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Posts by Jon Booth:

A Windmill and the Advent of Indoor Plumbing

The Olcott School (built 1905) is conspicuous in this photo that depicts eight men astride a 60-foot windmill, which they likely had just erected at 20 Olcott Avenue in Bernardsville, NJ.  The slatted fanwheel and tail are just out of view at the top of the frame.  Windmills like these, a common innovation across the

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156 South Finley, Basking Ridge

In 1870, Mary (Lewis) Goltra (1832-1896), a recent widow, built the house at 156 South Finley Avenue, Basking Ridge, NJ, perhaps with the assistance of her father-in-law, James P. Goltra.  A farmer and local builder, James constructed the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church in the late 1860s.  Eventually, the house was owned by Mary’s daughter, Margaret

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Trapping Foxes in Basking Ridge

When my brother Stuart ‘Budge’ Booth (1939- 2002) was a kid in the early 1950s, he used to go across Maple Avenue and set traps over towards the Great Swamp.  We lived on South Finley Avenue.  In the morning before school he would check his traps, and if there was a fox caught, he would

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  1. This was called "Hunt's Folly". The tunnel was excavated by my 5x great grandfather, Colonel Stephen Hunt, a Revolutionary War…

  2. What a fantastic little known story from the Revolutionary War! There are many others like Belfast, but not all so…

  3. Hi Meredith, Yes, the school was called Oak Twigs. A 1962 news article calls it The Oak Twigs Play School…

  4. I attended nursery school at the Presbyterian Church next to the Big Oak. Was our school named Oak Twigs? I…