Stockton University is nearing completion on renovations to the Alliance Heritage Center, an institution that preserves the history of the 43 Jewish families who fled persecution in Russia and settled in Salem County, New Jersey, where they created the first successful Jewish farming community in the U.S.
The center was created at Stockton in 2019 and has collected over 1,000 historical artifacts about the community, according to a Stockton University press release about the renovation project.
The renovation is centered around the Alliance Chapel in the Norma section of Pittsgrove Township, which will become a physical location for the history of this community as a complement to the pre-existing Alliance Heritage Center Digital Museum.
Previously, most of the center’s work had been digital, but the renovations have allowed the center to expand and provide tangible exhibits with which people can form a real-time connection.
“We just really wanted to have this physical interpretation of public history,” said Patty Chappine, a Stockton adjunct professor and Rudnick Fellow studying the history of the colony.
The renovation efforts were funded by a $100,000 Mellon Foundation grant the university received in 2023, and the work was carried out this summer through the combined efforts of Chappine, the center’s director Tom Kinsella, volunteers from the Noyes Museum of Art of Stockton University and a group of student interns.
The renovation comes as the Alliance Chapel nears the century mark since its dedication in 1927, and it sits on an important location in front of the Alliance Cemetery, where many of the community’s residents are buried, and a Holocaust memorial.
The renovation efforts also complement a previous addition in 1982 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the colony, when a collection of historical photos were added to the chapel’s walls.
This year’s additions include a paint job, new panels that will combine the photos with historical context, video screens to show oral history presentations and farm equipment displays, according to the press release.
“We really detailed the story and narrated the history of the original colonists and the hardships they faced when they first arrived,” Chappine said. “We tried to capture the story of their early immigration.”
The center was also proud of the work it was able to do in getting students involved in a project they could see and interact with inside the local community. Over 20 interns went through the center’s records to create historically accurate and informative text for the photo panels and to create a physical timeline of the colony’s history through the present day.
The experience was educational for the students, as they got the opportunity to do a deep study of the historical record of the colony and get creative in building these exhibits.
Celeste Casino was one of the students working on the renovation project. The 2024 visual arts graduate from Stockton went through the center’s archived photographs for the new exhibit. The design process took her around eight months, and she was inspired by her time going over the documents to create the theme of the display.
“It was very different because I didn’t really know anything about this story. It was very new to me,” Casino said. “As I was reading the material and going through the photographs, I knew this was something that evoked memories. So, that’s why I came up with the panel design that had a scrapbook theme.”
Charles Daubman, a junior psychology major at Stockton, interned for the center during the spring semester and had a slightly different experience during the project. He was in charge of recording oral history narratives from some of the relatives of the colonists and gathering some of the facts that Casino was able to use in the displays.
Daubman said he wasn’t aware that local history could be so interesting. Working on the renovation project led him to consider a history minor or joining Stockton’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies program.
“I’ve lived in South Jersey for most of my life, but I’ve just learned about the colony and everyone who emigrated there,” Daubman said. “I like to say it’s a little snippet of history that could have just been lost in time. A lot of these communities are in their own secluded section of the state that no one even knows about.”
The center will be holding a public open house at the chapel on Sept. 21 that will serve as a celebration of the renovations.