March 18th

Bernadette Rogoff presents

We are Present and Future Women

Freehold Young Ladies Seminary, 1845-1898

Bernadette Rogoff, author and Director of Collections at MCHA, has been curating Monmouth County history for three decades. Her impressive career has established her as one of the premiere historians of Monmouth County history, with a staggering breadth of knowledge that is matched only by her natural storytelling ability.  

There is no "one way" to classify the areas that Bernadette specializes in - from portraiture to 18th and 19th century textile identification and preservation to the most unique and obscure objects in our collection - you'll have to take our word for it! This lecture will spotlight the Freehold Young Ladies Seminary, one of the most prestigious female educational institutions on the eastern seaboard, as well as give a glimpse into the lives of some of the impressive young ladies who attended using primary source documents and objects from MCHA's collection. 

April 15th

Joe Zemla presents

Beneath the Floorboards:

Whispers of the Enslaved from Marlpit Hall

Please join us for an evening with MCHA Associate Curator, Joe Zemla, for a discussion on the enslaved African Americans who lived and worked at Marlpit Hall, the circa 1756 home once owned by the Taylor family of Middletown. In addition to original archival documents, recently discovered artifacts help tell the fuller story of 

those who inhabited the home’s second-story slave quarters, which have remained largely unaltered since the 18th century. Cultural beliefs, protective rituals, and representations of clandestine defiance of their forced condition are unveiled with these fragments, purposefully chosen and concealed centuries ago.

May 20th

Gary Saretzky presents

19th Century New Jersey Photographers:

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Gustavus Pach

The most successful 19th century photographer in Long Branch was Gustavus Pach (1845-1904), one of the several brothers in the Pach Brothers, a prominent firm with more than a dozen branch studios in the Northeast U.S. Gustavus Pach began photographing in Long Branch from a mobile wagon in 1866 and opened a gallery there the following year. He is highly regarded for hundreds of scenic stereo views of Monmouth County. Pach also made thousands of fine portraits, for which many of the glass negatives are at the Monmouth County Historical Association. This slide lecture provides a history of the Pach Brothers with an emphasis on the life and work of Gustavus Pach.

Gary D. Saretzky, archivist, educator, and photographer, worked as an archivist for more than fifty years at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Educational Testing Service, and the Monmouth County Archives. Saretzky taught the history of photography at Mercer County Community College, 1977-2012, and served as coordinator of the Public History Internship Program for the Rutgers University History Department, 1994-2016. He has published more than 100 articles and reviews on the history of photography, photographic conservation, and other topics, including “Nineteenth-Century New Jersey Photographers,” in the journal, New Jersey History, Fall/Winter 2004, a revised version of which is available at http://saretzky.com.