Bemmels, Cyrus W. (b. 1912; d. 1993).Inventor. Working for Permacel Tape, once a division of Johnson & Johnson, Cyrus Bemmels secured twelve patents relating to tape-making processes. His greatest achievement was discovering how to make maximum-strength tape by embedding parallel strands of filament in the tape’s adhesive, resulting in a product five to ten times stronger than conventional tape without being thicker or less flexible. Bemmels’s tape found ready acceptance in the packing industry. Bem-mels’s reinforced strapping tapes at one time generated more revenue for Johnson & Johnson than any other product except the Band-Aid.
Benedictines. A Roman Catholic religious order composed of independent monasteries of men or women, the Benedictines follow the Rule for Monks written by Benedict of Nursia, Italy (c. 480-c. 547). Benedictines in New Jersey trace their history to Saint Mary’s Priory, founded in Newark in 1857, when Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley asked Archabbot Boniface Wimmer of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, to take over the care of Saint Mary’s Parish. In 1868 the community opened Saint Benedict’s College (now Saint Benedict’s Prep). The community was granted abbatial status in 1884. In 1925 it purchased the Luther Kountz estate (Delbarton) in Morristown and established a priory there. A boarding school for boys was opened on the site in 1939. In 1956 the title "Saint Mary’s Abbey” was transferred to the house in Morristown, and the community in Newark resumed the title "Saint Mary’s Priory.” In 1968, the Newark community was given abbatial status and took the name "Newark Abbey.”
A monastery for women was established on Shipman Street, near Saint Mary’s Priory, in 1857. Sisters continued to reside in Newark until 1968. A second monastery of women, founded in Elizabeth in 1864, sponsored a secondary school for women, Benedictine Academy.
The Ottilien branch of the Benedictines opened Little Flower Monastery (now Saint Paul’s Abbey) in Newton in 1924, and the Sylvestrine branch opened Holy Face Monastery in Clifton in 1951.
Morris "Moe” Berg at the Centennial of Baseball game in Cooperstown, New York, 1939.
Philadelphia, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge was engineered by Ralph Modjeski (engineer of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge) and designed by the Philadelphia architect Paul Philippe Cret. With its 1,750-foot main span, the longest suspension bridge in the world when completed in 1926 after four years of construction, it was originally named the Delaware River Bridge and charged a twenty-five-cent toll. Among its distinguishing features are its ornate anchorages (including the seals of Philadelphia, Camden, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) and deep stiffening trusses above the main roadway deck. Modjeski chose lighter and cheaper steel, as opposed to concrete, for the two 385-foot towers.
Benezet, Anthony (b. Jan. 31, 1713; d. May 3, 1784). Quaker educator and reformer. Benezet was born in San Quentin, in Picardy, France. His Huegenot parents, Jean Etienne Benezet and Judith de la Mejenelle, fled persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and eventually settled in Philadelphia. Benezet joinedthe Society of Friends andspent most of his career teaching at the English Friends Public School, now known as William Penn’s Charter School. In 1734 he married Joyce Marriott of Burlington, New Jersey. Much of his life was spent propagating Quakerism and working to free slaves. One of his more famous antislavery works, A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies on the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes (1766), was written in Burlington during a brief hiatus from teaching. He became an important figure in a transatlantic antislavery movement and corresponded regularly with its leaders, including Wilbur Wilberforce, John Wool man, and Benjamin Rush.
Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Crossing the Delaware River between Camden and Berg, Morris "Moe" (b. Mar. 2,1902;d. May 29,1972). Major league baseball player, lawyer, and OSS agent. Born in New York City, Moe Berg was the son of Ukrainian immigrants Bernard and Rose Tasker Berg. In 1906 the family moved to Newark, where Bernard bought and operated a drugstore. Moe graduated from Barringer High School in Newark in 1918, Princeton University in 1923, and Columbia University Law School in 1930.
His baseball career began in 1923 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and included stints with the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Senators, and, finally, the Boston Red Sox. Berg played his final game in 1939.
Berg joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. His foreign language skills and legal knowledge led to his recruitment for undercover work. His first assignment, in 1943, was in Yugoslavia working behind Nazi lines. Later in the war he joined Project Larson, which required a second undercover operation in Europe to determine the progress of German scientists’ attempts to buildan atomic weapon.
After the war he returned to a civilian career as a lawyer, but worked occasionally for the CIA, the OSS’s successor organization, in the 1950s. Moe Berg never married and spent the final years of his life at his sister Ethel’s home in Newark.
Bergel case. In the spring of 1935 a young German instructor named Lienhard Bergel claimed he was fired from his position at the New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College) for opposing the pro-Nazi views of his department chairman, Friedrich Hauptmann. Bergel’s account of the events, which portrayed Hauptmann as a surrogate for Adolf Hitler, generated enormous press coverage. In response, Rutgers University President Robert A. Clothier appointed a committee of five trustees to look into the controversy. After one of the longest investigations in academic history—involving twenty-one sessions, 110 witnesses, and more than a million words of testimony—the trustees issued a final report that debunked Bergel’s charge of political bias and upheld his dismissal. The matter quickly faded from public view.
The case resurfaced dramatically in 1985, owing largely to the efforts of Alan Silver, a Rutgers alumnus who had been one of Bergel’s key student supporters fifty years before. Silver insistedit was time to "exonerate”Bergel and "right a terrible wrong.” With remarkable persistence—and the editorial backing of the Home News, the region’s largest newspaper—he persuaded President Edward Bloustein to appoint a panel of Rutgers historians to review the Bergel case and publish its findings. No one was more surprised by this turnabout than Bergel himself, then eighty years old and living in retirement. "I’m an old man. I don’t need vindication,” he said. "It is Rutgers that needs vindication. They have dirty linen to air.”
The panel interviewed the surviving participants, including Bergel, Silver, and retired members of the Rutgers faculty. It studied documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Army Intelligence, and the Federal German Republic. The panel concluded that Hauptmann had disseminated pro-Nazi propaganda to his students, that he despised Bergel’s anti-Hitler views, and that his political bias played a role in the decision to terminate Bergel’s employment in 1935. It added, however, that other factors, including budget cuts, declining enrollments, and Bergel’s status as the department’s junior member also worked against his retention.
The panel then noted the unsavory behavior of Rutgers officials in the years following the trustees’ report of 1935. They refused to write recommendations for Bergel, who desperately needed a job. They also concealed the fact that Hauptmann fled to Germany in 1940, leaving behinda string of unpaidbills. Records show that Hauptmann joined the Nazi party a year later and worked as a minor functionary in Slovakia during World War II. Jailed and interrogated, but never prosecuted by the Allies, he died in Austria in 1978.
Bergel went on to a long teaching career at Queens College in New York City. He was struck and killed by an automobile in 1987. Some of his supporters were disappointed that the panel’s report did not lead to a formal apology by Rutgers University. Others viewed the report as a judicious ending to an emotional and complicated case.
Bergen. New Jersey’s first municipality, now part of Jersey City, was established by the Dutch in 1660. The village of Bergen was laid out in a square with eight-hundred-foot palisades, tall fences of pointed wooden stakes. The land inside the palisades was drawn up around two intersecting main streets (present-day Bergen Avenue and Academy Street), creating four quarters. Eight plots were then drawn out in each of the quarters. The village’s palisade lines are still visible on contemporary maps of Jersey City by locating Bergen Square and following the configuration created by Tuers Avenue, Newkirk Street, Van Reypen Street, and Vroom Street. New Jersey’s first church and first school were organized at Bergen in 1660. The first local government, a Court of Inferior Justice, was established in 1661. In 1873 Jersey City consolidated a number of towns, including Bergen, to form its present-day boundaries.
Bergen Community College. This accredited, public two-year college, located in Paramus, offers associate degrees in arts, science, and applied science as well as one-year certificate programs and general education courses. It was established by the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders as the county’s first public two-year college on October 20,1965. Classes began in temporary buildings on the 167-acre site of the Orchard Hills Country Club in September 1968. Construction of permanent facilities totaling 430,000 square feet began in 1969 and was completed in 1973. Student enrollment in 1999 was 12,225. A second phase of construction added classrooms, a library, a theater arts laboratory, and a student center, and was finished in the fall of 2002.
Bergen County. 246.75-square-mile county located in the northeast corner of the state. Bergen County is bounded on the north by New York State, on the east by the Hudson River, on the south by Hudson County, and on the west by Essex and Passaic counties. It was originally part of the New Netherland colony. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited by numerous small family groups of Lenape Indians, notably the Manatthans (Manhattans), Achkinkeshacky (Hackensacks), and Tappaan (Tappan). After failed attempts to settle at Achter Col (Bogota), Pavonia (lower Jersey City), and Vriessendael (Edgewater), Europeans made their first permanent settlement the village of Bergen (Jersey City) in 1658, now in Hudson County. The first permanent settlement in present-day Bergen County was at New Barbado[e]s Neck (Lyndhurst) in 1670. Other major settlements were at New Milford (1677) and at the Indian villages of Acquackanonk (Passaic) (about 1679) and Hackensack (before 1682).
Bergen County was established as one of four counties in New Jersey in 1682, bounded by the Hudson and Hackensack rivers from the New York province line to Newark Bay. It was enlarged in 1710 to include territories west to the Pequonnock and Passaic rivers, at which time Hackensack was made the county seat. European immigrants, predominantly Dutch with some English, French Huguenot, German, Scandinavian, and Polish families, practiced Dutch customs, worshiped in the Dutch Reformed Church, and spoke a unique Jersey Dutch dialect. They developed a distinctive style of Jersey Dutch architecture with south-facing homes constructed of well-dressed red sandstone, often with gambrel roofs and sweeping porch overhangs.
Contested land titles and religious controversy dominated the period leading to the Revolutionary War. On the morning of November 20,1776, British forces under the command of Lord Cornwallis invaded New Jersey, landing at the base of the Palisades along the western shore of the Hudson River at Lower Closter Landing (Alpine) and marched on colonial forces at Fort Lee. Gen. George Washington led a retreat across the Hackensack River at New Bridge (Teaneck/River Edge/New Milford) and on to Newark the following day. Referred to as the Neutral Ground because of the divided loyalties of local inhabitants and the back-and-forth control by both British and American forces, the county saw significant military action throughout the war. Major historic sites exist at New Bridge Landing (River Edge), the Hermitage (Ho-Ho-Kus), and Fort Lee, as well as at the Baylor Massacre site (River Vale).
In the years following the Revolutionary War, the conservative Jersey Dutch citizenry largely returned to the prewar lifestyle. The county’s population grew slowly from 12,601 in 1790, when the figure included 2,301 slaves (nearly 20 percent of the county’s total population) and 192 free blacks, to 22,414 in 1830. The county seat, Hackensack, had 1,000 inhabitants and 150 dwellings in 1830. Farm produce was transported to New York City via the Hackensack River, as well as by country roads and turnpikes. Railroads, introduced in 1835, gradually replaced river transportation, especially after 1859.
In 1837 Passaic County was formed from parts of Bergen and Essex counties, and in 1840 Hudson County was likewise split off from Bergen County, causing a loss of nearly 13,000 inhabitants within a three-year period. The large increases in immigration that occurred elsewhere in the region during much of the nineteenth century did not occur in Bergen County. As the Civil War approached, voters favored conservative issues and candidates and were sometimes viewed as proslavery, though many men served in the Union Army.
Until the middle 1880s, the county was divided into large townships well suited for governing its predominantly rural population. As railroads brought new industries and people into the county, the population began to soar. The newer communities grew resentful of having to support expensive schools, roads, and other needs of outlying regions in the large townships. In early 1894 the legislature passed an act making it easier to establish new boroughs, and twenty-six new municipalities were formed the first year. The splitting up of townships continued until 1924, when the number of municipalities reached seventy— fifty-six boroughs, three cities, two villages, and nine townships.
With urban development came improved public services. Electric street lighting was introduced in Hackensack in 1861; water mains and a public water supply in Hackensack in 1869; telephones in 1882; electricity for homes in Englewood in 1888; hospitals in 1888; and electric trolleys in 1890. Added services resulted in further population growth— from 78,000 to 210,000 between 1900 and 1920. New industries sprang up, including motion picture studios at Fort Lee and surrounding communities along the Palisades. Kuhnert’s Aerodrome in Teterboro promoted interest in aviation and associated businesses; innovations in water filtration and pumping, especially after the construction of reservoirs at Woodcliff Lake and Oradell in 1904 and 1915, respectively, spurred new growth and dramatic physical changes to the landscape.
Camp Merritt was built on 770 acres of Bergenfield, Tenafly, Cresskill, and Dumont. It served from 1917 until 1920 as a debarkation and receiving post for more than one million U.S. military forces during and after World War I. Troops marched through local towns and down the Palisades to ferries waiting along the Hudson River that transported them to larger troopships in the harbor, or they traveled by train to the ferry terminal at Hoboken. Following the war, barracks and other buildings were dismantled and much of the building material was sold for reuse in residential housing throughout the area.
The completion of the George Washington Bridge in 1932 encouraged the growing use of automobiles for commuting to work and shopping. Growth in the county halted briefly during the Depression but sprang anew during the 1940s as jobs and income increased from wartime industries such as Curtis Wright in Wood-Ridge and Bendix in Teterboro. Returning veterans caused an even greater explosion of development, and by i960 Bergen County’s population was second only to Essex County’s in the state. Beginning in the mid-i950s, major shopping malls and commercial centers have contributed to the local economy as well as to congestion and sprawl.
County government is operated by a county executive and a seven-member board of chosen freeholders responsible to the local population.
In 2000, Bergen was the largest and most densely populated county in the state. The population of 884,ii8 was 78 percent white, 5 percent black, ii percent Asian, and 10 percent Hispanic (Hispanics may be any race). Median household income in 2000 was $65,241.
Bergen County Historical Society. Bergen County’s historical society was established on March 4, i902, in Hackensack for the purpose of collecting and preserving documents and data that relate to the county. One of its principal early activities was sponsoring and erecting monuments at significant historical sites, including the locations of the Revolutionary War Fort Lee and the World War I Camp Merritt in Cresskill. This tradition continues with the distinctive blue-and-silver cast-aluminum signs that grace more than 130 sites throughout the county. The society also sponsors a winter lecture series, colonial Christmas concerts, and a library and rare manuscript collection (at Felician College in Lodi). Its priceless collection of colonial Dutch artifacts is exhibited at its headquarters, the state-owned Zabriskie-Steuben House, at New Bridge Landing (now River Edge).
Bergenfield. 3.0-square-mile borough in Bergen County. First settled by the Dutch and French Huguenots in the seventeenth century, Bergenfield remained a quiet farming village until the arrival of the railroad after the Civil War. As the village of Schraalen burgh, it originally encompassed present-day Dumont and Bergenfield. Bergenfield was incorporated as a borough in 1894. Its proximity to New York City made steady growth and urbanization inevitable, with population surges during World War I, as nearby Camp Merritt sought skilled trades people to build and maintain its facilities, and after World War II. The community remains predominantly residential. The commercial hub, along Washington Avenue, has long been one of the most vibrant in Bergen County.
Since 1990 the ethnic diversification has accelerated and Bergenfield has become a fully integrated community. The 2000 census showed a total population of 26,247, of which approximately 63 percent was white, 20 percent Asian, 7 percent black, and 17 percent Hispanic (Hispanics maybe of any race). In 2000, the median household income was $62,i72.For complete census figures, see chart, i30.
Berkeley, Lord John (b. 1607; d. 1678).Lord Proprietor of New Jersey. Lord John Berkeley, baron of Straton, served as a commander during the English Civil War and, while in exile, became a confidant of young James, duke of York (later King James II). Upon the Restoration in i660, Berkeley was given a commission in the naval office, where he served with the duke, Carteret, and William Penn. Early in i664 he headed a royal commission whose objective was to recover England’s colonial dominance in North America from the Dutch. In June of i664, the duke of York drafted an "indenture of bargain and sale,” granting the lands between the Hudson and Delaware rivers to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Lord John Berkeley hoped to profit from the duke’s gift by encouraging colonial settlement; to further this goal he and Carteret permitted a large degree of religious tolerance for potential settlers. However, a number of time-consuming political and legal squabbles foiled Berkeley’s success in the province, and in 1674 he liquidated his share of the New Jersey proprietorship by selling what would later become West Jersey to Quaker John Fenwick (in trust for Edward Byllynge) for one thousand pounds.
Lord John Berkeley.
Berkeley. 42.9-square-mile township along Barnegat Bay in Ocean County. When Berkeley separated from Dover Township in 1875, the township was named for Britain’s original East Jersey landowner, Lord John Berkeley. Originally, the chief pursuits of its citizens were fishing and farming. Today many people live in the township’s several adult communities.
The main section of the township is Bayville, originally known as Potters Creek. Because of the abundance of trees, this area had sizable lumber operations, which supplied wood for homes and ships; the most famous was the Double Trouble Saw Mill. Early in the twentieth century, the seven-story Pinewald Hotel and golf course attracted many visitors, including the prizefighter Jack Dempsey, flamboyant New York mayor Jimmy Walker, and, reputedly, gangster Al Capone.
A landmark sight in the Bayville meadows at Holly Park is the cluster of antennas that once represented a high-power radio transmission system. It was installed in the 1930s to facilitate long-distance communication with overseas points and ships at sea. The system was deactivated in the 1970s when space-based satellite operations were introduced.
Suburban development spurred population growth in the 1970s, from 7,918 to 23,151. The 2000 population of 39,991 was 97 percent white. The median household income in 2000 was $32,134. For complete census figures, see chart, 130.
