Just a reminder that we have no meeting in January nor is the Cannonball House museum open. We’ve found through experience that few people want to venture forth in this cold month. We will post the program for our February meeting just as soon as it is finalized.

Our program this month will be so exciting and enjoyable. For decades countless American women fought for the right to vote.  But many others fought against it. Michele LaRue, a living actress, will portray a fictional Anti-Suffragist, Mrs. Harry Horatio Hemmenway who did oppose women getting the vote.  Marie Jenney Howe wrote this witty, insightful satire in 1912 titled “Someone Must Wash the Dishes:  An Anti-Suffrage Satire.”  (It is directed by Warren Kliewer) Some of the apparently absurd arguments will be presented by Mrs. Hemmenway to other well-off ladies as they gather for tea in one of their homes tea parlor to “Preserve the Home” and “Save the Nation from Anarchy.”

We are able to offer this beautifully presented, side-splitting performance thanks to funding by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. It is free and open to everyone.

We will transform our room at the Scotch Hills Country Club into a 1912 Edwardian tea parlor, complete with tea and other popular American snacks of the time (do you know them?).  Some of us will be dressing in 1912 attire and we encourage you all to join us.  For the ladies a high neck blouse and long skirt will do.  Ladies also wore big hats.  For the gentlemen a white shirt and dark jacket/suit will suffice.  A top hat or a bowler hat topped the men’s heads.  We will have a few hats for both sexes there for people to wear….if you don’t have your own.

Hopefully you will all have returned from your Thanksgiving travels, settled your overstuffed tummies and are ready for a night out for this performance and Historical Society of Scotch Plains & Fanwood time together.  Please bring friends and neighbors.

The “War to End All Wars” or the war that began all wars will be analyzed by the historians of the Scotch Plains Historical Society at their monthly meeting on October 23, 2018 at 7:30PM at the Scotch Hills Country Club. The focus will be on the European monarchies before World War I and their disappearance at the end of the war which ended 100 years ago this November. The talk will focus on the reshaping of Europe, the Middle East and the colonial aftermath in the rest of the world. The histories of various local soldiers who fought in World War I, originally called “THE GREAT WAR” and renamed World War I with the beginning of World War II, will be portrayed by society relatives and members.

This timely and important patriotic program takes place on Tuesday evening October 23rd, beginning at 7:30PM, held at the Shady Rest Scotch Hills Country Club located at 820 Jerusalem Road (and corner of Plainfield Avenue) in Scotch Plains. The meeting if free and open to everyone. Please bring your friends and relatives. Refreshments and fellowship follow the meeting.

In thankfulness with the “Hometown Heroes” program that will be lining the main streets of Scotch Plains and Fanwood on Veterans Day and Memorial Day with 190 banners of local veterans of all wars and all service branches, we will have a voluntary tax-deductible contribution hat to help fund these important banners and poles.