New Book: More Frenchtown

So, you finished Rick Epstein’s book Frenchtown, and now you’re thirsty for more?

Well, you are in luck because Epstein has just published More Frenchtown, a book that offers a second helping of fascinating tales about the Frenchtown of days gone by. As the author explains, it was a place “where arsonists lit up the nights while councilmen dithered on fire protection. Bad boys became street-corner rowdies that had decent folks shaking their fists and wringing their hands. And where violent drunks brawled and cursed while the righteous campaigned for Temperance and a jail,” Epstein notes.

Epstein’s new 264-page turner relies to some degree upon the 58 giant scrapbooks of William Trimmer Srope that are in the collection of the Hunterdon County Historical Society. The books contain newspaper clippings from a number of Hunterdon County newspapers, most notably the Frenchtown Press.

You can order the book on our website bookstore, or from Epstein at rickepstein@yahoo.com. Cost is $25.

“Don’t dress up,” Epstein warns readers. “There will be dust, mud, blood, ashes, tobacco juice, and horse manure. Take a deep breath and hold it: there will be smoke — wood smoke, coal smoke cigar smoke, and great billows of smoke from blazing barns add houses.”

A longtime Frenchtown resident, Epstein wrote and edited for several newspapers in New Jersey, including his last 20 years in the business with the Hunterdon County Democrat. He also gives several different walking tours of Frenchtown, and is author of the aforementioned book, Frenchtown: Fires, Floods, Fads and Felonies!