At first, we thought it had to be a joke. It felt too absurd, too unthinkable, the kind of headline you only see on April Fool’s Day. But then reality hit. It was April 2. This was not a prank.
The masthead that had lived for 125 years was replaced with a new “Somerset Review” nameplate for their April 2, 2026, launch.
After more than a century of telling this community’s story, the Bernardsville News is gone, quietly swallowed by the same digital tide that has been erasing local newspapers across the country. What generations relied on, what defined this town, did not fade away. It was taken off the map.
For many years, the Mr. Local History project has relied on the Bernardsville News as a local history “book of record” in which reporters documented local events and news that would one day become history. While the newspaper has shifted over the years and become another liberal tabloid showcasing its liberal leanings and editorial content, we stuck with our subscription to make sure we wouldn’t miss important information for documenting history as a reliable source. But with the banner disappearing, the writing is on the wall. What’s next to go? Jake Perry?
Here’s what the New Somerset Review Newspaper Had to Say….
From the Publisher: Complete Local Coverage
The Somerset Review includes all of the local coverage readers have come to rely on: local town news, local government and Board of Education reporting, high school sports, opinion columns and letters to the editor, county, regional, and state news, lifestyle features, and local events. It will draw on reporting from New Jersey Hills Media Group’s local news websites covering Somerset County towns, including the Bernardsville News.
From the Somerset Hills Review:
The printed newspaper and its electronic edition are changing by expanding. The commitment to the community is not. “Professional, independent, fact-based local news is the foundation of informed communities, and that’s exactly what New Jersey Hills Media Group has been providing to the local area for generations,” said Joe Territo, CEO and Publisher, Corporation for New Jersey Local Media and New Jersey Hills Media Group. “The Somerset Review is how we make sure we can keep doing that — and do it better. By bringing our resources together in one newspaper, we’re able to provide the residents of towns we cover with news about their communities and the surrounding area more efficiently. This enables us to invest more in news gathering. This is how a nonprofit news organization builds for a sustainable future.”
125 Years of the Bernardsville News
The Bernardsville News was founded in 1901 as a small, locally focused weekly newspaper serving the Somerset Hills communities of Bernardsville, Basking Ridge, Far Hills, and Peapack Gladstone. At a time when local papers were the backbone of civic life, it quickly became a trusted source for coverage of town government, school news, social events, and the everyday stories that defined the region’s character. Generations of residents relied on its pages not just for information, but for connection to their neighbors and a shared sense of place.
For more than 125 years of publication, the Bernardsville News has provided continuous service to the community, documenting everything from world wars and economic shifts to local milestones such as parades, graduations, and town debates. Its longevity made it more than a newspaper. It became an informal historical record of the Somerset Hills, preserving the voices, names, and moments that might otherwise have been lost to time.
A Great Story About the History of the Bernardsville News 1980
Case and point – why MLH loved what the Bville News and what it meant to our research. The article below states that The Bernardsville News was founded in 1897 in an unlikely moment. Reverend John Aldridge Wells, facing financial strain when his church could not raise his salary, stepped away and instead helped launch a newspaper. Originally called the Bernardsville Beacon, it quickly became The Bernardsville News, arriving at a time when Bernardsville was booming as a summer retreat for wealthy New Yorkers. From a modest start in a shed powered by a kerosene engine, the paper blended local news, community life, business advertising, and a strong editorial voice, reflecting both the town’s growth and Wells’ personal influence.
See the entire text of this story at the bottom of the page.
Over the decades, the paper passed through several owners but remained a steady voice in Bernardsville, chronicling its transformation from a railroad village to a thriving community. Its story is not just about journalism, but about identity. What began as a practical solution to a minister’s problem became a defining institution for more than a century, making its eventual end feel less like the closing of a business and more like the loss of a piece of the town itself.
Social Media – Tell Them what you Think.
If you feel as strongly as we do about what the Bernardsville News has become, feel free to post on their social media account as we did. We’ve tried to include their editors of history and commentary from the area we call home as well, but they lost their way and, hence, lost their readers, IOHO.
So Now What – Who’s in Charge?
Somerset Review Contact Information
The Somerset Review is a New Jersey Hills Media Group publication. To connect with the Somerset Review by phone, call 908-766-3900.
Editor: Solace Church, schurch@newjerseyhills.com
Sports Editor: Claudia Ceva, cceva@newjerseyhills.com
Living Editor: Walter O’Brien, wobrien@newjerseyhills.com
Advertising: Jerry O’Donnell, jodonnell@newjerseyhills.com
Subscriptions: Drew Wiggins, circulation@newjerseyhills.com
Classifieds: The Giardina, thega@newjerseyhills.com
Readers with questions about the Somerset Review or this transition are encouraged to contact CEO and Publisher Joe Territo directly at jterrito@newjerseyhills.com
The Last Issue of the Bernardsville News
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1980 –
Here is the full transcription of the article:
Page Fourteen
THE BERNARDSVILLE NEWS, THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1980
Start Of Bernardsville News Recalled
Minister Needed A Pay Raise, And A Newspaper Was Born
Editor’s note: The past caught up with the present for The Bernardsville News when we unexpectedly received a letter from Harold Wells of Bricktown, in which he said he was the founder of The Bernardsville News and the grandson of the other founder.
His recollections and early copies, including the initial issue and a subsequent one made available by Mr. and Mrs. Peter Meehan of Bernardsville, enabled us to put together this history of the paper.
By ANTHONY RUMMO
It was the turn of the century. Bernards Township was ripe for a newspaper.
Millionaires made the township one of the richest municipalities in the nation. Paradoxically, however, it was the financial struggles of the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church and its pastor, the Rev. John Aldridge Wells, that indirectly led to the founding of the township’s first newspaper. When the church was unable to give Mr. Wells the salary increase he asked for, he resigned — soon to help found a newspaper in Bernardsville, then part of Bernards Township.
First called The Bernardsville Beacon, the paper’s name was changed within an issue or two to The Bernardsville News — the only survivor among several local newspapers and magazines that were published over the years.
The year of birth was 1897. The village of Bernardsville was at its heyday as a summer resort for wealthy New Yorkers who had been lured to the Somerset Hills because of the salubrious air.
The villagers referred to some 60 mansions spread across the top of Mine Mount as the Mountain Colony. The mansions were surrounded by cottages for superintendents, carriage houses, and stables, built inside or outside, as though people, not horses, were meant to live in them.
The village had sprung up around a station of the Passaic and Delaware Railroad, which opened its way out to Bernards Township in 1872. The station was the wooden structure now occupied by The Bernardsville News. It was moved to its Morristown Road site when the present Mine Brook Road station was built.
The village’s inhabitants consisted of shopkeepers, blacksmiths, contractors, and laborers who worked on the estates. The village’s nucleus included two longstanding inns. One of them is now called Freddy’s. Once called The Old Stone Hotel, its former owners included Roswell Reusser of the Mt. Kemble Lake section of Harding. The other inn was the Revolutionary-era building now occupied by The Bernardsville Library.
The Bernards Inn and the Claremont Hotel, now an apartment house opposite the railroad station, met the demand for additional facilities to accommodate those whose visits were related to serving the Mountain Colony. Basking Ridge and Liberty Corner, meanwhile, remained hamlets at the general level surrounded by farms.
Like Bernardsville, Far Hills was dotted with mansions. Both were to secede from Bernards Township as municipalities in the 1920s.
The time was ripe for a newspaper not only as an advertising medium for local merchants but also for those in Somerville, Newark, Morristown, and Plainfield who wanted to reach the affluent Bernards Township.
The Bernardsville Beacon was born on February 27, 1897, with John E. Wells, a Jersey City printer, as editor and publisher, and his father, the Rev. John A. Wells, as associate editor.
Despite the designations, it was undoubtedly the minister who founded the paper, according to Harold Wells, who now lives in Brick Township. A retired printer, he is one of five living members of the family, all of whom are children of John E. Wells.
“My father was a good printer but a poor businessman,” Harold Wells stated. “He was too friendly with the help and the ‘’ellow workers’ grandfather, the former Army chaplain, was to be a dictatorial chief of the newspaper is apparent from what may be called a front page editorial in The Bernardsville Beacon (the name change from the Beacon had been quick) by the Rev. Mr. Wells written April, 1897, in the form of a poem.
The poem amounted to an endorsement of the ordination of women as ministers.
Establishing a bank and a fire company were suggested in other columns in that same issue.
Mr. Wells had been pastor of the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church for eight years when he resigned. The present pastor, the Rev. Dwight A. White, gives this history of his pastorate:
“The Rev. John A. Wells of Oxford, Mich., personally accepted the call to be pastor of the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church on December 15, 1889.
“During his pastorate, the church was struggling financially. The minister’s salary was raised through an understanding with the congregation.
“In addition, he and his family were kept well supplied with produce from parishioners’ gardens and orchards. His horse was also provided for in this manner.
“In February 1893, the session approved Rev. Wells’ request to serve the Stirling Presbyterian Church as supply minister, devoting several days a week to that church. This was approved as a $100 reduction in his annual salary.
“In September 1897, Rev. Wells submitted his resignation as pastor of Liberty Corner, but indicated he was willing to continue his service for the sum of $300 annually, provided he could use three days of the week for other business. The church records do not indicate the nature of the other business.
“The congregation voted to accept his resignation.”
Mr. Wells’ religious background was to be reflected in both the news and the editorial columns of The Bernardsville News.
The June 25, 1897, issue carried a Sunday school lesson. The paper had this to say about Peter B. Wolf of Basking Ridge in his obituary: “He was strictly temperate, honest and industrious and a good man.”
The paper reported: “Miss Eugenie Meeker departed this life in Somerville.”
Eye on World Affairs
The newspaper’s coverage was in world affairs as well as local ones. In the same issue, The Bernardsville News strongly urged Congress to annex the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).
“These islands naturally belong to the United States,” the paper said. “Our missionaries rescued them from a state of savagery and civilized them.”
The paper warned: “If Japan gets control of them, it will practically put an Asiatic power, which at best is only half civilized, in a dominant position in the Pacific Ocean — and a standing threat to our western coast.”
Much of the area’s social and commercial life was reflected in the June 25, 1897, issue.
On June 6, 1898, the elder Wells and his son incorporated the Bernards Publishing Co, “to publish and circulate a Regular Democratic newspaper known as The Bernardsville News throughout the State of New Jersey and other sections of the country.”
That was during an era when it constituted the Basking Ridge and Liberty Corner sections of Bernards Township. Democratic — in contrast to the Bernardsville area, where the 19th-century laissez-faire Republicanism of New York financiers was incorporated in the newspaper.
Incorporators of the paper included Luther Childs, a member of a leading township farming family that favored the Democrats. His brothers, William and Samuel, founded the Childs chain of restaurants.
The brothers were uncles to Wallace A. Childs, once a member of the Bernards Township Committee and at one time chairman, the title of chief executive of a township before it was changed to mayor. Once operator of the Old Mill Inn and the Town House in Morristown, he now lives in Chester Township.
A. Smith & Son of Peapack advertised themselves as manufacturers of wagons and carriages, as well as doing undertakings in all its branches. They provided caskets, coffins, trimmings, robes, gloves, caps, and handkerchiefs. Besides, they were embalmed by them “as desired.” The dead were given prompt attention, and the hearse was always ready.
Martin Monaco, whose son, Arthur, now lives in the Bernards Inn, advertised ice cream sodas at five cents a glass.
Austin Wright did horseshoeing and jobbing in a shop that stands today at the Exxon station on Quimby Lane and Mine Brook Road.
His daughter, Lulu, was on vacation from State Normal School, as teachers’ colleges were called, and riding her new “wheel.”
A one-column ad by Anna Ten Eyck listed fireworks for sale that ranged from 10-inch cannon crackers at 25 cents to 10-inch rockets at two cents each.
Over in Millington, Mrs. W.D. Combs was prepared to accommodate five or six summer boarders at $4 to $5 per week.
In Liberty Corner, Miss Lula Eaketon had a birthday party. Miss Edgerton was visiting town. On Sunday, in the absence of the organist, she came to the relief of the choir.
In Basking Ridge, Mrs. Gabel Emmons was slowly recovering. Nothing else was said about her. Meanwhile, William F. Trumppson was having a successful concert in his new world. William Childs offered a liberal reward for the location or return of a peacock.
The news columns carried a bit of editorializing by criticizing a “concert of European powers” for giving a slice of Greece to Turkey and making Greece pay Turkey $30 million. Said the writer:
“They may think they have gotten out of their awkward embarrassment in that way, but it must not be forgotten that the fanatical spirit of Mohammedanism has been unchained and is now rampant.”
Changes Hands
Some five years after they established the paper, the Rev. Mr. Wells and his son sold it to H.C. Rowell, who, in turn, sold it to Levi Trumbull and his wife, Helena, in 1907.
In reviewing the history of the paper in 1914, Trumbull wrote that “it was understood” the Rev. Mr. Wells was the owner and his son was the manager when they established the paper.
They founded the paper in an old shed on Main Street and used a kerosene engine for power, according to Trumbull. Later, the plant was moved to a building on Claremont Road.
In 1903, The Bernardsville News moved to its present location on Morristown Road. The front part of the building is Bernardsville’s original railroad station, which stood where the present one now stands.
The Bernardsville News had four other owners.
The Recorder Publishing Co., publisher of a competing newspaper called “The Recorder,” was given ownership of the News by the Trumbulls in 1915 because of the illness of Levi Trumbull. The Trumbulls resumed control in February, 1916. With Trumbull’s death later that year, control passed to his son, Carl H.B. Trumbull.
In 1955, Trumbull sold the paper to Charles Desderman, a former part-owner of The Madison Eagle. In 1957, McDermott sold The Bernardsville News to the present publishers, Cortlandt Parker and Nancy Knowles Parker.
Surviving members of the Wells family besides Harold Wells include his brothers, Gardiner R. Wells in Pennsylvania, and John E. Wells of Lakehurst, a retired compositor for the Newark News, and their sisters, Mildred Hertzfeld, now in the Order of Eastern Star home in Somerville, and Eleanor Wedel of Jackson.