Timeline....

[wyane]

Timeline - Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/16/99

The county seat of Monmouth County was settled in 1693.
1713 The original Monmouth County Court House is erected. The court house has been rebuilt several times after damaging fires.

June 28, 1778 Gen. Washington engages Gen. Clinton's troops in the fields west of Freehold. This is the day Washington snatches victory from impending disaster as he forces the retreat of British troops. It is also on this day that Molly Pitcher brings water to thirsty Continental soldiers and takes over her husband's cannon when he is fallen by British gunfire.

Jan. 1, 1795 The post office of the village is established and designated on the the records as "Monmouth." The first postmaster is Samuel McKinstry.

1824 The American Hotel and accompanying restaurant is built. Enlarged in 1928, it still stands today.

April 12, 1834 The "Monmouth Democrat," a newspaper, is founded by Bernard Connolly.

1853 Freehold Raceway is established. The raceway is the scene of the Monmouth County Agricultural Fair while horse trotting races are a major attraction.

1854 The first Monmouth County Fair takes place.

Feb. 21, 1861 President-elect Abraham Lincoln travels across New Jersey and through Freehold on his way to the White House.

April 20, 1872 The Freehold Fire Department organizes. The first company was Good Will Hook and Ladder under a charter passed by the Legislature.

1904 The A & M Karagheusian Rug Mill is founded by brothers Arshag and Miran Karagheusian. They bring weavers from Great Britain to work the looms. By 1928 the company becomes nationally known for its flagship product, the Gulistan carpet. In 1957, Karagheusian begins phasing out production here and in 1962, all operations are moved to North Carolina.

1925 What is then called Freehold Regional High School on Route 79 at Dutch Lane Road is built in 1925. It is now Freehold Borough High School.

1941 The Freehold First Aid squad is established by 15 A & M Karagheusian Rug Mill workers.

1945 Al's Bootery is opened for by business by Abraham (Al) Sorcher.

1947 Tony Iliadis opens Tony's Freehold Grill.

Sept. 13, 1948 The Nescafe plant, Nestle's new $1 million coffee factory, opens on Jerseyville Avenue.

1951 The Freehold Music Center is established by Mike Diehl.

October 1969 Dedication ceremonies for the new borough hall on West Main Street is held. It cost $200,000 to build.

June 10, 1972 A parade honoring the 100th anniversary of the Freehold Fire Department takes place.

1973 The Battleground Arts Center Inc. is founded in 1973. It's a non-profit organization which has its own repertory company and offers workshops and theater for all age groups.

October 1978 The Freehold Antique and Craft Center opens in the former Freehold Transcript building, which is owned by Art and Mary Kravetz. The building now houses six shops filled with an array of antiques, art work, paintings and collectible items.

1984 Freehold Furniture Store opens a second location across the street in Freehold's first firehouse, built before the turn of the century. Owner Carl Steinberg has renovated the building in a style reminiscent of the late 19th century.

1985 The former Freehold train station, built in 1890, undergoes eight months of renovation to restore it to its original colonial appearance. It reopens as a bus depot.

Dec. 18, 1990 The Borough Council gives the tax assessor the green light to reassess properties based on current market values. Residents had revolted against tax revaluations many claimed unfair.

Dec. 16, 1990 The Monmouth County Board of Freeholders votes to buy the downtown post office building.

June 20, 1999 More than 150 people, many of them veterans and relatives of those killed in the Korean War, gather at the unveiling of the Korean War Monument in front of the Monmouth County Veterans Memorial Building

[Wyane]

Freehold Borough by the numbers


Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/16/99

1 Number of Bruce Springsteen songs with "Freehold" in the title

$3 Daily salary of Joseph E. Clancy, Freehold's first police officer, hired Sept. 15, 1919.

5 Number of places in the borough listed on the New Jersey and National Historic Registers

9 Number of businesses along Main Street destroyed in an April, 1962, fire

26.1 Number of miles of local roadway in town

67 Number of marriage licenses issued this year

94 Height, in feet, of the Battle of Monmouth memorial outside the Monmouth County Courthouse

160 Number of licensed cats in town

655 Number of licensed dogs in town

1,500 number of rugs shipped each week from the Freehold Rug Mill during its heyday

$10,000 Contribution given by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie toward the building of the Freehold Public Library in 1903

30,000 Number of barrels of locally-grown potatoes shipped each day from Freehold in 1924

$40,000 Cost to erect the Battle of Monmouth monument, unveiled Nov. 13, 1884, at the site of what is now the Monmouth County Courthouse

$421,000 Property taxes paid by Nestle plant to Freehold Borough in 1999

10,000,000 Number of pounds of instant tea produced at the Nestle plant each year

18,000,000 Number of pounds of Taster's Choice instant coffee produced each year

-- Compiled by Amy Zurzola, with information from the Nestle, Office of the Borough Clerk and historical books and documents on file at the Freehold Public Library.

from the Asbury Park Press
Published: December 16, 1999

[im6ye4l]

In just 7 years.....

Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/16/99
By JOSEPH SAPIA
STAFF WRITER
Freehold Borough is the hole in the doughnut -- the hole is the downtown and surrounding area, landlocked by the "doughnut" of Freehold Township.

At daybreak, Beatrix Owens, the crossing guard at the Park Avenue Elementary and Intermediate School, may look like she's hamming it up for a photographer, but her eyes never leave the students she's charged with keeping safe.

The borough is a place where farmers and lawyers rub shoulders, as some have said, the congregating point for those practicing law in the county seat of Monmouth County and those from the now-vanishing farms outside of town.

"It has the variety of a city within the confines of a town," says Kevin Coyne, 40, the borough historian, who represents the sixth generation of his family to live here. The family settled here in the 1850s when it fled the potato famine in Ireland.

The borough is an eclectic blend of family owned businesses, bail bondmen's offices, outdoor cafes, ethnic restaurants and the Nestle factory, which still makes instant coffee and tea after more than 50 years. And at long last, the old A&M Karagheusian rug mill is being renovated into housing, commercial and community space, 40 years after the last Gulistan carpet was woven there.

"This is a real community," Coyne says. "This is a community comprised of an extraordinary body of people. There are people who have been here longer than me and Mexicans that arrived yesterday." (IN DEED)
The borough, with a population of about 10,800, has a large minority community. Based on analysis by Claritas Inc., a research firm, the town is about 23 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian.

By nightfall, holiday lights from the Christmas tree, creche and menorah highlight the Monmouth County Hall of Records.
A quick run down Main Street turns up business people with surnames reflecting the diversity: Haley, Iliadis, Kelmendi, Jones, Federici, Patel, Sorcher and Lopez. Besides regular publications, Esquire News sells newspapers serving Irish, Italian and Spanish-speaking communities.

In addition to the daily ebb and flow of people into the downtown business area, Freehold Borough is also where the pulse of Monmouth County government can be taken. Every day, roughly 600 county workers come to their base in the borough. Another 480 state Superior Court and state probation department workers work here.

"It's a thriving little community," says County Administrator Robert J. Collins, who has worked on and off for county government in the borough for the last 25 years. "It's enjoyable to be here. Sometimes, the traffic could be a little better."

It is Main Street traffic delaying Ted Adamko from getting the morning paper as quickly as he had planned. He is having trouble crossing Main Street because of the traffic. But, at just under 2 square miles, the town is not difficult to get around on foot. And Adamko, a 71-year-old Edgewood Drive resident, walks or bikes downtown daily.



STEVE SCHOLFIELD photo

American and decorative flags fly from homes along Murray Street.
"I thank God for my good health," Adamko says, "and I remember Pearl Harbor today by putting out my American flag."

This day is Dec. 7, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II in 1941. The day may have more meaning to Adamko than most. His brother, Johnny, an Army sergeant, was killed in France in 1944. Johnny Adamko -- memorialized with a marker along with other Freehold military casualties of war at "the Point," where Main Street meets Broadway -- would have been 80.

As for his search for a newspaper, Adamko says, "My coffee is on (at home), I'm going to read it."

For those who like their cup of joe outside the home, Barbara Potter, known as "Mrs. Harry," is already on the job. As a ball of red sun is just jutting over the Mechanic Street horizon, Potter is walking across the still-gray Market Yard parking lot, her slight frame bundled up against the morning chill, headed to her waitress job at Sweet Lew's Hometown Cafe.

"Good morning," Potter, 56, calls out, hoarsely. "I'm going to get coffee ready."

On Bennett Street, Brian Edghill, 26, is giving his 17-year-old sister, Shernell Morris, a ride to Freehold High School, where she is a junior. But first she drops off her 6-month-old daughter, Sierra, at a baby-sitter's.

"I love Freehold. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else," says Edghill, a Barbados native who actually lives in Freehold Township.



Bob Bielk photo

Earlier, a commuter bus pulls out of the bus station at sunrise, which comes at 7:05 a.m. on Dec. 7. The bus depot is the old train station on West Main Street.
The line between Freehold Borough and Freehold Township is somewhat of a blur. Not only because the towns blend together but because they were once the same municipality. On April 15, 1919, the two Freeholds officially separated when the borough incorporated as a municipality.

Examples of how the towns are intertwined are everywhere: Freehold Raceway is in the borough. On the other side of Route 9, Freehold Raceway Mall is in the township. The county courthouse is in the borough; the county Jail is in the township.

While the difference between the two Freeholds can be confusing, it is not so for historian Coyne.

" . . . If I can live my life without leaving the confines of the borough, I am extremely happy," says Coyne, a full-time writer now working on his third book -- this one about six men who left a small town to fight in World War II, only to return to that small town where they still live.

Yes, that small town is the borough of Freehold.

Do Coyne, Potter and others sound like characters from a Bruce Springsteen song? Perhaps. But maybe this is not a case of life imitating art. Maybe it's a case of Springsteen's lyrics having been influenced by his environment. Just as the borough is Coyne's hometown, it is Springsteen's as well.

The Boss may have left Freehold years ago, but he still comes back home. And when he does, he visits such places as Sweet Lew's, Federici's (home of the spicy pizza) and Tony's Freehold Grill, a half-century-old stainless steel, Jerry O'Mahony diner.

"He comes in once in awhile," says Tony Iliadis, 70, patriarch of the diner family. "He's a fine man. And a good sport. You should see what he leaves the waitresses in tips. A nice man."

It's all here. From the Walter J. Conley Lodge of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World on Throck, as Throckmorton Street is known locally, to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at The Point. From the Congregation Agudath Achim to St. Rose of Lima Church, from the Village Bar to the American Hotel's Coach House restaurant, they're all in the doughnut's hole -- Freehold Borough.

And, if you don't want to walk around or fight the traffic, you can explore the world of cyberspace from the Freehold Public Library. Or check out 7-year-old Christina Zarnowski's collectible dolphins, the library's current display. Or the "Freehold: Then and Now" photograph display presented by Brownie Troop 983.

"I love the borough," says Frank Federici, 75, the restaurant owner and lifelong borough resident. "I guess because I was born here. Every house has a tree in front of it. And people are nice."

So, what else is there?

from the Asbury Park Press
Published: December 16, 1999