Rutgers University’s legendary archivist Donald A. Sinclair, for whom the university’s New Jersey collection is named, once remarked after using the New Jersey Room of the Jersey City Free Public Library,that it is a veritable “treasure trove”. . . and that it is. From handwritten documents dating to 1675 to modern databases, it holds a wide array of resources. Jersey City is the oldest settlement in the state. Established in 1660 by the Dutch, it celebrated its 350th anniversary in October. It is also the state’s second largest city.
Main Library
The magnificent Main Library at 472 Jersey Avenue was built in 1899. It boasts a four-story marble staircase, ornate wrought iron railings, and an exterior in the Beaux-Arts Classic style. A view of the building alone is worth the trip!
Established as a separate department in 1964, the New Jersey Room is located on the third floor and houses a special research collection of materials about New Jersey with strong emphasis on Jersey City and Hudson County, which consists of 12 municipalities, including Jersey City, Bayonne, East Newark, Guttenberg, Harrison, Hoboken, Kearny, North Bergen, Secaucus, Union City (the resulting merger of West Hoboken and Union Hill in 1925), Weehawken, and West New York. The collection covers both historical and current information for researching an endless array
of topics.
Genealogy and Local History Collections
With Jersey City’s proximity to Ellis Island and the Port of New York, thousands of immigrants passed through or resided in Hudson County for a generation or two before spreading out across the United States. Consequently, we receive research requests from Alaska and Hawaii, Florida, and all points in between. International requests also find their way to the New Jersey Room and include queries from a Japanese citizen pursuing a Ph.D. regarding an obscure 1926 women’s rights incident in Secaucus, and a Scandinavian tracking the final demise of the Titanic survivors, including one who died in Jersey City.
For the descendants of immigrants our genealogical collections are of great interest. Thanks to the high school and college students who must complete community service time as part of their graduation requirements, we have been able to build an incredible array of databases. Over 100,000 names are in our High School Graduates database. It covers both public and private high schools in all of Hudson County. Similar databases have been created for births, marriages, and obituaries. Both the New Jersey State Census (1885, 1895, 1905, 1915) and the Federal Census are available on microfilm, along with maps highlighting the individual wards and precincts to make finding a specific address less painful.
City directories are a gold mine for genealogists as they list addresses and occupations for every head of household. Jersey City’s and Hoboken’s directories range from 1849-1910, inclusive, plus 1915, 1918, 1922, and 1925. Other communities in Hudson County have scattered dates ranging from 1884 through 1951. The New Jersey Room also holds more than 600 directories, from over 30 regions across the state, covering major cities such as Newark, Paterson, New Brunswick, and Trenton, as well as some smaller communities.
A vast book collection, with a great number of antiquarian books, covers the entire state. Over three dozen New Jersey related books are of eighteenth-century vintage with several Bibles dating to the 1600s. The New Jersey Room maintains a collection with a wide array of historical periodicals such as New Jersey Monthly magazine and the New Jersey Law Journal, and there is also a wide array of historical periodicals, some of which have long since ceased publication. Included among these are the Bulletin of the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital and Graphite, an internal publication of the Joseph Dixon Crucible Co. Well over 1,000 items make up the New Jersey Room’s collection of high school and college yearbooks, literary magazines, and other school publications.
The New Jersey Room was fortunate to acquire the card catalog of New Jersey’s longest running and still published newspaper, The Jersey Journal (begun in 1867 and formerly named The Evening Journal) for the years 1910-1951. These cards serve as an index to the names of persons who appeared in news articles. They are searchable by topic such as “Railroad Accidents” or “Businesses,” specific to Jersey City. Also available on microfilm are the entire runs of the Jersey City News (1889-1906), the Hudson (Jersey) Observer (1904-51), the Hudson Dispatch (1900-91), and several daily and weekly nineteenth-century newspapers.
Those interested in the physical history of the area may be able to determine what was on specific building lots as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, by using city directories, maps, and “criss-cross” indexes. The department’s thousands of vertical files cover topics such as individual businesses, buildings, churches, schools, organizations, railroads, neighborhoods, and biographies of people with New Jersey (mostly Hudson County) roots. There are also several manuscript collections for which finding aids have been made, including the 20 cubic feet of the Liberty State Park Papers. All the materials acquired by the Hudson County Historical Society (1908-1955) is maintained by the New Jersey Room and includes handwritten documents dating back to 1675, settlements of estates and even bills of sale for slaves.
Jersey City municipal records fill several bookcases. The genealogist can locate relatives who worked for the Board of Education, often with their salary listed and hiring date for years ranging from 1859 through 1981. Street and Water Commissioners’ Reports and the Minutes of the City Council also offer information on the movers and shakers of the time, the naming of streets, and many and varied bits of information.
Photos from the collection can enhance research. The cobblestoned street with trolley car tracks criss-crossing it, no vehicles in sight and little electrical wiring, as depicted in an 1892 photo, is a far cry from the same view in 2010. Homeowners and descendants of those who once lived there cherish historic photos of neighborhoods.
One of the New Jersey Room’s premier collections contains vast map and blueprint holdings. The hundreds of maps add tremendously to what can be learned of our ancestors. The Douglass Map of 1841 was the first of a genre of maps that indicated who owned land in what are now parts of Jersey City. The City’s boundaries were not set until the final merger of Greenville in 1873. In that year Hopkins Atlas of 1873 was produced, which, like the Douglass Map, lists the owner of every lot in Jersey City, but it goes a step further and indicates the ownership of all the land in Hudson County — a great resource for historians and genealogists.
To again borrow from Donald Sinclair, the New Jersey Room is a treasure trove. Few archives have the level of collection or can boast material dating to 1629. It is a magnificent collection that may have just the puzzle piece you need to complete a genealogical or historical search.
Currently, hours are Monday, 9-8; Tuesday through Thursday, 9-6; and Friday and Saturday, 9-5. Hours are subject to change in the new year. The collection is non-circulating and research may be ordered by patrons unable to come to the Library. For further information, please see our website, phone at 201-547-4503 or 201-547-6961 or e-mail charris@jclibrary.org.
by Cynthia Harris, MLS
Manager, New Jersey Room
Originally published in The New York Researcher, Winter 2010
© 2011 The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society
All rights reserved.