Silver Skates

One of the points of interest on Newarkology's walking tour of the Weequahic section was this intersection with the great big house.

But the house was not the point of interest. Rather, it was the street name "Mapes Avenue".

Our guide pointed out that many of the streets in that area were named for families who lived in the area at the time street names were assigned, and one of the families was the Mapeses. A female member of the clan, Mary Mapes Dodge, wrote the famous 1865 children's book Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, which contains the famous legend (a complete invention of her own) of a boy who stuck his finger in a leaking dike to keep the water from widening the hole and collapsing the entire dike, subjecting his town to a flood. Altho Ms. Dodge was born in New York City, she is buried in Hillside, NJ, which adjoins the Weequahic section to the south, and she was apparently in Newark when she wrote her famous fiction.
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(This is an entry for Wednesday uploaded Thursday because of time constraints.)