Gleanings on Herrontown Woods from the Princeton Recollector

One important window into the past of Herrontown Woods and surrounding lands along the eastern Princeton ridge is through a monthly journal called the Princeton Recollector, founded by architectural historian and preservationist Elric Endersby in 1975. The stories about earlier times in Princeton collected therein are accessible through the Papers of Princeton, an online archive. As reported in TapInto Princeton, Elric died earlier this month at the age of 79. One way to honor his legacy is to highlight relevant stories his publication so fortunately preserved. But first, a little background about Elric and his Princeton Recollector.

Elric described the Recollector's mission in the first issue, May, 1975: 

“In a town which so rapidly develops, it is only by passing along these memories from one generation to another that we may understand how we have come to be as we are. Through these pages we hope to affirm the dialogue between older and younger fellow Princetonians, so that together we may preserve our perspective on the elusive qualities which make Princeton a singular place despite the teasing changes of time.”

And who do we have to thank for preserving and digitizing the Recollector so that we would all have access? Back in 2014, Elric wrote to me that the 

"Princeton History Project turned over all of our materials to the Historical Society about 10 years ago. In the meantime a family by the name of Fuchs in the Brookstone area computerized The Recollector."

Here's a wonderful quote from a profile of Elric in the July 27, 2005 Town Topics:

"No satisfaction has been quite like the work with oral history and 'The Recollector' and spending my twenties and early thirties with people who were in their eighties. I talked with 50 to 60 people in Princeton who lived here when Woodrow Wilson was in town. The whole point for me was to gain perspective. I called it 'Periscopic Princeton.' Through their eyes, I could have been a spy in Princeton in 1900."

This legacy of historical accounts, one among several legacies Elric left us, shows the difference one person can make in the world. 

Doing a keyword search of the Recollector for "herrontown" yielded seven articles that paint a picture of life up Herrontown way long ago. For instance, there were things that locals gathered from the Princeton ridge lands that are not gathered today, among them being farm crops. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, much of the ridge was farmed by small-holder farmers. The Friends of Herrontown Woods honors that heritage by growing food in May's Garden on the Veblen House grounds. We also fought successfully to save the one remaining farmhouse from that era. The structure, known now as the Veblen Cottage, has since been deemed eligible to be listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places.

In addition to food crops, boulders were quarried, abundant chestnuts harvested and eagerly consumed by schoolchildren, cedar trees and a wild evergreen called ground pine (club moss) were brought home for Christmas decorations. Wildflowers teamed and drinking water sprang from the ground. An article entitled "Mount Lucas School Reunion Rekindles Old Friendships, Revives Memories" documents the memories of those who attended the schoolhouse on Mount Lucas that closed in 1920. Evidence of the small quarries remains, but the majestic chestnut trees succumbed to imported chestnut blight. The cedar trees were shaded out as larger trees took over, and the ground pine appears to have been completely consumed by the expanding deer population.

Here are some quotes from that article about farming up along the very rocky Princeton ridge:

• "This was all fields when we lived up here. We used to haul out these rocks every year when we plowed."
• "Farmer boys worked all the time. There was no time for recreation or sports."
• "Most people went through the eighth grade and that was it. The boys started school in November. Farm work came first."

About local quarries:

• As a boy I had a team of mules that hauled stone from the quarries to the crusher when they built Route 206 with convict labor. They had a convict labor camp up toward Rocky Hill. I have a watch chain the convicts made from horse hair. They wrapped the hair around sticks and made links with it."

About reaping natural bounty:

• "We used to get the water from a large spring with a large beech tree beside it with all sorts of initials. It was always called The Beech Tree Washington was supposed to have camped under it."
• "At lunchtime I used to go up in the Big Woods and pick wild flowers. I got lost once, all afternoon. How I finally found out where I was, was I heard a cowbell."
• "We used to gather chestnuts in the fall. There was a large chestnut tree in the corner of the Mount Lucas schoolyard. We'd eat them in school. There were many chestnuts along this road. We'd boil or roast them at night and eat them with salt."
• "We'd all bring our five-pound sugar bags and every recess we'd hit the woods and fill the bags with chestnuts. And you'd go home and bury them in sand in the cellar. And around Christmas time you had roasted chestnuts, and roasted apples with it."

From a 1979 edition came another story in the Recollector relevant to Herrontown Woods, an article entitled "Margerums Shared Family Christmas." The reference to coal probably makes the era pre-1940s.

"Dad and some of the older boys would go up to Grandpop Margerum’s wood lot in Herrontown to cut down a cedar tree. They would also gather some kind of an evergreen vine that grew there. I do not know what that vine was it was not standing pine but a trailing evergreen vine with lacy, fan-shaped leaves. [Ground pine.] They would gather two large burlap bags full. After they came home Dad would cut some switches from the privet hedge and tie them into rings so that in the evening all the family could work to make wreaths. The younger children pulled the leaves from the vines and placed them in piles on the table. The older ones gathered little bunches of these leaves and tied them around the privet rings. We must have made a dozen wreaths each year. We put one on the front door and one in each of the windows on the first floor. We never trimmed our tree ahead of time because Santa Claus always did that. The day before Christmas we would set it up in a corner of the living room sometimes it would be propped up in a bucket of coal and sometimes Dad would make a wooden stand for it."

And then there's Jac Weller's article in the Recollector about farming the rocky lands along the ridge, entitled Farming Small in Herringtown. Though it makes claims about "Herringtown" that we have been unable to substantiate, we are grateful for the information it provides about the lives of small-holder farmers, such as those who built and lived in what we now call the Veblen Cottage. That article will be explored in a separate post.

Related posts: 

Who Put the Herring in Herringtown? 

Nature Stories Preserved in Elric Endersby's Princeton Recollector

Sarah B Hart and the Beginnings of Herrontown Woods

If you google Sarah B. Hart in our era, you're likely to find links to a British mathematician who wrote a book about math and literature called Once Upon a Prime. She spoke last year in Princeton, and will be delivering the 2025 AMS Einstein Public Lecture this March. It all sounds very interesting and Veblen-relevant. 

But we're writing here about Sarah Barringer Hart, born in 1901, who had a direct and important role in the development of Herrontown Woods back in the 1960s. Her maiden name, Barringer, takes on multiple dimensions in this story, including being the main source of funding for Richard J. Kramer's 1960s ecological study of the newly created preserve and the book that followed. Below is an homage to Sarah Hart's environmental advocacy and an interesting story or two about her ancestors, who were of considerable note.

On June 27, 1963, a fateful year for us all, the Town Topics announced that Sarah Hart "has been appointed chairman of the Herrontown Wood Citizens' Development Committee." A landscape architect, J. Russell Butler, "had surveyed the arboretum and prepared topographical maps to aid in the development of Herrontown Wood."

(We pause here to point out the further evidence that the preserve was referred to early on as "Herrontown Wood," without an "s". When we formed our Friends of Herrontown Woods nonprofit in 2013, we thought of leaving the "s" off, as in Winnie the Pooh's "Hundred Acre Wood," but the "s" hung on.) 

"The Committee," the article continues, "plans to adopt an overall scheme of identification of trees and plants, a project which has already been started on a small scale." 

Six years after the Veblens' 1957 donation of the first 82 acres, it's not clear the preserve is even open to the public. The slow pace underscores just how new was this concept of a nature preserve to Princeton and Mercer County, as they scrambled to catch up to the Veblens' vision. In 1957, the Mercer County Parks Commission, which now oversees a vast network of parks and preserves, had not yet been formed. The article mentions James C. Sayen and Richard J. Coffee, both of whom would become prominent names in open space. 

Four months later, on October 10, 1963, another article mentions Sarah B. Hart. Shockingly, this one's an obituary. Sarah Hart died only four months after being appointed to lead the citizens' effort at Herrontown Wood. The cause of death is not given. The brief obituary lists some of Sarah Hart's involvements: at the Miss Fine School (named after the sister of Henry Fine, who brought Oswald Veblen to Princeton), the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association, and the Garden Club of Princeton. 

The depth of Sarah's passion for preserving nature, however, becomes more clear upon reading the homage to her at the beginning of the book made possible by a fund in her name. That book is Herrontown Woods: A Guide to a Natural Preserve, by Richard J. Kramer. Transcribed in full below, the homage places Sarah in the middle of the great environmental battles of her time, as she advocated for the Delaware and Raritan Canal, for preserving Island Beach from a proposed freeway, the Great Swamp from a proposed airport, and for preserving Mettler Woods. Back then, the future of all of these valued natural features of our time was very much in question. 

From the Herrontown Woods book:

THE SARAH BARRINGER HART MEMORIAL

"I respectfully suggest that The Garden Club of Princeton give the proposed program of improvement whatever moral and practical support it can." With these words, "Sally" Hart in 1948 closed her report on The State of New Jersey's inquiry into the condition of The Delaware and Raritan Canal. She was then the newest member of our club, ahead of the oldest in comprehension of ecology and way out beyond in understanding the need of all for open space. For this she worked tirelessly. She led us to Island Beach when it was threatened by an expressway and a few of us followed her with some reluctance. Island Beach became a park. Through her we learned of Mettler's Woods; that bit of virgin New Jersey forest was for sale. No falls had been cleared and there were lessons in rotting wood and in the depth of top soil for some of us to read. The Carpenters' Union bought Mettler's Woods to preserve as a memorial to their first president. Inspired by "Sally" we visited Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Pennsylvania. "What if we should have such a park?" she asked us gently. She was, she told us in 1956, hopeful of the establishment of a Mercer County Park Commission. 

Always an active member of our conservation committee Mrs. Hart became President of The Garden Club in 1959 and held one of our meetings at the headquarters of The Stony Brook-Millstone Watersheds Association to which she was elected Trustee in 1954 where from slides we learned of the lakes and ponds created for flood control in this region. Only twenty-two of us attended. At a later meeting when her successor as conservation committee chairman failed to report, Mrs. Hart read us a chapter from "More in Anger" by Marya Mannes. Urged by her we used our pens and our pockets to keep The Great Swamp free of jetports. Few of us knew of the Great Swamp at first but we listened and learned with awe of the natural treasure to the north of us. We became consumed with anxiety to save it from destruction. We had become indoctrinated.

Retiring from office in the winter of 1962 "Sally" once again became chairman of the conservation committee and kept us abreast of the Green Acres Plan and the creation of a County Commission for The Herrontown Woods. In the following spring she spoke of her wish for a nature center and declared that planting ivy around the Watersheds Association's headquarters was down to earth labor, far pleasanter than letter writing or listening to speeches. She died in October 1963. 

We respectfully suggest to the reader of this dedication a quiet pause to catch the cry of the wilderness. 

Mary C. Savage

The Garden Club of Princeton

This article from Dec. 17, 1970 shows that the book was being developed the same year as the nation's first Earthday. Though there's no mention in the book itself, it appears to have been published by the Princeton University Press, with design work by P.J. Conkwright.

We could ask how Sarah Hart came to be an ardent environmentalist. Was it her upbringing? Courses she took in college? An internet search for her full name yielded a clue:

There's a plaque with Sarah Barringer Hart's name on it, but the plaque isn't anywhere near Princeton. Turns out that she is one of eight children of Daniel Moreau Barringer, the first geologist to prove the existence of a meteor impact crater on earth. There's a crater bearing his name near Flagstaff, AZ, open to the public. 

Sarah's grandfather, also named Daniel Moreau Barringer, was a U.S. congressman from North Carolina who is said to have become "a personal friend of fellow congressman Abraham Lincoln." 

Sarah's daughter, Sarah L. Hart (Barringers seemed to like names to continue from one generation to the next) was a pianist who performed frequently in Princeton before heading to Yale music school. 

Also found on the internet, Sarah Barringer Hart has appeared in recent years with others in her family on the Easter program for St. David's Episcopal Church in Wayne, PA, suggesting that her family has something to do with sustaining the church. 

~ MEMORIALS ~ Flowers in the Chapel are given to the glory of God and in memory of: D. Moreau Barringer, Sr., 1860-1929, Margaret Bennett Barringer, 1872-1957 Brandon Barringer, 1899-1992 D. Moreau Barringer, Jr., 1900-196 Sarah Barringer Hart, 1901-1962, Lewin Bennett Barringer, 1907-1943, Elizabeth Wethered Barringer Cope, 1904-1988 Richard W. Barringer, 1907-1973, J. Paul Barringer, 1903-1996 Philip E. Barringer, 1916-2004.

There are, then, loci of gratitude for Sarah and the Barringer family of which she was a part, scattered across the country. The plaque in Arizona tells of the "family's tradition of service to the public." We still don't know how Sarah Barringer Hart came to connect so strongly to ecological matters, but her service to Herrontown Woods and other environmental causes in and around Princeton was part of a larger family tradition.

Update: Through the church in Pennsylvania, I was able to reach Sarah (Sally) Hart's niece, Margaret Barringer, who sent me this photo of her aunt Sally. Margaret is a founder of AmericanINSIGHT.org.

Related posts: 

Who Was Richard J. Kramer?

An Homage To Princeton Ecologist Henry Horn

Who was Richard J. Kramer?

In 1966, two plant ecologists arrived independently in Princeton. One, Henry Horn, joined the faculty at Princeton University and would conduct much of his research at the Institute Woods. The other, Richard J. Kramer, was a Rutgers grad student who wrote his dissertation on Herrontown Woods while serving as the preserve's first naturalist. In this way, the work that Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen did in the 1930s and 40s to preserve land for Herrontown Woods and the Institute for Advanced Study set the stage for the first in-depth studies of local plant ecology in Princeton some 30 years later. 

Kramer's dissertation was later turned into a book published and distributed locally, and it was that book that prompted me to research his life and times.

Below is an account of how, after many false starts, I was finally able to learn of Richard J. Kramer's life, how he played a central role in making Herrontown Woods the go-to place to learn about nature in Mercer County in the 1960s, and later played an important role in organizing the professional side of environmentalism, as a founding member of the National Association of Environmental Professionals. There's even a Dr. Richard J. Kramer, CEP, Memorial Award for Environmental Excellence awarded to "recognize extraordinary achievements of individuals in the environmental profession."

There's been way too much mystery about the man who wrote the 1971 book Herrontown Woods: A Guide to a Natural Preserve. True, the names Richard and Kramer are common, making it harder to google the name, but how many botany PhD's out of Rutgers named Richard J. Kramer could there be? The book itself devotes only one sentence to Dr. Kramer, divulging only that he "served for two summers as Herrontown Woods park naturalist." That would have been in the mid-1960s, when Kramer was doing the field work for his dissertation about Herrontown Woods. Only ten years earlier, in 1957, had the Veblens donated Herrontown Woods as Mercer County's first nature preserve.

Somewhere on the internet back in 2016, I found the following about Kramer, which has proved less than completely accurate:

"A native of Fairmont. Minn., he is a graduate of St. John's University in Maryland, and holds an M.S. in plant ecology from Arizona State University, where he also received a graduate teaching assistantship. Mr. Kramer has worked for the U.S. Forest Service, and spent two years in the Army as a second lieutenant."

Those with a keen eye will note that there is no St. John's University in Maryland, but rather St. John's College,  renowned since the 1930s for its Great Books program in liberal arts. Its Maryland campus is squeezed onto 36 acres in an urban setting.

Undergraduate Training at SJU in Minnnesota

It took our genealogist, Patricia Brady, who teaches at Rutgers. to confirm that a young Richard Kramer spent his college years at St. John's University in Minnesota, known for its expansive, verdant campus--a far more fitting and inspirational setting for a future botanist. The University's website describes a campus essentially surrounded by a nature preserve: 

"set amid 3.300 acres of varied terrain ... remarkable in its natural beauty. It includes wetlands, several lakes, an oak savanna, a restored prairie, and hiking trails that wind through an extensive pine and hardwood forest."

According to our genealogist's research, our future author of Herrontown Woods was born May 27, 1938 in Martin, MN--an unincorporated town in the Chippewa National Forest. Not far away is Lake Itasca, where the Mississippi River is said to begin. He was the son of John Kramer and Genevieve Devine, and had two brothers, Thomas and Edward. Richard appears to have grown accustomed from an early age to being surrounded by greenspace, from childhood through college, then later when he gravitated to Herrontown Woods to do his PhD. 

Our genealogist also made the brilliant suggestion to contact the university for more about his time there. Many thanks to Liz Knuth, Archives Associate at the library for St. John's University in Minnesota, for her generous sharing of the following photos and other gleanings from the University's archives. The registrar and alumni offices also helped out with some info. 

Here's Dick Kramer as a freshman at Minnesota's SJU in 1956. I chose this photo because he looks very much like the young man his wife would later tell me was "really affable, very friendly." Throughout his life, he seems to have been someone equally at ease in the solitude of the woods and in the company of people. Other photos in the university's yearbook, the "Sagatagan," show him standing in coat and tie or uniform with other young men in the Biological Society, the ROTC Distinguished Military Students, the Sanctuary Club, the Social Recreation Club, and sitting with a trombone in the University Band. 

SJU in Minnesota (there's another St. John's University in NY) has a strong Catholic underpinning. Here's Kramer (above in the photo) standing in surplice and cassock in the Sanctuary Club.

The description of the Social Recreation Club's activities conveys something of 1950s America. That's Richard in the upper left of the photo. 

Kramer earned a B.A. in biology from SJU in 1960, the dawn of a momentous decade, with John F. Kennedy running for president, the civil rights movement gaining momentum, and Cold War tensions building. Environmentalism was also on the rise, but the first Earthday was still ten years off.

1960 also happens to be the year Oswald Veblen died. There are a few parallels between Richard Kramer's life and Veblen's. Both came from families with Minnesota roots. In what may seem a surprising aspect for environmentalists, both received military training in midwestern universities and served stints in the military later on. Of Kramer, SJU's Liz Knuth wrote, "Two years of Military Science were obligatory at that time, but not everyone stuck it out all four years." In his military studies, he might have learned of Veblen's leading role in advancing ballistics during the World Wars.

Masters Degree in Arizona

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from verdant St John's U, he headed to the Arizona desert to work on a Masters of Science degree from Arizona State University. Why Arizona? Here, we pick up the story as told by Richard's wife, Patricia Cahill Kramer, who I was able to reach thanks to some sleuthing by Herrontown Woods' mapmaker from Maine, Alison Carver. 

By Patricia Cahill's telling, Richard had been ROTC in college and was given a pass to get a masters degree before he went into the military. He went to Arizona State to follow Dr. Robert Lewis Burgess, who had been a student of John T. Curtis at U. of Wisconsin in Madison. Curtis is particularly known for his lasting contribution to the development of numerical methods in ecology. Kramer would later apply numerical methods to his research at Herrontown Woods. For his masters, Richard did his study on the saguaro cactus.

Military Service and Plant Collecting in Korea

After completing his masters degree, Richard went into the military. Serving in the army in Korea, he was active duty but at that point they were just on the border, and he was the quarter master. A quarter master manages supplies and logistics--everything from food to the movies the troops would get to watch. The job sounded related to the organizing Kramer had done in college as a member of the Social Recreation Club. Military life didn't blunt Richard's interest in plants. He got permission from the National Herbarium in DC to bring plant specimens back. He spent time traveling around Korea, drying plant specimens, and when he came back he gave the plants to the herbarium. 

PhD Work at Rutgers

After two years' service in Korea, he returned to the States and lived in Philadelphia for awhile. He went from active duty into the reserves. Though he would later retire from the military as a Captain, he was still in the reserves when he moved to Rutgers to work on his PhD. 

A clue to how Kramer ended up at Rutgers for his PhD can be found in the Herrontown Woods book's acknowledgements. The book was edited by Professor Murray F. Buell, Department of Botany. Among Buell's many contributions to ecology was his role as director of the William L. Hutcheson Forest. According to a biography on the Ecological Society of America's website, "He devoted great effort in setting aside this forest and in making it into a major ecological study area and one of the best studied woods in North America." Some of Buell's areas of interest seem particularly applicable for Herrontown Woods: the impact of people on park ecosystems, the ecology of power line right of ways, and "tension zones" between vegetation types. As someone who learned of fire ecology in the 1970s, I was also intrigued by Buell's research decades earlier into the effect of fire use on forests and hydrology.

Kramer likely first came under the influence of Buell close to his hometown in Minnesota. According to the Buell biography: 

(Buell's) "life touched many hundreds of North American ecologists through the Rutgers Ecology Seminar that he initiated and sponsored. In the many summers he taught at the University of Minnesota's Lake Itasca Biological Station, he recognized exceptionally promising young students. Often the fortunate person was hired as an assistant, transported across the country in his car, fed chicken dinners and given a thorough introduction to life as a field ecologist."

Meeting His Wife

Rutgers is where Richard met his wife to be, Patricia Cahill. In her own words: 

"While he was working on his PhD, he ran into me. It's a funny story. I was working in my neighbor's restaurant before starting college, to get some money together. So I was waitressing. I wasn't the best waitress in the world, so I had to watch my P's and Q's because the other waitresses were career waitresses. So I was really, "What do you want?", and not taking much notice of or remembering who came in at that point. Richard wrote a note to me one time on the back of a receipt. It wasn't the first time this had happened. So I went to the back and I said you won't believe this, I got another request to make a date or get to know, that sort of thing. George, my neighbor, said "this guy waits for your tables." I said I couldn't believe that, that somebody waits for my tables. And he said, "You really should go out with him. He's really nice. He's in the reserves." The reserve unit was doing their reserve duty right close by and that's why some of them came in at different times to eat at the restaurant. And that's how we met."

Richard's PhD work at Rutgers was in plant ecology, which Patricia described as "the overall relationship of different plants to each other, the ecology of the soil, weather, and land use."

Richard Comes to Princeton to Study Herrontown Woods

On one of their first dates, he took her to Herrontown Woods, to show her what he was working on. She said he would point out jack-in-the-pulpit and things like that. She was a history major, but the second summer, she helped him in the trailer. He dried plants of all the different species. With special ink she wrote the plant names on the folder. Those specimens are preserved at Rutgers' Chrysler Herbarium.

Kramer's time in Princeton coincided with what ecologist Stephen Pacala has called the "heroic age" of ecology at Princeton University. Henry Horn, an ecologist who would share his knowledge with the community during many nature walks over the years, joined the Princeton faculty in 1966 "amid a wave of interest in evolution and ecology in the then-Department of Biology." 

National interest in the environment was on the rise, spurred by images of flagrant industrial pollution. Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, was first published in 1962, calling into question the postwar chemical revolution. As a kid in the 1960s, I remember holding Kleenex over my nose as my parents drove from Chicago through Gary, Indiana, where sulphurous clouds of pollution from steel plants would drift across the highway, turning the skies different shades of yellow, orange, and purple in the middle of the day. Another time, as our 707 jet descended into Los Angeles, the smell of L.A.'s notorious smog permeated the cabin. At home in small town Wisconsin, the woods behind our house was periodically sprayed with a fog probably laden with DDT. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted it caught fire in 1969. Unlike our current relentless spewing of invisible, odorless carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the chemical assault on nature back then also registered as a visceral assault on our senses, generating powerful images on the evening news and repugnant odors in daily life that ultimately drove political action. Subsequent regulation spawned a new field of environmental professionals trained to measure pollutants and assess their impact. Though he started out as a plant ecologist, Richard would later have a big impact in developing the environmental profession.

Richard's graduate study of Herrontown Woods was funded in part by a Sarah Barringer Hart Fellowship, awarded in April, 1965, that paid him to be the resident naturalist at Herrontown Woods for a few summers.

Today, this being 2024, Herrontown Woods is 150 acres, plus 80 acres at Autumn Hill Reservation, all owned by Princeton and maintained by the Friends of Herrontown Woods. Back in the mid-60s, it was much smaller but, as the only nature preserve in Mercer County at the time, served as an incubator for environmental education in the county. Taken from Town Topics articles, here's what the scene was like back then, when Elizabeth Veblen was still alive and living next to the preserve in Veblen House, (and women still went by their husbands' first and last names):

Herrontown Woods contains some 80 acres maintained as a natural preserve in the northeast section of Princeton Township, and was given to Mercer County by the late Prof. Oswald Veblen and Mrs. Veblen. It is administered by the Mercer County Park Commission and a citizens development committee, appointed by the commission. Members of the committee are Mrs. Gordon Knox, chairman; Mrs. Alan Carrick, H. Russell Butler Jr.. Carl Breuer, Richard Thorsell and James Sayen. 

By November of 1966, a self-guided tour of Herrontown Woods had been developed.

PARK GUIDE OFFERED
Explorers of the Herrontown Woods Arboretum will be able to observe and interpret natural changes in the woodland with the help of a new guide booklet available without charge at the parking area off Snowden Lane. The explanatory material is keyed to markers along the park's trails. The guide was; sponsored by the Citizens Development Committee and prepared by Richard Kramer of the Rutgers Botany Department. 

A June 22, 1967 Town Topics article underscores how central Herrontown Woods was to environmental education in Mercer County. After a month of hosting school groups from around the county, Richard spent July and August leading nine nature walks per week for the general public.

A WALK IN THE WOODS

Summer Program Offered. Guided walks describing the summer life of a forest will be conducted in HerrontownWoods starting next Tuesday. The walks will be held every day, Tuesday through Friday, at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., and on alternate Saturdays beginning July 1. Groups of more than 10 must call the Chamber of Commerce office, 921-7676, for reservations. Dr. Richard Kramer of Rutgers, will lead each of the walks. Dr. Kramer is completing his study of Herrontown Woods under Sarah Barringer Hart Fellowship. Subjects covered on the walks are plant and bird identification, predator and prey relationships, soil and water consrervation and stream and woodland ecology. During the past month, guided walks in Herrontown have been the exclusive province of school children in Mercer County. More than 600 children and their teachers visited the woods during this period.

In the mid-1960s, computers were just starting to come into widespread use in research. According to his wife, Richard collaborated back then with a grad student in computer science to collect and analyze data. They divided Herrontown Woods into quadrants and documented what plants grew in which quadrant. That data then had to be transferred to a computer, which back then was a very tedious process. Though some businesses had moved on to magnetic tape, the Rutgers grad students were still using computer cards. The product of his research took the form of a dissertation entitled, The biotic and abiotic influences on, and delimitation of, the plant associations in Herrontown Woods, Mercer County, New Jersey.

An aside: As often happens in my research of Herrontown Woods' history, it has turned out that Richard Kramer's world had many parallels with my own. Like Kramer, I grew up surrounded by natural splendor in the midwest before moving to Princeton. In my 20s, I spent a few months living in a tipi near Black Duck, MN, an hour away from where he grew up. Kramer's botanical mentor, Murray Buell, had a close professional partnership with his wife Helen Foot Buell. Similarly, my botanical mentor at the University of Michigan, Warren (Herb) Wagner, worked closely with his wife, Flora Wagner, whom I remember sitting in the room across the hall from his office, peering into a microscope. Many times I accompanied Wagner on his field trips in search of Botrychium ferns and butterflies. Like Kramer's two year tenure, it was my botanical interest that led me to Herrontown Woods, some 40 years later. I also date back to that early era of computers, having helped my father prepare his astronomical data for analysis in the room-sized computer in the attic at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. Each data point had to be typed onto a punch card about the size of an airline boarding pass. The cards were then carefully stacked and fed into the computer. 

1968 was a big year for Richard J. Kramer. He finished his dissertation at Rutgers, married Patricia Ann Cahill of Highland Park, NJ, and moved to Mary Baldwin College in Stanton, Virginia to teach and start a family. 

In a subsequent post, I'll describe what turned into Richard's influential environmental career, during which he wrote many environmental impact statements across the country and co-founded the National Association of Environmental Professionals. 

Not only did Herrontown Woods provide the setting from which Richard J. Kramer's career could grow, but Oswald Veblen's role in early computer development (described here and here) helped make computers available for Kramer to do his research. In this quiet way, Oswald Veblen's influence can be traced far and wide.

In similar fashion to the prestigious Veblen Prize in Geometry that is given out every three years, there is a "Kramer Medal for Environmental Practice Excellence," overseen by the Academy of Board Certified Environmental Professionals (ABCEP). According to the website:

The Dr. Richard J. Kramer, CEP, Memorial Award for Environmental Excellence was established by the ABCEP to recognize extraordinary achievements of individuals in the environmental profession.

Thanks to everyone mentioned above who helped me finally learn about the life of Richard J. Kramer and his profound influence, not only on Princeton in the 1960s but also nationally in his efforts to nurture the environmental profession in the decades that followed. 

The "J", by the way, stands for John. Of the many people who have given their time and talent to studying and rehabilitating the Veblens' legacy of land and buildings, some make such special contributions that they seem like "angels in our midst." For his work at Herrontown Woods and beyond, Richard J. Kramer will always be our St. John.

Related post:

Sarah Barringer Hart and the Beginnings of Herrontown Woods

An Homage to Princeton Ecologist Henry Horn

Found: Original Plant Inventory of Herrontown Woods

Occasionally, artifacts from the early days of Herrontown Woods come to light. 

Betty Horn, who has long taught a spring wildflowers course for the Adult School, and maintains the University's Rogers Bird Room, contacted me last month:

"Hi Steve,
I was at the University yesterday and came across two small metal boxes filled with index cards. They had “Herrontown woods” printed on the side and contained index cards listing plants alphabetically by Latin names.
I don’t know when they were made or who made them. If you would like them, please let me know."

She continued: "They were stored in an Eno Hall basement room known as "The Bird Room." They came to light when the Bird Collection was moved from Eno to Green Hall. They were probably in a niche along with other historical items (such as bird journals from W.E.D. Scott) and were put there when the collection was moved from Guyot to Eno. I think that was in the '70's." - Betty

The boxes are filled with cards, each with a plant name and nothing more. What finally occurred to us was that each plant had two cards--one with its common name, the other with the latin name, just like in the plant inventory that appears in the book about Herrontown Woods published in the early 1970s. The author, Richard Kramer, had done a study of Herrontown Woods for his doctoral dissertation at Rutgers. 

Here's the last page of the inventory in the book.

The index cards must have been the official inventory that was then transferred to the book. How they ended up at Princeton University's Eno Hall is not clear. 

Thanks to Betty for giving us this artifact from Herrontown Woods' early days.

Ceramist Toshiko Takaezu--The Herrontown Woods Connection

This story begins with a walk up the stairs of the observation tower at Rogers Refuge, on the other side of Princeton from Herrontown Woods. The usual reward for climbing the stairs is a fabulous view of the expansive marsh at the heart of this bird sanctuary, usually enjoyed in solitude. 

This time, I found a man named Bob enjoying lunch with his companion. He showed me the morel mushrooms they had just collected, and we got to talking.

That day, May 11, had already been packed with serendipitous encounters. In the morning we had met with a yoga instructor to discuss logistics for hosting yoga classes on the grounds of Veblen House. Afterward, while meeting with an architect, we ran into a couple actors who would later visit Herrontown Woods and stage a wonderful performance there called "Among Trees". Then I ran into a preservationist who turned out to have a hay barrack that could potentially replace the one that used to stand near Veblen House.

Now, at the top of the observation tower on that highly charmed day, I learned that Bob was Bob Lester, whose involvement in Princeton environmentalism includes having done some of the bird counts while Charles Rogers, for whom the Charles H. Rogers Wildlife Refuge is named, was still around. 

That's a deep connection there, because Charles Rogers was a man of Oswald Veblen's generation, living from 1888 to 1977. Rogers took part in the first Christmas bird count ever conducted, back in 1900 in NY's Central Park. Having graduated from Princeton University, he returned in 1920 after a stint at the NY Museum of Natural History to become a curator and teacher in the biology department. Rogers surely would have known nature enthusiasts like the Veblens.

Bob also told a story that had an unexpected connection to Herrontown Woods. There's a renowned ceramist named Toshiko Takaezu who lived in Princeton for many years. Like Bob, she would forage for wild mushrooms. Usually mushroom hunters are secretive about where they do their hunting, but at some point Bob offered to show Toshiko where morels grow in the Institute Woods. In return, he asked that she show him where she gets the clay for her pots. 

Turned out that Toshiko had dug her clay at Herrontown Woods. Bob says he doesn't remember where in the woods he took her, but his story will certainly add interest to any excavated area we find in the future. 

Not being shy about sending people emails from out of the blue, I contacted the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation for more info about where Toshiko sourced her clay. Don Fletcher sent a nice response

Thanks for the note! Those woods were a lovely place of refuge for many of us during our student days! Thanks for taking care of them.

Yes, Toshiko was an eager and expert mushroom hunter. I am sure that Toshiko would have gladly taken up an offer to hunt mushroom in the Institute Woods. So I have no reason to doubt the story at all.

Where she got her clay depended on the year. The clay recipe we used when I was taking classes (69-74) was heavily made up of Jordan Stoneware Clay which was (if memory serves…) mined in New Jersey. That source was exhausted by 1980 or so and she shifted to other recipes. In the 80s she also experimented with adding red clay dug from her property in Quakertown, NJ. This clay was high in iron and melted at a low temperature so it could only be a minor addition to give the clay body a richer color.

We still use her “post-Jordan” recipe at the studio, by the way.

Toward the end of her life she had helpers up at Skidmore College mixing her clay at loading her station wagon, when she would give her frequent workshops there. I have no idea whether that recipe was the same or a different one.

Through a more recent bit of serendipity, our Friends of Herrontown Woods has acquired a potter's wheel. Given that Herrontown Woods was once a source of clay for a potter of Takaezu's stature, it seems appropriate to put it to some sort of use. The wheel, protected from the weather, is currently being kept in our Botanical Art Garden. 

Here's a video that shows Toshiko at work, making her uniquely shaped pots.

One of Toshiko's creations was installed next to Pyne Hall on the campus of Princeton University.

A Chance Learning of the Barden Gazebo's History at 145 Ewing Street

By chance, we have learned who built the gazebo that we moved to the Herrontown Woods Barden from 145 Ewing Street in Princeton last year. Though the gazebo, unlike Veblen House and Cottage, is a new addition to Herrontown Woods, it brings along with it some history that turns out to have some connections to the Veblens, the genesis of the preserve, great writers, the founding of Princeton University, and some prize-winning giant tomatoes. 

I was pulling out of my driveway to head to Herrontown Woods earlier this month when I happened to see a man and his son standing next to the 145 Ewing Street house across the street, photographing the Bicentennial plaque affixed to the building. The house dates back to 1755, preceding Nassau Hall by a year, so existed when the country was born. 

Curiosity can lead to discovery, and so I walked over and said hello. Turned out the man's mother had owned the house. His name is Robert Field, and his mother, Alma Redding Field, had paid two men to build the gazebo a few years after buying the house from writer Caroline Gordon in 1978. Alma also remodeled the kitchen, built raised beds, planted roses, and added a "peeing boy" fountain framed by a rock wall. Alma's big raised beds would later grow a tomato that shared first place in the "Prize Princeton Tomato Contest", with a tomato weighing in at two pounds, eight ounces and a circumference of 18 inches.

Perhaps her inspiration for gardening greatness had been a neighbor just up the street at 178 Ewing, Leopauldine (Pauldi) Hutter, who had won an informal Green Thumb award from Town Topics in 1985 for her softball-sized tomatoes. Pauldi, an immigrant from Austria who was described by the Town Topics as a "cook and gardener extraordinaire and a warm-hearted, hard-working person," had "tended Mrs Oswald Veblen from the time her mathematician husband died in 1960 to her own death in 1973." 

By the time I moved in across the street in 2004, 145 Ewing had been bought by Anne Margaret Daniel, who revered the history but at some point moved out of town and would put the house up for sale between tenants. The house was finally bought two years ago, and now, 40 years after Alma transformed the backyard, the property is undergoing another transformation. To many people's surprise, the 1976 Bicentennial plaque on the front of the house did not mean the house was protected. It took an initiative by some of us neighbors to get the new owner and the town to work out a way to preserve the house. The raised beds are gone, but fortunately the 1755 house will be saved, and the new owner allowed us to save and repurpose the gazebo and shed by moving them out to Herrontown Woods.

I invited Robert and his son to come see his mother's gazebo at the Barden (short for Botanical Art Garden). They followed me out to Herrontown Woods, and so enjoyed the location and the company of the volunteers working there that they decided to extend their visit to Princeton an extra day.

The Redding name may sound familiar to many in Princeton. Robert's mother Alma was daughter of Joseph Redding of Redding & Sons Plumbing & Heating. Redding Terrace on Mt. Lucas Rd was named in his honor, after a life of public service, having served on borough council and many boards. A little research on the "Papers of Princeton" site revealed that Alma's family roots in Princeton date back to 1842. Like her father, she was very active in the community, serving on the Princeton Historical Society board for 15 years. Soon after buying the 145 Ewing St house, she joined the Princeton planning board, replacing Wendy Benchley, whom I would serve with on the Environmental Commission some 25 years later. 

In 1996, Alma was featured in an article in Town Topics, about her 94 page pamphlet "The Two Princetons: On the Record." Around the time she moved into 145 Ewing, she began a years-long project going through borough council minutes dating back to 1813, many of them written on cotton paper until wood pulp paper came into use in 1840. 

The article also describes the house. 

"her Ewing Street home is one of the oldest in Princeton, a house built in 1755 for Job Stockton... Sitting In her living room, a cavernous fireplace original to the house on one wall, Mrs. Field notes that this was Job Stockton's first house."He had a tannery, which needs water, and there are brooks nearby." Mr. Stockton went on to build Bainbrldge House, now the home of the Historical Society. The floor of the living room is the original wide-plank, honey-colored pine. In a corner is a Revolutionary War cannonball which Mrs. Field found under a pear tree in her yard. A part of the original front door was replaced in the 18th century after Job Stockton applied to a reparations commission for funds to repair two door panels destroyed during the Revolutionary War." 

The reference to a tannery and the need for water is interesting. You can see the brooks in this old map of Princeton. The blue line angling to the right is Harry's Brook, which drains downtown and eastern Princeton before flowing into Carnegie Lake over towards Kingston, and if you look closely at the map, you'll see a thin blue line of a tributary heading up and to the left. It ends just to the right of the "T", in the backyard of 145 Ewing Street. That, along with references to two giant willow trees that used to grow in the backyard, suggest that there was a spring there. 

Another feature of this old map will interest Princetonians used to driving up Harrison Street to the shopping center. At the bottom of the map is Nassau Street. Harrison Street heads up and then takes a sharp left, turning into Ewing Street just before that little tributary. 145 Ewing is at that corner, and the tributary blocked Harrison Street from going further until the early 1950s when the Princeton Shopping Center was built. Since I live across Harrison Street from 145 Ewing, part of that tributary once flowed through my backyard. In heavy rains, it still does, though most of the tributary is now underground, keeping the neighbors' sump pumps busy.

It's not entirely coincidence that the creation of Herrontown Woods in 1957 followed closely the building of the Princeton Shopping Center. The Veblens' donation of Princeton's first nature preserve was their response to the rapid conversion of farms on the east side of Princeton into suburban development. The loss of the rural landscape made clear to them the need for people to have a place to get away from cars and take a walk. 

I got some help from several sources in town about the history of 145 Ewing. Thanks in particular goes to the Historical Society of Princeton, and the Mudd Library had some useful information as well. Job Stockton bought the land from the Hornor family, for which a nearby street is named. In 1756, a year after the Ewing Street house was built, John Hornor along with Richard Stockton and two others contributed the land and funds to make possible the move of the college from Newark to Princeton. Nassau Hall was completed that year. 

Some internet sources claim that Thomas Jefferson slept in the 145 Ewing St house the night of November 4, 1783, during a meeting of the Continental Congress, but no evidence of this could be found in the historical records.

An addition to the house was built in the first half of the 19th century, perhaps by Arthur Browne, who owned it as of 1852. According to Amelia Miller McGinnis, who grew up in the house after the Miller family purchased it in 1918, the house had been owned by James Brown and included 18 acres. 

"It was called a truck farm. My dad ran that truck farm and sold vegetables. We even went over in the town and peddled vegetables. There were several English walnut trees, and anything you could lay your hands on to make money there in that place.”

Though Thomas Jefferson apparently did not stay overnight, there is evidence that the poet Robert Lowell and other famous writers visited the house. Novelist Caroline Gordon owned the house from 1956 to 1978. During her marriage to another well-known author, Allen Tate, from 1925 to 1959, their guests according to wikipedia

"included some of the best-known writers of their time, including Robert Lowell, who famously camped on their lawn in a tent one summer, absorbing everything he could from his mentor, Allen Tate, while enjoying the southern cooking and constant social life provided by Caroline Gordon. Other visitors were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, and Ford Madox Ford, the author whom Gordon considered her mentor."

Though wikipedia states that Gordon had a house on Nassau Street called "Benbrackets," it more usefully and hopefully accurately states that 

Gordon maintained her home at Princeton until 1973, teaching and writing; works of this time include The Glory of Hera (1972). 

Gordon and her husband had moved to Princeton--after living most of their lives in the southeast--in order to be closer to their daughter, Nancy Tate, who married a NJ psychiatrist, Percy Wood.

Gordon's correspondence with Flannery O'Connor included reference to two giant willow trees in her backyard. The house next to mine, built directly in the path of where the little tributary once flowed, is said to have had a massive willow tree in the front yard. It was gone by the time we arrived, but the hole is still there. 

What Einstein, Veblen, and Cicadas Have in Common

In this collage of Princeton Alumni magazines, Oswald Veblen finds himself framed by two miraculous companions: Albert Einstein and the Miracicada that currently has Princeton all abuzz. What do they have in common other than being miraculous? They have both spent time at Herrontown Woods. Veblen and Einstein were the first two professors at the Institute for Advanced Study, and remained good friends. The Miracicadas were singing in 1936 when Veblen bought what we now call the Veblen Cottage--an 1875 farmstead that became Veblen's study, often visited by Einstein and other friends. That purchase, which later became the core of Herrontown Woods, can be considered a starting point for the Princeton open space movement. By that measure, the movement to preserve open space reached five cicada generations old this year. Though the cicadas only come out of the ground once every 17 years, Veblen may have considered them friends as well, and as a mathematician surely took an interest in the primeness of their periodicity.

Update: In a letter to the Princeton Alumni Magazine about this, I noted that the author of the PAW's article on cicadas, Elyse Graham, was also the author of the PAW's past articles about Veblen, Adventures in Fine Hall and The Power of Small Numbers.

Open Space Beginnings in Princeton

Thus far, the 1950s appear to mark the beginning of formal open space preservation in Princeton. The Marquand family donated 17 acres in 1953, "for use as a public park, playground and recreational area for the benefit of the people of . . . Princeton and its environments.” As farms were giving way to housing developments on the east side of Princeton, Mrs. M. Taylor Pyne, Jr. donated land in 1956 to Trinity Church--what we now know as the All Saints Church tract.

It was the Veblens who donated the first land intended to be preserved in its natural state, a year later in 1957. The Veblens had acquired their land in the 1930s and '40s, next door to Mrs. Pyne, Jr's horse farm on Herrontown Road. At the same time, from 1936-45, Oswald Veblen was busy convincing the Institute for Advanced Study to acquire the 600+ acres that became known as the Institute Woods. 

Funding for open space acquisition appears to have come later. The Mercer County Parks Commission had yet to form when the Veblens donated the first 81 acres. Up to that point, Mercer County had developed a golf course in Trenton and received a six acre donation of land near Washington Crossing used by scouts. The Veblens' decision to step up, and the subsequent formation of the Parks Commission, had in part been a response to a survey by the National Recreation Association, which found the county was "generally deficient in all types of recreation and park areas". The county would then point to Herrontown Woods as evidence that it was beginning to address this deficiency.

The 1960s began with the expansion of Herrontown Woods by Mercer County, and closed with the founding of the nonprofit Friends of Princeton Open Space in 1969. DR Greenway was formed 20 years later, in 1989. The private acquisitions in the 1940s and donations in the 1950s formed the core holdings that later partnerships of government and nonprofits would then build upon. The Institute Woods was saved from development in 1997. A substantial portion of the All Saints Church tract was preserved in more recent years by DR Greenway. Due to these successful collaborations, Herrontown Woods is now at the center of a long corridor of open space, with Autumn Hill Reservation to the east and the All Saints and Richiardi tracts to the west.

A Dry Stone Waller Visits Veblen House

It was an improbable chain of events that brought a dry stone waller to Veblen House. First, the local Town Topics newspaper published a new year's day article about our latest progress in saving Veblen House. Of the photos I sent them, they chose this one--featuring the circular stone horserun with the Veblen House in the background--to publish with the article. Little did we know how and where that article might travel.

Ten days later, a message came via our Friends of Herrontown Woods website:

"Hello!! I am writing to you because a friend of mine from the Dry Stone Walling Association of Canada sent me a link to your article in the Town Topics about rebuilding the walls at the Veblen House. I am a dry stone waller from Vermont. The irony is that I grew up in Princeton as a child (ages 5 to 18) and lived down the street from Herrontown Woods!! I Went to Riverside School and Herrontown was just a bike ride away for me and my friends. Luckily we grew up without electronic devices and riding your bike and exploring the woods (and Lake Carnegie) was what we did. In fact, I have done the creek walk that connects Herrontown to Carnegie. These explorations of the woods was what eventually lead me to Vermont. 

I am now a dry stone waller here in Vermont and travel all over for work and dry stone festivals. I am also a teacher at The Stone Trust here in Dummerston, Vermont. Please check out the website. You will see that we are an educational center teaching the art and craft of dry stone walling. I would love to help with the restoration of the walls at the Veblen House. Their are many ways to go about restoring old walls and I would could help if you're interested. Have you thought about a workshop? I have been a part of many public workshops that people learn the craft and as walls get rebuilt. 

Have a great day and stay warm.
Torben Larsen
Windham Growers Inc. 

Herrontown Woods is most strikingly a combination of trees, rocks, and water. In my environmental work I've encountered organizations focused on trees or water, but never stones. At this point, I wasn't sure whether the walls he was talking about were the foundation walls for the buildings or the many rock walls in the woods left from a past agricultural era. A look at The Stone Trust website, whose motto is "In stones we trust," clarified what a dry stone waller does. The website opens up a new world where assemblages of stones--functional or fanciful--are juxtaposed with assemblages of people. Their faces glow with pride and satisfaction that seems rooted in the outdoor walls they have just constructed. Through collective action, the people become part of something larger than themselves, as do the stones that become part of a lovely stone wall. The way the photos are composed, the people connect to something elemental, while the stones seem to gain in humanity. Lately I've been musing that there is something soulful in wood that rubs off on those who work with it. Might stones have a gift to impart to us as well?

I contacted Torben, and a week or so later when he happened to be in NJ he came by for a visit. Soon he was explaining the logic of a stone wall. Gravity and friction are key to building a wall that will last 500 years. Stack "one on two," which is to say place each rock so that it straddles two rocks below. That way, part of its weight will rest on each of the two rocks. "One on three" is a weaker arrangement, because one of the three rocks underneath will be loose.

And be sure to "break your seams." Some areas of the horserun have running seams. The photo shows a couple running seams on the left, where a vertical line runs down through multiple layers of stone. Resting each stone on two stones below breaks the seams. Still, the horserun has endured pretty well, despite breaking some of the rules.

Each country has its own style of walling. I explained that the horserun was reportedly built by a German immigrant back in the 1930s, though it's unclear if he had brought any German stone-building heritage with him when he came to the States.

Taking a closer look at the horserun, I noticed its core is made up of smaller stones embraced by the larger stones lining the inner and outer faces of the wall. Torben called this "hearting."

Maybe all the king's horses and all the king's men will have more luck repairing this "check end" than they had with Humpty Dumpty. The sheer weight of the stones will pose a challenge, though. Torben said that this particular kind of stone weighs 175 pounds per cubic foot. He had some ideas about how the stones were originally lifted into place, but that didn't make it into my notes.

We then took a walk through Herrontown Woods, which surely is a kind of heaven for Torben, with all its boulders. While I tend to see the boulders as nature's artwork not to be disturbed, each with distinct shape and pattern of moss and lichen, Torben was seeing the rocks more as they must have been viewed in the 19th or early 20th centuries,

when the diabase boulders were being quarried for stone. One area of Herrontown Woods is pock-marked with the holes where boulders once stood, before they were split into pieces and carted away for various uses.

This block of stone must have marked the end of the quarry era, as it was never taken. Torben called the series of holes along the cracks "feather and wedging."

To be a stone waller is to be part of a network few of us have ever heard of. Torben is certified in Britain, and travels there periodically for stone walling events. Every now and then a gathering of rock wallers will do what Torben calls a "crazy build," like a "30 foot bridge, dry-laid," which is to say it's a bridge with a 30 foot span and nothing holding the stones together other than gravity and friction. He mentioned Sunny Wieler of Ireland, who builds intricate stone sculptures. We will never look at a stone wall the same way again.

Hopefully, Torben will return to Princeton to conduct a workshop, much like the ones The Stone Trust leads in Vermont.

After Torben headed back to his stone walling job elsewhere in NJ, I was still curious about the woman in Canada who came across the Town Topics article and is responsible for pointing Torben in our direction. Andrea Cross wrote a nice email back from her well-connected island in Lake Ontario:

"Great to hear from you!

I came across the article during the course of my daily business research which is focused on cultural heritage projects around the world. It was an active google search not an alert. 

You are right the story about the connections is pretty amazing.
Here I am living and working from an island in Lake Ontario and I come across your project. What moved me to take a second look was the lovely photograph with the dry stone structure in the foreground that was crying out to me to be restored!

I was professionally interested in your group’s efforts to create an interpretive or visitor center. However the stones spoke to me and it was an exciting “aha” moment...I am assuming Torben told you that I am active in the Dry Stone Walling Association of Canada and helping organize many international festivals which is how I met Torben.

The article was especially well written compared with many I come across. I was moved and inspired by the success and drive of your group.
I thought of Torben and the Stone Trust in Vermont - maybe they might take on the project for you.
On a more personal note my father, who recently passed away at the age of 93, had a love of mathematics and would have been excited to hear of the connection.

In his career he worked at the Microwave Physics Lab in Palo Alto when they were developing laser technology and was one of three people from his company sent to launch one of the successful Moon Bounce operations that moved communications forward in a big way. Mathematics being key.
Anyway....All this is to say I am cheering you on !!

I had mentioned to Torben, if I may help in any way let me know." 

Cheers
Andrea Cross
Amherst Island