New & Coming Soon

The Garden State After the Great War

Post–World War I life was dramatically different for New Jersey than it had been prior to the war. By 1920, the war was over for the Europeans, but it was still on for America until President Harding signed a paper in a local living room after a golf game. Harding’s out-of-wedlock child was born in Asbury Park, and Atlantic City began the beauty contest that would become Miss America. Prohibition hit what was an unwilling state, and the governor tried to keep New Jersey liquor legally flowing, while bootleggers and rumrunners made illegal liquor generally available. Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler detail this frenetic era in the Garden State.

True Blue for Union

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Cape May County was an isolated and lightly populated peninsula at the southernmost tip of New Jersey. Nevertheless, its citizens answered the call for the Union effort during the Civil War. The 7th U.S. Infantry regiment recruited substantially from the region, and the entire community came out to usher the gallant troops to war, departing from Cape Island. On the homefront, supporting rallies were staged, food drives enacted and medical supplies shipped to the front. Railroad tycoons eyeing the underdeveloped beaches of Cape May began developing the county’s resorts beyond Cape Island even before troops returned home. Author Ray Rebmann presents the valiant efforts and changing times of Cape May County in the Civil War era.