We’re in the dog days of summer now in Tucson with frequent monsoon rains, hot temperatures and higher than usual humidity. Genealogy is a great hobby to keep me busy indoors and even better that it’s time for this weekend’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge with Randy Seaver.

1)  Do you collect maps of the places that you have ancestors or family?  I do!  I love maps.

2) Tell us about a recent map find in your own blog post, and where you found it.  Share the map and a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  

I do collect digital maps of some of the places where my ancestors lived, although I haven’t found any new ones lately.

However, I did learn about a new geographic feature in Passaic, New Jersey, where I grew up, but it was long gone before I was ever around.

What started my hunt was finding this postcard of the neighborhood around St. Michael’s Church, which was where my grandmother, Julia Scerbak Sabo, worshiped for most of her life. I was very aware that the Dundee Canal, created in the late 1800s to supply more water to the newly established Passaic factories and mills, used to run right by the church. I assumed the water was channeled from the Passaic River, but this photo and then a modern map told me that wasn’t so.

This postcard is dated 29 July 1906 and under the postmark, “Vreeland’s Pond” can be read. I had never heard of Vreeland’s Pond. What caught my eye is the church towers seen in the distance in the middle of the photo, behind the square building.

Those are the original towers of St. Michael’s Church (later replaced by shorter ones for safety reasons). I have been to this neighborhood many times, but there was never ever any body of water there during my lifetime.

So, off I went to online maps to see if I could figure out exactly where the pond was. St. Michael’s is on the east side of the street (96 First Street) and the street runs mostly slightly northwest to slightly southeast. Based on the angle of the front of the church, First Street would almost certainly have been extended right through Vreeland’s Pond.

What is great about digital maps is that they can be rotated to match a specific view. Here is the first map view of the area:

St. Michael’s Church is the red pin at the corner of First Street (unmarked) and Bergen Street. By going to street view, I can rotate the map and neighborhood view:

The streets in this street view are First Street, along the left side and it passes in front of the large school building. You can see St. Michael’s current church towers again in the middle of the image, although they might be slightly more distant than as seen on the postcard.

It looks like Vreeland’s Pond was roughly here:

Without seeing the entire pond in the postcard view, there is no way to determine how large it really was. It’s possible it extended all the way over to Pulaski Park as many Passaic parks have ponds or streams in them.

To test this theory, I checked the Library of Congress for a Sanborn map of Passaic and found one dated 1903.

Here are the color images of the area:

You can see St. Michael’s called the Greek Catholic church at the corner of Bergen and First Street. Right across the street is the Dundee Canal and, if you travel left along First Street, the next map shows:

The Dundee Canal is prominent and 1st Street is just above. The bottom left corner shows Parker Avenue and Monroe Street with the blue area called Vreeland Lake!

Going back to Google maps, here is a much better view:

The red pin is the corner of Parker Avenue and Monroe Street today. St. Michael’s is the red arrow at the bottom at the corner of Bergen and First Streets. The yellow arrow in the middle, just at Madison Street is the spot I chose in Google street view as the area where Vreeland Pond was. I came pretty close, just using a postcard view!

Notice, too, in the bottom left corner, there is Vreeland Avenue. Passaic was originally settled by the Dutch. Vreeland is a Dutch name and I’m guessing Mr. Vreeland’s home and land was right around Vreeland Avenue.

Having found the Sanborn 1903 map, I pieced together several images, printed them out (black and white, so not very readable), but colored markers help define the area. St. Michael’s is the blue box on the right with pink along the Dundee Canal. Green is outlining the portions of Vreeland’s Pond. The gray buildings on the far left were part of Botany Worsted Mills where the Rusyn immigrants all went to work when they first arrived in Passaic. This company was huge in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but by the 1950s, I remember a big warehouse room where they sold coats and a few other articles of clothing.

It looks like the land is still being used as industrial housing today:

Finally, from William Winfeld Scott’s History of Passaic and Its Environs, comes this little tidbit:

Garrett Vreeland, in the 1700s, had a saw and grist mill and a distillery on the (Passaic) river bank, by the side of a brook, WHICH NOW FORMS A POND ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE AVENUE.

I think I’ve solved identified the location of the pond and the person for whom it was named and I actually found a new map while doing it – the 1903 Sanborn map of Passaic, New Jersey.

Thank you, Randy. This was fun.