I found this charming book in the Princeton Room at the Public Library last week: Along the Delaware and Raritan Canal, by James and Margaret Cawley. As a result of our move to Princeton last month, I’ve recommitted myself to the region in the way I know best: exploring hidden nooks and reading obscure local histories. The Princeton Room is full of the later, to my great excitement. It was written by a husband-wife team, local experts who were fond of camping along the canal. James grew up in the area, and his childhood memories are interspersed in the text. Mr. Cawley also apparently took most of the contemporary photos in the book, and it was only when I was most of the way through it that I looked up and thought, “now this is a man who really loved his wife.” Not only did he bother to take photos of her along with all his shots of the scenery, he put several of them in the book, for no other reason that because he felt like it. And not only did he do that, but he went on to write silly, lighthearted captions for them. Whereas I’d been a little irritated by these shots until that moment, framing it as a sign of conjugal love changed the entire tenor of it (to wit, “When I Start Paying Attention“).
Anyways, the book has given me a bunch of ideas for places to go exploring. Yesterday, just because it was close, I spent some time in Rocky Hill, poking around the canal and river bridges and walking the tow path. I was looking for this, a kiln for the Atlantic Terra Cotta Factory, that apparently still existed in 1970 (when the book was published). I was looking in the wrong place, though. I’d thought it would be located near a local business that I believed to be a remaining building from the factory, but I could be wrong–not because I didn’t find anything (goodness knows it could be gone or I might not have looked hard enough)–but because another look at the caption on this photo says that the factory was on the canal, and I was looking on the West side of the Millstone River. Time for another expedition!