MC 1056

Inventory to the Farmingdale Collection

By Dr. Fernanda H. Perrone

September 1996

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

Finding aid encoded in EAD, version 2002 by Tara Maharjan, March 2020

The preparation of this finding aid was made possible by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Historical Note

The community of West Fanns was one of several small communities in Howell Township where Jewish farmers settled early in the twentieth century. They called themselves the Farmingdale Jewish Community after the closest village where they shopped and banked. The community center they built was located in West Fanns. but identified as the Farmingdale Jewish Community Center.(1) Although a few Jews had lived in New Jersey since colonial times, permanent communities did not begin to develop until the immigration of Jews from Germany after the 1848 revolutions. German Jewish communities developed in Asbury Park, Long Branch and other New Jersey towns.(2) It was not until after the pogroms and economic dislocations of the 1880s. however. that substantial numbers of Jews began to emigrate from Eastern Europe. For the multitude of Jews emigrating from Europe at the tum of the century, their American dream included a new option. that of owning land. In Eastern Europe. ninety five percent were forced to live within a circumscribed area known as the Pale. There. they were forbidden to own land and were limited to certain occupations: artisans, craftsmen, manual laborers, and petty merchants.(3) It has been estimated that 4 per cent of the remaining Jews lived in the more tolerant Galicia (part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) where a number of Jews actually did farm.

Most of the early 20th century Jewish immigrants settled in congested areas of major cities along the eastern seaboard of America. Fearing that the cities would not be able to absorb them. various organizations such as the Hebrew Emigration Aid Society and the Jewish Agricultural Society encouraged Jews to settle in rural areas. An unknown number left the cities for other parts of the country.

Several Jewish colonies. mostly cooperative farming enterprises. were founded in the trans-Mississippi West. but were not successful because of inhospitable climatic conditions and poor business planning.(4) More enduring were the colonies founded in the Vineland area of Cumberland County. New Jersey (Alliance, Brotmanville, Norma, Carmel and Rosenhayn) and Woodbine in Cape May County.(5) Although these colonies were also founded as experimental planned communities. they eventually evolved into settlements of individual farmers which were integrated into the larger Vineland Jewish community.(6)

The beginnings of the Farmingdale Jewish community are attributed to Benjamin Peskin and Israel Friedman who arrived in 1919. Although they were not the first Jewish farmers in the area, they were instrumental in the growth of a discernible community because of their connection with the Jewish Agricultural Society. The JAS helped them, and subsequently many other immigrants, to settle.(7)

The first years found immigrant farmers in Farmingdale struggling to adjust to a new life style in a place where they had no common language with their neighbors, no shared religion, and no knowledge of American rural ways or fanning practices. It was difficult for them to make a living and many of the settlers suffered from loneliness, often going back to New York City to cam extra money or to visit relatives. The community gradually built institutions, however, like the Jewish Community Center, a combination of synagogue, meeting place and social hall, which was erected in 1928 previously religious services had been held in people's homes. In the early 1930s, the National Council of Jewish Women started weekend instruction in Yiddish in Farmingdale, and by 1934, a Yiddish school was formed affiliated with the Sholem Alcichem Folk Institute, where the children studied Yiddish language. literature and culture. The community eventually contained diverse social. cultural and political groups including the Spinoza Society, Discussion Group, feed buying and egg marketing cooperatives, (Yiddish) Farmers' Chorus and many other organizations.

Although the farm economy suffered during the depression, chicken farming became more profitable in the 1940s. Between 1940 and 1955, the output of poultry and eggs increased 23 I percent in New Jersey, a development to which the farmers of Farmingdale and other rural Jewish communities made an important contribution. For instance, Farmingdale residents Louis and Milton Harwood invented and marketed "specking", a way of preventing chickens from pecking one another to death.(8)

During this period. the composition of the Farmingdale Jewish community changed as well. While most of the original settlers were Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe, in the 1930s German Jews arrived fleeing Hitler. while in the 1940s American-born educated and professional Jews began to settle in Farmingdale looking for a better way of life. Finally in the early 1950s. displaced persons from Europe, many of whom were also Yiddish speaking, arrived in Farmingdale.

Throughout this period. the Farmingdale Jewish community was fairly isolated from its I Christian neighbors, although the children attended local public schools. The early settlers reported instances of anti-semitism. particularly in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was active in New Jersey. In addition. some of the Jews living in nearby towns like Freehold looked down on the Jewish farmers. while many community residents, although they enjoyed farm life for themselves. encouraged their children to aspire to professional careers.(9)

By the mid-1950s. the Farmingdale Jewish community was in decline. Most importantly. the farm economy collapsed because of overproduction of eggs, the recession after the Korean War. and the federal government's withdrawal of price supports from eggs but not from grain. Furthermore, newly developed refrigerated trucks and railroad cars brought fresh eggs and other fann produce from the South and Midwest to Eastern markets. The New Jersey farmer was in an intolerable economic squeeze. As the economy collapsed, the political debates escalated. The community was subjected to investigations by the FBI, which found the farmers' cooperatives particularly suspect. People were forced to look for other ways of earning a living. Many left fanning and Farmingdale altogether. By the early 1970s, when the original Community Center was moved to a new suburban location, the Farmingdale Jewish agricultural community had virtually disappeared.

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Notes

(1) Personal communication from Gertrude Dubrovsky, January 1997.

(2) See Alan S. Pine, Peddler to Suburbanite: the History of the Jews of Monmouth County, New Jersey (Deal Park, NJ, 1981).

(3) Gertrude Dubrovsky, The Land was Theirs: Jewish Farmers in the Garden State (Tuscaloosa, 1992), p. 18.

(4) Uri D. Herscher, Jewish Agricultural utopias in America, 1880- 1910 (Detroit, 1981), pp. 31-72.

(5) See Joseph Brandes, Immigrants to Freedom: Jewish Communities in Rural New Jersey Since 1882 (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 50-71.

(6) Ellen Eisenberg, Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey, 1882-1920 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1995), pp. 160-175.

(7) Dubrovksy, The Land was Theirs, p. 140. The remainder of this essay is taken from this source, and from her "The Rural Experience of Jews in Farmingdale, New Jersey," in Paul Stellhorn, ed., New Jersey's Ethnic Heritage (Trenton, 1978), pp. 37 58.

(8) Dubrovksy,The Land was Theirs, p. 140. There is nothing more about the Pacific/Asian Coalition of Professional Associations within this collection.

(9) Dubrovsky, "The Rural Experience of Jews in Farmingdale, New Jersey,", p. 46.

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Scope and Content Note

The Farmingdale Collection spans the period I R90 to 1995. with the bulk dating from 1919 to 1976. It is 12 cubic feet in size, comprised by 24 manuscript boxes. 16 audio cassette boxes. 1 newspaper box. and 3 phase boxes. It documents the Farmingdale, New Jersey Jewish community from the arrival of the initial settlers in 1919 to the demise of the community in the early 1970s. The bulk of the material pertains to this community, although the collection also contains material relating to other rural Jewish communities. Furthermore, the interviews with Farmingdale residents document the early life of the settlers before coming to Farmingdale. both in Europe and in the United States. their motives for buying farms and their subsequent experience of rural life. Finally, interviews with non-Jewish Farmingdale residents and inhabitants of other Jewish rural communities give some perspective on the experiences of the Farmingdale settlers.

The INFORMANT FILE AND ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS includes information about each person interviewed. available transcripts of the interview, and items donated by the interviewee. including correspondence, publications, deeds and other legal documents, diaries, receipts and order books for farm products. photographs. slides. newspaper clippings, and artifacts.

The COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS SUBJECT FILE and FARMINGDALE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER RECORDS contain records of community organizations including minutes, correspondence, certificates of incorporation. bylaws, annual reports, ledgers, newsletters, photographs, publications and broadsides.

The Farmingdale Collection also contains 243 audio cassette recordings of oral history interviews, which have been duplicated, and 45 audio cassettes documenting events in Farmingdale and other rural Jewish communities, and a POPULATION CARD FILE which lists 745 families who lived in Farmingdale and neighboring communities during the period 1919-1976.

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Arrangement Note

Gertrude Dubrovsky's original arrangement has been maintained as much as possible (INFORMANT FILE AND ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS, COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS SUBJECT FILE, FARMINGDALE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER RECORDS, and NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS). Her correspondence and research notes made while assembling the collection have been consolidated into one series, the FARMINGDALE COLLECTION ADMINISTRATIVE FILE. Subsequent acquisitions such as the ROXANE HOLSTEIN PAPERS, DAVID PERLMUTTER COLLECTION and HYMAN PETCHERS COLLECTION have been arranged as separate series.

Oversize materials are stored separately, with the series of which they are part indicated. while the audio recordings and POPULATION CARD FILE are stored in appropriate boxes. Transcripts of oral history interviews transcribed in 1995-1996 through a New Jersey Historical Commission grant are stored at the end of the collection.

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Administrative Information

Provenance Note

The Farmingdale Collection was assembled by Dr. Gertrude Dubrovsky between 1973 and 1995, when she donated it to Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. The bulk of the collection is described by Gertrude Dubrovsky in The Farmingdale Collection. New York: VIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1976. The Rutgers collection also contains. however, some material acquired by Dr. Dubrovksy through Documentary III, the organization dedicated to preserving rural Jewish history which she founded in 1990. The finding aids to the original collection prepared by Dr. Dubrovsky's assistant. Princeton University librarian Linda Oppenheim. arc also included in the Rutgers collection and can still be used to locate material.

Some of the Yiddish language materials have been donated to the YIVO Institute since the publication of Dr. Dubrovsky's guide. while film footage and videotapes of events in Farmingdale mentioned in the guide have been donated to the Brandeis National Center for Jewish Film in Waltham. Massachusetts. [n addition. a large collection of photographs, several thousand pages of FBI Surveillance Reports (the Rutgers collection contains a few examples). and materials on several other rural Jewish communities arc still in Dr. Dubrovsky's possession. They will be donated to Rutgers in the future.

Preferred Citation

Farmingdale Collection. MC 1056. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

Processing Note

Additional processing of this collection was completed by Ian Grayson in July 2020.

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Detailed Description of the Collection/Container List

This section provides descriptions of the materials found within each series. Each series description is followed by a container list, which gives the titles of the "containers" (for example, folders, volumes, or cassettes) and their locations in the numbered boxes that comprise the collection. The availability of any digital items from a container is indicated with a hyperlink.