Local Pets Available For Adoption

TOMS RIVER – Pets like this one is available at the Toms River Animal Shelter.

Elara has been with us at the shelter for about five months. Many people have seen Elara, but because she is so shy when it comes to strangers, she is often overlooked. Would you know someone who might like to give Elara a forever home?

For more information, call (732) 3411000 or visit tomsrivertownship.com/155/ Animal-Control-Services.

Trade, Sell, Or Donate Art Supplies

TOMS RIVER – Let’s face the facts. We all have way too many art supplies in our studios, stuffed in a closet, in boxes in the garage, anyplace we can find a spot for them!

So, let’s do something about it. If you have supplies you want to trade, sell, or donate, come to TRAC on February 11, TRAC artist 12 to 6 p.m., open to the public 3 to 6 p.m. Bring what you don’t use, see if you could sell it or trade it with another artist. Or just come on in to purchase supplies.

TRAC will also be accepting SOME donations for our children’s classes. If people have stuff left at the end of the day and would like to donate it, we will make a donation to South Toms River Elementary art department.

If you have a lot of items, call TRAC to reserve a table. What you carry in, you will carry out, nothing will be left at TRAC without approval from the TRAC Board

EDUCATORS! Have a special event planned for your class? Let everyone know by placing a news release in this paper! Call 732-657-7344 to find out how!

History: Continued From Page 1 cardboard containers - in all types of shape, form, and condition - of documents (in all kinds of organization and mostly disorganization) spanning several centuries were assembled. What a Herculean task it was! Records were everywhere: in nine different locations in Town Hall from the attic, to offices, to closets, to the boiler room - yes, the boiler room! - to the basement. Records were also stored in the various departments off the “main campus” of Town Hall such as the law enforcement center, public works garage, and other departments. It took years for our dedicated staff led by our tenacious records manager, Greg Horback, to organize it all. They literally had the town’s history in their hands. Today, due to their good work, the documents are recorded in a computer data base in which hundreds of thousands of separate files can be found.

They’re not just old records kept for the sake of keeping old records. They are the people’s records: building department records, engineering and land use records, environmental records that everyday people regularly need, along with a host of other municipal recordspolice, fire, tax, clerk, etc. The list goes on and on. Almost all of the records are now warehoused in our state of the art Records Center on Church Road.

A Lucky Find In The Basement

During the course of all of this work, the story returns to Town Hall - our municipal building - located at 33 Washington Street in downtown Toms River. The original part of the building is an old Victorian-era residence built in 1902. Over time, it became a doctor’s office. In 1949, the then-Dover Township Committee acquired the building and moved municipal offices into it (from the firehouse on Robbins Street which it had shared with Toms River

Volunteer Fire Co. No. 1).

The story continues down to the building’s basement where, during the course of our work, more records were found. That old basement: cold, dark, damp, dirty, dreary. It was, simply, nasty. But we tackled the project there and included what we found - early to mid-20th century records - in our inventory. The huge ornate, but unmovable, metal door to the Dover Township tax collector’s safe - probably from the late 1800s or early 1900s - remains down there (for some future clerk to figure out what to do with!).

As we worked through the basement, what a find we were to make! What luck! Tucked away in a rusty old file cabinet were years of the clerk’s office hand written Dover Township election returns in presidential elections. For a historian, it was a treasure trove of information about our town’s past that was lost and forgotten.

COMING UP: In the next This Month in History column, I’ll report what those old records tell us about voting in our town in presidential elections. How did Franklin Roosevelt fare in Dover Township in the four times he ran? Who won in our town in 1948 in that famous “whistlestop campaign?” Did Toms River like Ike in the two 1950s elections when Dwight Eisenhower ran? In the 1960 contest between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who carried the town? In the 1964 election between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, when vote patterns suddenly changed, what happened?

J. Mark Mutter is the retired Toms River and Dover Township clerk. He was elected to the Dover Township Committee for three terms and served as mayor in 1993 and 2000. He chaired the township’s 225-year anniversary committee in 1992, its 250-year anniversary committee in 2017, and its 200-year anniversary committee of the bi-centennial of the United States Constitution in 1987. He is writing a book on the history of Toms River.

Civil War Round Table Announces Speaker Schedule

TOMS RIVER – The Jersey Shore Civil War Round Table is a non-profit group of Civil War enthusiasts of all ages, occupations, and experience levels, who are drawn together by their common interest in Civil War history.

Established in 2014, the JSCWRT meets at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month, from September to June, in Room 203 of Bartlett Hall on the Ocean County College Campus.

At each monthly meeting, the members and guests of the JSCWRT enjoy a presentation by authors, scholars, or other noted experts in Civil War History.

The public is invited to attend a meeting of their choice as a guest of the JSCWRT. Anyone deciding to join the group as a member may do so. Annual membership dues for a single membership are $25 per year or $35 for a family membership. Membership for active Ocean

County College and Kean at Ocean students, as well as active military, are free. These dues help pay the monthly speaker costs.

The upcoming slate of speakers are:

• February 8 – Kevin Pawlak, Antietam Battlefield Guide, will present: “The Union High Command at Antietam”

• March 8 – Bill Trelease, JSCWRT Member and Gettysburg Battlefield Guide, will present: “Krzyzanowski’s Brigade – These Men Are No Cowards”

For more information, stop by and enjoy one of these presentations or visit jscwrt.org. These programs are made possible in part by grants administered to the Ocean County Cultural and Heritage Commission from both the New Jersey Council on the Arts and the New Jersey Historical Commission in the Department of State.

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From The Desk Of Congressman Chris Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Tapped by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to chair the influential Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th) vowed the bicameral panel, under his leadership, will “aggressively counter the transnational repression of Xi Jinping’s brutal dictatorship and ramp up scrutiny of those who are aiding and abetting the Communist regime.”

“The CECC has been instrumental in advancing critical legislation - including two laws I coauthored, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act - to hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to account for its heinous atrocities,” said Smith, who has chaired 76 congressional hearings on human rights abuses in China.

“I thank Speaker McCarthy for his serious commitment to countering the Chinese Communist threat, and I am honored to continue my extensive legislative work to promote human rights as Chairman of the Commission,” Smith