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Bergen County Historical Society : Celebrate Prinkster

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May 19,2018

the staff of the ridgewood blog

Riveredge  NJ, Experience history in one of the storied places where it was made! Pinkster is celebrated with a Maypole Dance at 1:30 & 3:00 pm with a participation session during the country dances. Ridley and Anne Enslow are featured on fiddle and hammered dulcimer.

This event features fun children’s activities including flower seed planting in clay pots to take home and lawn games in front of the Demarest House.
The 3 houses including the Steuben House a state-historic site and the barn are open for tours.
A new exhibit of 4 large historical paintings by B. Spencer Newman will be in the Steuben House. The Chariot Painting, 1830, by Marageta Van Wagoner of Oradell will be on exhibit. Broom making in the barn. Pinkster cake and raspberry punch are available in the Campbell-Christie House Tavern along with other refreshments.
Illustrated Talk at 2:30 pm: Treasures Through Time – The BCHS Collections

For well over one hundred years, the Bergen County Historical Society has been collecting artifacts of the famous and infamous, the exceptional and the everyday. Past President and Museum Collections Chairperson, Deborah Powell, takes us on a visual tour through centuries of Bergen life via its artifacts.

The Outkitchen cooks are demonstrating natural egg dyeing using vegetables and spices, and dyeing fabric and yarn with onion skins. If our weather is fair, we will make authentic old style onion rings, oliebollen (Dutch fried dough) and fried chicken legs using recipes from the outkitchen collection of 18th century recipes.
Event with something for everyone!

All 3 sandstone houses, including the Steuben House, a state historic site, are connected by an ADA compliant gravel walking path. Weather permitting the Westervelt-Thomas Barn will be open. Free parking is available or take a train on the Pascack Valley Line from Secaucus via NJ Transit to the “New Bridge Landing” train stop. Walk one block north & east. By car, HNBL is only 7 miles from the GWB.
Refreshments in the 18th century tavern (additional cost). Some folks come just for the cider and cider donuts!

Historic New Bridge Landing: American Revolutionary War Battleground including 3 Jersey-Dutch Sandstone Houses, exhibits of BCHS collections, tavern, gift shop, outkitchen & barn. $12 adults, $7 students, BCHS members free. (Become a member and support our efforts!, $20 individual / $30 household).
HNBL, 1201 Main St., River Edge, NJ.

Traveling by carriage from Newark to view the Passaic Falls in Paterson on June 6, 1797, William Dunlap noted in his diary, “The borders of the Pasaick [River] are colour’d by the Iris now in bloom. On the rocks near the [Great] Falls was the Kalmia [or mountain laurel], the wild Columbine & wood pink. The settlements along the river are Dutch, it is the holiday they call pinkster & every public house is crowded with merry makers & waggon’s full of rustic beaus & belles met us at every mile.”

The name of the holiday derives from the Greek word, Pentecost, meaning “fiftieth day,” which originally signified the ancient Jewish celebration of the first fruits of the harvest, arriving seven weeks after Passover. On the seventh Sunday after Easter, Christians commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. The English identified this holiday with the white garments of baptismal candidates, calling it Whitsunday or “White Sunday.” Among the Jersey Dutch, a rose-colored Azalea blossom, known as the “Pinxter blomachee,” was the May bush.

Bergen County Historical Society
May 17 at 6:50am ·
Join us this Sunday for our next event!
Pinkster Fest
A Jersey Dutch Celebration of Spring
May 20, 2018, Sunday, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

 

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Under the Shad Moon, Chwame Gischuch • Lenape New Year

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April 18,2018

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

River Edge NJ, The Bergen County Historical Society celebrates:

  • Under the Shad Moon, Chwame Gischuch, the Lenape New Year, from 1-5 pm. Sunday, April 22, 2018
    Historic New Bridge Landing, 1201 Main Street, River Edge 07661.

1:30 pm: Dr. Meta Janowitz who will speak on Native American food ways, as they relate to the Dutch. She will introduce ceramic forms that were used by the Dutch and traded with the Native Americans. Janowitz is an archaeologist who worked on the African Burial Ground Project in lower Manhattan**.

2:30 pm: Primitive Technologist Steve Adams will give a talk on The Material Culture of Prehistory. Adams will talk on the use of stone tools; their manufacture (flintknapping), forms for different functions, re-usage/resharpening sequences, the ‘waste flake’ pile of expedient tools and the changing stone tool forms through time.
He will discuss the working of plant fiber; its manufacture, the different native species used, the impressively large range of purposes and functions it served, its ‘invisible’ nature as an organic medium which does not preserve well as an artifact, its foundational value as having ‘tied’ together the prehistoric world, etc. the selection of local plants would also anchor it in the location and the event. His talk will move outside to demonstrate flintknapping.
This talk will offer an informed glimpse into the ‘hardware’ of prehistoric peoples – not just those of the New Bridge region, but internationally – this is part of every person’s ancient lineage.

Selections from the BCHS Native American collections are on exhibit. Visit the outkitchen where reenactors will be cooking over a fire. The event includes activities for children.

** The African Burial Ground project began in 1991. During excavation work for a new federal office building workers discovered the skeletal remains of the first of more than 400 men, women and children.

Historic New Bridge Landing: American Revolutionary War Battleground including 3 Jersey-Dutch Sandstone Houses, Exhibits of BCHS collections, Tavern, Gift shop, Outkitchen & Barn. (The barn closed in cold weather) $12 adults, $7 students, BCHS members free. (Become a member and support our efforts!, $20 individual / $30 household).
HNBL, 1201 Main St., River Edge, NJ. Site map below.

All 3 sandstone houses, including the Steuben House, a state historic site, are connected by an ADA compliant gravel walking path. Weather permitting the Westervelt-Thomas Barn will be open. Free parking is available or take a train on the Pascack Valley Line from Secaucus via NJ Transit to the “New Bridge Landing” train stop. Walk one block north & east. By car, HNBL is only 7 miles from the GWB.
Refreshments in the 18th century tavern (additional cost)