Friday, Aug. 15, 1975 began as a typical summer day in the suburbs. Young children played with their friends, adults prepared for work or planned for their vacation at the Jersey Shore...That all changed in the hours before noon, when Gretchen Harrington, the 8-year-old daughter of a Presbyterian minister and his wife, was kidnapped while walking to a vacation Bible school less than a quarter-mile from her house. Her body was found by a jogger in a state park nearl...

Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is known today for its shopping centers and residential neighborhoods. This tightknit community, founded in the 1600s by English followers of William Penn, began as a collection of hardworking farm families and early American Patriots. The town played an important role as the "crossroads of the American Revolution"? and bravely fought to help southern slaves to freedom using the Underground Railroad. Townspeople persevered through the turbulent and trying times of ...

Long before shopping centers and housing communities were developed in Cherry Hill, farmers earned their livelihood working the rich soil that stretched between the Cooper River and Pennsauken Creek. Small hamlets such as Ellisburg, Colestown, and Batesville contained thriving businesses. A real estate boom triggered by the opening of the Delaware River Bridge (now the Ben Franklin Bridge) and the end of World War II led to the development of the township's first suburban neighborhoods. Ne...

Until 1961, Cherry Hill was known as Delaware Township. From its inception in 1844, Delaware Township was an agrarian community dotted with gristmills, blacksmith shops, and taverns. Many farmers earned their livings by selling produce tothe Campbell�s Soup Company, which had its canning plant in Camden until the 1980s. Delaware Township remained relatively quiet until the 1920s, when the first residential building boom resulted in neighborhoods such as Colwick, Erlton, Woodland, and Barlo...

For most of their histories, Marple and Newtown Townships were farming communities on the western outskirts of Philadelphia. The thriving farms supplied local grocers, while the fresh air and clean water in Marple and Newtown attracted city dwellers seeking recreational opportunities. With the West Chester Pike linking the townships to other areas, they quickly became quintessential suburban communities. Marple and Newtown Townships captures the growth of the two communities from the early...

The rich heritage of descendants of English, Dutch, and German settlers in the Hunterdon County population centers of Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville is presented here. Life among the rolling hills of northwest New Jersey and in the three small towns that became centers of that area's population has been faithfully recorded by residents since the Civil War, capturing the rural character of their landscape.

In 1837, Henry Janes applied for a post office called Black Hawk for the southern Wisconsin settlement where he ran a ferry across the Rock River. The postmaster general, however, noticed a town already by that name in the Iowa part of Wisconsin Territory, and he assigned the name Janesville, with Janes as postmaster. Two years later, Janes moved his family west, but the community grew to become the Rock County seat, and by 1860 it was Wisconsin's second-largest city. Today more than 62,00...

The first settlers came to the Brockport area soon after 1800. Located some twenty miles west of Rochester, the towns of Sweden and Clarkson, the village of Brockport, and a college were organized between 1814 and 1835. The Erie Canal, farm implement manufacturing, and higher education fostered their growth and prosperity in the mid-1800s. At Brockport, the United States became a continental nation, the Industrial Revolution came to agriculture, and popular literature came to American wome...

The history of York College of Pennsylvania begins shortly after the Revolutionary War. The college traces its lineage directly to three ancestral schools. The foundation was York County Academy, an English classical school chartered in 1787. The academy merged in 1929 with York Collegiate Institute, founded in 1873. Under one roof, both schools survived the Great Depression. In 1941, the charter was amended to allow two years of college-level courses and the institution became York Junior...

Woodbury possesses a rich heritage that reads like the story of America. Established in 1683 by Quakers seeking religious freedom, the community was occupied for three days by British troops under Gen. Charles Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War. In 1787, Woodbury became the county seat of Gloucester County, and it remains so to this day. It was home to Capt. James Lawrence, who coined the phrase "Don't give up the ship" during the War of 1812. Woodbury features views of the lavish hom...

The Coldwater area was first settled on the historic Sauk Trail in the 1830s. Coldwater became a village in 1837, and after the arrival of the railroads in the 1850s, it became a city in 1861. Majestic homes and buildings were constructed, churches and schools were established, and a vibrant community began to take shape. The 1900s brought more growth and challenges, as residents encountered the Great Depression, World War II, and subsequent eras of transition, renewal, and expansion. This...

Monticello was founded by the White County commissioners in 1834 on a bluff above the Tippecanoe River. They named it after the mansion ofThomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. It was incorporated as a town in 1862. The county seat grew more rapidly when the railroads cameto town before the Civil War. Then the town grew large enough to become a city in 1909, and a mayor was elected. The area around the city became atourist destination in the 1920s after dams created th...