Woodbury’s 2023 Colonial Day Celebrates History

Gloucester County Historical Society officers Donald Kwasnicki and Janet Bishop dressed in colonial garb
Dressed in Colonial garb, Gloucester County Historical Society Museum trustees Donald Kwasnicki and Janet Bishop welcome Woodbury Colonial Day visitors on Saturday, September 16. (Click for larger)

With fall-like temperatures and sunny blue skies smiling down on it, Woodbury’s annual 2023 Colonial Day celebration on September 16 brought in the crowds, especially to the Gloucester County Historical Society Museum, the nearby Friends Meetinghouse, and Woodbury Antiques’ Colonial Tea Party.

The Historical Society welcomed more visitors than it’s seen in a day since before the pandemic. It also had some of them wearing colonial costumes as shown above. Kwasnicki portrayed George Washington and Bishop dressed in a 1781-style dress.

“It was the first time I’ve played George Washington leading visitor tours through the museum,” Kwasnicki said. “We started talking about doing this last year and this year, and the kids who came in today seemed to really like it. I’ve been getting photo requests all day long. So, people are taking away the museum experience on their phone cameras, and that further helps us do what we’re trying to do, which is let more of the world know about the Museum.”

Woodbury’s Long History

Located across the street from the County Courthouse Complex, the Society’s large three-story museum features exhibits covering nearly every aspect of life in the region from the Native American cultures that first occupied it, the colonial settlers that built it into a thriving commercial community, and the enslaved and free African Americans who played such a role in its evolution and character.

Bishop said Woodbury traces its history back to the late 1600s and during the Revolutionary War had armies of both sides seizing control of the town as battles raged across New Jersey and up and down the Delaware River. She also noted that the Society celebrates its Centennial next year.

“For the last hundred years the Gloucester Country Historical Society has been working to keep alive the memory of that history, which is who we are, even though in these times, many people have forgotten that,” Bishop said.

Fireplace from Hugg’s Tavern

One of the colonial exhibits in the museum is one of the fireplaces from Hugg’s Tavern in Gloucester, one of the colonial era’s most important social gathering spots. Situated at a shoreline Delaware River ferry landing, the tavern in 1773 was the site of the marriage of seamstress and upholsterer Betsy Griscom to John Ross.

While it has long been a widely circulated historical myth that Ms. Ross created the first U.S. flag, investigations by researchers over 200 years has never found evidence of that. Nevertheless, the myth has fueled her sustained popularity as a historical female figure and made her marriage a significant historical event that was documented in New Jersey state historical records. The ceremony is said to have occurred in front of one of the tavern’s eight fireplaces.

In 1929, when the dilapidated 208-year-old tavern building was demolished, the Gloucester Country Historical Society paid to have one of its fireplaces disassembled, removed, and reassembled in its own headquarters building in downtown Woodbury where this week’s Colonial Day visitors were able to view and photograph it.

The fireplace from Hugg's Tavern moved to the Gloucester County Historical Society
The fireplace from Hugg’s Tavern now in place in the Gloucester County Historical Society. (Click for larger)