MapleGOOD—Susan Newberry

She is a keeper of Maplewood's past. Susan Newberry is president of the board of the Durand-Hedden House & Garden Association, guardian of the historic home built in 1790 in a town that would be named Maplewood in 1922. A gumshoe anthropologist with an insatiable curiosity for all things historic, Susan has dug up the minute details that breathe life and relevancy into a picture of our town's past.

"Edwin Hatch was the local Bernie Madoff of his time," said Newberry of the owner of the last dairy farm in Maplewood. "He came from Chicago, went into investing and he portrayed himself as a gentleman farmer, but he was a swindler. He was tried and thrown in the state penitentiary. In the midst of this, he got appendicitis. The next thing he knew, his wife is divorcing him and marrying someone else."

More detective than archivist, Newberry peers into online files like Ancestry.com,  musty building permits at Town Hall and yellowing photographs in family attics. She gathers precious clues where she can find them ("With Hatch, it was 1 a.m. and all of a sudden all of these New York Times articles came popping up. I looked up the Trenton State Prison in the Census and there he was."). Then she tracks down any distant relatives she can find who may have an oral history to share.

"I did make contact with a family descendant in North Carolina who helped me piece together the story behind Maplewood's bicycle craze of the late 1880s to 1915," recalled Newberry. "One of the ultimate bicycle races on the East Coast was along a dirt road that is now Springfield Avenue. It ran from Irvington to Millburn. There were 20,000 spectators who came from all over. The New York Times gave directions. A bicycle shop at the corner of Baker and Valley roads was owned by Charles DeGrasse. He undoubtedly prepped the competitors' bikes for the race there and was very involved himself."

Locals can learn more about Maplewood's historic link to cycling through an exhibit Durand-Hedden is bringing to MayFest 2010 (held on Springfield Avenue between Indiana Street and Yale Street on May 16, rain date May 23).

In her day job, Newberry works as a historic preservationist currently tracking the back story on a Jersey City church that was integral to the Civil Rights Movement and may be tied to the Black Panthers. She lives in the Maplewood home of her childhood, where she dreamed as a Middle School kid of becoming an archeologist in Egypt. Ancient history for her now dates back no further than the late 18th Century, when the Durand-Hedden House was built. But it's the future that worries Newberry.

"Who will step up to keep these historical records after me and my dedicated colleagues?" wondered Newberry. "If I really face it, it makes me nervous. I committed to this more than 25 years ago. It's hard to find volunteers like that who stay for the long term."

To preserve and give the public greater access to  many historic maps, photos and other local documents, Newberry helped create the Robert H. Grasmere Local History Center at Hilton Library. Anyone interested in viewing or donating  materials or volunteering should contact Durand-Hedden at 973-763-7712.

While many people today seem obsessed with iPads and Droids, Newberry gushes about the days in 1838 when horses pulled passenger trains over the Morris and Essex railroad from Newark to Orange, before Seth Boyden invented a steam engine that was powerful enough to handle the incline to the towns beyond.

"Later on, about 1890, Maplewood had a total of six daily commuters to New York City," said Newberry of the weekday slog that NJ Transit now reports takes 2,266 Maplewoodians to Penn Station and 345 to Hoboken, where many board PATH trains to NYC.

"In those days, Springfield Avenue was a far more important section of town than what is today's Maplewood Village. There was the General Store and post office where the abandoned Shell station now stands and a Cope carriage factory. From about 1860-1910, the Hilton area was famous for its crops of strawberries, which later gave way to pansies. The area supplied flowers for Rockefeller Center and for the 1939 World's Fair. There was Olympic Park, an amusement park, with an opera house, which was as prominent as Palisade's Park. It started as a beer garden for the Germans who had immigrated to Newark as jewelers, and who were a little too noisy for what was then a very Protestant Newark. Then…"

The stories are fascinating. The level of detail and illuminating perspective is as remarkable as Maplewood's history itself. Newberry's enthusiasm is infectious. She is clearly a volunteer whose labor is powered by love.

MapleGOOD is a blog that profiles our hometown heroes and their feats to better mankind. It's inspired by our neighbors' sense of selflessness and the good works that they carry out quietly all the time. If you know a MapleGOOD-doer whom you'd like to see profiled, drop us a line. 

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