseas. It was an important refueling stop for aircraft being ferried overseas and also hosted antisubmarine and air defense units. McGuire’s airlift capabilities were again utilized during the Korean and Vietnam wars. American prisoners of war repatriated from North Vietnam were flown to McGuire in 1973. The base also played a significant role during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990s.
McGuire was an important site of Cold War air defense initiatives. The first direction center within the nationwide Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system became operational here in 1958, as did the first BOMARC missile squadron one year later. Fighter-interceptor units were also based at McGuire during this period. As the headquarters of the 305th Air Mobility Wing, McGuire is today the largest military airlift port on the East Coast.
An F-4E taxiing past the hanger after completing a training mission as part of the 141st Tactical Fighter Squadron at McGuire Air Force Base, Lakehurst, 1991.
McIntire, Carl (b. May 17, 1906). Clergyman, anticommunist activist, and religious entrepreneur. Born in Ypsilante, Michigan, Carl McIntire was raised in Oklahoma, where his father served as a Presbyterian minister. He enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1927. McIntire followed his prominent fundamentalist mentor J. Gresham Machen out of Princeton because of its "modernist" tendencies, and began his ministerial career at Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood in 1933. Two years later the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. suspended McIntire for sowing discord within the denomination. He established his Collingswood church as the headquarters of a new splinter denomination, and also formed the American Council of Christian Churches (1941) as a conservative pandenominational fundamentalist organization. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, McIntire emerged as a prominent anticommunist, regularly skewered theological liberalism, attacked Roman Catholicism, and adamantly supported America’s presence in Vietnam. He also centered a network of fundamentalist institutions in Cape May and Collingswood, including Christian conference centers, a Bible school known as Shelton College, a weekly newspaper, and a popular syndicated radio program. The state of New Jersey revoked Shelton’s degree-granting authority in 1971 because of various violations, prompting a temporary move to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mclntire’s ministry and influence generally dwindled in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mackay, John Alexander (b. May 17, 1889; d. June 9, 1983). Clergyman and seminary president. Born in Inverness, Scotland, John Alexander Mackay was the son of Duncan Mackay and Isabella Macdonald. Mackay attended the University of Aberdeen, the Theological Seminary of the Free Presbyterian Church (Scotland), Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Madrid, and the National University of Peru. He married Jane Logan Wells in 1916. The couple had four children. After service as a missionary in Latin America from 1916 to 1932, Mackay became an executive of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. In 1936 he was appointed president of Princeton Theological Seminary, a post he held until his retirement in 1959. As president, Mackay rejuvenated the seminary, recently divided by a controversy over fundamentalism. He also played a major role in the ecumenical movement. In 1953, in the midst of anticommunist hysteria, he was the principal author of "A Letter to Presbyterians” which condemned the excesses of McCarthyism.
Mackay wrote thirteen books. He died in Hightstown.
McKim, Mead and White. McKim, Mead, and White was the leading American architectural firm between the death of H. H. Richardson (1885) and the rise of Frank Lloyd Wright (1910). Although based in New York City, the firm had New Jersey roots through its leading partner, Charles Follen McKim. The son of a Quaker abolitionist, he lived as a youth in Llewellyn Park (West Orange) and is buried near there. In addition, the architects enhanced their national reputation with early key works on the New Jersey Shore.
Leaving his father’s A. J. Davis-designed villa in 1867, Charles McKim trained for one year at Harvard University and three years at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, before working in the office of H. H. Richardson in Brookline, Massachusetts. He formed a partnership with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White in 1879, having practiced for the previous seven years in New York. Taking up the emerging Shingle Style developed in part by Richardson, the three quickly distinguished themselves as innovators in works such as the Short Hills Casino (1879-1880) and the H. Victor Newcomb House (1880) in the resort community of Elberon on the Jersey Shore. McKim had cultivated patronage in New Jersey during the 1870s, when he executed commissions in Montclair and Elberon.
It was not until the late 1880s that McKim, Mead, and White established their signature classical style in monumental urban buildings such as Madison Square Garden (1887-1891) and the Boston Public Library (1887-1898). Their dominant professional stature and large office organization helped to transform not only urban architecture in America but also the practice of architecture itself. While designing institutional buildings in cities from Boston to Washington, the firm also contributed to the civic center of Morristown, with Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church (1886-1892, 1905-1908). Adding to their distinguished array of large country estates in Newport, Long Island, and Boston’s North Shore, they built "Florham” for Vanderbilt family business associate Hamilton M. Twombly on a vast parcel near Madison (1892-1900).
The firm reached its pinnacle of influence and creativity from 1900 to 1909, directing the Senate Park Commission plan for Washington, adding to the White House under Theodore Roosevelt, building the great Pennsylvania Station at Thirty-fourth Street in Manhattan, and executing such signal commissions as the Rhode Island State Capitol and Columbia University campus. All three partners and their assistants worked at a hectic pace for a decade, finally designing in all more than 785 commissions. Tragically, the height of their ascent was matched by the depth of their fall—Stanford White was murdered by the jealous husband of one of his many mistresses in 1906; Charles McKim died in 1909, exhausted by the scandal and debilitated by the exertion of running the firm.
The McKim, Mead, and White office remained robust for two and a half additional decades, directed by senior partners Bert Fenner, Lawrence Grant White (Stanford’s son), and William Mitchell Kendall, and advised by Mead. One of the last major civic buildings designed by the firm was Newark’s Pennsylvania Station (1929). Like so many of their best buildings, it contributes a dignity and grace to the city and continues to enrich the lives of succeeding generations.
McNulty, Frank Joseph (b. August 10, 1872; d. May 26, 1926). Labor leader and congressman. Frank Joseph McNulty was born in Ireland, the son of Owen McNulty and Catherine O’Donnell. He immigrated to the United States with his parents at age four, and grew up in New York City. He trained as an electrician; after moving to Perth Amboy, McNulty became involved in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Described as "distinguished” looking and "charming,” he rose through the union’s ranks until he was elected its president (1903-1918). During this period there was a bitter struggle within the union over whether it should be organized by craft (all electricians), or by industry (all auto workers). McNulty kept his union craft-based and managed to convince many who had left to return. Under his leadership the union became the fourth-largest labor organization in the country. During World War I he served on a railroad board as well as a government commission that went to Italy. In 1919 he resigned as president of the union to become director of Public Safety in Newark. After retiring from that position in 1922, he ran as the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 8th District, and won. He served on the House Labor Committee, but neither labor support nor charm helped him win reelection in 1924, when there was a Republican landslide.
McNulty, William (b. 1829; d. June 18, 1922). Clergyman. An extraordinary figure in Paterson Catholicism, William McNulty was born near Ballyshannon, Ireland, in 1829. Immigrating to America in 1850 to pursue a religious vocation, he studied at Fordham University and Emmitsburg College before being ordained a priest by Bishop J. R. Bayley in Newark in 1857. McNulty’s first appointment was as dean of discipline and vice president of the recently established Seton Hall College at Madison. When the college moved to South Orange in i860, he remained at Madison as chaplain to the Sisters of Charity. This ministry was also brief. In October 1863 Bayley appointed McNulty pastor of Saint John’s in Paterson, a post he held until his death in i922. His tenure of fifty-nine years at Saint John’s remains the longest in the state’s Catholic annals. McNulty, indefatigable promoter of Catholic interests in a rapidly growing city, was named dean of Bergen and Passaic counties in i886. Presiding over his own parish, he also assisted in the formation of "daughter” and "second-generation” ethnic parishes in Paterson. Many schools, hospitals, and charitable institutions also owe their existence to him. He rebuilt his own parish church on a sufficiently grand scale that it became the cathedral church of the Diocese of Paterson when the latter was formed in 1937. By then, McNulty was fifteen years dead: "the last of the pioneer priests,” as local newspapers aptly dubbed him.
