The Daily Register from Red Bank, New Jersey • 61

Milestone for rock hounds Monmouth SHREWSBURY, J. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1979 By IRIS ROZENCWAJG The Monmouth Mineral and Gem Club celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, and thats a lot of rocks. The county chapter was founded by Mrs. Naomi McGregor of Oceanport, and it meets on the second Thursday of each month new members are also welcome, and theres more here than meets the eye. Gemstones and fossils are also part of the lure.

I was collecting, McGregor recalled, and I joined another club in North Jersey, and I got lost every time I went. Wesley Crozier of Fair Haven belonged to a club in Newark, and he said, I will, if youll do the work. And so the club began. a McGregor, it is generally admitted, has done a lot of work, organizing every field trip, every program. She had also been keeping a diary of the clubs activities all along, and when the club members found that out last year, they made her historian.

She herself doesnt do lapidary work the glamourous business of working with gemstones. Im strictly a mineral girl, McGregor said. Since I was a little girl, I was always picking up rocks. The zeolites from Paterson were wonderful, she said by way of explanation. Paterson minerals were known all over the world.

The mineralization is gone now; its worked out. Mineralization, McGregor said, runs out at Watchung down here its mostly fossils. In fact, New Jersey has its own official state fossil: the Belemnitella Americana or squid fossil, irrevocably connected for all time with the Garden State. The pre-meeting talks of the rock hounds run to chat about microgrowths, fuzz, hardness and Zaire. Sane of the members are purely amateurs, others, like AI Platt, are highly professional.

Platt is the owner, teacher and craftsman of The Craftsmen on Brighton Avenue in Long Branch. So many people think were a highbrow outfit, said Jack Dean, editor of the clubs periodical, the Mini-Miner. Were just the opposite. Were people who like to get out in the woods and dig holes and stuff. Franklyn Ellis of Howell Township started collecting rocks and minerals in 1959 and never stopped.

He also has a fossil collection, as yet uncatalogued, from Pennsylvania and North Jersey, as well as the Manasquan River area of Howell. Crawford Hill, around Bell Labs, is a good fossil collecting place, he said. Thats a known spot. The Boy Scouts know about it, though its off limits. When they were building there, they turned over a lot of fossils from the Triptarian Age, 300 million years ago.

'Diere is also, Ellis said, the fun of finding rubies and sapphires (although not at Holmdel), but they dont look like much at first. The club has grinding and polishing equipment at the Deans house, and members come there to work on stones and minerals from wherever theyve been. At one meeting, George Dunn brought in sapphires and rubies including one 5.5-carat ruby which was appraised at 3100 uncut and $2,000 once he cut it. Cabochon, or round faced, rubies are less valued than faceted rubies. Clarity and the original style of rough stone, plus labor, all go to increase a stones value.

Many rock hounds go to Cowie, S.C., to work the mines there the public may pay a fee and get their own buckets for scrounging the old gold mines. A spot closer to home is in Shrewsbury, behind the Mill Run, where there is a rich DIAMOND TRIM Jack Dean using uses the diamond trim saw to rough-shape some semi-precious gemstones. Dean also edits the club news- letter, which is full ofillummat- ing puns and other outrages pertaming.to It i i W.Oil tj Continued on next page -o.