Students wishing to find out more about Belleville's past may consult the following sources of information. Unfortunately, Belleville does not have a full-length book devoted to its history. The most ambitious attempt to write a full history was made by Richard A. Shafter in the late 1930's and early 1940's, but his research was never published. Copies of his typewritten A History of Belleville may be found in the Belleville Public Library (221 Washington Avenue). It contains a good deal of information about the years from the first settlement of Second River to about the year 1940. Shafter
his history.

The Belleville Public Library has several file drawers (called vertical files) full of folders containing information on all aspects of Belleville's history. These files are organized alphabetically by subject (Buildings, Education, History, etc.). The collections of the Belleville Historical Society may also be found at the library. These include scrapbooks containing historical documents, photographs, postcards as well as the writings of local
historian Allen Crisp. Finally, the library has the Belleville Times, a local newspaper, on microfilm from 1950 to the present.

Information about Belleville may be discovered in other area newspapers, especially the Newark Star- Ledger and the Newark News. These and other local newspapers are available at the Newark Public Library (5 Washington St., Newark) and the New Jersey Historical Society (230 Broadway, Newark). Both of these institutions have old pictures of Belleville.

More on Belleville's early history may be found in books. These include William H. Shaw's History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey (1884) and Joseph F. Folsom's The Municipalities of Essex County, 1666-1924 (1925). Belleville resident Hugh Holmes wrote a Brief History of Belleville. (ca.1895).

As Belleville was once part of both Newark and Bloomfield, histories of these municipalities shed some light on early Belleville and its neighbors. See John T. Cunningham's Newark (1988), Joseph F. Folsom's Bloomfield Old and New (1912), and the Bloomfield Free Public Library's Bloomfield, New Jersey (1932). For the Woodside section of Newark, which once belonged to Belleville, see C.C. Hine's Woodside, The North End of Newark (1909). Nutley, too, was once part of Belleville; see Ann A. Troy's
Nutley Yesterday and Today (1961).

Finally, for those who live in or visit Belleville, the past is all around. It may be found in the very streets, buildings, neighborhood of Belleville. Every street building, and histories. So can oral history, which is asking people who live in Belleville and know firsthand something about its past. By reading, looking and asking, much can be learned about the history of Belleville.

Source: Belleville: 150th-Anniversary Historical Highlights 1839-1989 by Robert B. Burnett and the Belleville 150th-Anniversary Committee Belleville, New Jersey. 1991.