(b. January 12, 1905 / d. March 24, 2006)
Madeline Post was born in Bernardsville in 1905 and moved with her family to Brookside when she was a one-year-old. Her father, a Swiss immigrant fluent in French, Italian, German, and English, worked as a local realtor and occasionally served as a translator at the Morristown courthouse. The family settled at 16 East Main Street in Brookside, where they maintained a productive farm, growing various fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Brookside was a quiet community with dusty, dirt roads, no electricity, and no city water. The Brookside Market and post office had the only phone in town. Madeline’s mother, initially uneasy about living in what she considered a frontier area, once nailed the door shut when her husband traveled overnight.
Madeline’s childhood memories included traveling to Morristown by horse and buggy, playing under paw-paw trees on summer evenings, and teaching a rooster named Billy to jump for bread. She had a love for animals, including dogs and clever cats that caused playful chaos.
She attended the two-room schoolhouse in Brookside and then Morristown High School. Madeline knew from a young age that she wanted to teach and later attended Newark State Teachers College. She began her career in Newfoundland, teaching in a one-room schoolhouse and then at Pompton Lakes, where she managed large, diverse classes with care and authority.
In the mid-1920s Madeline began courting Russell Post, whom she married in 1941. They had a long courtship, since Madeline said she was in no hurry to marry. Despite a school policy barring married women from teaching, she continued working until the birth of their son, Ned. She bought the family home in Brookside from her mother around 1940, and Russell and Madeine spent the rest of their lives there. After leaving teaching, she remained actively involved in the community as a room mother, field trip chaperone, and Sunday School assistant.
Madeline was known for her deep connection to her community, hosting dance classes and helping neighbors in need. She also enjoyed sharing stories of local characters and the playful antics of neighborhood youth. Many of her stories were recorded by local historians. Throughout her life, Madeline’s love for teaching, family, and community remained central to her identity.
Madeline was 101 years old when she died and is buried in Hilltop Cemetery in Mendham.
Madeline Post Interviewed by Thomas G. Timpson, between 1997 and 2004
Transcription by Patricia Zimmerman
NOTE: Several years ago, Mrs. Post wrote a description of Brookside in her childhood and, as she read it into the tape recorder at the beginning of the interview, she elaborated on the narrative. The following is her original writing with her taped comments added in. (Questions from the interviewer are in italics.)
When we came to Brookside in 1906 it was a very small community. Everyone knew everyone in town and all about them. We had no electricity or town well. Everyone had a well and kerosene lamps. We had a dirt road which was dusty in the summer. In winter when we had snow, the men had to shovel it. In the spring they were very muddy with deep ruts.
The township had a machine called a stone crusher. They would put in large stones which came larger than a walnut and some as large as a small egg. They spread these on all the roads. You can imagine what it was like to walk on these and what it did to our shoes. Eventually they sank into the mud and by summer we had our dusty roads again.
We had our Rockaway Valley railroad. It left here at 8 a.m. with the mail and passengers. It came back with mail at 10 a.m. It left again at 4 p.m. with the mail and brought back passengers and mail at 6 p.m.
It was called the “Rockabye Baby.” It did not go into Morristown. It stopped at a place quite a way out called What Not Station. A stagecoach would meet us and take us to the United States Hotel on the park. They had made arrangements with the hotel to let people wait in their front room or on the porch. It was a few doors from Macy’s where we could see the coach coming up from the Lackawanna railroad station.
Brookside General Store/Post Office, 1910
We had a small country store. The P.O. was on the right back of the front door. They had a wood frame with boxes with numbers for the mail. There was glass in front of the boxes. We could see if we had mail and would ask for it.
Next to that was the penny candy counter where we could buy lollipops, tootsie rolls, red & white barber poles, fudge squares, round peppermints, etc. for a penny.
Next to that was the counter where we were served and the coffee grinder. Along the wall was the canned goods.
On the other side as you came in was the telephone which everyone used. (Mrs. Post, was that the only telephone in town? Was that the one everybody used?) Uh huh. Again, later they got phones, but that’s years later. Then came a few medicines, ribbons, thread etc. Then on the back was all the yard goods. After that was the rack for bread and larger tins of cookies. I should have put in here, you could buy a small loaf for 5 cents and the big loaf was 10.
In the middle was a large pot belly stove. The owner had his desk there. On three sides were benches. The men would gather there at night to talk and play cards. They would stay until the store closed at 10 p.m.
We had a chapel where on Sunday afternoons one of the ministers from Mendham would come to preach – the Methodist minister one Sunday, the Presbyterian the next and perhaps the Episcopal if we had a fifth Sunday. We had Sunday School from 2:30 to 3:30 and church from 3:30 to 4:30.
Between the church and the store was the blacksmith shop. There were two beautiful maples spaced nicely in front of it. There was a ramp going up to the second floor called the carriage shop. When they wanted to put the iron rim on the wheel, they would bring it down to the yard. They placed the rim on the ground. They would cut sticks ten to twelve inches and stand them around the rim, pour kerosene on and light it. By the time the wood had burned the rim was red hot which they would put quickly on the wooden wheel. As it cooled it would shrink and become very tight on the wheel.
Two-Room School House, replace in the Fall of 1923
We had a two-room school. The smaller room was for grades one to four. The larger room was for grades five to eight. The classes were small. Most of the time I was the only girl in my class. There was only one girl in the class ahead of me. Of course we were invited to all the parties. Later when we were in high school and the boys could borrow their father’s car, we were always sure of an escort.
Most of the men were farmers or worked in town. The women had dinner for them at noon. As soon as the dishes were done the women would clean up, put on a nice white apron, and sit on the porch to sew or read.
Someone from the lower end of town would walk up the street, stop to talk at each house to tell the news she had heard. She would pass that to the next and pass on her news and get more and so forth. We always knew all the local news.
People were neighborly. If your tomatoes, corn, or anything came on before your neighbor’s you shared.
Our place had been a truck farm. My father didn’t do that as he was in real estate.
We had every kind of fruit on this place apples from early in July through the summer to fall and winter apples, all kinds of pears, cherries, peaches, plums, walnuts (English walnuts, that is), all kinds of berries, grapes, red currants, black currents and people felt free to come to get what they wanted. My father always had a large garden which was shared.
Women felt free to borrow coffee, sugar, tea, eggs or whatever they needed.
Brookside was a wonderful place in which to grow up.
END 1997 INTERVIEW
START OF INTERVIEW(S) CONDUCTED BETWEEN 1997 & 2004
But this was only something I scribbled. That’s awful. I think, as you know, as I think I write down these things. Then I wrote a good copy, and I turned it in somewhere. Oh! they wanted to use something at Seniors, but I don’t think they ever got around to using it. You have to correct all the errors in it, but I just sat there jotting down what I was going to put in the report. Does that answer most of your questions? (That’s a good start.) I told Ernie, when we came to Brookside, I can’t remember the teacher, I was too small, I was only a year when they brought me here. And the teacher got $35.00 a month and boarded up to Ed Scank’s (that’s where Lois Frank lived). Yup, yup. They called her Jenny Scank. She boarded there, the teacher boarded there for $3.00 a week and that included her laundry. (And all her food too?) Oh, yes, everything. Well, she was getting only $35.00 a month. So, there went $12.00 right there. But the men were getting only $1.00 a day on the road, so no wonder that … The man that was over the road got $2.00, he was the chief, but the other men got $1.00.
And when we had snow, the men had to go out and shovel it. There was no equipment to do it, you know.
(Mrs. Post, about what year this was? ) It was shortly after we came to Brookside. We came in 1906, so it must have been around 1908 or 1909, or somewhere in there. When we came here, the person who owned this truck farm was a widow and she was here from 1891 and those two vases on the shelf their (over the mantel) have been there for 101 years. Her name was Sarah Shoemaker, everyone in town called her Aunt Sally, I don’t know why. She stayed with us, and she had these two rooms. My mother and father let her stay with us. She knew all the history. She used to tell us all these things, you know, I got a lot of history before I came here, before we lived here. She would tell us all about these people who had lived here before us.
(Do you know when your house was built?) Not exactly, but we know it was here in 1765, it is in the book here.
(Could you tell us, just briefly, where did your mom and dad come from?) They were married in New York. My father was Swiss, and he came over when he was 21 and then went back to Switzerland. He couldn’t come before because they have to serve in the army over there. Then he was in school studying to be a veterinarian, and his father died so he couldn’t continue, then he came back the second time and he met my mother. They got married. Of course, mother would not go to Switzerland, he wanted to go back to Switzerland, my mother wouldn’t go. So, then he got his naturalization papers immediately and my mother was raised in New York. I was never very interested in history. I never asked many questions. I was a very active child, and everything was too exciting I wasn’t interested in the past.
I wish I had gotten more from them and a lot of the papers we had, when my brother got married, he was married to (I suppose you know around here) the Glassons. He was married to Thelma’s sister, and they lived down there back of the shop there. They were only using three rooms, and my brother collected everything. He had all the old newspapers that had anything of importance in my father’s naturalization papers, I do not know how much more he took and, one day, Doris wanted to use the, she had them all in an old washstand, washstand so she just took everything out and burned it. Everything was burned. Wouldn’t that have been wonderful to have.
(What were your parent’s names?) My father’s name was Samuel Ferdinand Laederach. My mother’s former name was Ormond. My brother was Earnest.
My father managed to farm in Bernardsville and then, as soon as he got this place, he moved over here.
(What was it like in your home, did you have chores to do? You never did the farming.) Oh mercy no. My father always had a big garden, a great big garden. And people always came in and got all the apples they wanted, and we had a family down there that lived across from you (across from 3 West Main Street) and they were pretty down and out, so every morning the children would come up with bags. Did you ever see those 25 pound flour bags? They used to sell flour. And each of the children would bring a bag up and they would pick up the apples and they would go to the garden and get string beans, lima beans, corn, anything they wanted out of the garden.
(Did you can things?) Oh yes, my mother was a wonderful cook and canned, she could can anything. We had like all the apple sauce we wanted, all the other fruit she canned, we had every kind of a berry on this place. All kinds of pears, little sickle pears, to early summer and the late winter pears. And then we had chickens and pigs and a cow. My father always insisted on a Jersey cow. They have the richest milk of all. That is what I was brought up on.
(Then you went to school in what is now the Community Club?) But it was over where the Municipal Building is – Town Hall. For High School, we were taken into Morristown, and I think it was the first year I went, Joe Laurey had the bus, and he was a very nice man. I mean he would drive the bus back and forth anyway. If we wanted to come home at 4:00, we’d come, if we wanted to wait until he drove the 6:00 bus, we’d shop in Morristown, do what we wanted, or stay at school to do things.
Then the next year we had … did you ever know the Cranes on Old Brookside Road? It’s where that old barn is on the right hand side. Well, the Cranes lived up there, that was their barn, and their oldest son drove the bus, and the oldest children used to tease him cause he was young you know. When it was slippery and we were going up the hills, the boys would all swing this way, and then we would have to go up the hill like this. When it snowed, he could not use that bus, so he’d bring us down in the bobsled. And then on Old Brookside Road the snow wouldn’t be cleared off, but the main road would, so he couldn’t use his bobsled, so he would come with this hay wagon. We’d ride into Morristown on the hay wagon, with hay to sit on and a few blankets. (One way or another, you were going to school.) We got there.
(How many of you would there be going to the high school?) Well, we had such small classes. I don’t think there would be more than a dozen of us at the most. We had a lot of fun growing up.
(You were born in 1905, so you began high school in 1918?) Yes, in 1918. (About the time of the WWI?) Yes, because that first fall we were there, Armistice Day and we wanted to come to see the parade, everybody had a parade, we wanted to cut. And the girls said to me, “Oh, I’ll just tell my mother I was sick. That I had to go home with somebody else.” Or something like that. They said to me, “What are you going to tell your mother?” I’ll tell her, “I stayed to see the parade.” I can always remember that. I never could understand why they would say something else. As I said, we always had a lot of fun.
(What did you study in high school?) Well, it was the first year the new high school was opened. The high school the year before was over on Maple Avenue. There was an old school there. That first year it opened, we went. So, we didn’t have any trouble being kidded by the others, getting lost, no one knew where they were going. (That was the present high school then? ) Well, they have added on to it since.
(What classes did you take? I would think English. . .) The first year I had English and Algebra, Science and Ancient History. (And it went along like that, but at higher levels. Did you have things like athletic teams?) Oh yes, they wanted me to be on the basketball team because down here at school I always played with the boys and, of course, girls are easier. So, when we were practicing, the girls wanted me to be on the team. I couldn’t because I didn’t have transportation into Morristown. They were there at night so much, no buses at night. They practiced during the day, in gym classes. But the games were at night.
(World War I, was there a significant effect on Brookside? Were there fewer parties, I’m sure you rolled bandages and did things like that. But how did it affect Brookside?) The women did it, and we used to knit. I always hated it. My mother always wanted me to learn to crochet and knit and tatting and all that sort of thing. And I hated it. I learned, but I would never do it. And when it came to knitting, I had to knit a sweater, I guess it was, and there was a person living down there where, right on Woodland Road that first house, that was the Ward house, they had a housekeeper, and she knew I hated it, so she finished it for me.
(Did many of the sons and fathers go to WWI from Brookside?) Let me see, yes we lost several here. I was trying to say, Martha Hoppler’s brother went to work in the Post Office, he had injured his arm. And he went into government work instead of . . .?. . . service, and his brother . . . . . (NOTE: phone rang).
(You had been a schoolteacher?) Taught for 22 years in Mountain Lakes. I boarded there. They did not want me to commute. You have night meetings and so on. I always boarded. (What grade did you teach?) I started in fourth grade and then I went up to departmental work. We had the seventh, eighth and ninth, junior high, in our building and then they built the high school and took them over there for a year. The school got too crowded, so they sent them back to us and my supervising principal asked me if I would go up and teach one of the upper grades and he said I could have any subject I wanted if I would come and any classroom. So, I went up there. I loved my fourth graders. He had asked me to go to fifth and I said, “No, I love my fourth graders.” Then he said, “Will you go to sixth?” The next year and I said, “No, I won’t.” So, then he asked me to go up there and then my old principal insisted that I go. So, I went. And I just loved them. You know, I always thought I liked the little ones better, but I just loved by teenagers. (What did you teach?) Math. I always liked math.
Madeline Ormond Lauderach, c. 1925
(When did you meet Mr. Post?) Well, the first year that I taught, I boarded at a home, well it was really called the Fairview Villa. They had fifteen bedrooms, and they took boarders in the summer and the schoolteachers all boarded there. Their names were Post. And at night we had so much fun because one cousin lived on one side of them and then a little bit farther down was another cousin, and they were always in at night.
But the way I met him was one night we were invited up to, they had something to do with radios or something way back there – I’ve forgotten, they wanted us to hear something. This man had built a crystal radio, you know what I’m talking about? He brought us up there, this was like a second home to him, he boarded there a lot, on and off, so he came down to take us up to hear this and Russell happened to be there. And I didn’t pay any attention to him, I was not particularly interested.
And then in the spring, I had one of the teachers, one of the girls, she was a teacher too, that I went all through high school and Newark State Teachers and so forth, we have been friends for years. So anyway, I invited her up for the weekend and, as we were going out to church that morning, Russell was coming in because he and the son of the house were close pals. We just met on the porch and when he got inside, he said to Tom, “Get those two girls and we’ll go somewhere in the afternoon.” So, Tom asked us to go, so we went. Anyway, it was kind of funny. We both got in the back and Tom said, “Lets divide up” and she didn’t move so I got out and I got in the front with Tom, but Russell didn’t pay any attention to my friend. He kept paying attention to me all the while I was there. And I didn’t think much of it, so then he came over and asked me to go to the movies on Wednesday night. So, I went. Guess I wasn’t very interested in boys. I mean he was just a friend, and I had a friend from here coming up to see me and some of the other people up there invited me and I would go! But I didn’t want to go steady with anyone.
I had no interest in getting married. But eventually, this went on and on, eventually I did get married. (What year was this?) When I met Russell the first time was in 1924, and I wasn’t particularly interested. I am not the marrying kind. I like friends and I had lots of them. I have always been that way. Anyway, then it was in ‘25 that the boys took us out. At that time, I was still in Newfoundland. I was commuting to Pompton Lakes. I had so much fun there. I boarded there even though I was going to Pompton Lakes for four years.
(How did you get to Newark State Teacher’s College?) There was a bus that came here, and I commuted from Morristown. (The bus took you to Morristown and then you went by train. Was that four years or two years?) It was only two years, but then I took courses after that over at . . .?. . . That was a long commute! I always went in on Saturdays.
(The Depression must have hit shortly before you were married.) Yes, and it was nice cause I would go into Morristown, and they had a store there on Washington Street that called it “The Jumbo” and when I would go in, I always bought a lot of stuff when I came home weekends, and they would all cater to me, it was funny, you know, and the other people, they would let wait and wait on me. And then when the war started and all these people were getting bigger salaries then I, I did not get all the extra attention.
(Did the depression hit Brookside hard?) Some it did. It never bothered me very much because teaching I had a job, but we did have to take a cut. And they didn’t, for instance, they weren’t getting any money then at all. But we’ll say that you were getting $1,500 or $1,600, something like that, they said if they cut our salary back to $1,400, when the Depression was over we’d have to start back at $1,400. So, what they actually did, they made us give back that amount. See what I mean. (I don’t get it Tim, what do you mean “give back”? Well, this would maintain the salary level. You are donating so that after the Depression was over you would start at your original level not the depressed level.)
(What did Mr. Post do?) He had studied to become a civil engineer. And when the war broke out they wanted you to do government work of some kind. And because he had engineering training, they wanted engineers to teach the boys who came out of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps, you know. All the boys graduating from high school, lovely boys, had nothing to do. So, they started the CC camps.
Were you familiar with those? (I read about them.) They needed engineers to train these boys, and Russell went up to Hackettstown and he said the boys were so nice. He just adored the boys he was working with. And they had to lay out ponds for the fish. Hatchery I am talking about. Have you ever been up there? (No, but I have heard about it.) Then they had to put in new roads and all that sort of thing. Of course, I mean he knew how to do all that sort of thing. And he just loved those boys.
And then they transferred him to, close to Butler, they had a camp there. He said he did not care too much for the men there. He said they were the people that came back from the war that they drank a lot, and he said he didn’t care for them. (I’m getting mixed up.) I know when he was working . . . then somebody he knew wanted him to do war work. They were making all kinds of part for airplanes. They had to be within, not a ¼ or ½, but 1/1000 of an inch close. He loved it, he loved this. He liked the machinery and anything like that. So, he did that. He never went back to doing anything with the , , ,(?), , , , he stayed with them.
(Where did he work then, in Hackettstown?) No, no, this was in Newark. Called a machine shop or something, whatever it is, it had every kind of a machine in there to make these . . .(?) . . . . As I say, those parts have to be made within thousands and thousands of an inch.
(He commuted by train to Newark? ) Car.
(What was it like in Brookside during WWII – this special little town?) Let me see, where was I then? I was teaching, I know. Well, I don’t know, I guess I was away from home.
(You would have been married and living here with your husband I think. Did you move into this house right after you were married?) Yes, I stayed right here, in fact I bought it just before I was married. (From your parents?) And my brother.
(Your parents had passed away?) One had. And my mother was here yet. (Did your mom stay on living with you?) Oh, yes. (And you had a little boy? When was he born?) In ’46. (So, it would have been just before he was born that the war ended.) Yes, he was drafted. He was an older . . . that died. And he was out in California. My husband. He was out there and then they let the older men go. (They were not drafted?) They were and he was sent out to there. Let me see. I didn’t get married when I was very young. Let me see. I was married in ’41 and, uh, I was married just before the war broke out. Pearl Harbor. I was married in August. Pearl Harbor broke out in December 7th. (You must have collected scrap metal here.) My brother had all that, that is what Doris took and burned.
(There is just one thing in the chronology that I am confused on. You met your husband in 1926 and married in 1941.) I’ll tell you. I wasn’t in any hurry to get married. I must have been queer. You know, I had plenty of friends and if someone said, “Let’s go here,” I’d go. If somebody else said let’s go here, I’d go. I mean, I would not be tied down. We had good times.
(Young women today are not in a rush to get married.) I wasn’t. I guess they thought I was odd. But I had lots of fun. You know, they were friends, they knew they were friends. I mean there was . . . (Wherever you went, new friends.) We were just friends, and they knew it. (The boys.) Yea, they all knew it. I remember when I was in High School, that uh right after I was beginning to teach, there were two in particular, and those were friends, but I’d go with either one of them. Wherever they were going.
(When did electricity come to Brookside, when did the telephone come to Brookside?) I think in the ‘20’s. I think, let me see, I . . .(?), , , before that. I started to school . . .(?). . . it must have been in the teens. Maybe ‘14, ’15 somewhere in there.
(And did you always have indoor plumbing?) No, we had no city water. (No electricity to pump the well, you couldn’t pump the well except by hand.) Yeah, we had the ones with the bucket in. The old wooden bucket. (Where was your well?) It was right there, out there (pointing to the front of the house). It was hand-dug with stones all the way up and down and, uh, it had when we came here, is it a windlass you call it? (Yes.) And then my father was the one that put the, what they called the well box, or whatever you call that thing. He put that in. And in the summertime, so many of the well would go dry and we had the best well around and when you pulled the water up in the summertime, when it was really hot out, this water would stain on your glass just as if you had taken it from the refrigerator. And people used to come here for water and, uh, they were welcome to the water. The only thing they would always tap on the door, our kitchen was out there (east side of the house) where I use for a storeroom now and it was an eat-in kitchen, and they would always come at mealtime, and they’d tap on the door. We’d open it, mother would answer the door, and they’d talk, and so forth. And here we were, we couldn’t eat, here we would be sitting at the table, mother would be at the door talking to them, and this would go on and on. So finally, my mother got tired of it, and she moved the kitchen back there (motioning to the back of the house). Then we used this like a little sitting room and then, when Ned (your son) was little, we made it into a toy room for him.
And now that we have to do all this recycling, wouldn’t let anyone in there for anything. Here are the papers, here are the magazines, here’s the brown paper bags, here are the junk mail, and everything’s in rows, you know, right along there. And then, so you can imagine what this looks like. Then I have my bird seed out there. And I put my garbage can out there too, because I don’t have any place, I have no garage to put it in. So that’s out there and all, I recycle my paper bags, plastic bags, I don’t know whether you do that or not. Well, by the time you get through, that storeroom is just filled. (Interviewer tells about her garage and recycling.) I have everything piled in there, but that was very old. It has the biggest fireplace in the house. Of course, this one is in back of it (motioning to the two angled fireplaces in the living room – where we were seated – and the dining room). And mother would never use the fireplaces because the house was so old, she was afraid to use it. But now you just put a steel sleeve down it there and you could use them. And I have two here, one on each side, and when they put in our furnace, they took that chimney and so I don’t think you could use these unless you put the, for the furnace, you put that on the outside. But it could be done.
(One last question, understanding the type of information we are trying to collect, is there anyone in town you think we should talk to?) Now, Ann Major is an older resident. But I don’t know if she would be good enough to give you any information or not. Ann has to have someone with her all the time. And now this was quite a number of years ago, Alice Cooper, Ann Major and I joined, Alice was already in the Seniors, we joined, and we were going to drive, take turns driving, and then Ann got to the point where she was afraid. She wouldn’t drive. So, I said that’s okay, I don’t mind driving. So then, even before she gave that up, I called her and I said, “Ann, tomorrow is Seniors.” We go the second and fourth Mondays. And she said, “Now, what time?” She knew the time; she’d been going right along. And I said that time, and so then we’d talk about it, and she said, “Now, what did you tell me?” And I’d tell her. And before I could get off the phone, she’d be asking me three times. What I had told her. And then she just dropped out altogether. So, I don’t know whether she’d be good on anything back or not. She might be good on any of the things far back, I don’t know.
You know lots of times people remember the things that were way back. I notice that I used to have the best memory, the teachers at school used to take a pad and write down all the notes. I never had to. When I was in school I could read a chapter and go back and practically read it to you verbatim. One person who was an A student would come to class and have all these notes she made the night before; she’d go over all these notes and everything before class, and I never could see that. May have had a good memory, she could do the same thing. But I don’t know . . .(?). . . suggesting. She has to have someone with her during the day.
(If you’re not tired, you had said that you have stories about this house, the lady who lived here, from whom you bought the house?) Not the history of the house. But it’s called the Chedister house. I want to show you some things before you go. They called it the Chedister house, and people by the name of Freeman lived here, and people by the name of Loesey lived here (unsure of spelling of names). A lot of Chedisters, two different kinds.
(Who were your neighbors then?) When I was quite small the Hansons bought that house and Seth Smith lived here before that, they bought it from Seth Smith. And the house the other side where Greidanus live, people by the name of Thompson owned that house. They also owned the house where you live. And the Hansons had it, from when I was quite small up until I think it was 1921 when they sold to Fred Kiser. You know Fred Kiser. And then where you live, Thompsons owned that and Brown, there was a family here called, Adam Brown was an older man and he lived in your house and his sister lived there with her daughter, which was not right mentally and, uh, they sold – I can’t think of the first family that moved in there in chronological order. I know Peacocks had it for a while. Frank Green had it for a while. Frank Green raised chickens, and he worked in the garage in Morristown. And then Hoaglands bought it. It had been a two-family house, you knew that. (Yes.) People, when we came here, their name was Price, he did paper hanging and painting, that sort of thing. (Speaking of 3 West Main Street.) Price lived there. And people by the name of Thorburn lived there. When they went in there, their floors were bumpy. I have a couple that are quite bumpy, but the others are pretty good. But she liked those bumpy floors, and she wouldn’t put any rugs down and she had them, I don’t know what they call varnished or something because they were really shiny, I was only in there one time, but she was so proud of these bumpy floors. But I have two, this one out here, this one I think is the worst in the house. Upstairs, the floors are pretty good. They have all the wide board floors, you know and so forth. I like upstairs better. See, here I have five rooms on one floor. At least I have, but that one really has a, like a lean-too. Guess there is more space up there, it is so bright. Lots of funny things.
END OF INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION
Note from the interviewer in 2004: We further discussed with Mrs. Post which houses were which on an 1886 map and one earlier map, also several books about Mendham history and, finally, the real estate description of Mrs. Post’s house, a copy of which is in the Mendham Township Historic Preservation Committee files, and general discussion of the problems of selling an old house.
Finally, Mrs. Post very graciously took us on a tour of her home, pointing out the many beautiful, old features – the floors, the doors, interior siding, etc. The house should be a museum!
ABOUT THE POST HOUSE, 16 EAST MAIN STREET, BROOKSIDE
Chedister-Laederach-Post House
The lifelong home of Madeline Post was the Japeth Chedister homestead at 16 East Main Street. It was one of the oldest structures in the Brookside. No records exist to establish a date of construction. The house, however, appears on a map of the area dated 1760, and a local historian/building contractor Ernie Maw estimated it as 1740. The house was a frame, two-and-a-half story, four-bay structure that rested on a stone foundation. Brick chimneys were located at either end of the side-gabled house. The grade-level rooms on the east had dirt floors and no electricity (until the 20’s). The house is unchanged from the day it was built, with the exception of the enclosure of an 8′ x 8′ section that had once been the summer kitchen, and probably a replacement of the façade with wood shingles, A portico, well house, out house and garage — all shingled and gabled — completed the picture.
Japeth Chidester was a farmer. He and his heirs held ownership of the house and farmland until 1902, when they sold it to Jasper Laederach, Madeline’s father, who was a real estate agent with offices in Gladstone. The house remained in the Post family until Madeline’s death at age 101. It was demolished in 2013.
ESSAY DATED OCTOBER 29, 2004
from the Estate of Edward & Rhoda (Tufts) Radtke, author unknown.
The family moved to 16 East Main Street, Brookside from Bernardsville when Madeline was 1 and her brother Ernest 3. Aunt Sally remained in the house, inhabiting the present living room and dining room because, as Madeline put it, “Where else would she go?”
Madeline’s father was from Switzerland. His family, including a twin brother, owned an inn and Alpine farm. He spoke French, Italian and German, in addition to English, and was called on to do translating at the Morristown courthouse when the need arose.
Her mother thought of Brookside as a frontier outpost and when Madeline’s father went on an overnight trip, she remembers her mother nailing the door shut to protect herself and the two children.
The present kitchen is the former feed room and Madeline’s mother soon put an end to the rats dining there. Early plumbing extended to a backyard outhouse which Madeline remembers as having one of the earliest examples of local graffiti, “If you make a deposit in this bank, do not leave change on the counter.”
As a toddler Madeline traveled by horse and buggy to Morristown and, seated between her mother and father, she was allowed to hold the reins. They went to Day’s Restaurant in Morristown where she ordered tea, just like her mother.
Day’s Restaurant, Park Place (west side of Green), Morristown.
Photo Courtesy of Morris County Historical Society
In the mid-19th century, Morristown found its sweet spot with the
opening of Wilbur F. Day’s confectionery and bakery on Park Place.
Over the generations, the Day family and their thriving enterprise
became a part of the fabric of the Morristown community, until it was sold in 1942.
The Post Family property, a former truck farm, extended north of East Main Street and produced bumper crops of produce from fruit, flower, and vegetable gardens, especially the cabbage-type vegetables her Swiss father grew and the corn which went directly from the stalk into a waiting pot of boiling water,
Summer evenings meant sitting under a paw-paw tree and watching white moths emerge from their cocoons. Walnut, cherry, peach, pear, plum, and apple trees; raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, red and black currants; white, purple, Concord and Elizabeth. Grapes, Baldwin apples, and a variety called Astrakhan which ripened by the Fourth of July. Her favorites were the sun-warmed peaches, although she clearly recalled the day her mother was overcome with abdominal pains while canning pears, which Madeline attributed to overindulging in the pears but were, in reality, labor pains.
“Kenjockety” 2 Woodland Road, home of Rev. Zimmerman
As a local realtor Madeline’s father sold the Brookside Woodland Road home “Kenjockety” to the Rev. Andrew Zimmerman, the first permanent minister at Brookside Community Church. Due to the rocky soil on Woodland Road, the Reverand would help in the gardens on East Main Street regularly and would share his sliced and fried puffball mushrooms. Presumably, he kept his recipe for groundhog, learned during his days on the Mississippi, to himself. He kept bees and gave the honey to local families, and in the summer dammed the stream in front of his home so children could swim. Madeline also recalled his tonsorial talent, trimming not only the hair of his three daughters, but also Madeline’s curly auburn locks in the popular shingle style.
One of Rev. Zimmerman’s daughters had a physical disability and, when faced with his daughter’s taunting at the hands of bullies he “innocently” asked the ringleader to protect his daughter, paying him 50 cents for the service. The tormenting stopped.
Union Chapel in Brookside
Before Rev. Zimmerman’s arrival, Brookside worshippers heard visiting ministers from Mendham churches at 3:30 services, which followed the 2:30 Sunday School classes. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” were words to live by and meant quiet play only in the yard. Madeline remembered two girls on Woodland Road who passed the time as one played the piano while the other guessed the title and number of the hymn.
It was a different time, a slower time, with neighbors visiting, baking, sharing the overflow from gardens. Baked goods, flowers, fruit, and vegetables in abundance, when people had more time, fewer distractions, and no white-tailed deer. It was a time when women baked gingerbread to share at lunchtime with a widowed neighbor. A time of families giving garden produce to the hard-pressed family of an alcoholic father. A time of raised eyebrows when a couple’s quarrel escalated into a tomato-throwing fight on East Main Street. The same man delighted in waiting outside for Madeline’s father to walk to the Post Office and off they would walk, loudly arguing politics all the way. When her father died, this man told Madeline how much he would miss their ongoing debates.
The Post farm also had barns for the cows, horses, and pigs. At three, Madeline taught a Plymouth Rock rooster named Billy to jump for bread, regretting this only when he jumped for, and got, the coveted last apple of the winter. She also recalled the Houdan chickens, a black and white breed with a topknot,
and ducks that awoke early and quacked on her front lawn. Madeline had a life-long affection for cats and dogs. One, an orange cat, was particularly clever. Madeline ‘s mother was confined to bed with her leg in traction, and the cat, knowing the bed to be off limits, would run from one side to the other while her mother tried to shoo it away. Tiring of this, the cat proceeded to the windowsill where it would tug the dangling curtain pull until the shade snapped up wildly, and then quickly curl up in a chair when Madeline came upstairs to see what the commotion was about.
A neighbor who was given a Post kitten was seen fast asleep on a lawn chair with the new kitten sound asleep on the top of his head. A pet collie was so devoted to Madeline that when a friend attempted to play a piano duet with her, he gently caught the girl’s wrist in his mouth until she moved away from his young mistress.
A later collie belonging to Ned, Madeline’s son, was lucky. On visits to the local store, Ned would allow the ice cream to drop out of his cone so the dog could have it while he enjoyed the cone.
Many of her stories concerned animals. As Madeline told it, a neighborhood parent had been contacted by her son’s teacher, concerned when the little boy repeatedly told his classmates that he bad “killed a bear.” The boy’s uncle, knowing of the child’s fervent wish to go bear-hunting, had designed an elaborate trek into the woods where he had earlier placed a bearskin over a padded sawhorse. Taking the boy by the hand, the two had set out, armed with sticks, to “go hunting” and, discovering the animal in the woods, had proceeded to “kill the bear.”
Early Brookside had only dirt roads. There were two cars, one at the grocery store and one at Thebault’s on Route 24. Or one could “ride with the lady with the green scarf,” the advertising slogan of Marge, who drove an open touring car, taking passengers to and from Morristown. This unusually enterprising woman traveled what would later become the bus route. Her service ended in 1911, when Madeline was six.
Travel was then done by train, the “Rockabye Railway,” which stopped in downtown Brookside and continued on to Washington Valley’s out-of-the-way What Not Station A stagecoach then took the passengers to the United States Hotel on the Morristown Green where they could wait until it was time for another stagecoach to take them to the Morristown Train Station.
Snow meant sledding down Cherry Lane or ice skating on the local ponds, which were also used for the ice cutting industry. Snow also meant taking the horse-drawn bus with center facing seats to Morristown High School. Wesley Savadge’s uncle was one of the drivers. His substitute was not so lucky, and being a timid man, was subject to the games of the older boys. Their favorite was to run from one side of the bus to the other, causing the back of the bus to sway wildly from side to side as it went up and down icy hills.
Other characters included Curly, the fish man, who delivered fresh fish from house to house. The “Banana Man” sold his fruit at the downtown bridge and people never did figure out why he would then leave bunches of bananas at intervals in the stream that ran along Main Street. Neighbors would wait until his truck passed, and run out to retrieve the fruit, wondering about his being “not right in the head.”
Another neighbor, a World War I veteran, would behave perfectly normally until seized by the sudden need to run and he would take off down the street as if running for his life. Another neighbor, Shorty, lived in the basement of the Greidanus house before it was renovated by the Robert Neely family, that owned Nedick’s Soda. Shorty was an alcoholic recluse who would emerge from time to time covered with mildew. He was one of the few residents who frightened Madeline, and he was eventually “taken away.” Then there were the two women, mother and daughter, who lived in the “cat house” on West Main Street until their demise. Chronically short of money, they nevertheless provided the means for their nephew to attend the seminary and become a priest.
Early Brookside homemakers had their own medicinal recipes. Madeline ‘s antidote to poison ivy, a thick paste of baking soda and water, worked better than remedies found on the shelves at the Apothecary. She used aloe to cure any itch or burn. Her lifelong practice of hanging laundry outdoors to dry resulted in better smelling and whiter clothes than any product sold on supermarket shelves.
The school Madeline attended was a two-room structure that sat near the Community Club, and then the larger building that is now the Town Hall. The only girl in her grade, she often played with the boys, and enjoyed basketball played by boys’ rules, instead of the game which seemed too easy when played by girls’ rules at the High School.
Madeline’s theatrical career began in the 7th grade when she tugged on the principal’s coattails, cueing him to bang on the water pipes to create the thunder in a production of “Ichabod Crane.” That career ended as her teaching career was beginning. After accepting a pay cut during the Depression, she was cast as the “good” daughter in a teachers’ production about mistaken identity, a fund-raiser with tickets selling at 50¢.
Madeline recalled family vacations to lakes and beaches in the Northeast, a later trip to Nantucket the first-year automobiles were allowed and, one of her few regrets, deciding not to go to Europe with friends. She recalled, vividly and uncomfortably, a trip to Canada where she saw the 7-year-old Dionne quintuplets as they played in a one-way mirrored room for the entertainment and admission money of curious sightseers.
A member of the first freshman class at the Morristown High School’s new building, she was a classmate of Welsey Savadge’s father. Her teachers included an English teacher with an English accent, whom she loved to listen to. Having decided on teaching as a career when she was a mere seven years old, she went on to attend Newark State Teachers College. She was rejected at her first choice of teaching jobs because as a petite and spirited 19-year-old under a cloud of auburn hair in her graduation photo, she looked too young. She shared some long-forgotten photographs of friends and classmates rediscovered in the hidden compartment of an old trunk. One dashing F. Scott Fitzgerald-type inscribed his photo “To Madeline whom I love” and when asked why it was not a photo of Russell Post, she merely smiled.
Hired by the Newfoundland School district, she lived at a l5-bedroom boarding house run by Grace Saltus Post, a cousin of Russell Post. A neighbor was Albert Payson Terhune, author of Lad, Lassie, and other canine classics, but a disappointment when he came to speak at her school, dressed in worn and wrinkled tweeds and speaking in a rambling style.
Her first school had 17 students and a wood-burning stove, which was tended by the 8th grade boys. She apparently ran a tight ship when she began teaching a year later at Pompton Lakes. She had up to as many as 43 students in her class. The varied student body included Edward, a 4th grader from a poor family who had given up on him, making him sleep in a packing crate on the back porch. They told Madeline he would never learn to read but Madeline taught him, although she had to keep an eye on him because he would hide his preferred magazines beneath his textbooks. His size made the other students leery of him and Madeline would designate him room monitor whenever she had to leave, knowing the class would not risk crossing him. The principal always marveled at her ability to control her classroom even in her absence, never tumbling to the fact that Edward had been left in charge.
She made a point each morning of listening to the youngest child in a family of 17 children because the girl needed a chance to talk and be heard. She was particularly pleased one morning to report to Madeline that her aunt had died. Madeline responded, “That’s very sad.” The girl said “Yes, but that’s not all. My brothers get to be the ball bearings.
One of her students accused another of stealing his homework. The second indignantly denied the charge and when questioned by Madeline said, “I wouldn’t steal a spelling paper!”
Madeline taught all types and loved them all, both the 4th graders and the seventh graders, who “knew it all.” She always appreciated the outspoken, the spirited, the naughty, saying they had spunk. She worried about the “good” ones who were quiet and shy, afraid they wouldn’t learn to speak up for themselves.
Madeline began a courtship in the mid-1920’s with her landlady’s cousin, Russell Post. On one occasion he took Madeline riding in an open-cockpit plane at the airfield located near the Paterson-Pompton Turnpike. Her first car was a 1932 Chevy, one of the first to have heat.
Their engagement was marked with the gift of a log cabin-patterned quilt stitched by “Aunt Sally” Schumacher which Madeline stills owns. The couple married in 1941, and Madeline continued to teach after being advised by her principal to not wear her wedding ring, the school policy of the time barring married women from teaching. With the birth of their son Ned, Madeline ended her teaching career but continued to stay connected with Mendham schools as a room mother and field trip chaperone.
She became Assistant to the Sunday School Supervisor, taking attendance and counting the weekly offering, a job that entailed recording each and every penny as a mission or church contribution.
She later organized a dance class at the Community Club where young residents learned to waltz and fox trot. Always, she cared for her family and neighbors, taking meals and tidying homes of the sick, and visiting and transporting the lonely on day trips and errands.
Madeline ‘s memories also included the escapades of local youth, some of whom still live in Brookside. On one occasion, two boys distracted the overzealous, new (and first) policeman, chatting away with him at the Post Office while their buddies smuggled a sack of pigeons from the Bockoven farm into the back seat of the patrol car. Another day, the same group again distracted the policeman while their confederates ran a chain from the patrol car’s axle to a boulder and then watched while he attempted to drive away. The hapless officer, nervous about patrolling at night, asked Madeline’s brother to ride with him, providing a nightstick as a weapon. This nightstick was recently returned to the Police Department, Madeline having worried about owning a “concealed weapon.”
Not to be outdone by the boys, one girl (who grew up to be a church organist) and her friend delighted in providing “special” directions to the New York bus drivers needing help in finding the Mount Freedom summer hotels. The girls would give long, involved, circuitous directions along East Main, Tingley, Washington Valley and Schoolhouse roads. They would then hide under the bridge waiting for the bus to return via West Main Street and laugh as the driver belatedly recognized the intersection.
Blog post prepared and all photographs added by Sam Tolley, March 7, 2025
Radtke Estate Essay edited by Helen Wall
Photo of Day’s Restaurant as seen on Morris County Historical Society blog post “Those Were the Days”
https://morriscountyhistory.