THE HISTORY OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE NEWARK FEMALE
CHARITABLE SOCIETY’S WORK, AS TOLD BY ITS OWN RECORDS

...In 1836, Newark became a city. In place of shady lanes were paved street, Churches multiplied, and these began to care for their own needy. With immigration came poverty and a multitude of struggling poor. Orphan asylums and Homes for the aged and afflicted were built, and all demanded a share in the beneficence of the rich; yet the Female Charitable Society kept on the even tenor of its way. A religious or charitable occasion was sure to be well attended, for in those days there were not so many interests, and no such pressure of engagements upon the people as now, and all felt it a religious duty to attend a sermon for the benefit of the Charitable Society; that being the first expedient to replenish an exhausted treasury.

In 1878 the Board of Managers was increased to thirty. As the need of "training the poor to help themselves" became apparent, industrial branches were started, and work given out to be done at home.

In 1882 came another step in advance. A building was rented for laundry and other work, where skilled teachers were employed to "train the poor," and as a result many became self-supporting; and as some became skilled, they in turn were employed to teach those who came to take their places. Then came the Day Nursery, where babies were cared for while the mothers worked, and where they, betimes, were trained to give more intelligent care to their children.

With the knowledge of suffering, gained by visiting the poor in their homes, in crowded tenements during the summer heat, came the thought of Fresh Air Work, when willing hearts and hands were found for this service, and the work was started by three enthusiastic members, who thought lightly of their sacrifices of comfort and pleasure, since women and children were to be benefitted in a way hitherto unknown in their poor lives.

With multiplied activities in cramped quarters came the demand for a building which these workers should own. It seemed imperative that the Female Charitable Society should have a habitation in the city where so long it had had a name. In 1887 the building was ready for occupancy, and with the increased families the work enlarged. A laundry, kitchen-garden, day nursery, kindergarten, cooking school, mother’s meeting and sewing class came into existence, while at the same time the relief for the suffering poor in their homes, with personal Christ-like ministering, continued.

In the enlarged board of fifty-five managers of the present day, are found many descendants of the eight devoted women who organized it, and of the twelve who kept it alive in the years of small things – when the avails of a concert, seventeen dollars, seemed a munificent amount, and a donation of fifty dollars a fortune. While in this day of great things, legacies of ten thousand dollars are not unknown, and the Society aspires to an Endowment Fund of an hundred thousand dollars in its Centennial year.