Motorola VT-105 ad, Schwering, The New Era, Dec 16, 1948
Do you recall your first TV? Bonus points if it was black and white.
Here is the must-have holiday present – a big-screen Motorola VT-105 television set available from The Schwering Store, as advertised in The New Era, Dec 16, 1948.
Schwering’s Hardware Store, founded in 1922, was already 26 years old in 1948, but broadcast TV was still in its infancy.
The New Era, May 15, 1930, p4
Only a few years prior, in 1930, a columnist for The New Era had described the first public demonstration of a two-way television broadcast between points just three miles apart in New York City.
He imagined that the expensive process would become cheaper and, “Very soon there will be little rooms… to which anybody could go and for a fee talk to people… as if face to face.”
A Life magazine ad, December 6, 1948, touted the innovative features of the new line of Motorola TVs, featuring the “Gorgeous Table Model” VT105 (same one in the above Schering ad) that “…shows constant, crystal-clear pictures. Hand-rubbed Furniture Styled Cabinet.”
1948 Motorola VT-105
Imagine your family clustered around that massive 10-inch display ready to watch your choice of three available television stations in the Philadelphia region – 3, 6, and 10.
According to Philadelphia Television by Bill Shull, Philadelphia’s first commercial broadcast station WPTZ, which was later called CBS 3 (KYW-TV), commenced operation on July 1, 1941.
WPVI-TV/Channel 6 went on the air as WFIL-TV in September 1947, and WCAU-TV followed in May 1948, as Philadelphia’s third television station.
WPTZ TV to televise RYC races, The New Era, Sept 23, 1948, p1
Before the advent of taping, a method, apparently used for the Riverton Yacht Club broadcast, was to film an event and then scan it for broadcast back at the studio.
I was six in 1953 when Nana and Pop-Pop got their TV in Camden, but I still remember seeing some of the shows depicted in this YouTube video.
Sure, the grownups had their favorites like Uncle Milty, Red Skelton, and the Ed Sullivan Show, but my favorite was Winky Dink and You (at about 26:30 you can see a girl with the plastic overlay and crayons).
Winky_Dink Photo Credit: CBS Photo Archive, Getty Images
I sent in 50 cents for the Winky Dink Kit and Magic Screen and every week I helped Winky Dink out of a jam by drawing whatever Winky needed (rope, boat, rollerskates, etc.) on the TV screen.
And the price to put that 1948 Motorola under your tree? $289.00 was a hefty 9.3% of the $3,120 median family income in 1948 (Federal Reserve Bulletin, Nov. 1949). According to this Consumer Price Index Calculator, $289.00 in 1948 dollars is equivalent to $3,086.02 in 2019.
You know what it is – an excuse for an awesome party – but do you know why we’re throwing it?
The Historical Society has a tradition of encouraging student involvement with local history. In 2007 we established the Betty Hahle Excellence in History Award for sudents at Riverton Public School.
A 2011 web post describes the motivation behind the award and profiles the esteemed former Town Historian for whom it is named.
Betty B Hahle 10-06-09 age 90
The Betty B. Hahle Excellence in History Award is given to an eighth grade student each year at Riverton Public School. Betty Hahle’s many decades of historic research and writing as Town Historian and her interest in cultivating the interest of young people in the study of history inspired the award.
Betty B Hahle Award plaque in RPS trophy case, 2012
At Riverton School’s 8th grade graduation ceremony in June, I was very pleased to announce the inaugural winner of the Historical Society of Riverton’s BETTY B. HAHLE EXCELLENCE IN HISTORY AWARD. Named for our esteemed historian, this annual award of a $100 savings bond is given to the 8th grader who best completes an oral history project of a Riverton resident. Riverton School social studies teacher and HSR Board member, John McCormick, created the 8th grade history project to capture, via audio and video recordings, the stories of notable Rivertonians. Miss Jennifer Pacek, now a 9th grader at Palmyra High School, won the 2007 award for her videotaped interview with 100-year-old Mae Goodwin, who is believed to be the oldest living graduate of Riverton School.
Mae told of kids taking rides on fire trucks in celebration of the end of World War II, she did not particularly like school, and she recalled that in school, bad students were whipped with a strap. Even decades ago, children like young Mae went sledding at Double Bunkers at the Riverton Country Club.
Other Riverton School recipients of the award include: 2008 Hannah Hoag, 2009 Emily Curci, 2010 Chelsea Montieth, 2011 Hannah Creighton, 2012 Andrea Kinzler, 2013 Holly Bednarek, 2014 Taylor Blinebury, 2015 Grace Hochenberger, 2016 Fisher Hudak and Maura Scott, 2017 Joseph Fort, 2018 Catherine Azelby, 2019 Jack Kinzler
Our hope is to establish cash awards to encourage students to author local history articles using primary source material. The primary goal of the Historic House Party is to raise the funds needed to underwrite that endeavor.
C’mon and help make some history. Please buy a ticket and join the fun if you can. For more details, see this website linkto the event and this Facebook event.
Event tickets are on sale for $50 at Riverton Library and the Guitar Guild of Palmyra. The Guild has a credit card reader.
If you can’t go, but wish to support the Society’s goal to better connect with families and young people, just click on the PayPal button at left and follow the prompts. Or send your check, payable to The Historical Society of Riverton to:
Historical Society of Riverton
PO Box 112
Riverton, NJ 08077
One of the most common requests for help received here – family research – often results in a descent down a rabbit hole on a search that the questioner hopes will reveal some historical truth about their ancestor. That search seldom has had as satisfying an end as this one.
Last week Richard E. Shaw emailed me from his home in North Carolina to tell about a visit to Riverton he had made in October in a quest to find out more about the Dreer Nursery since William F. Dreer employed Shaw’s great grandfather, John Shaw, as superintendent of the Dreer estate in Rosemont, PA from 1900 to 1922. Another ancestor, Joseph Shaw, John Shaw’s brother, worked at Dreer Nursery in the 1910s-20s and resided in Riverton and later in Palmyra.
Wed, Jul 26, 1899, Woodbury Daily Times, Page 1
John Shaw, whose stated profession was “Gardener,” might have started his association with Dreer as an employee of the Dreer Nursery in Riverton sometime between 1883 and 1895. After immigrating the USA from England in 1882, Shaw may have been living in the Frankford section of Philadelphia or perhaps he resided at or near Riverton. From 1895 to 1900 he worked for Mr. G.G. Green in Woodbury, NJ.
Richard had already gleaned the above information from forays into ancestry.com and help from Gloucester County Historical Society Library, but he hoped to flesh out more details.
Understandably, Richard had some questions: 1) Are the records of Mr. Dreer’s 250 or so employees at Riverton during the 1880s or 1890s? 2) Did employees reside in (or near) Riverton or did some of them commute each day across the Delaware River from Philadelphia? 3) Does anyone happen to know whether the Dreer family papers and/or business records are archived anywhere, such as Riverton or Philadelphia? 4) Is there more than one cemetery in town for me to check next visit?
With Richard’s permission, I highlight here some of our correspondence to explain a bit about our research process.
Searching through our old hometown newspaper collection for “Shaw” yielded over 240 results – it’s a common surname. Halfway through, most results were not relevant. However, I found a few for John or Joseph and sent Richard a few news clippings that looked promising and answered his questions.
Down the Rabbit Hole
I wrote, “Regarding your questions: #1 – I ONLY WISH we had Dreer employee and business records. #2 Yes, many Dreer Nursery employees lived locally – probably most. #3 If anyplace was given company records, Cornell Univ. makes a good suspect. There is a William Frederick Dreer Scholarship there. #4 There is no cemetery within the Borough. Morgan in Palmyra and Westfield in Cinnaminson are likely ones to try.
Richard replied, “Thank you so very much for navigating that rabbit hole on my behalf. I am most grateful… The Joseph Shaw obit that you shared was spot on.”
We agreed to keep each other apprised of further developments and then Richard did the classiest thing… he used the PayPal button at left to make a donation to the Society!
His comment about the donation reads:
I am grateful for the fine assistance provided to me via email by John McCormick, helping me search for my great grandparents in the Riverton and Woodbury areas. Also for his gem of a ppt presentation about the former Dreer Nursery at Riverton.
We continued corresponding and when I found some more results, I sent him this:
Maybe nothing below. Just trying to follow breadcrumbs…
(Google) searching for John+Shaw+Florist… see middle col., bottom, near GRAND PRIZE.
I thought we might be on to something with Shaw and chrysanthemum culture, so I searched further for John+Shaw+chrysanthemum and found more accounts of his prize-winning flowers in old trade journals.
The trade journals also listed other employers. Click on each image caption to view the source material.
That American Florist page mentions John and Joseph Shaw five times.
Lots of searchable Dreer catalogs online. I hoped to find a mention of Shaw, but no luck.
Have you tried searching for a connection to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society or Radnor Historical Society? Radnor High School has an award named for Dreer.
After several email exchanges with attachments between us, Richard concluded with…
…your most recent email included two additional clippings I had not received, including the one from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Each of these helps fill gaps in our family information. I’m very pleased and am grateful for your assistance.
Your search unearthed much more than bread crumbs. You’ve provided several meals worth of information for me to chew on and digest. You found my great grandfather showing his chrysanthemums at several flower shows, and winning awards!. And, you’ve revealed that he was employed by G.G. Green (of Woodbury, NJ) many years sooner than I had known from previous documentation (1889, rather than 1895). So you have helped add color and close temporal gaps in my knowledge. In addition, you found that John Shaw in 1887 had been employed by another prominent Philadelphian, Clarence Howard Clark. So, in addition, you have pointed me in other directions for additional information.
And I was glad to help.
I thank Richard Shaw for his generous donation and for allowing us to share this experience with our readers.
Please know that we welcome submissions of information and images from the public.
Indeed, much of what you encounter here is the result of contributions from scores of persons who have helped us document local history.
Each one enriches this online resource and helps search engines find us. How else do you think Richard Shaw found us from Hillsborough, NC? -JMc
Yes, it’s a party, but one with a noble objective: to establish cash prizes to encourage student authors to use primary sources to write about local history.
Event tickets are on sale for $50 at Riverton Library and the Guitar Guild of Palmyra. The Guild has a credit card reader. You may also purchase tickets by contacting Heather Huffnagle at heather.mary.macintosh@gmail.com.
You don’t want to miss this. But, if you must, please support the Society’s goal to better connect with families and young people, for that is where our hope for the future survival of this Society lies.
Just click on the PayPal button at left and follow the prompts. Or send your check, payable to The Historical Society of Riverton to:
Historical Society of Riverton
PO Box 112
Riverton, NJ 08077
On Saturday, November 23, from 6pm ’til 10 pm, the Historical Society of Riverton will host a very historic house party at 100 Lippincott Avenue to raise funds for cash awards to students at Riverton School and Palmyra High Schoolwho use the HSR’s archives to write about aspects of local history.
Ticket price is $50 per person and includes an open bar and dinner buffet of smoked pork and beef brisket, roasted vegetables, pickled vegetables, cornbread and an assortment of seasonal pies.
Kids under 18 admitted free, but let us know that you’ll be bringing them so that we can plan properly. Bounce house and kid-friendly snacks and refreshments will be provided.
Tickets are on sale at the Riverton Library and the Guitar Guild of Palmyra. The Guild has a credit card reader.
More Info
In 2020, HSR will be celebrating it’s 50th birthday, and we’ve been thinking about how to recognize this benchmark and better connect with families and young people in Riverton. At the same time, we’ve been cleaning up our archives, improving how we store them (these are currently in the Riverton Library’s basement) and putting a lot of archival material online (see http://www.rivertonhistory.com). The most recent Criterium Bike Race’s proceeds went toward our archives project.
Each year, the HSR’s Betty Hahle Award has recognized a Riverton School student who excels in history. We’re looking to build on this with an expanded program that spotlights our archives and includes Palmyra High School students.
Hope you can make it!
Heather MacIntosh Huffnagle
Membership and Ways and Means Chair
Historical Society of Riverton
After almost fifty years of documenting the rich and varied chapters in Riverton’s history, it is a rare treat for the Society when we encounter a new one.
What alerted us to the role played by Riverton in the establishment of our nation’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System was a Facebook post made last week in which Sara Sinexon Gual asked, “Does anyone remember where RCA/BMEWS was located?”
It was the BMEWS (pronounced be-muse) radar arrays that provided the capability to detect an incoming ICBM attack and provide 15 minutes warning.
Resident John Hartnett got the ball rolling when he commented, “East Riverton, banner st”.
However, it was former resident Rob Gusky‘s link to an essay by Gene McManus that really opened up the story. Mr. McManus, a former USAF radar technician recounts his training experience at Riverton (actually, East Riverton) in February 1961, for BMEWS training and his subsequent BMEWS deployment at Thule, Greenland.
RCA BMEWS El Paso Herald Post, El Paso, Texas, US, December 2, 1960, Page 51
Here, a classified ad, perhaps similar to the one to which Mr. McManus responded, outlines the need for positions of engineers, technicians, and technical writers at Riverton and on-site in the Far North.
If you know Riverton geography, you know that there is no Bannard Street within its boundaries. While all of the news clippings we found listed the address of RCA Service Company as 1908 Bannard Street in Riverton, Bannard Street actually lies within East Riverton, an unincorporated community located within Cinnaminson Township.
The following screen capture from google maps shows the location of 1908 Bannard Street, East Bannard Street, Cinnaminson Township, Burlington County, New Jersey. Can anyone tell us more about the RCA operations that once took place there?
google maps screen captureBuilt in 1959 and maintained by RCA under contract to the US Air Force, FPS-49 was the prototype for BMEWS
Other clues to the beginnings of the BMEWS story were once in plain sight.
Remember Moorestown’s “golf ball”? That now-gone landmark, located on Centerton Road in Moorestown, was a radar station built by RCA and a prototype for the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System,
As any school child of the 1950s and 60s who experienced a “duck and cover” drill can attest, the possibility of a nuclear attack was something for which we prepared. It caused anxiety and fueled our nightmares.
The undated RCA produced color film linked below (probably from the late 1950s-early 1960s) mentions RCA Moorestown shortly after 3min:53sec. The construction process at Thule commences at 8min:05sec.
Another USAF produced video, Eyes of the North, explains the difficulties of constructing such an installation in the harsh conditions above the Arctic Circle. Look for one of those “golf balls” and the radar array inside it at about 2min:19sec.
HSR Editor, John McCormick
Our purpose here is not to thoroughly examine BMEWS (other sources do a better job of it), but to simply provide a place for other readers from this area to tell of their first-person experience with this massive technological achievement that provided advance warning to the United States of an enemy missile attack during the Cold War.
Please leave a comment below or contact us at rivertonhistory@gmail.com. -JMc
The New Era, June 8, 1944, p7
P.S. Speaking of long-forgotten stories, former Riverton resident Edith Harris once told me that she worked on developing bombardier sights at Optical and Scientific, Inc. in the Collins Building for the US Government during World War II. Can anyone corroborate that?
Added 12/07/2020: Thank you to George Pfeffer who sends this first-hand recollection of his time at a BMEWS installation in Greenland.
After having served 3 years in the Army – two and a half of those years in Germany I went to work for RCA at their BMEWS headquarters in Riverton. Having worked in Army administration I was hired as a clerk. After about two months things were slowing down and I had a choice of either being terminated or going to J-site at Thule Greenland. I was a young 21 year old single guy looking to get ahead so it was Thule.
They had no openings in administration at the time so I went there as a utility man which was basically janitorial maintenance. I was told when there was an opening I would move into admin. I worked with a great crew of young guys and really didn’t mind waxing floors and emptying trash cans. I was eventually promoted to Leadman and decided to stay in maintenance for my 18 months. Once we stayed 18 months everything we had made was tax exempt.
Being in Greenland was the experience of a lifetime, the dark season, the light season, the tremendous winter storms (phases). Going to work on the midnight shift wearing sun glasses. RCA provided nice dorms and the food was terrific all at no cost. I was a Delran Twp resident so the Riverton location was just down the road. I loved everything about my time with RCA and the BMEWS project and especially my time in Thule Greenland. I have spent the past 50 plus years in law enforcement and at 79 I am still working.
Thank you for the opportunity to reminisce and comment on my time with the BMEWS project. Even now I will go on google maps and bring up the site and the dorm I lived in. One of the other young men who were with me in Riverton and then in Thule was Ken Landis. Ken drove a trash truck at the site but later became a prominent Tax Attorney in Collingswood. We all moved on to other vocations but none of us will ever forget our time with BMEWS.
– George Pfeffer
Added 2/12/2021: I love it when someone googling the internet for a topic finds just what they had sought here. Such was the case when a reader found our story above and sent us his following recollection of BMEWS. Sounds like hard work and long hours to us but he remembers it as “Great Fun.” You’re a better man than I am, Dennis Skiffington!
BMEWS I went to BMEWS school in Riverton in the summer of 1965… Don’t remember much as my 81-year-old brain cells pretty much are FUBAR… Remember the school was on the main drag in Riverton, east (?) of town. Used to hang out in a bar in Palmyra. ‘Graduated” and headed to J-Site in Thule, worked in the RCS (Rearward Communications System), on the ground floor of Bldg 2, right next to the covered tramway/road that connected the 3 main bldgs… Pretty much worked every day… Lived in Bldg 1098 (?) on main base. Took those old Wayne school busses to and from work, always lugging our bag of survival gear… Great Fun (????)…lol
Added 5/3/2022: We thank Michael Blaber for this record of his father’s experience with BMEWS
Hotel Walt Whitman
My father, Keith Blaber, flew from Mildenhall to McGuire Air Force Base, Burlington County, New Jersey on 1 March 1962. His VISA was valid to 30th April 1962. Whilst there he stayed at the Walt Whitman Hotel, Camden, NJ. He was a radar technician from Fylingdales in the North Yorkshire moors. Part of the defense early warning system monitoring Soviet ICBMs. He was visiting/working at RCA Riverton.
Added 8/6/2022: Thank you to Bill Pierce for sending in this info about his father’s experience.
BMEWS My dad worked for RCA on BMEWS from late 1958 until late 1968. We moved into our brand new house at 2302 New Albany Road in Cinnaminson just before Thanksgiving ’58, and stayed until October of ’69. While there, Dad was sent to Clear, Thule, and Fylingdales in England, where he was in management, installing communications networks. After BMEWS, the company transferred him to Anchorage, where RCA had just bought the bits and pieces of what became Alascom. We rented out the house on New Albany for 18 months to be with him in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and we were part of a community of RCA families that lived in Ravenswood, Fountain Farms, and Pheasant Run back in the States. Cold War Nirvana.
Added 2/22/2023: Thomas Fletcher writes –
I was a technical writer at this facility in 1959 and continued working for RCA Service co. Thru 1963. Spent short period in Fylingdales UK at Site IIi of BMEWS.
Keep it up, guys. You might reconnect with an old acquaintance. We welcome comments, photos, and scans from readers that will add to this chapter of Riverton history. – JMc, Editor
Newton Ave, S. of Berkley St., Camden, NJ, Aug 16, 1910. (Click on the image for a larger view.)
Here’s one for the ages! A wonderful real photo postcard view at the intersection of Newton Ave. and Berkley St. in Camden, New Jersey. This item was placed in the mail stream and bears a Camden, N.J. postmark dated AUG. 16, 1910 6-PM, so it’s about 110 years old. (See over 150 more vintage views of Camden on our Camden, NJ images page.)
Things to look for include: the “Coca-Cola” and “Oysters In Every Style” signage; a large assemblage of school-aged boys in the street wearing their customary vintage-era knickers, caps, and ties; and a set of trolley tracks along with a horse-drawn wagon with a driver. One wonders what the occasion was for taking this photo at this particular moment in time. This characteristic street scene, a mix of mostly residential row homes and some neighborhood commercial businesses and corner stores, is located very close to the well-known Haddon Avenue.
Now, if you really had a tech-savvy HSR Editor here, he would upload a short video in which one view dissolves into the other. This would be interesting to do with some of our scenes of old Riverton. – JMc
Gen. Rosalie Jones and gospel wagon Miss Alice Freeman in the background, Steel Family Album
Regular visitors here may remember a post seen here and a subsequent piece in the November 2016 Gaslight News that featured photos documenting the 1913 women’s suffrage hike from New York City to Washington, DC. A series of hand-captioned photos in an old family album owned by Bill and Nancy Steel provided the catalyst that activated our research for that article.
We hope that our readers may have more old family photo albums, letters, diaries, and other such primary sources that may further illustrate the struggle of South Jersey suffragists who fought to secure the right to vote for women.
Lisa Hendrickson of Mt. Laurel’s Alice Paul Institute asked for our help in finding items from folks that the organization can photograph to reproduce on educational banners. These banners will travel to local libraries, historical societies, corporations throughout 2020.
Ms. Hendrickson writes:
Was an ancestor of yours a suffragist? Do you have family photographs of suffrage events in southern New Jersey from 1905-1920 that you would be willing to share?
Please help the Alice Paul Institute and the Riverton Historical Society find information on local suffragists and some of the suffrage events that happened in southern NJ. The Alice Paul Institute is creating a traveling exhibit about the suffrage movement for the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 2020. We are looking for photographs, voting memorabilia, newspaper articles, etc. that show local people and events. Items would be photographed for the two-dimensional exhibit.
You might just see an ancestor in the following list of suffragists’ names that appeared in newspapers of the time.
Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery
Miss Annette Campbell
Miss Amelia Coale
Miss Edith Coale
Mrs. E. S. Cole
Mrs. Catherine B. Lippincott
Miss Helen Lippincott
Miss Elizabeth Lippincott
Mrs. Mary W. Lippincott
Miss Beulah Parry
Miss Susanna Parry
Mrs. Mary L. Thomas
Mrs. E. R. H. VanValin
Miss Elizabeth Williams
Mrs. D. Henry Wright
These were excerpted from a much longer list of suffragists from throughout South Jersey that Ms. Hendrickson provided. Look for dozens more names from Beverly, Bordentown, Camden, Clayton, Collingswood, Florence, Franklinville, Haddonfield, Glassboro, Merchantville, Millville, Mt. Holly, Palmyra, Pennsauken, Princeton, Riverside, Trenton, Westfield, and Woodbury.
If you have any items that you could share, please contact us. Questions? Call the Alice Paul Institute at 856-231-1885.
Alisa Dupuy, professional storyteller and historical reenactor, will return in October to portray Alice Paul, American suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Details to follow in another post.
Johnny Ola, a reader who has before left several comments and observations about Millside Farms, has given those of us interested in Millside Farms a wonderful gift by providing the link below to “Millside Farms Remembered” by Karen Ruza, a 7-page PDF with text and photos.
Millside Farms ad, The New Era, 1939 50th Anniversary Issue
Old posts and comments often get buried back within this website so I highlight this recent one along with a couple of dozen others here so they are easier to find.
Speaking of milk bottles… here are a few from my personal collection.
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Francis “Franny” Cole August 2010
See more about Cole Dairy in the November 2010 issue of the Gaslight News. Follow links below to download a video interview in three parts, about 30 minutes total, with Franny Cole.
We invite your comments and encourage you to add what you know of the history of any of these local milk suppliers. -JMc
added 9/14/2019: Well, that didn’t take long! A few folks checked in with their recollections of Millside Farms.
Matt Mlynarczyk writes: Hello John, Saw the Millside Farms story on the HSR website and thought I’d forward you a few pics to post from my collection.
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Ok… now I’m just jealous. Those are some choice collectibles. -JMc
Don Ulmer, another frequent flyer here, contributes this: Early thirties we concluded a song sang in grade school; “My Garden State. We’ll sing thy praises evermore. I want to live and die in dear old Jersey on the blue Atlantic shore.” Your superb collage validates these lyrics.
Three readers commented on Facebook:
Marilyn Hahle writes: We (went) there for class trips. Also, when our family got together we would go there for ice cream and order a “Lost Weekend” which was a huge sundae which we all shared.
Michael Gilbert wants to know: …where was it located? (see below*)
Deb Hammond reminds us: September 28 is Delran History Day. Stop by 900 Chester Avenue between 11-4 browse our collection. From 12-2pm will have appraisals. Enter your name for chance to win Ancestry DNA kit.
*Regarding the location – Delran Historical Society shows a map with hiistorical sites here. I get that the highway shown in the lower right of the postcard was Route 25, now Route 130, but I can’t get my bearings on the placement of the farm. Was it where Delran’s Millside Shopping Center is now or was it on the other side of the highway? And why do all of the product containers credit a Riverside location instead of Delran, as Ms. Ruzo cites in her article?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Millside Farms sign – Evie Moorhouse
added 9/15/2019:
When Evie Berlin Moorhouse mentioned on Facebook that she has the Millside Farm sign found after the fire I replied and asked for a photo. She obliged with the photo at right.
Evie writes: The sign is about 3×5 feet made of pressed board. As a toddler I lived around the block from the farm in Delran. We would walk to see the cows often.
Later we moved to Cinnaminson. Went to Millside for birthdays and class trips. Best ice cream sundaes ever!
After the fire I lived in Millside Manor Apts. for a while. So many changes to that memorable property. Great local history.
Added 1/13/21:
Fred Pfeffer clears up the Rverside/Delran location:
Millside Farms was on the opposite side of the highway of Millside shopping center. The shopping center got its name from the farm. The shopping center used to be a pasture for the cows. And the reason the products had a Riverside address is because there was no Delran Post Office back then. The Bridgeboro section of Delran had a post office and if you lived in that area your mail was delivered to Bridgeboro N.J. The rest of Delran went through the Riverside post office.
Added 7/5/2021: A recent Facebook post made by Rick Grenda, Admin for the About South Jersey group, and shared to our Facebook page, elicited a number of comments that we’d like to make part of this record.
Kathleen McDermott Anderson
My Mom worked at Millside Dairy Bar. Lots of wonderful memories!
Kate Hickey
My mom worked at the Millside Farms when she was a teen!!!
Kathy Richardson Barker
I loved going there!
Marilyn Hahle
Millside Farms was one of my favorite class trips when I attended Riverton Public School. The Dairy Bar ice cream was delicious. When our cousins would visit we would always go there. They had a special sundae called a Lost Weekend. Even with 11 of us it was a delicious but huge amount of ice cream with all of the toppings.
Jean Miersch
Marilyn Hahle – I went there too. I have not thought about that in many years. I don’t remember this, but my dad once told me that at one time people had to wait sometimes for the dairy cows to cross Rt. 130 there.
Alice Doerr Groome
Jean Miersch – twice a day!
Sandra Cucugliello
The best place to go on date night!! Do I remember right that the ice cream was not in “scoops”?
Jerry Wakeham
Sandra Cucugliello yup they were in cubes. Loved them
Alice Doerr Groome
They used to stop traffic twice a day on Route 130 to get the cows to pasture and back again.
Chuck C Cattell
Alice Doerr Groome , my father told this story to me many times.
Alice Doerr Groome
Chuck C Cattell – I don’t know when they stopped doing this, but I know it happened in the 50s and maybe the early 60s.
Margaret Roedig-Wark
My father worked there as a delivery man door to door. Was able to put three girls through catholic school in the 50’s and early 60’s.
Christine Roedig Gentile
Margaret Roedig-Wark – do you have any pictures of Pop Pop in uniform?
Added 9/24/2020: We were very gratified to hear this comment left by a descendant of the founders of Millside Farms.
As the grandson and great-grandson of the founders of Millside Farms, it is wonderful to see these cherished artifacts from the farm and dairy bar as well as to read about fond memories of time spent there. While Millside Farms was gone before I was born, it was a source of great pride for my grandparents and my mom. They would be overjoyed knowing how much it still means to those who remember it. Thank you. Best, Cory Laslocky
Added 12/21/2022: I love it when a random google search query lands a person here, and they find something that sparks a memory. Thank you to Don Workman for this comment. Say “hi” to Don.
wow we use to live at the farm on the dirt lane that led out to chester ave,dad & my uncle worked for the farm ,was a wonderful time .i guess 1958 -59,old woody windsor lived on the corner ,across the street were the- levengoods -hunsickers -workmans -freemans-& a black family- we all played together, thay had a lot of turkeys back then would sled down the big hill in winter time & swim in the stream& ponds , we even met sally star there a few times
Ok, now we’d really like to see a photo of Pop-Pop in a Millside Farms uniform. Or anybody who has a family photo related to Millside.
Thank you to all who contributed to this post. Come back anytime. -JMc
