A tambourine that belonged to Chief William Arthur Richardson (1872-1935) of Basking Ridge Fire Company No. 1 is a recent addition to the society’s collections. Richardson moved to Basking Ridge by 1910 from Pennsylvania where he had been a fireman and had started using the tambourine in parades. He served as chief in Basking Ridge
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The Bernards Fife and Drum Corps, Bernardsville, NJ, was organized on July 16, 1906 and posed that year for this photo, possibly before a parade. The date is supported by a note on the reverse by Edwin S. Spinning, fire company president, who also identified the building on the right as Bernardsville’s first firehouse. The
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After World War II, Soap Box derbies became a common form of family entertainment for many towns including Peapack-Gladstone and Bernardsville, NJ. The competition was open to youngsters, who constructed a “coaster car” powered by gravity. A standard kit provided the wheels and basic hardware. Ruth Hill Thomson, local historian and writer, collected a group
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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.
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