First Edition, Signed by the Author. This is the story of one small New Jersey town, founded casually at the place where Lenni Lenape Indians crossed the Passaic River. It is, as well, the story of nearly all small towns, where Indian trail gave way to muddy road, to turnpike, to Main Street with its traffic and rows of refurbished stores. Within these pages are the stories of the old toll road, the coming of the railroad, the young men who laid aside their saws to fight the Confederates. Here are the village blacksmiths, the local editor, the hotelkeepers, and the rose growers. Here are the firemen, the police, the schoolteachers and those they taught. Here is the agony of global war - not from the battlefield view but as it affected Main Street. People walk through these pages; those who raised the Liberty Pole and guarded the bridge in the Revolution; those who fought for causes that ranged from good schools to temperance. There are people riding bobsleds down Fairmount Hill, people founding new churches, people at work and at play. This book is far from the usual town histor, where all is glory and triumph. Writer John T. Cunningham has intermingled the tragedies with the triumphs, the follies with the glories. The result is history, and in the writing this becomes more than just another story of a small town. The book becomes instead the story of your hometown and mine - the story of America in transition.
A fine copy, tightly bound in original forest green cloth-covered boards, with gilding to the cover and spine, in a pictorial dust jacket, which is a little worn and has one or two little tears, showing signs of minor chips/wear. Jacket by Carroll N. Jones, Jr. Well illustrated throughout.