Join us at our June monthly meeting when our featured speaker will be Alice Smith. Alice Smith will highlight the guidelines outlined in Donald A. Ritchie’s book Doing Oral History. This book is considered the premier guidebook to oral history used by historians, archivists, and genealogists as a core text throughout the history community. Alice will be discussing setting up oral history projects and conducting interviews. She will also be sharing some of the information gathered from an oral history project conducted about ten years ago while interviewing persons who worked the Russ farm in Delano. Genealogy involves researching historical documents, oral history and now DNA. Alice M. Smith has been involved with the Riverside Historical Society since 1999. She is a resident of Delran and is also an active member of the Delran Historical Society.
Join us at 7pm on Tuesday June 21 at the Delran Township Municipal Building. Light refreshments to follow.
Delran Township was established in 1880. Since that time, 43 people have served in the position of Mayor. Dee Wells, a member of the Delran Historical Society has been searching for photographs of all the people that served in this capacity. Howard Bishop came to the April meeting and brought photographs of his grandfather – Frank Yansick. Frank Yansick was Delran’s longest serving mayor. He took office on January 1, 1936 and remain the mayor until December 31, 1952. Early in his term, he approved plans for a new development on Fairview Street, planned as Riverside Estates. Mr. Bishop brought a copy of the site plans for this project. Hard to believe that the total budget in 1936 was only $18,170 a slight increase over the 1935 budget. The budget surplus was $11,289. The township budget included $175 (the amount of tax revenue on dogs) to pay claims presented by residents for poultry killed by dogs. At one meeting in the spring of 1936, a resident presented a bill for $47.50 for 29 dead chickens.