Bridgeton, New Jersey, is home to the state�s largest historic district, and its past is full of exciting events and remarkable people. The Lenni-Lenape first populated this region, and during the Revolutionary War, the city sent Patriots like Dr. Jonathan Elmer to lead the struggle for the young republic. The town continued to grow in size and importance through the Victorian era, building everything from roads to taverns to industries. Owens-Illinois Company, Seabrook Farms and Ferracute Machine Company were all business innovators and leaders. Bridgeton has always produced concerned, community oriented citizens who through the years have come together to build the hospital, save the library, rebuild a football stadium and perform countless other civic deeds. Local writer Sharron Morita recounts these and other stories in her chronicle of Bridgeton.
Tales of rumrunners and speakeasies; arrowheads and pottery shards; Oberlin Smith, Charlie Seabrook and Sylvia Beach; circuit-riding priests; Quaker social activism; Klansmen wearing telltale shoes; and a napping editor all fueled Sharron Morita�s fascination with Bridgeton history. She began to hear such stories when she arrived in Bridgeton to work as a reporter and editor after graduation from Syracuse University with a degree in journalism and political science. Later work as a freelance writer added to her supply of tales about the town.
She contributed to New Jersey: Spotlight on Government, a publication of the New Jersey League of Women Voters, and wrote Bridgeton Impressions: 1686�1986 for Bridgeton�s 300th anniversary celebration. In 1995, she received the Lloyd P. Burns Memorial Award for responsible journalism from the New Jersey Press Association.