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This Week at NJHS: Dec 30: Dec 31:
NJHS Holiday Closing for November and December 2016 |
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Current Exhibitions:
The New Jersey Historical Society
Photograph of Thomas Edison (possibly by William Cone), ca. 1915-1930
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Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison set up his first small laboratory in Newark, New Jersey in 1871, where he invented devices to greatly improve the speed and efficiency of the telegraph. He later moved to Menlo Park, NJ, where he built a research and development laboratory, which would later serve as a model for such modern facilities as Bell Laboratories. It was here that Edison invented the first successful incandescent electric light for both commercial and residential usage. After moving to his third laboratory in West Orange, NJ, in 1887, Edison began to work on the phonograph, eventually creating the first motion picture. By the time of his death, Edison had earned patents for more than a thousand inventions. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1973, Edison is a cultural icon and symbol of American ingenuity. For more information, please see http://www.nps.gov/edis/index.htm. Compiled from information provided by Edison National Historic Site. |
Paul Leroy Bustill Robeson
One of New Jersey's most influential and controversial figures of the early 20th century is singer, actor, civil rights activist, scholar, athlete and author, Paul Robeson. One of the best known and most widely respected black Americans of the 1930s and 40s, Robeson, who was born and raised in Princeton, NJ, was an internationally-acclaimed stage actor, who starred in such memorable leading roles as Othello (1930 and 1943), The Emperor Jones (1933) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (1936). Robeson, a graduate of Rutgers College (now University) was an early staunch supporter of many controversial causes, including socialism, civil rights, and colonial liberation. In 1998, The New Jersey Historical Society showed the unprecedented exhibition Paul Robeson: Bearer of a Culture, which marked the 100th birthday of the pivotal, but forgotten American cultural figure from New Jersey. This traveling exhibition, comprised of rare photographs, manuscripts, diaries, sculpture, memorabilia, and audio recordings of speeches and songs, was created by the Paul Robeson Foundation. |
Abbie Greiger Chevallier
Abbie Greiger was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1810. She married a well-known Newark jeweler Clement Eugene Chevallier in 1833, and the prominent couple ranked among the elite of Newark society during the early 19th Century. Mrs. Chevallier died in 1846 at the age of 36. This portrait, which was donated to The New Jersey Historical Society by Julia C. Alling in 1936, was painted around 1835. Attributed to the painter Oliver T. Eddy, it is an oil painting on wood, one of about 240 pieces of fine art in the museum collection of the Historical Society. Our collection consists of many notable figures of New Jersey's past, including Aaron Burr by artist Gilbert Stuart and Theodore Frelinghuysen (Henry Clay's vice-presidential candidate in 1844) by Rembrandt Peale. Additional portraits include other works by Peale, portraits by Asher B. Durand (founder of the Hudson River School) and Oliver Tarbell (a Newark portraitist whose works are also at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). |
Gladys Perez
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