front cover of The Architecture of Bergen County, New Jersey
The Architecture of Bergen County, New Jersey
The Colonial Period to the Twentieth Century
Brown, T. Robins
Rutgers University Press, 2000

Winner of the 2001 New Jersey Historic Preservation Award | Commendation Award from the Bergen County Historic Preservation Advisory Board

Walk or drive through any of Bergen County's seventy communities and you will find telling reminders of a wonderfully rich and diverse architectural history--the legacy of three hundred years of settlement, growth, and change.

The Architecture of Bergen County, New Jersey presents an accessible overview of the county's architectural heritage and its historic structures. The volume explores the styles, trends, and events that influenced the design and setting of the region's buildings. More than 150 photos document Bergen County's architectural treasures, generating awareness and appreciation for these structures and their history.

The book is arranged chronologically, beginning with the arrival of European settlers in the seventeenth century and ending in the late twentieth century. Each chapter opens with a brief historical background and follows with a description and analysis of building types common to Bergen County for the period. Some structures, such as the Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus, the Vreeland House in Leonia, and the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, are of regional, even national, significance.

The book also highlights delightful surprises. Examples include a large number of picturesque houses that were built from the designs published in mid-nineteenth century architectural pattern books, the home of an early African American newspaper publisher, and two homes in Paramus and Washington Township whose exterior walls are made of mud.

The Architecture of Bergen County, New Jersey demonstrates the close association between architectural development at the national and local levels, and shows how social, technological, and political changes occurring within the county have been reflected in the building types and styles of the area.

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front cover of A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies
A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies
1660-1880
Firth Haring Fabend
Rutgers University Press, 1991
Firth Haring Fabend has studied a large colonial American family over five generations. The Haring family settled in the Hackensack Valley (on the New York/New Jersey border), where they lived, prospered, and remained throughout the eighteenth century. Fabend looks at how this ordinary family of independent, middle-class farmers coped with immigration, established themselves in a community,  acquired land and capital, and took part in the social, political, economic, and religious changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

As she traces the lives of the Harings and their neighbors, Fabend focuses on their marriage and childbearing patterns, living conditions, agricultural methods, and relative economic position. She investigates inheritance patterns, concluding that the position of women deteriorated under English law. She is equally interested in the political and religious life of the family. The Harings formed a church fitting their Pietist beliefs, and this church became central to community life. Their theology encouraged them to question religious authority, which in turn fostered the questioning of political authority. Their community became a seedbed for revolutionary activity. Fabend examines the family's position in the Revolution--primarily patriot--and the losses they suffered in that conflict.   

The Harings of colonial America were ideal yeoman farmers, a class that stood well in the social hierarchy of the day. They were industrious, they prospered, and they participated in the civic life of colonial America. But once the new republic formed, they were not very visible. Fabend argues that they maintained their "Dutchness" more consciously than ever after the Revolution, which hindered their full participation in public affairs. In some ways, the fifth and sixth generations were more Dutch than the early generations.

    

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front cover of The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley
The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley
The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775-1783
Leiby, Adrian C.
Rutgers University Press, 1980
After November 1776, the Hackensack Valley--located in northeastern New Jersey and Rockland County, New York--lay between the invading British army in New York City and the main Continental defense forces in the Hudson Highlands. Jersey Dutch patriot and Tory troops carried on a five-year war of neighbors between the lines, while the grand armies of Britain and America maneuvered on either side of them for a chance to strike a blow at the other.

Adrian Leiby offers an exciting narrative of the people of Dutch New Jersey and New York during this conflict. Historians will find colorful details about the Revolutionary War, and genealogists will find much previously unpublished material on hundreds of men and women of Dutch New Jersey and New York in the 1700s.
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