Madison. 4.0-square-mile borough in Morris County. Madison, remembered in history by an enduring nickname, "The Rose City,” broke away from Chatham Township on Christmas Eve, 1899, to form a new borough.
Originally known as Bottle Hill, the town was founded in about 1740. It became Madison in i834, adopting the name of President James Madison. By i900 Madison, center of the nation’s largest rose-growing industry, had more than fifty greenhouses supplying millions of cut roses every year. They were shipped to New York City markets from the Madison depot of the Morris and Essex Railroad. The industry gradually died after World War II from competition by other states and nations. There are now no rose growers in the area. Drew University, which opened in i867 as a theological seminary near the western edge of town, has become a multifaceted university. Madison’s multimillion-dollar municipal building, which opened in i935, honors Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr., who died in Europe in 1930 in an automobile accident. It also recalls his mother, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, the major town benefactor. Across the street from the municipal building is the Collegiate Gothic railroad station where a large portion of the town’s adult population each day boards trains to commute to jobs in New York City.
The 2000 population of i6,530 was 90 percent white. The median household income in 2000 was $82,847.
Magnetite. Magnetite (Fe3O4) is a common, dark iron oxide that typically forms octahedral crystals or massive deposits. Historically, magnetite ore is New Jersey’s chief economic mineral along with other related iron minerals such as limonite, hematite, and goethite (bog iron). New Jersey magnetite mining began by the early 1700s or earlier; more than four hundred magnetite mines once existed in New Jersey. New Jersey iron was an important asset during the Revolutionary War. The largest magnetite production occurred in the Dover-Rockaway region of Morris and surrounding counties. Commercial mining of magnetite is not currently feasible in New Jersey.
Magnolia. 1-square-mile borough in north-central Camden County. Once part of the original Third Tenth of old Gloucester County, Magnolia was formed from Centre Township (1915) and Clementon Township (1915 and 1916). The Albertsons, Webbs, and Barretts were among the earliest families to settle here in the late seventeenth century. The name "Magnolia” was borrowed in i888 from the name of the Philadelphia-Atlantic City railroad station located in the borough. The railroad and a later trolley line that terminated at Camden City stimulated development.
The borough had its peak growth in the i950s and is today a suburban community consisting largely of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century residences. It is bisected in a north-south direction by a rail line; commercial developments have grown up along its major roads: Evesham Road, which crosses the community in an east-west direction, and the White Horse Pike and Warwick Road, both of which cut through it in a north-south direction.
The 2000 population of 4,409 was 77 percent white and i8 percent black. In 2000 the median household income was $43,728.
Magowan, Frank A. (b. 1858; d. 1915). Mayor. Elected mayor of one of New Jersey’s most important cities at the age of twenty-nine, Frank A. Magowan’s meteoric rise in New Jersey politics led many to believe he was destined for the U.S. Senate or the governor’s mansion. Even though Trenton prospered during his two terms as mayor, his promising political career ended in scandal. After an affair with a mistress turned him into an embezzler, Magowan was committed to Trenton Psychiatric hospital in i9i4. He was found wandering the streets of Hoboken in a stupor in i9i5, and taken to a hospital where he died the next day.
Maguire, Mathew (b. 1854; d. Jan. i, 1917). Labor leader and politician. Born in New York City of Irish parents, Mathew Maguire moved to Paterson, where he started factory work at the age of fourteen. He completed a machinist apprenticeship in i87i and moved to Brooklyn, where he worked for the Columbia Iron Company. He was elected secretary of the International Association of Machinists and Blacksmiths’ Union and helped organize the New York Central Labor Union, a federation of fifty-three unions. He served as an executive committee member of the Eight-Hour League, and appeared before President Ulysses S. Grant demanding a shorter workday for government employees. Maguire organized the first Labor Day Parade in New York City on September 5, i882, and proposed an annual parade as a tribute to working people. President Grover Cleveland presented Maguire with the souvenir pen that he used to sign the Labor Day Bill (1894). Maguire returned to Paterson in i889, and joined the Socialist party in 1890. He was elected secretary of Paterson’s Machinists’ Local 344 and published the union’s first journal. Entering politics in i894, Maguire was elected to the Board of Aldermen on the Socialist-Labor ticket and served four years in office. In i896, he was nominated as the vice president of the United States on the Socialist ticket.
Mahwah. 25.7-square-mile town in Bergen County. First settled by a widow, Blandina Bayard, who established a trading post on the Ramapo River in 1700, Mahwah was then part of New Barbados. It was part of the precinct of Saddle River in 1716, Franklin Township in 1771, Ho-Ho-Kus Township in 1849, and became Mahwah in 1944. In its earliest period, the area was primarily extensive farmlands; estates were established through the second half of the nineteenth century; and industrial development and suburbanization became important in the twentieth century. Mahwah is the site of Ramapo College and is the home of the Ramapough Mountain Indians. The municipality houses the national headquarters of several large corporations, electronics and health industries distribution facilities, and printing businesses. In 2000 the population of Mahwah was 24,062; 88 percent was white and 6 percent Asian. The median household income in 2000 was $79,500. For complete census figures, see chart, 133.
Maidenform. Maidenform was originally formed in 1925 by Enid Bissett and William and Ida Rosenthal as the Enid Manufacturing Company in New York City. The firm moved its manufacturing operations to Bayonne in 1922, and its administrative offices to their current location on Avenue E by 1927, changing its name to the Maidenform Brassiere Company. Famous for its "I dreamed… in my Maidenform bra” advertising campaign, Maidenform became a leading brassiere and women’s apparel manufacturer. Today, Maidenform remains a privately held firm and employs 245 people at its administrative offices in Bayonne.
Manahawkin. Village in Stafford Township, Ocean County, that has existed since at least 1740. An Indian tribe once lived there, and the name is thought by some interpreters to mean "good cornland.” Situated off Manahawkin Lake, the village is the social center of Stafford Township. It also is the jumping-off place for travelers bound east for Long Beach Island, whose population swells in summer. A Baptist church built in 1758 is still standing; it has served many denominations.
The boyhood home of William Newell, governor of New Jersey just prior to the Civil War and originator of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, Manahawkin was one of the stops on a U.S. mail stage line run along the Jersey Shore, which was inaugurated in 1853. It whisked passengers to New York in a day and boosted the area’s popularity as a summer resort. That popularity was enhanced in 1871 with the establishment of a railroad line connecting Philadelphia with the region. A road taking cars from Manahawkin over the bay to Long Beach Island was built to replace a railroad spur abandoned in 1923.
Manalapan. 30.85-square-mile township in western Monmouth County. Manalapan— its Native American name has varying interpretations—was incorporated in 1848, taken from Freehold Township. Historically Manalapan was a major farming area, the principal site of a major Revolutionary War battle, the home of a Civil War training camp, and an important spiritual landmark, the Old Tennent Church. Agrarian life was centered on small communities, including some with mills. Many left their names on the land. One settlement, formerly the township’s commercial core, separated in 1888 when Englishtown became a borough. A second, Tennent, later became the township’s business and municipal district. A third, Woodville or Little Africa, located on the Millstone Township border, is a noteworthy nineteenth-century African American settlement.
British forces relocating from Philadelphia to New York in June 1778 were challenged by the American army on the 28th, largely in Manalapan, in the crucial Battle of Monmouth, a strategic victory that influenced the course of the war. The battlefield is now a New Jersey state park. Some of the action was around the First Presbyterian Church of Freehold, known as Old Tennent for two early clergymen. In the latter third of the twentieth century, Manalapan was extensively subur-banized by single-family houses and became home to the headquarters of the Monmouth County Library. Route 9, bisecting eastern Manalapan, creates a major commuting route. A massive 1960s Levitt project, Monmouth Heights, spurred suburban development.
The 2000 population of 33,423 was 92 percent white. The median household income in 2000 was $83,575.
Manasquan. 1.4-square-mile borough in Monmouth County. Located on the Atlantic Ocean and bordered on the south by the Manasquan River, Manasquan was originally part of the townships of Shrewsbury, Howell, and finally Wall before incorporating as a borough in 1887. Its name derives from the Lenape word manatah-squawhan, meaning "stream of the island for women,”referring to an island in the river where the women and children would be safe while the men fished and hunted.
Several men living in Shrewsbury and Middletown purchased the area from Native Americans in 1685. It remained agricultural until the early nineteenth century when summer visitors began to arrive for fishing and bathing. As a village became established, visitors built summer bungalows on the beachfront. In the early twentieth century, pound fishing and shipbuilding added to the economy.
Surrounded by predominately single-family homes, the village has developed into a business district for the service and retail industries. Tourists still increase the borough’s population in summer, but many of Manasquan’s beachfront bungalows have been converted to year-round homes. In 2000, the population of 6,310 was 98 percent white. The 2000 median household income was $63,079. For complete census figures, see chart, 134.
Manchester. With its 82.6 square miles, Manchester Township is one of Ocean County’s and the state’s largest communities. It began its municipal life in the closing days of the Civil War when the state legislature (April 6,1865) created it from 34,000 acres of Dover Township land. A section of Manchester was incorporated as the Borough of Lakehurst in 1921.
The township was named for Manchester, England. A New York banker originally from that city was one of a group of English merchants that purchased the acreage from Mon-mouth County in 1841. The prime mover in Manchester Village’s development was a transplanted New Yorker, William ("King of the Pines”) Torrey. Important enterprises were charcoal, lumber, and railroading.
The greatest surge in population came with the post-World War II suburban boom that brought a wave of senior citizens to Ocean County, especially after 1965. Manchester in particular became a haven for "adult communities” such as Leisure Village, Leisure Knoll, and Crestwood Village. The mostly semiru-ral township has large wooded areas and stretches west from a point near Toms River through the vast Pine Barrens region. Routes 70 and 37 are major highways.
The original 1865 population of 1,084 climbed to 38,928 (94 percent white) by the 2000 Census. The median household income for 2000 was $29,525.
M&M’S. Forrest Mars, grandson of Frank Mars, founder of the privately owned candy dynasty, introduced M&M’s in 1940, in partnership with R. Bruce Murrie, son of the president of Hershey Chocolate, Mars’s archrival. M&M, Ltd., named for Mars and Murrie, first manufactured M&M’s with specially modified Hershey machinery in Newark, New Jersey. The impetus behind M&M’s came from the desire to find a chocolate candy that wouldn’t melt, even in very hot climates. Today, the M&M factory in Hackettstown stamps the tiny white M on 200,000 M&M’s each minute, or 100 million M&M’s every eight hours.
Mannington. 38-square-mile township in Salem County. Mannington was first named East Fenwick by John Fenwick, but it soon became known as Mannington, probably in honor of Mane to, a local Lenape chief. Before the American Revolution, secret Catholic services were held in the 1720 Kiger house, defying a ban on Catholicism. The township was incorporated in 1798. Early industries included agriculture, several distilleries, a gristmill, limekilns, and the manufacture of phosphate. In 1836, Joseph Bassett discovered marl in Mannington Township, giving rise to the development of several marl pits. This discovery was a boon to agriculture, as it enriched depleted soil. Hamlets and villages include Claysville, Welchville, Halltown, Marshalltown, and Mannington Hill. The Memorial Hospital of Salem County is located in Mannington, as is Mannington Mills, the well-known floor-covering company. Open farmland best describes this township today.
In 2000, the population of 1,559 was 76 percent white and 21 percent black and the median household income was $52,625.
Mannington Mills. Based in Salem, Mannington Mills was founded in 1915 by Scottish immigrant John B. Campbell as the Salem Linoleum Company. The company survived three disastrous fires, World War II, and the Great Depression. Still privately held, and now one of the largest flooring companies in the country with plants in North Carolina and Georgia as well as South Jersey, Mannington produces carpet, vinyl, laminate, and wood flooring products for commercial and residential needs.
Mansfield (Burlington County). 23.04-square-mile township. Mansfield is situated southeast of Bordentown and Florence townships, with a small stretch along the Delaware River. Earliest settlers were Quakers, many of whom had been wealthy English landowners, who began arriving in 1677. It is one of the original townships of Burlington County, incorporated in 1798. Florence and part of Bordentown Township both broke off from Mansfield in 1852. The township’s principal population area was, and remains, the centrally located village of Columbus, originally called Encroaching Corners due to disputes among landowners, and later named BlackHorse. Other villages still in existence today are Georgetown and Kinkora.
A Revolutionary War skirmish at Petticoat Bridge diverted Hessian mercenaries’ attention so Gen. George Washington’s troops could safely cross the Delaware River on Christmas Eve 1776. Prince Lucian Murat, nephew of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte, lived on Main Street in Columbus through 1829. Most of the township’s historic homes still stand today. The economy is still primarily agricultural, although a major move toward suburbanization began when the Homestead at Mansfield retirement community was built in the 1980s, drawing new residents from as far as New York City, many of whom subsequently griped about the location of the new county landfill next door. The 2000 population of 5,090 was 95 percent white. The 2000 median household income was $50,757.
Mansfield (Warren County). 30.50-square-mile township. The township was separated from Greenwich in 1754. Historically significant villages are Beattystown, Karrsville, Mount Bethel, Port Murray, Rock-port, and Anderson.
In the past the Morris Canal, turnpikes, and railroads delineated major transportation routes. Rockport and Port Murray prospered along the Morris Canal. Beattystown historical district on the old King’s Highway is on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places, along with the Mount Bethel stone church, built in 1844. In 1795 Joseph Anderson founded a settlement and built a hotel at the fork in the road. Today the road leads to Hillcrest, a predominantly black community created in 1926 when real estate speculators divided farmland into subplots and promoted the development to Newark’s black residents. Undersized, unbuildable lots were sold on easy credit and a promise of lucrative employment at nonexistent factories resulting in contracts forfeited and lots repossessed. Those who had clear title formed the basis of today’s integrated community.
Population in 2000 of 6,653 was 91 percent white. Median household income in 2000 was $61,763. For complete census figures, see chart, 134.
Mantell, Robert Bruce (b. Feb. 71854; d. June 27, 1928). Actor. Born in Scotland, Robert Bruce Mantell first came to the United States in the 1870s, and soon became one of America’s best-known Shakespearean performers. Mantell established an acting company that toured all over the country. His four marriages were all to his leading ladies. In 1907, he purchased the historic Leonard homestead on Avenue D, Atlantic Highlands, and renamed it Brucewood. His players rehearsed there in a converted barn. In 1911 Mantell’s troupe performed Macbeth to benefit Atlantic Highlands’s Grand View Hose Company 2, which subsequently changed its name to the Robert B. Mantell Hose Company.
Mantoloking. 0.59-square-mile borough. Mantoloking is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Ocean County. A topographic map of 1872 showed just two buildings on the sandy peninsula known as Swan Point: the Life-Saving Station and a boarding house. The salt hay meadow was used as common land for mainlanders to pasture cattle. In the 1870s, Frederick Downer and Frank Hall, land developers from New York City, invented Mantoloking as a resort community. In 1883, a railroad spur and a bridge connected the resort to the mainland. The Mantoloking Tennis Club was established in 1887 followed by the Mantoloking Yacht Club in 1896. The borough was incorporated in 1911, when it was split off from Brick Township. Norwegian fisherman worked the Downer fish pounds off the beach from 1892 until 1944 when a hurricane destroyed their nets. Lisa Downer (daughter of Frederick) established an art studio in 1910 for her wa-tercolor society. Several of the stately houses in Mantoloking were designed by Stanford White. Today it is a residential community.
In 2000 the population of 423 was 98 percent white. The 2000 median household income was $105,841.
Mantua. 15.90-square-mile township in Gloucester County that is divided into four sections: Mantua, Barnsboro, Sewell, and Centre City. Early European settlers in the middle of the eighteenth century built homes and farms on large tracts of land along Mantua Creek, after which the township was named. According to legend, a group of Native Americans who made their home along the creek heard a chorus of frogs and christened themselves the Manta, which means frog. During the nineteenth century, Mantua’s central location on the West Jersey Railroad was popular with farmers for shipping their produce. In 1853 Mantua was officially taken from Greenwich and organized into a separate township. During the late 1880s a cannery, hotel, carriage factory, blacksmith, and a steam gristmill contributed to the small but bustling rural township. Although today the township remains rural, with a number of farms, it has continued to attract industries, particularly farms that have built large warehouses. Ceres Park, a nature reserve, and Chestnut Branch Park are popular recreation destinations.
In 2000, the population of 14,217 was 96 percent white. The median household income was $58,256 according to the 2000 census.
Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth at Bordentown. The Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, which operated until 1955, was founded in 1866 as the Ironsides Normal School. Its founder and first principal, the Rev. Walter Rice of the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, established the school based on the philosophy that the combination of industrial and academic training were important to developing the minds of New Jersey’s black youth. The name was taken from the USS Constitution, whose nickname was Old Ironsides. Ironsides was a nondenominational school that opened with an enrollment of eight boarding students. The school was originally housed in a private frame house on West State Street in Borden-town. Operating support came solely from private contributions.
Rice modeled the school’s industrial education curriculum and religious studies component after Tuskegee Institute of Alabama. Ironsides School became known as the Tuskegee of the North. Religious and moral training courses were taught along with separate vocational courses for girls and boys. Trades taught to male students included agriculture, auto mechanics, woodworking, general mechanics, and printing. The girls were taught sewing, canning, beauty culture, and dressmaking. Academic courses open to all students included composition, mathematics, public speaking, music, art, and physical education.
The school was incorporated in 1886 under the name of Technical Industrial Educational Association of New Brunswick. Ironsides School came under the control of the state of New Jersey in 1894 and was maintained as a racially segregated boarding school. School operations were assigned to a special board of trustees. Two years later, the state board of education leased the Ironsides property for $35,000 and moved the school to the sprawling 204-acre tract of land. From 1903 until 1938, the state remodeled old buildings on the estate and had new ones erected, including boys’ and girls’ dormitories, an administration building, a teacher’s cottage, and a trades and assembly building. A new athletic field was completed in 1938 at the cost of $45,000.
In 1897 the state appropriated the first annual school budget of $5,000. James M. Gregory of Howard University in Washington, D.C., was appointed principal, succeeding Rice. The first commencement was held in 1898; two students graduated. The state legislature transferred control and management of the school to the New Jersey State Board of Education in 1900. By 1945 the state commissioner of education was in control of the school, subject to the authority of the state board. By an act of the state legislature in 1948, the school’s name was changed to the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth at Bordentown.
Bordentown School closed in June 1955, one year after the May 17,1954, Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing the segregation of black children and white children in public schools.
The school property is currently administered by the state’s Juvenile Justice Commission and used as a correctional institution. The structures are on the state and national registers of historic places.
Manville. 2.5-square-mile borough in Somerset County, formed from Hillsborough Township on April 18, 1929. Inventors H. W. Johns and C. B. Manville joined forces in the late nineteenth century to manufacture asbestos building products, moving their plant to a 328-acre farm in Hillsborough Township in 1912. A bustling community sprang up around the plant, home to immigrant families from Pennsylvania coal towns, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. By the late 1920s nearly 5,000 lived here, all of them dependent upon the prosperity of the asbestos plant. A mix of Polish, Slavic, Ukrainian, German, Hungarian, and Italian people built their homes on twenty-five-foot wide lots. The plant closed in 1984. Empty for a decade, the sprawling complex was demolished in the mid-1990s, and its site is now occupied by a used car auction. Periodic flooding, especially in the Lost Valley section, has added to the borough’s woes. Saint Mary’s Church, built in 1917 and destroyed by fire in 1998, sported the onion dome typical of Byzantine Catholic churches. South Main Street, the principal shopping area, is now the focus of revitalization efforts. Elsewhere, modest single-family homes predominate. The 2000 population of 10,343 residents was 96 percent white. The 2000 median household income was $51,258.
Mapes, James Jay (b. May 29, 1806; d. Jan. 10,1866). Agriculturist. James Jay Mapes, a native of Maspeth, Long Island, wore many hats—chemist, inventor, educator, and editor. He worked chiefly in New York City, but his passion was scientific agriculture. In 1847 he bought a worn-out farm in what is now Newark’s Weequahic section, near Irvington, and put into practice his principles of fertilization, drainage, crop rotation, and seeding. He developed an artificial fertilizer, Mapes Manure, and made his property a showplace. His "book farming” was scorned by some and praised as pioneering by others, like his friend Horace Greeley.
Maple Shade. 3.72-square-mile township in Burlington County along its western border with Camden County. Maple Shade was originally part of Chester Township, an early town along the Pennsauken Creek, founded in 1688 and chartered by the British in 1712. Maple Shade remained a rural village until 1885, when Henry Fahr opened the first store. In 1892, the township’s development began in earnest when several Philadelphia businessmen and speculators formed the Maple Shade Land and Development Company. In 1922, Maple Shade and neighboring Moorestown both seceded from Chester Township and became independent municipalities. A 1945 referendum formally established the township’s name as Maple Shade.
Apartment construction began in the 1940s and continued for more than twenty years, especially after Route 73 and Kings Highway evolved as major thoroughfares. Major apartment complexes now exist along both roads. Routes 38 and 73 have significant commercial development, and the downtown business district was refurbished in the 1990s. The 2000 population of 19,079 was 83 percent white and 7 percent black. The 2000 median household income was $45,426.
