A ‘Power to Change’ 250th exhibit at the NJ State Museum

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As part of a celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary, the New Jersey State Museum, in partnership with the New Jersey State Archives, is presenting an exhibit titled “The Power to Change: Revolutionary Stories from the New Jersey State Archives.”

“We call this exhibit the power to change because it’s about this awesome authority that our fathers vested in the people of New Jersey and the people of the United States to govern themselves,” said Joseph Klett, executive director of the New Jersey State Archives. “They gave us the ability to change our course as we need to over time, through the founding documents.”

As visitors enter the exhibit, they will stand before the state and federal charters.

“The first is the state constitution of 1786,” he said. “It’s New Jersey’s declaration of independence from the crown [British monarchy].”

The second document on display is the ratification of the United States Constitution from 1787, and alongside it is the New Jersey ratification of the Bill of Rights, circa 1789.

“New Jersey was the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights. It was the third state to ratify the Constitution, so we’re called the third state,” Klett said.

He stressed that having these documents on display for the public to see is rare.

“For most of the last 50 years, these documents have lived in the vault of the state archives; they have not been on display for a duration of time,” Klett said. “This is the first time since the Bicentennial that you’ll be able to see these documents for an extended period of time.”

Claudia Ocello, the consulting curator for the exhibit, said different themes are highlighted, from the 1600s to the present.

“In thinking about our history and talking to the staff at the Archives, I was able to narrow things down and put things into categories,” she said. “The goal was to bring out some of the stories that show how the past has influenced the present, and how we’re continuing some of the ideals and stories that were started in the revolution.”

Owning property and land

In the first section, “Owning Property and Land in New Jersey,” a deed displayed from the Duke of York gave two Englishmen the proprietary rights to what is now the Garden State in 1664. Another document, written in 1677 on vellum, a type of parchment made from animal skin, bears the marks of several Indigenous leaders who sold the rights to what is now Gloucester County to a group of English settlers.

Klett said the tribes understood there would be an influx of people from Europe, and they were interested in getting guns, utensils, tools and other materials.

Belonging

The second section of the exhibit is called “Belonging.”

“Obviously in the history of our country and in our state different groups have not always felt they were welcome, that they belonged,” Klett said. “We also explore how groups formed their own communities so they could establish their own sense of belonging.”

In this section, visitors can learn about the Bordentown Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth that operated from 1886 to 1955.

“It was where young Black men and women learned trades,” he said. “We have a motion picture showing the school and the classrooms.” The campus was situated on 400 acres overlooking the Delaware River.

Another display focuses on Seabrook Farms in Cumberland County, where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II.

Patriotism and loyalty

A separate section of the exhibit focuses on patriotism and loyalty.

“We explore whether it is patriotic to protest against the government if you believe there’s something wrong that should be fixed,” Klett said. “We wanted to look at that from different angles.”

He said one document on display from 1762 is the appointment of William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s son, as a royal governor by King George III.

“That’s a symbol of loyalty to the king,” he said. “William Franklin, unlike his father, stayed loyal to the king throughout the Revolutionary War and ended up in exile in England.”

The exhibit also features a “Hello Girls” uniform, the outfit worn by women who operated the telephone communication systems for the American military during World War I.