THERE’S no second chance to make a first impression, and this had all the makings of an audacious debut. Notices of a new historical society for New Jersey, emanating from the busy pen of its corresponding secretary, had barely reached the meeting rooms of other learned associations around the country. Now they, and the wider … More 053–Scot’s Model
CONVENING in January 1846 at the place of its birth to celebrate the New Jersey Historical Society’s first year, members could look back with satisfaction, and look expectantly ahead. They reviewed the Society’s achievements over the past eleven months, chose officers for the year to come–a formality, as the incumbents were re-elected without exception and … More 052–Field work
EMPLOYED variously as clerk, land surveyor, customs collector, banker and financier through a professional life spanning seven decades, William A. Whitehead had an eye almost always to what could be observed, quantified and verified. His mathematical bent was manifest early on. As a boy, coveting a classmate’s “half-used” text of arithmetic (a “Cyphering Book”), he … More 051–New Jersey by the numbers
LONG after the event, William A. Whitehead recalled how, through the 1845 founding of a historical society for New Jersey, he penetrated a circle of “several prominent gentlemen … whom I had never met before.”1 By many standards, Whitehead would have been regarded as an interloper. The men who gathered in Trenton that February worked … More 050–Meetings of minds
MORE ancient and enduring than New Jersey’s status as a Revolutionary battleground has been its contest for self-definition. The state is often coarsely cast as suffering a kind of bipolar disorder, forever torn between the megacities it faces across its two frontier rivers. The nature of that struggle is of course far more complex, variously … More 049–Try, try again
HISTORY was, ironically, news in New York City during William A. Whitehead’s first years living there. His initiation into the New-York Historical Society’s holdings (a membership in that body would have to wait some years more) came just as it was awakening from a long period of slumber. But far from being the preserve of … More 048–Lights and shadows
LEAVING his Lombardy Street residence one pleasant day in 1859, William Whitehead may have headed for the stone bridge spanning Mill Brook, the stream that in his childhood marked the northern limit of the town of Newark. Crossing the ancient bridge he would have bent his course to the northeast, near the once sylvan shores … More 029–Friends of early life
IN the presence of friends and fellow votaries of history assembled in an upper room of the National Newark Bank, the normally serene William A. Whitehead confessed to having suffered from “something like outraged feelings.” A half century earlier, he had stood in awed silence at the sepulchre of the man who “gave a new … More 021–Dust and din
IN 1849 William A. Whitehead donated a map of Key West, Florida, to the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark. A memento of his first sojourn on the island and the result of his surveying it twenty years earlier, the map provided a link between towns far distant in temperament as in latitude, but a … More 016–A key of many colors
FOR all that it has gained or lost in the tides of politics and war, Perth Amboy’s history attests to the power of place, the environment’s ability to span time and distance through the agency of human memory and motivation. For so many who spent the bulk of their lives elsewhere–and William Whitehead was by … More 009–Progress and place