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Resources -
Local History and Special Collections
The Plainfield Public Library houses the largest local history collection in Union County.
Included are books, documents, photographs, blueprints, maps, newspapers and archival records of organizations. In addition to County and State histories, the library has significant publications on the American Revolution and the Civil War. Local History and Special Collections are held in closed stacks.
Please see our About Local History and Special Collections page for more details about opening hours, research guidelines and fees.
The Plainfield Collection
The Plainfield Collection includes historical and contemporary materials about the city of Plainfield, NJ. The Plainfield Collection is comprised of historical and contemporary materials about the place and its inhabitants. It contains city directories dating back to the 1870s, high school yearbooks, family histories, bound organization records as well as monographs detailing the cultural, social and historical aspects of life in Plainfield. Items from the city government and social services are also part of these holdings.
The Catalogue of the Plainfield History Collection, published in 2002, provides quite a comprehensive guide to the contents of the collection. Additions are made on a regular basis, please contact us for the most current information.
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Archival Records of Local Organizations
The Library holds archival records of more than 110 local clubs and organizations, from the late nineteenth century to the present. They contain such important documents as charters, constitutions, by-laws, articles of incorporation, financial reports, and membership lists of many local associations.
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Local and Area NewspapersThe Plainfield Periodical Collection includes 23 newspapers and magazines spanning 160 years of local history. These holdings include microfilmed copies as well as broadsides. The Courier News on microfilm is available in the upstairs reference section. ________________________________________________ |  |
Local Authors Collection
This collection includes a broad array of about 100 books of 35 local authors. A recent inventory showed that Plainfield has had authors since the early 1800's writing about everything from science to poetry to children's books.Local authors can be accessed by using keywords Plainfield-Local Authors database. Selected authors include: Van Wyck Brooks, Judy Blume, Adele DeLeeuw and many others. ________________________________________________
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Recently inventoried, this collection includes 98 State maps beginning in 1874, 19 Plainfield flat maps, and 21 framed walls maps of Plainfield, including two copies of the oldest map of Plainfield dated 1832. This cartographic collection includes numerous atlases in the New Jersey Collection. Maps of and information about the the nine historic districts of Plainfield can be found here.
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Photograph Collections
The Plainfield Public Library's historic photograph collections include over 20,000 individual photographic prints, negatives, slides and glass plates by over a dozen local photographers from the 1870's to the present.
Historic Photograph Collections of the Plainfield Public Library
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Plainfield Postcard Collection
The Plainfield Postcard Collection contains 2,000 postcards with 1,000 unique images. The Chase collection and the Ricketts collection make up the core of the library's holdings, depicting Plainfield in the early 1900s.
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Plainfield Police Logs
The Library houses 340 ledgers used by the Plainfield Police Division between 1854 and 1956 to record their daily activities. Journals report items such as arrests, accidents, thefts, criminal dockets, tax ledgers, and lost and found animals. Surnames are indexed in many volumes.
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Images of art or photographs found on this website are not to be used in any manner without the expressed written permission of the Plainfield Public Library Board of Trustees as delegated to the Library Director.
See our Terms and Conditions
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