The Name-Dropper: Van Neste Square
SEPTEMBER 4, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY JEFFREY PAGE
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
THE RECORD
Who was Lee of Fort Lee, Votee of Votee Park and Merritt of Camp Merritt? The Name-Dropper gives you the lowdown on some of the people whose names you see on public statues, memorial plaques, park signs, highways and even some local streets around North Jersey. Have suggestions? Email them to features@northjersey. com and put Name-Dropper in the subject field.
In the legendary first intercollegiate football game, when Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4, John Alfred Van Neste of the Rutgers team may have kicked the ball, may have helped score a point, may have blocked a Princeton player.
Then again, maybe not.
Accounts of that game played in New Brunswick in 1869 report the score, but provide little about how individual players performed.
It seems easy, 145 years later, to assume Van Neste got a chance to play since the rules of that time dictated large lineups, 25 players per side.
But in one respect, how Van Neste played doesn’t matter since it was not his exploits on the gridiron that caused the Village of Ridgewood to name a sweet little downtown park in his memory. Rather it was for the remembrance of Van Neste as an adored minister in mid-19th to early-20th-century Ridgewood. He was the Reformed Church pastor who helped people of other denominations establish and build their own places of worship, and in the meantime allowed them to use his church.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/ridgewood-park-ministers-to-all-as-did-its-namesake-1.1081013#sthash.y4WRDtCp.dpuf
