Yesteryear
100 years ago

All who have the welfare of Freehold at heart will be pleased at the reopening of the shirt factory here. This enterprise formerly employed some 400 or 500 hands, and upon reopening will put upon its payrolls fully this number and possibly many more. There will be plenty of good work for everybody and the prospect is that by January there will be few vacant houses in Freehold. The sewing room at the shirt factory has been practically closed for the past year, only a few hands being employed to do necessary work and not really running on a paying basis. New machines are now being placed in position and there will be ready work for all old operators as well as many new ones. The plan will be opened up in full force on January 4. This means the distribution of thousands of dollars in Freehold every two weeks. Freehold is now "looking up." The town has a live Board of Trade, composed of representative businessmen. It is laying plans, devising ways and means, and persistently following them up. These efforts cannot be devoid of results and there is no reason why Freehold shall not again become the leading town of Monmouth County.

George J. Taylor, who has been in the employ of the Freehold Transcript some ten years past, has accepted the position of local reporter and exchange editor. Mr. Taylor is one of the Freehold Transcript’s most valued employees, careful and painstaking and in thorough sympathy with the aims and traditions of the paper. We bespeak for him the same kindly consideration that has been accorded to other Freehold Transcript representatives in the past, for it is only with hearty cooperation and sympathy of the public that we can make the Freehold Transcript all that it should be as a local paper.

Governor’s Day is and has been of late years an event in Trenton. On Tuesdays and Fridays, but particularly on Tuesdays, the Governor of the state for the time being makes it a point to be at the State House and accessible to all who have business with, or at times, desire to see him. He may be there at other times, and frequently is, and during the legislative sessions endeavors to be on hand on all the working days of the sessions, which rule, however, does not make an excessive demand on his time.

75 years ago

The unusual happened in court in Freehold on Tuesday. Two prisoners were brought from the county jail. One secured the release of the other by becoming his bondsman and then himself returned to jail. The bondsman was a Brielle man, who on Nov. 21 was fined $500 on his plea of guilty of the illegal sale of liquor and $400 and costs on his plea of illegal possession of a gambling slot machine. He had been and still is in jail for failure to pay these fines, but came into court and made affidavit that he owned property to the value of $4,000 and became bondsman for the other man, who was held in $400 bonds each on four charges for trial in January. The other man was apprehended about a week ago. His attorney applied to Judge Steinbach to fix the amount of bail bonds for his client. The man was charged with false pretenses in one indictment and in the other three he is charged with uttering false checks in Asbury Park. The false pretense charge alleges that the accused told a Wall Township man that he had paid the $500 entrusted to him by the Wall man on some lots in Florida.

On the night of July 6 last, 40 chickens and four turkeys were stolen from the Garret W. Conover farm near Englishtown. The fowls were recovered by troopers from the Hightstown Station of the State Police. The troopers later arrested two men from near Jamesburg in connection with the thefts. One of the men confessed to the theft, the troopers said. But when the case came for trial in front of Judge Steinbach and a jury in Freehold Wednesday, an assistant prosecutor asked for a severance of the in­dictment, saying that one of the accused was without the jurisdic­tion of the court. The man who confessed turned up for trial, while the other was declared to be a fugi­tive from the law.

50 years ago

If all goes well the Freehold Regional High School will become a going concern by September 1955. Meeting in Freehold on Monday night, the new regional high school’s board set this date as a target for the opening and completion of the additions to the present high school building on Robertsville Road. These additions are absolutely necessary if the school is to accommodate all of the students in the newly formed regional district, and until they are built there will be little visible change in the existing arrangements in the district. A great deal of preliminary work has priority over building plans, however, and after informally agreeing to postpone all decisions on architects and buildings until spring, the board set to work on a budget timetable leading to the school elections on Feb. 2, and discussed ways and means of screening the mounting list of applicants for the supervisor’s job.

25 years ago

Contracts awarding bids for several construction projects in Freehold Township’s school district are expected to be signed within a matter of days. The signing, according to Superintendent of Schools Marshall Errickson, is a mere formality, pending approval of the bids by the State Department of Education. The bids, totaling $677,395 for five major contractors, will cover the cost of additions to the Barkalow, Burlington and West Freehold elementary schools. The bids were approved Tuesday by the Board of Education following voter acceptance of a referendum granting additional funds for the completion of the project. The vote on the referendum, which calls for $226,000 to be appropriated for the projects, was 521-81. A referendum for $500,000 was approved last February. The funds will be taken from the school board’s surplus. The projects include a new library at the Barkalow School, a resource center and some new furniture at the West Freehold School and an addition to the library at the Burlington Road School.

— Compiled by Dick Metzgar