Tour homes in Plainfield, New Jersey, many of which have sheltered several generations. Images of brick, wood, and stone buildings and their occupants relate the city's heritage. Here residents worshipped, learned, purchased worldly goods, and conducted their daily businesses. See many homes as they first appeared and were transformed over the past three centuries. They have shaped Plainfield, New Jersey, into the city it is today.

In becoming "a useful man" on the maritime stage, Matthew Fontained Maury focused light on the ills of a clique-ridden Navy, charted sea lanes and bested Great Britain's admiralty in securing the fastest, safest routes to India and Australia. He helped bind the Old and New worlds with the laying of the transatlantic cable, forcefully advocated Southern rights in a troubled union, and preached Manifest Destiny from the Arctic to Cape Horn. Late in life, he revolutionized warfare in perfecting electronically detonated mines. Maury's eagerness to go to the public in person and in print on the...