About Montague Township, NJ & its Heritage: 10/1/15

Courtesy
http://www.cardigansandcravats.com/blog/2014/10/29/happy-vintage-halloween

As reported in the

HERALD STATESMAN, YONKERS. NY, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1969:

Halloween, celebrated on the night of Oct. 31, has its origins in Roman Catholicism and pagan Druidism. It takes its name from All Saints' Day because Oct. 31 was called All Hallows' Eve, "eve of all the holy ones' day."

All Saints' Day. a holy day honoring all Christian saints and especially those who do not have days named for them, will bo observed on Saturday, Nov. 1. All Saints' Day was first celebrated on May 13, 610. as the Feast of All Holy Martyrs when Emperor Phocas gave the ancient Roman temple of the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV as a church.

Gradually the feast was extended to commemorate all saints in addition to those who have given their lives for their faith.

Modern Halloween festivities derive from the Christian feast day and the old Druid autumn festival, Samhan (pronounced SAHwin) or summer's end.

The Druids, an order of priests in ancient Gaul and Britain, celebrated by feasting on the foods grown during the summer.

The custom of using leaves, pumpkins and cornstalks as Halloween decorations comes from the Druids. This ancient order also believed that on Halloween ghosts, spirits, witches and elves came to harm people. They thought that cats, whom they considered sacred. were once human beings which had boon changed as punishment for evil deeds.

The present-day use of witches, ghosts and cats at Halloween stems from these beliefs. So, if you still fool like venturing out on Halloween, remember the words of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley and take care

"An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you

ef you don't watch out!"

[ from his poem titled: "The Elf Child" - later renamed "Little Orphant Annie"]

The origins of trick or treating and dressing up in costume stem from 16th century

Ireland, Scotland and Wales where people would go door-to-door in costume

asking for food in exchange for a poem or song.

The phrase trick-or-treat was first used in 1927 in America ,

when these traditions were brought over to America by immigrants.

Reminder - "FALL back!"

watches and clocks set back tonight .. we gain an hour of sleep!

Thankfully cell phones and computers do so on their own now.

It's a good time to be sure all battery powered smoke and CO2 alarms work.

Baseball is at least 170 years old,

and the first game written of was played in NJ!

The first competitive game was played in 1845 at Elysian Fields in Hoboken.

As per excerpts of a 1990 NY Times account at:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/04/nyregion/cooperstown-hoboken-try-new-york-city.html

The discovery was made by Edward L. Widmer, a Harvard student, who was doing research for his doctoral dissertation at the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West.

'Time-Honored Game'

In a copy of The New York Morning News, Mr. Widmer found an account of a game on Oct. 21, 1845, between the New York Ball Club and a team from Brooklyn. Like the 1846 game credited by historians as the first, the earlier game was played at the Elysian Fields, then a bucolic area easily reachable by ferry from Manhattan [[in Hoboken], which was already suffering from overdevelopment.

And the newspaper account of the 1845 game suggests that there had been even earlier contests. ''A friendly match of the time-honored game of Base was played yesterday at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken,'' the article said.

New York won, 24 to 4, aided by a grand slam, or in the vocabulary of the time, ''four aces'' off a single hit.

John Bowman, a co-author of ''Diamonds in the Rough: The Untold History of Baseball,'' said, ''This looks like the first box score and first published newspaper account of a game.''

When Gov. Jim Florio proclaimed ''Baseball Day'' on the previously held June 19th date, based on 1846, he related: ''The truth is that baseball was born here in Hoboken.''

Baseball developed from the 18th-century English boys' game of rounders, Dr. Voigt said. Rounders was played in America by soldiers at Valley Forge during the American Revolution. But various regions, including Massachusetts, New York and Philadelphia, initially had their own informal variations of the game, and it was only in the mid-1840's in New York that teams specially organized to play baseball sprang up, formulating a set of rules similar to the modern game.

Check out the newly redone website

for the

Township of Montague!

Click the link above

Courtesy of the Office of Public Affairs -
US Dept.of Veterans Affairs

Montague Township will hold its annual Veteran's Day Service

on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at 11:00AM

at the grounds at the Montague Township Building, 277 Clove Road, Montague.

The service will be conducted by the township's

Boy Scout Troop 98, Cub Scout Pack 98,

and Girl Scout Troop 70840.

This will be held rain or shine.

MARCH - Montague’s historical society has prepared a photo exhibit

of veterans from Montague, which will be displayed that day.

Courtesy Tri-States Railway Preservation Society

Many from Montague worked on, or in support of, the Erie Railroad

in Port Jervis - some provided railroad ties.

From the May, 1927 Issue of Erie Railroad Magazine:

Courtesy Erie Railroad Obituaries

Jacob Ramage died on March 5 (1927) at his home in Montague township, N.J.,
aged nearly 87 years. As a young man he served in the Civil war
and was wounded at Salem Church, Va. After the war he engaged in farming
and later entered the employ of the Erie Railroad
and for over twenty years was conductor of a freight train.

Mr. Ramage was survived by a widow and one daughter
and also three brothers and one sister.
He was the oldest member of the Odd Fellows' lodge at Port Jervis,
which organization he joined in 1871.
His home was on Clove Road, just north of the mini-mall.
He had served with Company K, Fifteenth Regiment
and had been wounded at White Oak. He is buried in Laurel Grove cemetery.