What's Happening at Your Local Library: Manalapan

by Muriel Smith from the Monmouth County Library System

Mysteries and Myths at Eastern Branch

Mysteries, myths and Lore are all on tap at the Monmouth County Library’s Eastern Branch for November, starting with more insight into the Lindbergh baby kidnapping that drew international headlines in 1931.

Robert Zorn, author of Cemetery John: The Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping will speak on how his father, the late Eugene Zorn, was at Palisades Amusement Park in the summer of 1931 and inadvertently heard his two German immigrant neighbors from the Bronx conspiring with Bruno Hauptmann. His book was the driving force behind the PBS/NOVA documentary, “Who killed Lindbergh’s Baby?”

The program will be presented at 3 p.m. at the library on Saturday, Nov. 5, and will include information that there is an almost 100 percent probability that the neighbor, John Knoll, was a collaborator with Hauptmann in the kidnapping.

The following day, Sunday, Nov. 6, at 2 p.m. reporter and historian Dan Radel will present a program on Lost Topanemus. A Lenape place named that translates to “a place of plentiful freshwater and fish,” Topanemus appears on early maps of New Jersey as what is now Marlboro Township. Radel will also link an old cemetery in the “village” missing its gravestones to a Freehold congregation that still meets in its 18th century-era church at the corner of ‘Old Indian Road’.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt will be at the library on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 2 p.m. to discuss the tragic New Jersey story of a high seas hit-and-run: the mysterious sinking of the Lady Mary off the coast of Cape May. The incident left a single survivor and no clues to its demise.

Nutt won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for The Wreck of the Lady Mary and was also a finalist in 2009 for her Newark Star-Ledger newspaper feature Accidental Artist. Currently a health and science writer for the Washington Post, and a New York Times Bestselling author, she is a graduate of Smith College, and earned Masters degrees from MIT and Columbia University. She was also a Niemen Fellow at Harvard University in 2004-05.

Brian Regal, PhD, will be at the library on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 3 p.m. to talk about the Jersey Devil, one of the most popular myths of New Jersey history. Regal discounts myths that the Jersey Devil is a spectral winged horse demon, and believes instead the story of his birth is far more interesting, complex and important than most believe. Regal asserts the Devil is a product of innuendo, scandal and rumor mongering rather than witchcraft, and likens this early American tale to tabloids and internet gossip of today.

A professor of history of science, technology and medicine at Kean University, Regal is the author of numerous books and articles on the more esoteric realms of history. He has appeared on radio, television, blogs, and Op Ed pages around the world.

The mystery, myth and lore series will coincide within the library’s annual Fall Book Sale, which will be held from Nov. 1 through Nov. 5 during regular library hours. The last two days of the sale, Nov. 4 and Nov. 5, will offer specials, with Friday half-price day, and Saturday a dollar a bag day.

No reservations are necessary for any of the programs, and all are offered at no charge. For further information on these or other programs at any of the Monmouth County library branches, visit monmouthcountylib.org.

Image via Gregg Richards, flickr.