MAPLEWOOD, NJ — During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Maplewood resident Daniel Kaslow spent his time at home diving even deeper into the town.
His book, “Maplewood A-Z: A Compendium of Notable People, Places & Events in the History of Maplewood, 1680-2022,” started out as a research project when he worked as a docent at the Durand-Hedden House in Maplewood. Kaslow decided to turn the information into a book and put together a rough chronological outline before deciding that wasn’t the best format for a book.
“A compendium is a better format,” Kaslow said in a phone interview with the News-Record on March 21. “I decided to write capsule histories and broke them into different categories. I fell down the rabbit hole, and then it became 12 chapters and 135 pages.”
Starting with the 1600s history of the Lenape, the indigenous people who inhabited the land that is now New Jersey and parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, Kaslow moved into the founding of the town all the way through to the present moment. He used archives at the Maplewood Historic Preservation Commission, the Maplewood Memorial Library and old newspaper archives to gather the research. He also combed through Columbia High School’s halls of fame to build a roster of notable residents from town.
“There’s endless research,” Kaslow said. “Maplewood has a lot of history, and you find a lot of crazy characters. I found some names that would have been long forgotten that I thought should have more shine.”
He spent time on ancestry.com, combing through names to figure out who was related to whom, and also put together histories of organizations and businesses in town. There are lists featuring the oldest businesses with the same ownership, the oldest business that kept the same format and notable women from Maplewood. Some entries go back to the 19th century, such as that for Juliette Atkinson, a tennis player who won three women’s titles and seven doubles titles at the United States Tennis Championships between 1894 and 1902; two of the doubles titles were won with her sister, Kathleen. Others featured will be recognizable to many residents: Ellen Davenport, who was Maplewood’s first female mayor, from 1994 to 1997, and current township clerk Elizabeth Fritzen, who has held the position longer than anyone else in the town’s history, having become clerk in 1988.
There is a lot to like in Maplewood’s history, but Kaslow didn’t shy away from the darker events. He included a chapter about racism and crime, not wanting to gloss over that complicated history.
Eventually, he had to slow his research down. “I went pretty far in many different directions, and eventually I had to narrow it down. Otherwise I never would have finished it,” Kaslow said.
Kaslow has lived in Maplewood for 36 years and has always been interested in history. But he still found nuggets of information he was surprised to learn, especially about the businesses in town.
“Some stores have been around for much longer than I thought,” Kaslow said. “I was also looking at, who are these parks named after? Sometimes it was just good people who contributed to the community, and other times it was to honor something more monumental. There were a lot of ‘Oh, isn’t that cool’ moments.”
The book is approaching the finish line; members of the HPC are helping Kaslow finalize some of the research to make sure everything is accurate. Kaslow’s target is to publish by this July, before Maplewood celebrates its 100th anniversary of being incorporated as a township in the fall. Kaslow will sell the book; he’s talked to Words Bookstore about carrying copies. But it was more a passion project than anything else.
“If there are organizations that want to sell it, that’s great,” he said. “But if it only goes to five people and the library, that’s also great. I wasn’t in it to make money. It was a fun project.”
Kaslow wants to make sure that people know his book isn’t comprehensive. It’s not a full, minute-to-minute history of Maplewood. But it will be a place where a lot of information about different people and places can be found.
“It’s not meant to be an archive, and I’m not reinventing the wheel,” Kaslow said. “It’s a compendium, so I’ve put a lot in one place where people can look. You probably won’t sit down and read it cover to cover; it’s a one page at a time thing. We have a lot of interesting history. It’s a fun book to read.”
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