Merce Ridgway

An authentic voice for the folklife of New Jersey's Pine Barrens and the traditions of the Jersey Shore, Maurice "Merce" Inman Ridgway, Jr. is part of a culture that has virtually disappeared. Born in 1941, in the tiny Pine Barrens hamlet of Bamber in Ocean County, Merce's family roots stretch deep in the sand of southern New Jersey. Since 1679, generations of Ridgways have made their living from the traditional seasonal occupations of the pinelands and water. Merce worked as a bayman - catching clams, oysters, crabs, and fish from the vicinity of Barnegat Bay - and in the Pine Barrens. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1959 - 1963. Son of a musician celebrated by folklorist Dorthea Dix Lawrence, the author is well known in folk music circles as a songwriter and musician in his own right. In 1983, he represented New Jersey at the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife in Washington, DC. After an end to sessions in the legendary Albert brothers' cabin in the Pine Barrens, Merce produced the "Sounds of the Jersey Pines" in 1974, a weekly folk music stage which continues to this day in Waretown. This led to the establishment, in 1975, of the Pinelands Cultural Society, of which Merce was a founder and first president. Deeply concerned about the declining environmental condition of the shore, he was first president of the Baymen's Association for Environmental Protection; member of the first executive board of the Commercial Fisherman's Council; and the Coalition for Survival. Performing at the New Jersey State Folk Festival in New Brunswick in 1995, Merce was honored by Rutgers University for distinguished contributions to the traditional arts of New Jersey. Ocean County named October 14 1995 "Merce Ridgway Day" to honor him for his work to preserve the region's traditional cultural heritage. He received the "Hurley Conklin Award" from the Barnegat Bay Decoy and Baymen's museum in 1996, honoring those who have "lived their life in the Barnegat Bay tradition." As Rutgers University American Studies Professor Angus Kress Gillespie says in his foreword to The Bayman, "what fascinated me most was that he was an exemplar of tradition."