MCHC Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Special Programing All Year

MORRIS COUNTY, NJ — The Morris County Heritage Commission is turning 50 this year, and it's celebrating the occasion with a calendar of special programming to highlight the county's history.

The special events are scheduled to be held between February and September of 2020, MCHC announced in a press release Wednesday. All programmed topics are based on past issues of The Heritage Review newsletter, formerly known as the County Circular. Issues of the newsletter from the 1970s through 2019 are available online.

Topics to be covered include The Founding of MCHC, Picatinny Arsenal History and Archaeology, the Civil War in New Jersey, historic preservation, genealogy research tips and technology in Morris County, the release states.

See the full calendar of events on Morris County's website.

The MCHC is also developing a women's suffrage presentation for later this year and co-sponsoring the 2020 Local History Symposium with the Canal Society of New Jersey at the Morris County Cultural Center in Mendham Township on April 25.

MCHC is co-sponsoring a Grant Writing Basics workshop Aug. 19 at the Morris County Library in Hanover Township, and it's participating in the Morristown Fall Festival in September.

The commission is also celebrating the occasion with a specially-designed logo featuring the Morris County Courthouse, which housed the MCHC in the early 1970s. The logo features gold, a color representing 50-year anniversaries, and aubergine, a color associated with wisdom, dignity, devotion and humanitarianism, according to the release.

"We thank the Heritage Commission for 50 great years of educating us on the important role Morris County played in our nation’s history, from its founding and formulative years, through the Civil War and World Wars I and II, to the present day,” Morris County Freeholder Director Deborah Smith said in a statement. “The staff and all volunteer members of the Heritage Commission over the past half century are to be congratulated for their outstanding efforts in calling attention to our great history.”