Hopewell Valley History Project
Preserving Our History
We are lucky to have two booklets passed on to us from Hopewell boosters from over a century ago – Healthy, Historic Hopewell from 1897, and 1909 Hopewell New Jersey. Each is over 50 pages, with text plus 40-some photos to “set forth the advantages of Hopewell as a place of residence” – and as … Continue reading Hopewell Reference Books – HHH 1897 & 1909 Hopewell
We are very fortunate that our predecessors in Hopewell Borough wrote down and published the stories of their times. For example, we have Ralph Ege’s Pioneers of Old Hopewell book of local history (1908), several booklets promoting the town as a place for potential businesses and residents (1897 & 1909 – see below), and, of … Continue reading 1900 & 1914 Hopewell Progress Editions
We’ve compiled together twenty History Briefs written over the past two years and packaged them up as a “book” (free PDF download) for convenient reference, searching, and printing. These History Project research reports provide historical information and chronologies on Hopewell Borough organizations, businesses, and properties, and the people that made them. See below for some … Continue reading Hopewell Borough History Briefs – The Book
It’s difficult to imagine life in Hopewell Township in 1880 – almost century and a half ago. It was an exciting time, since two train lines had been recently built though the township, accelerating the growth of the region. (See the Hopewell Railroads post.) We are blessed with some maps of the area, including details … Continue reading The Villages of Hopewell Township in 1883
Gary Saretzky has kindly shared his collection of black and white photographs of Hopewell Borough from 1978 to 1980, which also conveniently provide a record of the buildings and businesses of the time. UPDATE – 9/15/21 – Added 7 more Hopewell photographs from Gary Saretzky == See the Hopewell Photography album in the Image Galley … Continue reading Hopewell Photographs by Gary Saretzky
The March updates on the Hopewell Valley History Project site included reports on the Second Calvary Baptist Church of Hopewell and the Hopewell Tomato Factory, photos of Tomato Factory artifacts and the back of the Chocolate Factory, new Hopewell Borough 1972 Aerials, and the full 1964 Mercer County Tercentenary booklet. By the numbers, we finished … Continue reading March 2021 Update – Hopewell & Mercer
In 1964, Mercer County celebrated the “300th Anniversary of New Jersey” with a wonderful commemorative book, Mercer County Tercentenary 1664-1964, which provides a broad snapshot of the time, with extensive discussions of the history, current status, and path forward for the county – from a rather optimistic and positive perspective. This book is in the … Continue reading Mercer County Tercentenary, 1664-1964
Thanks to discussions with local historian Elaine Buck, we have assembled the story of the Second Calvary Baptist Church in Hopewell. The Church that we know was built in 1959, and is the anchor of eastern end of Columbia Avenue at the corner of Maple Street. But, as we have come to expect with Hopewell … Continue reading The Second Calvary Baptist Church of Hopewell
We’ve added new 1964 aerial images – from the year the Beatles took America by storm. This project expanded into developing a new Aerial Panorama Viewer for exploring them (including panning and zooming into the images), which then grew into extending the simple Collections Viewer interface to support the other History Project collections. New 1964 … Continue reading New 1964 Panoramas, and Collections
So who was where in Hopewell, when, and doing what? We have some annotated maps that help with this (see previous post), and some business directories. And now, as a result of the Lindbergh case (see companion post on our fascination with Lindbergh), we have a 1932 phone directory for Hopewell and the surrounding area … Continue reading 1932 (Lindbergh) Hopewell Phone Directory
