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

During the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) reorganized in the South and spread north including to New Jersey.  In the Somerset Hills, there were demonstrations and cross burnings reported in Bernardsville, Basking Ridge and Far Hills in 1923.   The resurgent Klan opposed new immigration to the country, especially of Italian and Irish Catholics.

This 1909 real picture postcard shows the original Far Hills, NJ, Train Station with the freight house on the left.   The station was built in the 1890s when the railroad was extended from Bernardsville to Gladstone.   The current concrete Far Hills station replaced it in 1914, but the original was moved.   Most railroad stations can’t

Bill Hine (1924-1997) was affectionately known as the “village guardian” of Basking Ridge.  His full name was Willard Foster Hine, Jr., and he was born in Westfield.  Bill suffered an oxygen deficiency at birth, which left him unable to work at a regular job.  After his family moved to Spencer Road in Basking Ridge in

This early wood schoolhouse, originally called the Jefferson school, stood on the west side of Lyons Road, north of the triangle in Liberty Corner, NJ.  It was built around 1853 to replace an earlier school, which had burned down.   The building is clearly marked on a map from the 1873 Beers Atlas of Somerset County

In 1902 C. Ledyard Blair, who was then in the process of completing the construction of his Blairsden mansion in what is now Peapack-Gladstone, NJ, proposed changing the name of Peapack to Westminster. Obviously, the suggestion didn’t go anywhere.

We bet many attics in the Somerset Hills still contain “antiques” bought at Manning’s Auction in Peapack, N.J.  Robert “Col. Bob” Manning (1926-1994) founded and ran the business (1972-1988), first at the Kay Memorial Building on Willow Avenue and later on Main Street, Peapack.   Residents would flock to the auctions on Friday or Saturday night

Lyons became a stop on the New Jersey West Line railroad (now NJ Transit) when the line was extended to Bernardsville in 1872.  In 1906, the station was a flag stop, meaning trains stopped only on a signal.  In 1910, in the case of William J. Kearns et al.  vs. The Lackawanna, the NJ Board

This red and white pennant from Maple Avenue School in Basking Ridge dates probably to 1948-1969.      Maple Avenue School, also known as Basking Ridge School, was built in 1903 to replace the Brick Academy and Franklin Corners School.   In 1939, it was closed after the new Oak Street School was built.  Bernards Township planned

A matchbox from the Bedminster Inn on Main Street (Route 202) in Bedminster, NJ.   The box pre-dates 1989 when area code 908 replaced 201.  After the Bedminster Inn, the restaurant became Willie’s Taverne and then Delicious Heights.