Middlesex County

Middlesex County wraps around the Raritan Bay, and the industrial corridor brings in heavy development as it continues down from the north, while more space starts to open up in the less-developed southwestern corner around South Brunswick and Monroe.

In the Amboys, bordering Staten Island and historically built up around shipping- (a recently-written history book I have to get the details of- talk w/ N.F.)

Thomas Edison lived here but what's more interesting than him is this song about him.

New Brunswick, about ten miles inland along the Raritan, saw an influx of Hungarian immigrants in the 1930s. The American-Hungarian Foundation is there, my first planned stop to learn more:http://ahfoundation.org/

The Hungarian population grew when Hungarian revolutionaries were crushed by the USSR in 1956, and many fled the country as refugees. All the refugees who came to America were initially housed in the barracks of Camp Kilmer - a military base with many interesting chapters in its own history - just across the river from New Brunswick, between the towns of Piscataway and Edison. Many of the new Hungarian arrivals later dispersed across the country, but many also stayed in New Brunswick.

Two Rutgers professors put together these maps and photographs of the town, some of them very beautiful, some very old and some from just before the wave of gentrification that came in the late 80s.http://oldnewbrunswick.rutgers.edu/

The Raices Cultural Center does a good deal of educational work around Carribean culture in the area:http://www.raicesculturalcenter.org/index_en.html

Poems, stories, artwork and zines from New Brunswick's underground culture in the 80s and 90s are archived athttp://newbrunswicksoutlawpoets.weebly.com/

In Piscataway, you can visit the Cornelius Lowe house, a free museum with rotating exhibits. See http://co.middlesex.nj.us/culturalheritage/museum.asp for more.