William Penn didn't sleep here

While George Washington did sleep here, in much of Morris County, no, William Penn didn't own all the land in the county, prior to his death in 1718. (Actually, he wasn't here much, traveling between England and Ireland.) Penn was one of 36 proprietors in East and West Jersey, acquiring some of his interest in a debt sale after George Berkeley's death.

Land transfers and holdings in Morris in the colonial period are obscure and ill-defined, in part because property boundaries are described as "to a corner white oak tree, thence crossing it again" .."crossing ye said river again to another white oak corner tree, thence..." One good storm and there go the property boundaries? We've posted an overview and suggested resources for 17th c property titles research.

West Jersey 1676

Reviewing the 1676 "The Concessions and agreements of the proprietors, freeholders and inhabitants of the province of West New-Jersey, in America" (wearing archival gloves to handle the wonderful 1747 volume), Chapter XVI:

That no Men, nor number of Men upon Earth, hath Power or Authority to rule over Men's Consciences in religious Matters, therefore it is consented, agreed and ordained, that no Person or Persons whatsoever within the said Province, at any Time or Times hereafter, shall be any ways upon any pretence whatsoever, called in Question, or in the least punished or hurt, either in Person, Estate, or Priviledge, for the sake of his Opinion, Judgment, Faith or Worship towards God in Matter of Religion. But that all and every such Person, and Persons, may from Time to Time, and at all Times, freely and fully have, and enjoy his and their Judgments, and the exercise of their Consciences in Matters of religious Worship throughout all the said Province.

Exactly 100 years later Jefferson and Franklin would write the Declaration of Independence.

Business focus group

The library would like to put together, in the first quarter of the year, a focus group of businesspeople from local small to mid-sized companies. Do you know the business resources we have for you? Are they in your preferred formats, print or online? Does your operation need research assistance? Let's talk about it. The northwest New Jersey Small Business Development Center has offered to also do an info session for the group.

Call (973-285-6969) or email the reference desk to sign on to a roundtable about your business information needs

Your databases

With adds, drops and tweaks, we begin 2012 with 35 databases, about half of which you can also use from home. (Sometimes the cost of remote access is prohibitive!) New this year are:
PowerSpeak: instruction in seven foreign languages and ESL for Spanish and Mandarin speakers
Dow Jones LP Galante, venture capital firms
S & P Industry Surveys (has been added to our existing S & P NetAdvantage)
Prices for Antiques, auction prices for collectibles and art
LoisLaw
PACER, the US Courts electronic case tracking system

Expanded is Foreign firms in../US firms overseas, from UniWorld. We had a subscription to NJ only, have expanded it to national. This resource is particularly valuable to those of you who are bilingual and might look for employment with overseas firms having offices here, or vice versa.
Questions about any of this? Contact our Reference desk, (973) 285-6969.

Brotherhood of Unemployed

Local history librarian Miriam Kornblatt has added September-December 1934 to our Great Depression project, Morris life as seen through the Daily Record. Fall of that year included the Brotherhood of Unemployed, Local #1, Denville, meeting and a CCC company moving into barracks on Whippany Rd to work on flood control and mosquito extermination.

Cooper Seward family

Interesting family, the Cooper Sewards, of Chester. Beulah Cooper, Abraham's daughter and Nathan's (Cooper's Mill) niece, married Henry Seward (descendent of Obediah Seward who is on the 1752 freeholder list) and had a son William. William Seward, through the 19th century, became quite the land baron, buying, mortgaging, even foreclosing. We've learned all this in cataloguing the Cooper-Seward deed file here. Some of the documents are too fragile to scan (though not the 1778 deed--terrific rag paper!) so we'll try photographing them to digitize.

Yes, the Chester family was related to Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who thought the US should buy Alaska. Land acquisition seems to have run in the family?!

FamilySearch

We've just been granted Family Search affiliate library status by the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. This means we'll be able to rent ($5 per reel is your fee) microfilm from them, for you, through our interlibrary loan office.
The Utah library recommends these tools for determing what's in their collections:

FamilySearch Pilot
FamilySearch Indexing
FamilySearch Wiki

The bottom line

Among our spending reviews is year-end unit cost analyses of the databases we buy for your use (Ancestry (library edition), Mergent, Morningstar, Dun & Bradstreet, etc. etc.) At the end of the calendar year we divide the annual cost of a database by the number of uses, to get the per session amount. $2 or less is acceptable, over $2 means its time to reconsider the subscription.

A few titles are on the 2012 chopping block at this point, will be dropped if use doesn't increase substantially and lower the per use cost this year. AllData Automotive, Mergent Online, Morningstar Investment Research Library and Valueline are all candidates for a drop..the last for an announced $3,000 price increase, the others for low use. Best ROI? Ancestry, the library edition (which is far superior to the home edition); folks love genealogy research.

Databases you can use from home are found on our remote resources web. Our library value calculator estimates the cost benefit of your library visits.

Morris County Magazine

For 15 years, between 1982 and 1995, the county Chamber of Commerce published Morris County Magazine. Reference librarian Donna Burkey has indexed the entire run, identifying the local places and people the magazine highlighted.

We have the entire run of the magazine in our NJ collection. Drop us a note if you need one of the indexed articles.

Another gem!

Found another gem in our local history files: proof copy of volume 1, number 1 of a literary magazine, "6 x 9". The name was taken from the nine writers of the 6th district (Morristown) of the Federal Writers Project, WPA, who put it together. The editor, Albert Truman Boyd, and associate Carl John Bostelmann were Denville residents. Associate Benjamin Goldenberg and illustrator/printer Lewis W. Biebigheiser lived in Morristown. Biebigheiser (1914-1992(, who cut 12 original linoleum blocks for the issue, would later own a printing business in Chester. We've let his family know what we've found.

Morris County Children's Home

It is sad to see three and four children from one family in the Morris County Children's Home, ca 1910-1920. Or is it good that they at least were still together? In some cases (the Miller family, 1895) some family members are in the County Alms House and the little one is in the Children's Home. And no, it wasn't scarlet fever that created the need for the children's cemetery (Littleton Rd, near the fire house, now), it seems to have been croup and diptheria. The County Children's Home operated from 1882-1929, when foster home placement became the norm. The organization lasted until 1974 as a placement and aid society. It's final trustee chief was the Rev. Thomas Mutch, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown from 1936-1966.
Picture by Richard Hrazanek, 2002

Jobs & Career Accelerator

New database, from the NJ State Library and a jobs grant: Jobs & Career Accelerator/Learning Express allows you to take practice tests and software lessons (Excel, Viseo, PowerPoint, etc.). Register (free) to set up your own work space to save those practice exams or come in and use the library's login if you just want to try out the product, first. For home use, contact the Reference desk (973-285-6969 or e-mail ) for the password.

MCL on your cell

What's your preferred method of keeping up with library events and programs while on the road?
Twitter?
Facebook?
Foursquare?

or, use our micro web for your cell.

Geocaching

Meet Geomate Jr, available at the Music & Media desk for a 14-day loan, so you can try geocaching, the GPS assisted scavenger hunt for caches left by folks out and about in open, public spaces. There are 3,101 of these "geocaches" within striking distance of Whippany, alone, including one 331 ft from the front door of the library. (See getting started with geocaching for information. We also have books about geocaching.)

This device from LLBean is preloaded with 250,000 geocache locations, allowing you and your family to try out seeking and finding. Wear sturdy clothes, for you might end up tromping through brush and bush; sign and date the log in the cache when you find it; if you take something from the cache, put something in its place; and always, always put the cache back where you found it, for those who come after you. For more information and a list of local caches, visit geocaching.com They estimate there are currently 997,008 active caches, 3-4 million worldwide, and were 2,097,268 cache log sign-ins in the last thirty days. Have fun!

1,350 maps

You can now search the library's map collection online. One of our reference librarians recently completed a full, descriptive inventory of the collection which, thanks to a grant from the Library Foundation, we can now offer via the web.

Homeschooling?

Is your family homeschooling? The library offers resources and support.

Morris area newsfeed

We've pulled together a Morris area news aggregator If you want to subscribe, use http://www.mclib.info/morrisnews.xml