Reopening of the Historical Society Featured Exhibition – Last Call: Taverns and Temperance
Last Call explores the colorful history of local taverns (both respectable and notorious), patent medicines, the temperance movement, prohibition, bootlegging, and winemaking through an extraordinary collection of artifacts, images and documents, many of which will be exhibited for the first time. The exhibit experience is further enhanced by a series of recorded narratives drawn from local history with tales of “tavern crawls” before the Civil War, a raid on a bootleg still in Richwood, and a story about drunken pigs in Mullica Hill, all accessible by scanning QR codes in the gallery. The museum opens Saturday, October 5, 1-4, and continues through December 7. Admission is free.

Storytelling Continues Saturday, October 5, with the Original Mullica Hill Ghost Walk.
This popular tour starts at 6 pm at blueplate, and ends at Old Town Hall. Guided tours explore the ghostly side of historic Main St. with groups leaving the starting point every ten minutes. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased on-line at HarrisonHistorical.com or HarrisonHistorical.ticketleap.com. Advance purchase is advised as tours fill up quickly.

Whiskey, Gin & South Jersey Glass, October 6, Richwood Academy Cultural Center
Gay LeCleire Taylor, Independent Scholar and Curator Emeritus, WheatonArts,  explores how the drinking habits of Americans impacted the various types of bottles produced for spirituous liquors by South Jersey’s glass factories.

Temperance Saloon for Fall Festival, Saturday, October 12, 1-4 pm
Featuring tasting flights of locally made fruit ciders.

Bessie Blount Griffin: Pioneering Physical Therapist and Inventor, October 20, Richwood Academy Cultural Center
Presented by Community Historian Robert Greene, this lecture tells the story of Bessie Blount Griffin. Griffin, a Virginia native taught herself to write with both hands in grade school. After Blount completed sixth grade, she was forced to stop her education because the resources offered to African American children in her community had been depleted. Blount obtained her GED, obtained her nursing degree, and went on to become a physical therapist. While working with injured soldiers during World War II, she invented an assistive device to help amputees feed themselves.

What America Sounds Like: 250 Years of American Music, November 3, Richwood Academy Cultural Center
This interactive, multi-media talk provides a look at the iconic music that helps us understand our shared history as we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence. Special emphasis is given to Thomas Edison, Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, and others from NJ who have contributed so much to the American music landscape.  Presented by Melissa Ziobro, Curator of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University.

Jazz by Denis DiBlasio, November 17, Richwood Academy Cultural Center 
Denis DiBlasio, renowned jazz master, and the Executive Director of the Maynard Ferguson Institute of Jazz at Rowan University, performs live.

Rowan’s Collegium, December 8 
Musicum concludes the season with a fascinating program of vocal and instrumental music from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods

All of the Cultural Center’s programs take place on Sunday afternoon, 3 pm and are open free to the public. Tickets are available at HarrisonHistorical.com and HarrisonHistorical.ticketleap.com. These events are livestreamed and archived at the Society’s Facebook page.

These programs are funded in part by the Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission at Rowan College of South Jersey, in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey Historical Commission/Department of State.

Old Town Hall Museum is located at 62 S. Main St. in the heart of Mullica Hill’s National Register Historic District. Richwood Academy Cultural Center is located at 836 Lambs Road, Richwood.

For move information visit the Harrison Township Website and follow them on Facebook.