By Richard D. Smith | September 4, 2025
Going back even further from the August 1995 founding of The Montgomery News, which celebrated its 30-year anniversary last month, one finds two other newspapers which — although comparatively short-lived — made tremendous contributions to the local community.
Notable among them were the Montgomery Citizen (published from June 1967 to November 1968) and another, earlier Montgomery News (1984 to 1987). And in both cases, it was accomplished women writers who served ably as editor.
The first issue of Montgomery Citizen, published on June 19, 1967. The paper folded in November 1968.
The editorial in the inaugural June 19, 1967 issue of the Montgomery Citizen was headlined “The Need for Communication.”
It pointed out that in rural Montgomery Township, with a somewhat far-flung populace, being reliably informed as a citizen was often more challenging than doing so in a city.
And there was certainly a need for good information. As the that Citizen’s front page headline declared, a $3.3 million bond issue to build Montgomery’s first high school would be put before voters on June 27.
(Montgomery was a sending district of Princeton High School at the time.)
Publisher Jack E. Schuss had tapped Ursula C. Brecknell to be editor of the Montgomery Citizen. There could scarcely have been better choice.
Ursula C. Brecknell
In her lifetime, Ursula Colbourne Brecknell made innumerable contributions to historical research, both locally and at the state level.
Hailing originally from Staten Island, she graduated in 1944 from Barnard College with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 1964, she moved to Montgomery Township where she became a charter member — and pillar — of the Van Harlingen Historical Society. She also authored the handbook “Montgomery Township: An Historic Township, 1702-1972” and also “Hillsborough Township: An Architectural History.”
She consulted on historic preservation for numerous committees and groups. She chaired the Ad Hoc Preservation Study Committee, which produced the township’s ordinance preserving historic buildings and landmarks. She was appointed to the state’s Historic Sites Council by then governor Thomas Kean.
Despite diminishing eyesight in her later years, she remained active in the Van Harlingen Historical Society and was also a trustee of the Somerset County Historical Society. She succeeded in placing several historic Montgomery properties and sites on the state and national registers of historic places, notably the Gulick House and the historic districts of Bridgepoint, River Road, and Blawenburg.
In addition to communicating about property taxes, sewage treatment, police work, community groups, and entertainment, the Montgomery Citizen was a staunch advocate for the rural community it represented.
A wonderful example: The writer of the “Jerseyana” column in the influential Newark Star Ledger newspaper at one point compiled a list of Jersey myths, including places in the state that are named but didn’t actually exist.
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Among these, the columnist included “Roaring Rocks” in the Sourland Mountains region. In fact, this natural wonder did exist, as some intrepid local Boy Scouts documented — a collection of huge boulders overlaying a wide stream coming down from the high hills. The boulders reflected and seemingly amplified the sound of the rushing water beneath them — hence the name “Roaring Rocks.” The scouts were hailed as community heroes and got their pictures in the Citizen.
The high school wasn’t the only expansion of educational facilities planned for the township. The Citizen kept tabs on the new N.J. State “Training School for Boys,” an alternative to simple incarceration for wayward youth. (The building now houses administrative offices of the Montgomery School District.)
Taxes, the local Hillsborough- Montgomery Telephone Company (and its progressive measure of including Princeton phone numbers as local calls), arts, theater, sports, community events: The Citizen provided a previously unknown level of communication about them all.
Unfortunately, the Montgomery Citizen was terminated by Mr. Schuss after a political promotion backfired and caused something of a local scandal.
On the front page above the fold of the November 8, 1968, issue — which was to be the Citizen’s last — was a prominent boxed announcement in bold, capital letters:
DISCLAIMER: THE REAL MONTGOMERY CITIZEN IS NOT THE “MONTGOMERY TAXPAYER,” OR VICE VERSA.
Inside, in a lengthy editorial headed “The Citizen Bows Out: At Least for Now,” Schuss explained that a mock newspaper titled the Montgomery Taxpayer had been made up by Democrats on his staff to promote their party’s positions for the upcoming elections.
These partisan persons used the same typeface and layout of his newspaper and — even worse — the Citizen’s own subscription mailing list. So it appeared to represent the Citizen and its politics.
Schuss emphasized that his paper had both Democrats and Republicans among its staff members, and it did not “propagandize” for any political party. His bipartisan newspaper was now being denigrated, he said, by association with the hoaxed version, and he could no longer work with the staff members who’d created it.
But Schuss forthrightly admitted that his reason for ending the paper was also financial. The subscription base had held stubbornly at some 200 families. Also, finding staff workers was proving difficult.
So even with a good amount of advertisements from local businesses within its 4-page format, the Citizen was no longer a viable business operation, monetarily or logistically.
It would be 16 years before Montgomery had another community-specific newspaper.
The first issue of Montgomery News was published in October 1984. The paper folded in 1987.
On October 24, 1984, the first issue of the pioneering Montgomery News was published.
It was brimming with optimism. And why not? For the next three years it kept the community well informed on topics ranging from local government and property taxes to upcoming arts/entertainment events and the successes of Montgomery Cougars school sports teams.
The editor — and its co-owner with her husband Charles Creesy — was Virginia Kays Creesy. In a front page article titled, “The News: Aiming to Serve Montgomery,” Creesy spoke of having been frustrated with the difficulty of getting any township news except hearsay tidbits from neighbors.
“Since many smaller towns have their own newspapers, I didn’t see why Montgomery couldn’t, too. So I started looking into whether a paper was feasible. And the more I looked, the more I got hooked on the idea.”
An accompanying photo showed Virginia Creesy posing, all smiles, with Ellyn G. Cook, the new paper’s display advertising manager.
Ellyn G. Cook and Virginia Cressy: Mapping out the future of the Montgomery News.
Like Ursula Brecknell, Creesy was an accomplished writer and historian.
Born in Chicago, she had graduated in 1967 from Vassar College, with a Magda Cum Laude in history. She had been an editor/reporter for a San Francisco-based chain of weekly newspapers, and, having moved east, a teacher and administrator at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn.
She freelanced for various publications, contributing a major article on the Battle of Princeton to the December 6, 1976, issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, in advance of the bicentennial of that pivotal event on January 3, 1977.
This may be where she met her husband Charles L. Creesy. A Princeton University graduate, Class of 1965, who’d later served as a Peace Corps volunteer, Charles started working at the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 1975 and later became its editor.
Two years later, he guided the difficult but important transition of “PAW” from a weekly newspaper to a monthly but full color glossy magazine. He also pioneered the “Electronic PAW” — an early computer bulletin board for Princeton alumni — and subsequently became head of publishing technology at the Princeton University Press.
At the time of the first Montgomery News, Virginia and Charles lived in a former grocery store (now the Blawenburg Bistro) on the corner of Rt. 518 and the Great Road, a property then owned by her mother.
Like the Citizen, this first iteration of a Montgomery newspaper covered local news, features and sports stories in a manner cheerful as Virginia’s smile, but without skirting serious public issues. And its eight pages doubled its predecessor’s space.
This Montgomery News appears to have ended its run with the March 18, 1987, issue. However, unlike the Citizen, there was no formal announcement that the paper was ceasing publication.
The paper may simply have run short on money reserves and was no longer a financially feasible venture. Indeed, some longtime residents who remember the early Montgomery News report that it simply went out of business.
(Montgomery resident Frank Drift, who helped launch a new Montgomery News eight years later in August 1995, says he did not purchase the name nor any remaining assets from Ms. Creesy.)
Perhaps a separation with her husband and newspaper co-owner Charles Creesy was a factor. This is only speculation, but Virginia did remarry to a Willem Vienswijk.
As Virginia Kays Vienswijk, she continued as a freelance contributor to various publications.
She authored the book “Coudert Brothers, a Legacy in Law: The History of America’s First International Law Firm,” published in 1993.
Virginia and Wilhelm relocated to Miami, Florida. There, after a long battle with lung and bone cancer, Virginia died on October 11, 1996. She was 49.
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Ursula Brecknell had remained in Montgomery, a core member of the Van Harlingen Historical Society and a respected leader in local historic preservation. She died on December 22, 2011, at age 89.
Brecknell Way, a street through the apartment and commercial development at the northwest corner of routes 206 and 518, has been named in her honor.
Fortunately, the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill had preserved copies of the Montgomery Citizen and the first Montgomery News. These were transferred to the Montgomery Public Library in the township municipal center.
There, they will be available for future scholars, journalists, and interested citizens to learn more about these late 20th-century newspapers and the history of the communities they served — briefly, but so very well.
