Photo by Rick Geffken
By Rick Geffken
MIDDLETOWN – Growing up, Peter VanNortwick and his friends would ride their bikes to explore old farm fields and the dilapidated ruins of barns and farmhouses in his hometown.
The Beekman Orchards and Hendrickson farms were virtual treasure chests of abandoned historical ephemera. A Colts Neck grocery store was a source for tin beer cans, used before aluminum pop-tops became popular.
“After a while, the guy would tell us to just go in the back and empty some still-full cans into the sink before we took them. Mostly, we did,” he said. One of his most prized artifacts is a rare six-pack of 1957 cans with an original Miss Rheingold image on the cardboard packaging.
Today, VanNortwick still thinks about the past a lot. A Monmouth County historical commissioner, he is the official historian of the Middletown Landmarks Commission and vice chair of the Middletown Historical Commission, too.
He grew up in a time that celebrated history. The U.S. 1976 bicentennial celebrations occurred when VanNortwick was just 10. “It was so well promoted that I got really interested in Revolutionary War history at that young age,” he said. He accompanied his grandfather, Frank, to antique furniture auctions. While attending Nut Swamp and Thompson schools, and then Middletown South High School, he grew from youthful collector to serious historian.
He loved hearing his older cousin’s stories about the Dutch roots of the VanNortwicks (his preferred spelling of the family name). His great-grandfather, Walter VanNortwick, began the VanNortwick Brothers local milk delivery operation in 1930. Over the years, and through three generations, the company evolved into a school bus business. Many older residents of Middletown remember a parking lot full of the company’s yellow buses just behind the Polar Bear Ice Cream store, another VanNortwick family business, on Route 36 in North Middletown. VanNortwick still owns the now-defunct bus company’s signs, schedules and albums full of photos of its drivers and Middletown school kids.
VanNortwick has not lost his collector’s enthusiasm. To this day, he peruses local flea markets and estate sales for unique items. He stores this vast collection of Monmouth County books, local dairy milk bottles, slavery documents, maps, property deeds and more in several rooms of a packed basement, a place his wife, Joy, “happily avoids.”
One of VanNortwick’s recent purchases is a 1698 sales invoice addressed to Capt. John Bowne “in Middletowne, East Jersey.” This document complements another spectacular find – a 1701 property deed from Richard Clark of Freehold to Bowne.
VanNortwick has a comprehensive private collection of local historical books and maps, as does former mayor of Atlantic Highlands, Bob Schoeffling, another avid collector. The two have exchanged items over the years, including a rare Monmouth County slave bill of sale dated 1793.
To say VanNortwick is an eclectic collector understates his varied interests. Among his holdings are Hollywood posters and autographed pictures of early actors like Clara Bow; one-of-a-kind maps such as a 1930s depiction of the Hendrickson farm which spanned both sides of the Middletown to Red Bank Road (now Route 35); a Jonathan Holmes liquor license signed at Middletown in 1814; a large four-color poster of an early 1900s development called Plattmount in Atlantic Highlands; board games from the 1970s and earlier; a large wooden Belford Post Office sign; and an 1843 letter signed by the poet Walt Whitman.
At a recent house sale, VanNortwick was able to salvage a box full of Grover family letters and documents, too numerous for him to have examined in detail yet. James Grover was among the original 12 men who were granted Monmouth County lands in the famous Monmouth Patent of 1665.
Wouldn’t a letter with his signature on it be quite the find?
