Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

There’s a sign in Mendham that says Civil War General Abner Doubleday once lived there.For a lot of people driving through town, that sign might be the only piece of Mendham history they ever encounter. It’s a small thing — a welcome sign perched on the side of the road — but it carries a surprising amount of weight. It tells passersby: this happened here, this place matters, this town has a story.But signs are never neutral. Someone decides what goes on them and where they get placed. And in New Jersey, those decisions have become even more complicated because of one surprising fact: out of 455 official state historical markers installed over the last hundred years, about 330 are missing.So what happened to them?That’s the question at the center of the New Jersey Historical Commission’s revamped Historical Marker Program — and the reason we partnered with the Commission to explore the strange, surprisingly fragile life of these roadside pieces of history.A Century of SignsWhen people talk about historical markers, they’re usually referring to those aluminum signs mounted on poles — the ones you see in parks, downtowns, along roadsides, or outside old buildings. These are not town welcome signs or privately made plaques. They are official markers placed by the state of New Jersey.The oldest of New Jersey’s markers date back to the 1920s. There were several major eras when the state made a concerted effort to install them, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and then again in the 1960s.But the early history of the program is murky.“The New Jersey Historical Commission was created in 1967,” Rachel Thimke of the New Jersey Historical Commission explained. “So even the markers that came in, in the 1920s and thirties, we would’ve never seen that because we didn’t exist.”Before the Commission took charge, there does not appear to have been one comprehensive historical marker program. Instead, markers were likely installed by different departments at different times, often for different reasons. Some may have been part of a public works effort during the Great Depression, others may have been tied to later commemorations.The result was a scattered paper trail — one that became harder to follow with every passing decade.Until finally, in 2009, the New Jersey state legislature formally gave the New Jersey Historical Commission responsibility for overseeing the roadside marker program.“In 2009 the state legislator passed a bill saying, ‘Historical Commission, it’s up to you to oversee these roadside markers and to continue a roadside marker program’” Thimke said.By then, hundreds of markers had already been installed across the state. But no one had a perfect record of what was still standing, what had been removed, and what had simply disappeared.What Happened to Them?The challenge the Historical Commission faced was daunting, like taking over a class project from someone who last touched it forty years ago.“The first step was to get that survey of, okay, what is the current landscape? What are we working with?” Thimke said. “When are these markers from, what information do we currently have on them? What’s still there and what isn’t?”The Commission also relied on members of the public to help crowdsource information. People went out into their communities, looked for markers, and reported back on whether they were still there.The results were startling. Of the 455 known markers, only about 125 are still standing.In many cases, the Commission does not know exactly what happened to the missing ones. There is no single dramatic culprit; no statewide historical marker thief; no grand conspiracy.Instead, the explanation seems to be more ordinary — and in some ways, more revealing.Time happened. Weather happened. Maintenance didn’t happen.Leah Baer, who helped verify which markers were still standing and which were missing, said some of the older signs simply deteriorated due to acid rain.“Especially the ones with very flimsy material were not the sturdiest,” Baer said. “So we got an image from someone who had a 1960s one, and it was very deteriorated to the point where it was not legible at all.”And once a marker became unreadable, it could become more of an eyesore than a public history tool.“So it just gets taken down and ends up in a basement somewhere,” Baer said. “And that’s the sad tale of probably a lot of these markers.”The irony here is that historical markers are supposed to preserve memory. They are designed to remind people that something important happened in a particular place. But over time, the markers themselves have become historical artifacts — objects that now need to be located, documented, replaced, and preserved. They created their own preservation problem.Why Not Just Replace Them All?Once you learn that more than 300 markers are missing, the obvious question is: why not just put them back? The answer is more complicated than it seems.The New Jersey Historical Commission does not want to simply recreate old markers because someone, somewhere, once decided a story belonged on a sign.“Kind of our whole ethos as we’re coming into this is we don’t wanna go into a community and be like, ‘Hey, a hundred years ago someone decided that this was important to your town,’” Thimke said. “We wanna make sure that this is really community driven, that folks are coming to us saying, ‘We appreciate this marker. We want it back.’”That community-driven approach shaped the Commission’s 2025 application process. Residents, municipalities, and organizations were invited to apply either to replace missing markers or propose new ones.The timing was intentional. The application period was tied to the upcoming commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, giving the state a chance to rethink which stories should be highlighted as New Jersey approaches the semiquincentennial.“We wanna make sure that this is really community driven, that folks are coming to us saying, ‘We appreciate this marker. We want it back.’”This year, 67 applications were considered. Of those, 42 markers will be placed in this round.But even if more communities want markers, there are limits. For one thing, they are not cheap: fabricating a historical marker costs just under $3,000.And while it might seem like a private citizen or local donor could simply pay to replace one, the Commission is cautious about that approach. The old markers need more than new metal - they need a historical audit.“Our preference would definitely be for us to take care of it,” Thimke said. “And one of the really big ones is to do a historical audit because again, we’re looking at the 1920s and thirties. We have learned so much in that time. It’s very possible that what we thought was true in 1936, we now understand it’s not. So we don’t wanna put up fresh markers with inaccurate information.”Local history is full of stories that were repeated for generations before anyone checked the evidence carefully. The Abner Doubleday sign in Mendham is a good example. Doubleday did live in Mendham, but the claim that he founded modern baseball is widely disputed.That sign is not an official state historical marker. But it shows how easily well-intentioned local history can harden into public memory. That’s why getting the story right matters.Do People Still Read Signs?The renewed marker program also raises a bigger question: what role do physical signs play in an age when most of us get information from screens?When many of New Jersey’s original markers went up in the 1920s and 1930s, people were more likely to be walking through town, lingering in public spaces, and encountering information in the physical world. A roadside marker may have been a genuine invitation to stop and learn something.Today, we are often driving past, looking at our phones, or moving too quickly to notice the landscape around us.Historical markers can start to blend into the background — part of the visual wallpaper of a place. The Commission knows that, too, which is why these new markers are designed to be harder to ignore.“They’re gonna be fairly large,” Thimke said. “They’re gonna be at eye level. If you’re walking past them, you’re gonna have to try really hard to ignore it.”That may be the quiet power of a good historical marker. It interrupts the ordinary landscape just enough to make you look again.An Audio Historical MarkerIn a way, that is also what we try to do here at Hometown History NJ.A podcast is not a metal sign on a pole. But it can work like one. It can point to a place and say: Check out this story you might have missed. This is why this town matters. Here is something worth remembering.Over the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing two stories from the New Jersey Historical Commission’s list of sites in need of a new historic marker. Because local history is not just about the stories we inherit. It’s also about the stories we choose to keep visible.This story was written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Special thanks to Rachel Thimke and Leah Baer at the New Jersey Historical Commission. Podcast episode image courtesy of the New Jersey Historical Commission. For more information about historical markers around the country, visit the Historical Marker Database at hmdb.org.To support New Jersey’s historical marker program, you can help identify missing markers in your town. Visit history.nj.gov to see a comprehensive list of every marker in the state. Applications for the next round of markers will open in 2027. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Hometown History is cooking up something new for you this Fall...and it smells like cinnamon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

Written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Our website is hometownhistory.substack.com and hometownhistorynj.com. We’re on instagram @hometownhistorynj.Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com

(Listen on your favorite podcast player: iTunes, Spotify, Overcast, HeartRadio, Amazon Music)RYAN: The town of Clinton, New Jersey is named after a political figure. Not President Bill Clinton, not even Brigadier General George Clinton (who also served as the country’s 4th Vice President) But the 19th century Governor of New York - DeWitt Clinton. A man you might have never heard of.Historian Stephen Jaffee used to work at the Museum of the City of New York on Fifth Avenue. And to help us understand who DeWitt Clinton was, he sent my producer Katie on a little mission.SXF - NYC STREETSSTEPHEN: As I said I worked at the Museum of the City of New York, and if you go to the façade of that building there are two, like, niches, and there are two bronze statues.KATIE ON SCENE: So I'm here to see the two statues. There's the first one, it's right here.STEPHEN: One is Alexander Hamilton…KATIE ON SCENE: Pretty handsome guy. Honestly, even for a bronze statue.STEPHEN: I mean, the thing about Hamilton, apart from the fact that, you know, a big hit sexy musical was done about him is that he really was the mastermind of the federal government's financial structure and one of the major architects of the rise of the banking system in the country.KATIE ON SCENE: Okay, I'm going to walk to the other side to see if I can find the other guy. Here he is…STEPHEN: …and the other is DeWitt Clinton.KATIE:. …DeWitt Clinton. 1769 to 1828.STEPHEN: And I mean, once the musical started, we had people, like, coming up and doing stuff with this statue, of Hamilton that is, and people are kind of like, oh, who's this guy over here, you know?KATIE ON SCENE: The two icons of New York. Um, okay, just being honest here, he's a lot less handsome than the Alexander Hamilton one.MUSIC ENDRYAN: When we learned about the town of Clinton’s namesake we had a lot of questions. Why would a small town in rural New Jersey name itself after a New York political figure? A governor who was known in his day for building a massive transportation project across New York State?Why were Hunts Mills residents obsessed with this guy? Who was he? And why have we mostly forgotten about him?INTRO THEMERYAN: Welcome to Hometown History, a series about the iconic places and events that make a town someplace people call home - stories that people can tell to their friends old and new about the place they live, did live, or will live. The town of Hunts Mills changed its name to honor New York State Governor DeWitt Clinton - a man it seems it had no association with. Until you look at who DeWitt Clinton was and what he represented to this little milling town.THEME ENDSTEPHEN: DeWitt Clinton is like the best kept secret of the revolutionary era.RYAN: That’s historian Stephen Jaffee, who you heard from at the top of the episode.STEPHEN: Clinton is a New Yorker and whatever national ambitions he has, he's much more a local or a state, a statist, for lack of a better term. All of his political connections come out of being a New Yorker.RYAN: Clinton isn’t usually mentioned alongside founding figures like Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson and Adams for one pretty good reason. He kind of just missed all the important stuff.MUSIC - FIFE AND DRUMSRYAN: DeWitt was only ten years old when the revolution got going. He graduated from King’s College one year before the Constitution was signed. He got his first job in politics not because he fought on the battlefield or attended the Constitutional Convention, but because he had family connections. His first job was secretary to the Governor of New York State - his uncle George Clinton.MUSIC ENDRYAN: From inside New York’s political machine, DeWitt Clinton moved up the ranks quickly. In 1797 he was elected to the state assembly, and then to the State Senate. A few years later he became a three term Mayor of New York City. By then the Clintons had a strong grip on New York politics.STEPHEN: In New York, the Clinton clan, are creating a political base for themselves. So you have a political dynasty around a family, sort of think a little bit like the Kennedys.RYAN: Owning and running New York State politics was a strategic move for the Clintons. In the early 1800s New York and Virigina were the two most powerful states in the union. Three of the first four presidents of the United States came from Virginia (John Adams was the exception). And three of the first four Vice Presidents came from New York (again, except Adams). This wasn’t a coincidence. Candidates from Virginia and New York routinely ran together to ensure the most votes. But eventually New York State grew tired of playing second fiddle.STEPHEN: Dewitt Clinton ran for president in 1812 against James Madison and got pretty close.MUSICRYAN: So why did we never have a President DeWitt Clinton? By all accounts DeWitt was an intelligent and savvy student of politics, his political education was top notch, and he came from an extremely well connected political family. Check, check and check.Well, to put it nicely…the guy was kinda aloof. Clinton came across as snobbish in conversation - owing to the fact that he was extremely well read and intelligent. He was also known to put his foot in his mouth. And he struggled to recover from his political faux pas. He didn’t have the charisma of Hamilton, or the political clout of Jefferson…you get the idea.All that is to say, after an embarrassing defeat in the 1812 presidential election, a humbled DeWitt returned home to New York State to lick his wounds and to look for his next job. In 1817, Clinton, running unopposed in a special election, took on his biggest political role to date, as Governor of New York.MUSIC ENDRYAN: So that answers the question: DeWitt Clinton who? But it’s not so much who Clinton was but what he did that inspired the residents of Hunts Mills.MUSICRYAN: As Clinton stepped into the governor's seat he was in need of a little reputation management. He also still felt the sting of his defeat against James Madison of Virginia. To bolster his reputation, and that of New York State, Clinton threw his support behind a new infrastructure idea: the Erie Canal.DEREK:  So a canal is an artificially constructed waterway. In the Erie Canal's case, it's 40 feet wide and four feet deep.RYAN: That’s Derek Pratt. Director of Education & Public Programming at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, NY.DEREK: In contrast to a natural waterway you can control things like the flow and the change in elevation.You have what are called locks which operate as essentially elevators for boats.MUSICRYAN: By 1817 canals weren’t exactly a brand-new idea. For centuries engineers and leaders in Europe had seen the value of building their own waterways to boost trade. And Native American tribes had been using a similar route through upstate New York for hundreds of years. After the American Revolution, engineering had finally come far enough that it actually seemed possible for the young country to take on a big, challenging project like the Erie Canal.Clinton had actually been thinking about the potential of a canal through New York State since his time as mayor. In the 1810s he went on a bit of a fact-finding trip to check out New York’s waterways and possible canal routes.Along the way he recorded observations in his diary. In a tavern in Schenectady he noted advertisements for two new machines used for wool and cotton production. He wrote about a large cheese factory just outside Utica whose product was “equal to the best English cheese that is imported.” A little farther west he described a water-powered spinning works for cotton owned by the Oneida Manufacturing Society. By the end of his trip, Clinton was convinced that the future of New York State was in manufacturing and commerce.MUSIC ENDRYAN: So Clinton threw his weight behind pushing for the Erie Canal to get built. At first his political rivals mocked his efforts, calling the proposed project “Clinton’s Ditch.”DEREK: Which was originally kind of a derogatory term for it. His enemies called it that.RYAN: New York’s canal bill was signed into law in 1817. But political heavyweights in Washington were still doubtful of its success. In 1822 Thomas Jefferson wrote to Governor Clinton to say he thought that “New York has anticipated by a full century, the normal process of improvement.”RYAN: But for once, Jefferson was wrong. The Eric Canal was completed in 1825 and offered a near immediate benefit to New York State.DEREK: Prior to the canal it takes about 30 days to get from Buffalo to New York City and it costs around $100 a ton. After the canal is built, it takes about five to seven days to make the same voyage, and it costs less than $10.RYAN: But it wasn’t just that people could now get from Buffalo to New York City quickly. The key was: they now had access to the Great Lakes. This is the 19th-century version of the internet. We have E-Commerce now, They had Erie commerce.SFX - INTERNET DIAL UPRYAN: In overpopulated parts of the Northeast, second and third sons, who weren’t inheriting the family farm, started moving west on the canal looking for new land. That land was rich with raw materials, like lumber and iron ore. Those products would then be shipped to major cities on the east coast. And then those places were able to ship manufactured goods back to the growing settlements out west.DEREK: As a result towns like Cleveland Toledo Chicago all spring up almost immediately after.RYAN: The Erie Canal also made New York the most influential state in the union. Before the canal, New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia were in competition with each other to be the primary port for the east coast.DEREK: After that, it's not really a competition. New York can service the whole Midwest.RYAN: Everyone is looking to be the next New York. And an era of “canal mania” sweeps across the country. In 1825, Ohio began building its own Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie to the Ohio River.DEREK: They have DeWitt Clinton come out to like turn the first shovel full. DeWitt Clinton, as a result, becomes this, like, celebrity.RYAN: So to 19th century America, DeWitt Clinton was much more than what he seemed to be on paper - just a regular old Governor of New York. He was DEWITT CLINTON father of the Erie Canal, this enormous infrastructure project that's transforming the nation!SFX - STADIUM CROWD CHEERING, ROCK MUSICRYAN: Which brings us back to Hunts Mills, New Jersey. Clearly DeWitt Clinton was a big enough figure that he was well known even outside his home state of New York. He might have even had another shot at running for President and winning this time, had he not died suddenly in 1828, the same year Hunts Mills changed its name to Clinton.STEPHEN: The surface answer would be, okay, he was a great American, he died, and people decided to name the town after him. Now, there's got to be more to it than that.RYAN: Here’s historian Stephen Jaffee again.STEPHEN: For a place like Clinton, New Jersey in the 1820s, which has already two mills on the local waterways, has a cluster of other businesses that are serving local farmers, grain growers and orchard owners, someone like DeWitt Clinton would have been honored and remembered by folks like John W. Bray and members of the the Taylor and Dunham families who are sort of the early economic elite I think it's fair to say in Hunts Mills, New Jersey. These are larger landholders. They had a sort of forward looking vision of connecting, traffic, industry. That's a vision of trade and exchange producing a kind of prosperity in America that someone like DeWitt Clinton really symbolized for people.RYAN: In fact, according to town lore, it was John W. Bray who proposed changing the name of Hunts Mills to Clinton in 1828. Proposed it or, given his place of prominence in the area at the time, just sorta made it happen.RYAN: Recall that John Bray took over ownership of the Red Mill just as the town was going through a rapid transformation. In 1818 it had a total of three houses. By 1829 it had grown big enough to require a way to communicate with other towns, and that took the form of a post office.RYAN: But in order to establish a post office, you need the most unique of identifiers - a name. They could have gone with Hunts Mills - but the Hunt brothers were long gone and the area was starting to be known for much more than milling. There’s no record of how things went down - it might not have been as formal as a full-on meeting. There’s reason to believe that Bray just said “Hey, we’re naming the place Clinton. Anyone have a problem with that? Good. Done.”STEPHEN: I found a kind of a funny newspaper article from 1827, so the year before Clinton gets renamed from Hunts Mills to Clinton. And the quote is that basically across the United States there are no less than 20 towns named Washington, nine Jeffersons, eight Madisons, 17 Monroes, eight Jacksons, six Clintons, and two or three Adamses.RYAN: There’s so much wrapped up in the name of a town. The residents of Clinton, New Jersey clearly felt that DeWitt Clinton was an important enough figure to name their town after. And after digging into what he’s known for (hehe, canal joke there) they were likely justified in doing so.RYAN: But there's also another reason to name a town after someone, and that’s to preserve their memory. DeWitt Clinton needed this recognition more than his famous contemporaries did.STEPHEN: The other thing of course about canals though is that very quickly, within a couple of decades, you get the railroads.MUSIC ENDRYAN: Oof, yeah. The canal system that Clinton built his reputation on became kinda obsolete rather quickly.STEPHEN: The canal era really is from about the 1810s, let's say, through the 1840s. And the railroads then supersede the canals pretty quickly.RYAN: A brief three decades of glory…before everyone is back to saying “DeWitt Clinton, who?” Everyone that is, except for people from Clinton, New Jersey.MUSICRYAN: Next week on Hometown History, Clinton may have been inspired by the man who championed canals, but it was ultimately transformed by railroads and highways. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com