Pittsgrove Township, N.J. — Since Stockton University created the Alliance Heritage Center in 2019, it has collected about 1,000 historical photos, memoirs, letters and memorabilia about the first successful Jewish agricultural community in the United States.

Soon, the story of the Salem County colony just on the other side of the Maurice River from Vineland will have a newly renovated place to call home.

“We have the Alliance Heritage Center Digital Museum and documents in Stockton’s Special Collections, but 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.

Thanks to a $100,000 Mellon Foundation grant the center received in 2023, Chappine spent this summer, along with the center’s director Tom Kinsella, a Stockton distinguished professor of Literature, volunteers from the Noyes Museum of Stockton University and a group of student interns renovating the Alliance Chapel in the Norma section of Pittsgrove Township.

The chapel was dedicated in 1927 in front of the Alliance Cemetery where many residents of the colony have been buried and where a Holocaust memorial stands. The colony was established in 1882 by 43 Jewish families fleeing religious persecution from Russia and Eastern Europe.

“The renovation of the chapel is in coordination with the community members, and we hope we can do this story justice, and that it’s something they can be proud of,” said Chappine, ’06, M.A. ’09.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the colony in 1982, a small collection of historic photos was placed on the chapel walls. This year’s renovation project included a paint job and a new series of panels combining the photos with historical context. The project also included the installation of a video screen to broadcast oral histories and displays of equipment used by the farmers, including a corn husker and an asparagus buncher.

“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.”

Stockton students played an integral role in the renovation as more than 20 interns poured over hundreds of the center’s records to pull information for the display panels and create a new physical timeline of the colony’s history from its establishment to the present day.

“One of the goals of the grant was to have the students involved in something out of the classroom that they can tangibly see,” Chappine said. “Something where we can integrate the students, Stockton and the community.”

Celeste Casino, a 2024 Stockton graduate who majored in Visual Arts, was hired to design the new panels as part of an internship she had with the Noyes Museum. She sifted through hundreds of photos to select the ones that are part of the new display.

“It was very different because I didn’t really know anything about this story. It was very new to me,” said the Toms River resident. “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.”

Casino said once she visited the chapel “it really all came together” to have the panels displayed chronologically along the chapel walls. She said the entire design process took about eight months.

“When I started this project there was a lot of information given to me,” she said. “My main thing was, ‘How am I going to fit this all in a series of panels?’ So, I really had to step back and organize everything.”

Sifting through all the historical records was the biggest but most interesting challenge for junior Psychology major Charles Daubman, who interned with the center this past spring. As part of the internship, he recorded oral histories with relatives of the Jewish colonists and pulled out some of the facts that were used on the panels Casino designed.

“I’ve lived in South Jersey for most of my life, but I’ve just learned about the colony and everyone who emigrated there,” said the Little Egg Harbor Township resident. “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.”

Daubman said he “never thought that local history could be so interesting” and that the experience working on the renovation project has him considering minoring in History or in Stockton’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies program. And while he hasn’t visited the chapel, he plans to attend the public open house on Sept. 21 celebrating the renovation.

“It’s really nice to learn more about people, especially when you didn’t really think you would ever be doing work like this,” he said. “But it’s very rewarding and valuable to know the history of the area that you live in.”

— Story by Mark Melhorn, photos by Lizzie Nealis