Clinton Township Newsletter

3 s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 2 C U S T O M PA I N T F I N I S H Transformations for Your Cabinetry & Furniture • D E S I G N 9 0 8 . 8 3 2 . 6 0 3 2 T E W K S B U R Y I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Jan Mulligan, the Associate Editor of this publication from 2002 to 2009. Last year, after the September 11th Memorial Service in Annandale, I enjoyed visiting with Jan and her husband, John. I'm glad I had that time to spend with her – I never imagined it would be the last. The Mulligan family and their friends are in my thoughts and prayers. In other news, the development of Courthouse Square in downtown Flemington began in early July, with up to 50 dump trucks per day hauling dirt away from the site. Recently I saw a photo online of the excavation process behind one of the old buildings and my first thought was, due to the history of the town, could there be any interesting artifacts in that dirt? Whenever I see an excavation process, my thoughts turn to archeology. Once, when I walking down the sidewalk in Chatham, I came upon a group of men tearing up the sidewalk to put down new concrete. As I'm sure you know, General Washington and his troops were all over Morris County during the Revolutionary War, and many of the houses date back to that time. I asked these guys if they ever found anything archeologically intriguing when they did the excavation work in historic areas, and one of them answered, "Yep, we sometimes find interesting things. One thing we often find is arrowheads at the base of the trees because, when the native Americans (Lenape?) shot their arrows, they would hit the tree, fall to the ground, and get lodged there, and eventually get covered by dirt. It's kind of a pain because when we find anything of histroic value, we have to halt everything and call in the archeologists to do a dig." Fascinating (to me, at least)! We used to find (Timuquan?) arrowheads pretty frequently in a part of my childhood neighborhood in Florida that we called The Lost World. Surrounded on three sides by the St. John's River and canals, it was rich in arrowheads and filled our young minds with imagination. I so wish I still had that collection today, along with the palm-sized ancient shark teeth we kids would find on Cumberland Island, GA, on the sand roads newly dredged from the ocean. We thought we'd always be finding these treasures and, after a while, they took on the same importance to me as my pet rock, which is to say, little. On my way from North Carolina to Florida several years ago, I saw a brown historic site sign – always a temptation for me. Thinking I would just stop for a couple of minutes, I turned off of the highway onto a back road and ended up exploring Hampton Plantation for two hours, which was as much as I could spare on a fairly long car trip. According to their website, "Located in the southern Santee Delta region, Hampton Plantation State Historic Site is home to the remote, final remnants of a colonial-era rice plantation. The plantation now serves as an interpretive site for the system of slavery and rice cultivation in the region from the colonial period through the end of the Civil War." https://southcarolinaparks.com/ hampton After touring the house, I poked around the property and found, underneath the back stairs, a pile of what looked to be very old shards of pottery. Did they date back to the time when George Washington visited here? The elevated front porch, with wide brick arches allowing one to walk underneath, is where I discovered a large handprint on the low ceiling in the ancient cement. I put my hand up to it and found that it was much larger than mine. This, I thought, might have been the handprint of one of the enslaved people who built this structure, as a way to say, "I was here." While looking toward the future, we also need to try to listen to the (sometimes silent) voices of the past. -Julie Flynn DAYS TO KEEP IN MIND September 2, 1945; V-J (Victory over Japan ) Day, the formal signing of the Instrument of Surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Japan's Tokyo Bay Monday Sept 5 Labor Day Thursday Sept 8 International Literacy Day Sunday Sept 11 Patriot Day Tuesday Sept 13 International Chocolate Day September 17, 1787: Constitution Day – the day the U.S. Constitution was formed and signed by 39 delegates of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia Wednesday Sept 21 International Day of Peace ☮ Thursday Sept 22 Autumnal Equinox (Start of Fall) Sunday Sept 25 Rosh Hashanah Carol Beder's

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