Rutgers Preparatory School. The oldest independent school in New Jersey, Queen’s College Grammar School was chartered in 1766 as the grammar school portion of Queen’s College (now Rutgers University). Its original purpose was to train male students for the college. In 1883 the name was changed to Rutgers Preparatory School, but it remained in New Brunswick and close to the college until 1957, when it obtained separate status. Today it is located on a thirty-five-acre campus in Somerset. A coeducational day school covering pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, it serves approximately 625 students.
Committed to a diverse student body, Rutgers Prep has been recognized as a national "blue ribbon” school.
Rutgers University-Camden Center for the Arts. a division of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the Center for the Arts on the Camden campus has a mission to serve the regional community with a year-round calendar of arts education and public presentation programs that promote a full appreciation and enjoyment of the arts and an understanding of their connection to all facets of life. RCCA’s main facilities are located in the Fine Arts Complex, which opened in 1975—the Stedman Gallery, the Walter K. Gordon Theater, and the black box theater. Programs for the general public include visual arts and cultural heritage exhibitions; music, theater, dance, and multidisciplinary performances; film presentations; and other programs that seek to expand knowledge of the arts. RCCA also conducts innovative arts education and enrichment programs for children and families throughout the year. The curricular-related Museum and Mainstage Education programs for the region’s K-12 school community provide direct access to the arts and are offered both on-site and via videoconferencing. Other programs are designed to serve the needs of the children of Camden City, such as Shared Visions, Shared Rhythms, and Art Soup.
Rutgers University Press. Rutgers University Press is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in Piscataway under the auspices of Rutgers University. The press was founded in 1937, and since that time has grown in size and in the scope of its publishing program. The press publishes books in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, and is known for its large collection of books about the state and the region. Press books that have been particularly influential include The Collected Worlis of Abraham Lincoln, Black Athena, The History of Interest Rates, Quicksand and Passing, Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, Jersey Diners, and Twin Towers.
Rutherford. 2.8-square-mile borough in Bergen County. First settled by Europeans in the seventeenth century, Rutherford developed as a residential suburb when New York City investors began subdividing farmland into town lots. The first lots were auctioned off in 1858. By the 1860s the area had hotels, fine homes, and a host of land development companies. By 1870 promoters had named it Rutherford Park. In 1881, it left Union Township and incorporated as Rutherford borough.
With urban amenities in a country setting and rail access to business centers in New York and New Jersey, Rutherford soon became one of Bergen County’s most desirable communities. By 1920, its 9,497 residents lived in spacious suburban homes on the higher ground overlooking the Hackensack Meadowlands. Rutherford was the original site of Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1942 until 1994. It was also the home of the poet William Carlos Williams, and now contains the William Carlos Williams Center for the Arts, as well as the Meadowlands Museum on area history. Rutherford’s population peaked at 20,802 in 1970. It remains a residential community with commerce along Route 17. In 2000, the population of 18,110 was 82 percent white and 11 percent Asian. The 2000 median household income was $63,820. For complete census figures, see chart, 136.
Ryan, Anne (b. July 20,1889; d. Apr. 18,1954).Painter, collagist, printmaker, and poet. While she published her first written work in 1925, Anne Ryan did not begin her art career until 1938. Influenced by the art she saw during a European sojourn (1931-1933), Ryan began painting with the encouragement of Hans Hoffman. In 1941, she had her first solo exhibition. She studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, and inspired by Kurt Schwitters’s work, she began making collages in 1948. Her work has been exhibited widely and is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, and the Newark Museum.
Ryle, John (b. Oct. 22, 1817; d. Nov. 6, 1887). Silk industry entrepreneur. Born in Bollington, England, John Ryle studied the silk manufacturing process and by age twenty-two was the superintendent of a mill owned by his two brothers. Immigrating to the United States in 1839, he obtained the position of superintendent in a small silk mill in Northampton, Massachusetts. While employed there he became acquainted with George W. Murray who, in 1839, purchased Christopher Colt’s silk mill, the first in Paterson. Ryle went to work for Murray and in 1842 became a partner in the renamed firm of Murray and Ryle. In 1846 Ryle, with the help of his brothers, bought out Murray’s interest in the firm. Ryle’s company, which manufactured both spooled sewing silk and woven silk goods, became the center of the silk industry in Paterson. Active in politics, Ryle was mayor of Paterson from 1869 to 1871. He died while on a visit to Macclesfield, England in 1887.
Sackett, William E. (b. May 23,1848;d. Nov. 18,1926). Journalist. Sackett, the son of William and Josephine Findlay Sackett, was educated at the Anthon School and the New York Free Academy. Originally intent on becoming a lawyer, he clerked for three years (from 1865 to 1868) in the law office of Chester A. Arthur, who later became president of the United States when James A. Garfield was assassinated.
A veteran reporter for the New York Times and New York Herald, Sackett is perhaps best known for his delightful two-volume work aptly titled Modern Battles of Trenton. The first volume, which chronicles New Jersey politics from 1868 to 1894, ranks as a classic in muck-raker literature. The second volume, published in 1914, covers the gubernatorial administrations extending from George Werts to Woodrow Wilson. Although there is much hearsay and exaggeration in both volumes, they offer an invaluable chronicle of state politics from just after the Civil War to World War I. A reform Democrat disillusioned with machine politics and political bossism, Sackett made a futile attempt to seek his party’s nomination for governor in 1913 during the high noon of progressivism.
Saddle Brook. 2.7-square-mile township in west-central Bergen County. Saddle Brook was originally formed in 1716 from New Barba-does Township, along a well-traveled wagon route to Newark called "Old Swamp Lane” and bordered by the Passaic River on the west and the Saddle River on the east. It was incorporated as Saddle River Township in 1798. The present community is what was left after numerous municipalities seceded from it, principally Franklin Township (1771), Garfield (1898), East Paterson (now Elmwood Park, 1916), and Fair Lawn (1924). The name was changed to Saddle Brook in 1955 as a requirement for obtaining a post office, to avoid confusion with other similarly named towns in the county. Agriculture—especially corn, potatoes, and hay—small-scale dairies, and poultry farms predominated until the first decade of the twentieth century. Like many communities in Bergen County, Saddle Brook experienced rapid residential development in the 1950s. It is conveniently located at the hub of three major arteries, I-80, the Garden State Parkway, and Route 46, with major Routes 4
Saddle River. 4.98-square-mile borough in Bergen County. Native Americans called the eastern side of the Saddle River "land of the grapes.”Albrecht Zaborowsky bought land from them in 1702. In 1708 he deeded the tract to Thomas Van Buskirk (Van Boskirk). Van Buskirk’s son, Andries Thomas, built the first house in Saddle River around 1724. Saddle River has been part of many different communities over the years. In 1885 Orvil Township was created, which included Saddle River along with Allendale, Ho-Ho-Kus, Upper Saddle River, Waldwick, and Woodcliff. In late 1894 the township was dissolved into individual entities.
Saddle River was originally a farming community. Over time, mills were erected along the namesake river, which bisects the borough. These included gristmills, sawmills, cotton mills, bark mills, and shingle mills. The area also hosted small industry. A basket factory, triphammer factory, iron foundry, and hat factory were among the manufacturers. Today, Saddle River Borough is a residential community bordered on the east by the Garden State Parkway and the west by Route 17. It was the home of President Richard M. Nixon from 1976 until his death in 1994. The 2000 census shows a population of 3,201 with 90 percent white. The median household income was $134,289. For complete census figures, see chart, 136.
Saffron, Morris H. (b. Jan. 28, 1905;d. Apr. 28, 1993). Physician, medical historian, and bibliophile. Morris H. Saffron was born in Passaic to Abraham and Bertha Saffron, emigrants from Russia. He attended Columbia College in New York (A.B., 1925) and the University of Maryland Medical School (M.D., 1928). He served his internship (1928-1929) and was the director of dermatology (1945-1970) at Saint Mary’s Hospital, Passaic. His special interest in history led him to earn an M.A. (1949) and a Ph.D. (1967) from Columbia University.
While he practiced medicine (dermatology) in New Jersey and New York, Saffron also devoted himself to medical history: teaching, as a professor of medical history at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and writing books and papers. He established the Medical History Society of New Jersey (MHSNJ) and generously supported the New Jersey Historical Society. Saffron created and funded an endowment at UMDNJ so students would appreciate and become knowledgeable about the history of their profession. The rare book collection of UMDNJ and an annual MH-SNJ lecture are named after him.
Sagan, Carl Edward (b. Nov. 9, 1934; d. Dec. 20, 1996). Astronomer and science writer. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Sagan decided to become an astronomer while he was a student in Rahway High School, where he graduated in 1951. His later education was at the University of Chicago.
Winner of many awards, author of more than twenty books and six hundred scientific papers. Sagan pioneered in the study of other planets. A believer in the existence of extraterrestrial life and intelligence, he played a leading role in the search for living matter on Mars. He helped create the disputed concept of "nuclear winter,” which portrayed the horrors of nuclear war. He also warned of the consequences of global warming. His television program Cosmos, co-written with his wife, Ann Druyan, was seen by half a billion viewers in sixty countries, and his book The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Origins of Human Intelligence won a Pulitzer Prize.
Saint Barnabas Medical Center.The "Saint Barnabas House” began humbly in Newark in 1865 under Episcopalian auspices. In 1867, the year it received its charter as Saint Barnabas Hospital, it housed ten patients. At present, as a nonsectarian institution located in Livingston, it is a 620-bed facility, one of the largest hospitals in the state. It has New Jersey’s only certified burn treatment facility; provides pediatric cardiac surgery services in affiliation with the Cardiac Surgery Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; has the state’s only center for heart and lung transplants; and has one of the most active kidney transplant centers in the country. Saint Barnabas is an affiliate of the Saint Barnabas Health Care System, which includes nine additional hospitals in the state. The Saint Barnabas Health Care System annually trains 443 residents and fellows in nineteen residency programs and is a teaching affiliate of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Morris Saffron.
Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School. Originally an all-male Catholic college founded in 1868 by Benedictine monks, Saint Benedict’s dropped its college program in 1910 in favor of a college preparatory curriculum. Over the next five decades the Newark school developed a reputation as an academic and athletic powerhouse. Although Saint Benedict’s enjoyed growing enrollment and unprecedented success through the 1960s, changing demographics and a negative image of the city led to its closing in 1972. After a one-year hiatus it reopened, demonstrating the monks’ commitment to Newark. Now serving a predominantly African American and Hispanic student body, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the school was in the midst of a fifty-million-dollar endowment and building campaign to ensure its future.
Saint Clare’s Hospital. Opened in 1953 as an extension of the Saint Francis Health Resort in Denville (founded in 1895), Saint Clare’s Hospital is operated by the Roman Catholic Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. Enlarged in 1984, it is today part of the Saint Clare’s Health System, which also maintains hospitals in Boonton, Dover, and Sussex. Its geriatric services operate the Franciscan Oaks Continuing Care Retirement Community and the Saint Francis Residential Community in Denville. Since 1998, Saint Clare’s hospitals in Denville and Dover have included oncological facilities operated by Manhattan’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the only off-center facilities of this institution.
Saint John’s Church. The first Roman Catholic congregation in Newark was established in 1826. Saint John’s original wooden church, completed in 1828, burned down shortly thereafter and was replaced by a stone building. The Reverend Patrick Moran (pastor, 1833-1866) enlarged the church according to his own design, adding the present neo-Gothic facade constructed of Newark brownstone. Further additions to the original building were made in the 1930s. Today the parish serves commuters and the urban poor. Saint John’s Church was given landmark status by the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office and has been designated a National Historic Site.
Saint Michael’s Medical Center.Four Sisters of the Poor of Saint Francis arrived in Newark in 1867 to staff a thirteen-bed hospital in a converted residence. The three-story 150-bed Saint Michael’s Hospital, built to accommodate escalating demand, opened in 1871, and Saint Michael’s was officially incorporated by the state legislature. Soon outpatient services and a women’s hospital were added. In 1895, Saint Michael’s expanded again, doubling its beds. An early patient was Annie Oakley, who was treated for a back injury in 1901. By 1914, 127 beds were added and yet a third wing was built. In 1930, a nursing school was created, and in 1942, a five-story maternity wing. Bed capacity peaked at 500 in 1959. Saint Michael’s pioneered in cardiac care, opening the state’s first cardiac clinic in 1937, the first cardiac catheterization laboratory in 1949, and performing New Jersey’s first open-heart surgery in 1959. Saint Michael’s Medical Center, a member of the Cathedral Healthcare System of the Archdiocese of Newark, is presently a 357-bed regional care, teaching, and research facility.
Saint Peter’s College. Saint Peter’s College, the Jesuit College of New Jersey, was chartered by the state on April 3, 1872; it now offers a liberal arts education in thirty-eight bachelor’s and ten associate’s degree programs in addition to four master’s programs with numerous concentrations. The main campus is on Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City with course offerings on the Jersey City Waterfront and a branch campus for adult learners in Englewood Cliffs.
In 1870 Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley of Newark invited a group of French Jesuits to found a college for men in Jersey City and take over Saint Peter’s parish on Grand Street. The college, with its Preparatory Division, began classes on September 2,1878.
The college closed temporarily in 1918 but, under the leadership of Dean Robert I. Gannon, S.J., it reopened in 1930 in the Chamber of Commerce Building in downtown Jersey City. In 1932 Saint Peter’s initiated its evening division and adopted the peacock as its symbol. It moved to its present location on Kennedy Boulevard in 1936.
One of twenty-eight American Jesuit colleges and universities, Saint Peter’s has been fully coeducational since 1966, with a student population reflecting the rich diversity of the metropolitan area. The college opened residence halls in 1984. In autumn 2003, Saint Peter’s enrolled 2,500 undergraduates, with 40 percent of the full-time students in residence, and 600 graduate students.
Saint Peter’s Preparatory School.This Jesuit high school near the Hudson River waterfront on Grand Street in Jersey City serves young men in grades nine through twelve. College preparatory classes began on September 2, 1878, under the Charter of Saint Peter’s College issued by the state of New Jersey in 1872. The preparatory school and college grew together as part of Saint Peter’s parish, which had had an elementary school since 1850 and was taken over by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1871 at the request of Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley of the Newark Catholic archdiocese. It was not until after 1900 that the documents of Saint Peter’s distinguish enrollment between the high school and the college.
Founded by French Jesuits to serve the sons of Catholic immigrants, originally mostly of Irish ancestry, Saint Peter’s Prep has educated young men commuting from a broad geographic area. For the 2002-2003 year, 940 students traveled from 102 New Jersey communities and 2 boroughs of New York City. Ninety-nine percent of Saint Peter’s Prep graduates attend four-year colleges and universities, including many highly selective institutions.
Saint Peter’s University Hospital.Saint Peter’s was founded in 1872 as a sixteen-bed hospital. Located in New Brunswick and sponsored by the diocese of Metuchen, by 2001 it had grown to a 420-bed facility. Saint Peter’s became one of only ten hospitals in the nation to receive the prestigious designation of "magnet" status, conferred by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, for excellence in nursing. In its role as University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School teaching affiliate, Saint Peter’s provides residency training for doctors specializing in nine different fields of medicine. Saint Peter’s is the state’s only Center of Excellence in Maternal-Child Health, and its maternity service is one of the largest in the nation.
Saint Vincent Academy. A Catholic high school for girls located in Newark, Saint Vincent Academy was established in 1869 as a finishing school for young women that also included an elementary school for girls and boys. The elementary school closed in 1967, while what had become a high school expanded in size and programs to include business as well as industrial arts courses. Today the school, run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, provides a college preparatory curriculum for approximately three hundred students from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Salem. 2.6-square-mile city in Salem County. "New Salem” was founded in 1675 by English Quaker John Fenwick as the capital of Fenwick’s Colony in the province of West Jersey. It was the first permanent English settlement in the Delaware River Valley. Fenwick’s innovative democratic form of government influenced others to immigrate to West Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1695 Salem was incorporated, and in 1858, chartered as a city by the state legislature.
Salem became a busy colonial port of entry and site of government, commerce, and industry. During the Revolutionary War, the British occupied Salem briefly in 1778. Important nineteenth-century industries here were glass, canning, floor coverings, milling, and shipping. Salem continues as the county seat of Salem County, a port of entry, and a site of glass and electrical components manufacturing. Historic neighborhoods are mostly comprised of single-unit houses built before 1939. Today, the streets that John Fenwick laid out in 1675, Market Street and Broadway, are historic districts on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. In 2000 the population of 5,857 was 57 percent black and 37 percent white. The median household income in 2000 was $25,846. For complete census figures, see chart, 136.
Salem Community College. Located in Carney’s Point Township, Salem Community College began as a career education center in 1957 and became the Salem County Technical Institute in 1958. In 1971 it affiliated with Wilmington College in Delaware and became Salem Community College upon receiving degree-granting authority in 1972. It achieved Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools regional accreditation in 1979. Salem Community College is particularly well known for having the nation’s only associate degree program in scientific glassblowing technology. Facilities established since 1998 include a five-thousand-square-foot Glass Center, the Paul J. Stankard Gallery, a distance-learning center, and a classroom center in the city of Salem.
Salem County. 349.75-square-mile county located in the southwestern part of the state. Salem’s name is derived from the Hebrew word shalom, meaning "peace.” The county is the site of the first permanent English-speaking settlement on the Delaware River in 1675. The first European arrivals, however, were Dutch traders, followed by Swedes and Finns in 1638, who established New Sweden, of which Salem County was a part. An attempt at English settlement followed in the 1640s, but failed after a few years. From the outset, relations between the county’s native peoples, the Lenape, and the Europeans were generally amicable, so that when English Quaker John Fenwick arrived in 1675, he and his fellow colonists built upon these peaceful precedents. Local tradition maintains that Fenwick treatied with the Lenape beneath the Salem Oak, still a revered landmark in Salem City.
Fenwick’s arrival marked the beginning of the first Quaker colony in North America, predating Pennsylvania by seven years. Known as the Salem Tenth, the colony originally encompassed both present-day Salem and Cumberland counties. It slowly began attracting settlers reflecting the developing diversity of the Middle Atlantic colonies. Salem City was planned as the "shire town” of the little colony, and remains so today as the seat of county government. Nonetheless, Fenwick’s settlement was relatively quickly outpaced by nearby Philadelphia as the region’s commercial and cultural hub, due largely to that city’s more favorable location. Salem County’s towns and villages developed as local and regional centers of trade.
The county was the scene of some military activity during the American Revolution. Both the Continental and British armies occupied the county in 1778 while on foraging expeditions. The British occupation came to be known as the Salem Raid, during which time several skirmishes occurred with members of the local militia. Most horrific, however, was the Hancock House massacre in which the Queen’s Rangers carried out a surprise raid on the militia’s outpost at Hancock’s Bridge, bayoneting a number of militiamen to death. The house remains as a historic shrine, rescued from destruction through the efforts of the Salem County Historical Society in the 1930s.
The Revolution marked the last time that war directly touched Salem County soil. The events leading up to the Civil War, however, greatly affected the county’s citizenry. One route of the Underground Railroad passed through the county, and a documented station survives today in Salem City, as well as a number of other associated sites. Salem County has long been home to an important African American community. Mount Pisgah A.M.E. Church in Salem was founded in 1800 and is one of America’s oldest African American churches. During the Civil War, nearby Fort Delaware was used as a prison for captured Confederates, and hundreds of soldiers who died there lie in Finns Point National Cemetery in Pennsville.
Industrial development did not take place to any great degree until the mid-nineteenth century, with the notable exceptions of the glassmaking and shipbuilding industries. Casper Wistar established the first successful glassworks in America in 1739 in Alloway Township, and the Reeve Brothers operated a prosperous and technologically innovative shipyard in Alloway village in the early nineteenth century. Most industrial activity, however, began in earnest in the 1860s, including glassmaking, food processing, ice cream making, and the floor covering manufacturing. With this modest industrial expansion also came an accompanying growth in population, although the county still remained largely rural and agricultural. One of the most interesting settlements—Alliance—was established as an agricultural colony for Jewish immigrants in the 1880s in Pittsgrove Township and environs. In the late nineteenth century the DuPont Company established a gunpowder works in Carney’s Point, initiating a great period of industrial expansion later spurred on by the military needs of World War I.
An improved and expanded network of highways in the twentieth century, including the construction of the Harding Highway (U.S. Route 40), the Delaware Memorial Bridge, New Jersey Turnpike, and Interstate 295, have perhaps brought about more change locally than any other single factor, for these transportation improvements mitigated the county’s previously isolated location. Although the county remains largely agricultural, urban and industrial sites have developed in the riverfront communities. Despite this modest development, however, the county retains to a remarkable degree its traditional character. An astonishing array of historic architecture survives throughout the county, including a unique concentration of eighteenth-century patterned-brick buildings, in which dark-hued brick were used to create designs on the exterior walls. One early example, the Abel and Mary Nicholson House (1722), Elsinboro, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2000, the first such designation in the county. Two National Register Historic Districts are also to be found in Salem City. State, county, and religious organizations maintain a number of historic sites throughout the county, which serves as the southern anchor of the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail. Perhaps most notable, however, is the large number of residents who can trace their family histories here a century and more, including many de-scendents of the original seventeenth-century European and African settlers.
In 2000, the population of 64,285 was 81 percent white, 15 percent black, with a median family income of $45,573. The county consists of fifteen municipalities: Alloway, Car-neys Point, Elmer, Elsinboro, Lower Alloways Creek, Mannington, Oldmans, Penns Grove, Pennsville, Pilesgrove, Pittsgrove, Quinton, Salem City, Upper Pittsgrove, and Woodstown.
Quaker founder John Fenwick boasted in 1675 that Salem County was a "terrestrial Canaan, where the land floweth with milk and honey.” Three centuries later, the county remains a land rich in history and scenic beauty and one of the Northeast’s most unspoiled rural areas.
