Spring Lecture Series to be Held at Historic Cold Spring

CAPE MAY – Celebrate New Jersey’s 350th Birthday in 2014! Join us on four consecutive Wednesday evenings in March and April for a wide-ranging series of talks on New Jersey and US history. All presentations will be held at the Village Welcome Center at 7 p.m. There is no fee for admission but donations are appreciated. Speakers will be available for book signings and a meet and greet after each presentation. Featured presentations for the 11th Annual Spring Lectures Series are:
March 19: Inventing in New Jersey – The ice cream cone, vacuum cleaner, catcher’s mask and even professional baseball itself- all New Jersey natives! Linda Barth, executive director of the League of Historical Societies of New Jersey, discusses her new book A History of Inventing in New Jersey: From Thomas Edison to the Ice Cream Cone.
March 26: Behind the Scenes in South Jersey – Did you know that the classic American drive-in movie theater has its roots in South Jersey? Or that Wildwood hosted some of the Country’s first rock-and-roll acts? Gordon Bond, founder and director of the online magazine Garden State Legacy, discusses overlooked aspects of our region’s past from his book Hidden History of South Jersey.
April 2: Spycraft of the Revolution – Learn about the key spy rings of the Revolutionary period and the tactics they employed- from ciphers, codes, and hidden compartments to dead drops and deceptions. Noted historian of the Revolution and espionage John Nagy explores intelligence operations during the War of Independence in his book Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution.
April 9: Garden State Ghosts – From the ghosts of Greenwich to the beachcombing woman in white, hear a selection of the most spine-tingling accounts of ghosts from the Garden State. Patricia Martinelli, curator of the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society, examines this popular aspect of folklore often associated with historic sites in The Big Book of New Jersey Ghost Stories.
To learn more about the New Jersey’s 350th Birthday and how you can celebrate all year long, please visit www.officialnj350.com. Historic Cold Spring Village is a non-profit, open air living history museum that portrays the daily life of a rural South Jersey community of the Early American era. Its mission includes the preservation of 26 historic Cape May County buildings, history education and promoting heritage tourism. The Village is a museum for all seasons. During the summer months, interpreters and artisans in period clothing preserve the trades, crafts and heritage of “the age of homespun.” From October to May, the emphasis is on teaching history through school trips to the Village, classroom visits by the education department and interactive teleconferences with schools throughout the United States. The Village is located on Route 9, three miles north of Victorian Cape May and a mile and a half west of the southern end of the Garden State Parkway. For more information, please contact Jim Stephens, HCSV Deputy Director for Education and Interpretation, at (609) 898-2300, ext. 17, jstephens@hcsv.org or visit www.hcsv.org.