Morris History Club highlights the past of Liberty Street and beyond

Manhattan-native Morris resident Matt Laker took it upon himself last year to start chronicling what he could find of old copies of the Morris Daily Herald, using Instagram to share how things have changed in Downtown Morris since the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

This has led to him sharing clipping upon clipping of old stories and photos from the Morris Daily Herald, featuring prominent members of the city’s past all the way down to the everyday people just living their lives. Laker goes day-to-day and month-to-month, highlighting store openings and closures, missing people’s reports, real estate happenings and more.

“It started on dog walks,” Laker said. “I began to learn the neighborhoods by knowing when houses popped up. We have 1910 homes and 1970s homes on my street, so now when I look at these houses it’s apparent to me what was there before.”

Laker said he uses family history and research tools like ancestry.com, Newspaper Archives and eYearbook.com to piece together narratives based on these old news stories.

These old Morris yearbooks when you flip to the back page have all the businesses congratulating the seniors,” Laker said. “Something unlocked. There were photos from my dog walks of Page Jewelry, now Harrington Jewelry. If you look down, it still says Page in the tile.”

—  Matt Laker

The yearbooks, Laker said, are important not just for the students but for the sponsors that made them possible.

“These old Morris yearbooks when you flip to the back page have all the businesses congratulating the seniors,” Laker said. “Something unlocked. There were photos from my dog walks of Page Jewelry, now Harrington Jewelry. If you look down, it still says Page in the tile.”

The goal for Laker is to document the 1950s through the 70s to influence how people see the town they live in. Every spot he passes, he thinks of a photo he has from that location. If he doesn’t have a photo for a location, he searches for one while he’s chronicling.

While he’s not from Morris, he said he has a sense of pride in the community from seeing where it was to where it is now and he loves talking about it to any interested customer who comes into the Weits Café, where he’s a manager. He’s used his work to decorate the café, and now old photos, headlines and storefronts of yesteryear line the wall. Above the booth in the corner hangs a photo of diners from years ago eating in the same spot.

The booth, itself, has since been replaced with another as has the name. The Weitz family sold the restaurant, according to an article Laker has shared on his Instagram page, and one of the terms of the sale was changing the restaurant’s name from Weitz to Weits.

“Then there’s this photo of a waitress here who was celebrating 25 years working for the at-the-time Weitz Café and I met their daughter,” Laker said. “She came in and looked at the photo and said ‘those are my parents.’”

“I know the power of this because of my family’s work with genealogy, and it really hits people right in their memories,” Laker said. “I’m able to excel this to the next level because I could look at a photo of two guys selling hearing aids, and that’s boring, right? It’s not, because that’s someone’s dad and uncle, and a store that’s run by someone different by someone right now selling something different.”

—  Matt Laker

Laker said those are the moments he’s most excited to have when people come into the restaurant or check out his Facebook and Instagram pages. He’s since found photos and videos of many different people originally thought to be lost to time.

He said he has local business stories, crime stories, fire stories, and even a video he digitized from film of Corn Fest.

“I know the power of this because of my family’s work with genealogy, and it really hits people right in their memories,” Laker said. “I’m able to excel this to the next level because I could look at a photo of two guys selling hearing aids, and that’s boring, right? It’s not, because that’s someone’s dad and uncle, and a store that’s run by someone different by someone right now selling something different.”

Laker hopes to expand his operations in the future by sharing QR codes with other local businesses, so visitors there can scan with their phones to see what the buildings originally looked like.