NEW JERSEY VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

The records of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association (NJVMA) document one-hundred years in the history and development of the organization, roughly from 1884 to 1984. Included in the records are those created by the NJVMA as well as those created by its Auxiliary group (formerly the Women's Auxiliary of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association, now simply called the Auxiliary of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association). There are a few records that date before 1884 that document the influence of New Jersey veterinarians in the national organization, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). Given to the Special Collections at Rutgers in 1985, these records filed five center cartons.

Included in the records of the NJVMA were the organization's Constitution and By-laws of 1917; its minutes' and newsletters; committee reports; financial documents, basically receipts and disbursements, and ledgers; books of license registrations; a scrapbook from the Morris Regional Health Fair; as well as the research notes from Ray Thompson, the author of The Feisty Veterinarians of New Jersey, which helped to fill the gaps in some of the original records. These research notes of The Feisty Veterinarians of New Jersey as well as the book itself should serve as a constant source of corroborated identification for some of the documents and photographs. Also included were the minutes of the Auxiliary organization and a personal scrapbook of one of its earliest members.

In addition, the research notes contain news items related to Animal Science and Husbandry, education, and the Academy of Veterinary Practices. Biographical data relating to some of the leading personalities in the field are also contained. Drs. William Herbert Lowe, Oscar W. Sussman, and William B.E. Miller figure prominently here. Insight into the interaction between the state organization and the national organization as well as interaction between the state organization and the local constituent organizations is also given attention. Lastly, contact between the state organization and other organizations and agencies is documented; e.g.., BAI (Bureau of Animal Industry) and the Boards of Health and Agriculture.

Despite the breadth of the research notes of The Feisty Veterinarians of New Jersey, there were still a few significant omissions in the records . For example, there were no financial records after 1934 and no committee reports before 1959. The only copy of the Constitution and By-laws was from 1917. The run of meeting programs was incomplete but a sample of these may have been all that was necessary. The License Registrations began with the inception of licensing of veterinarians in New Jersey in 1902, but go only up to 1942. Lastly, the scrapbook merely has photographs of a single event. All of the other photographs from the records were from newsletters.

There were also omissions in the Auxiliary's records. The most blatant was that there were only two series'--that of the minutes, which basically documents it from its inception in the 1930' s to 1976; and a scrapbook that documents nearly twenty years of the organization in photographs.