Vineland, Hammonton Chambers of Commerce meet in Vineland
Page 4 • Wednesday, February 12, 2020 • The Hammonton Gazette
CHAMBER, from Page 1
nated with Vineland Mayor An-
thony Fanucci.
“He had said that we’re sisters,
and we’ve got to be doing business
together. I found the Chamber in
Hammonton, found the Chamber
in Vineland, we all had breakfast,
everybody thought it was such a
great idea, and today here it is.
Everybody wants to do business
together, and we just want to make
that happen,” Venti said.
John Runfolo, Executive Direc-
tor of the Greater Hammonton
Chamber of Commerce, noted that
when Hunter reached out to Ham-
monton Chamber president Ben-
jamin Ott, the idea was an easy
sell.
“We said that it’s a great idea.
The hook was the fact that our ori-
gins are very, very similar. Our
ethnic backgrounds, our demo-
graphics, are very similar. It was
natural. There are a lot of people
who were born in Vineland and
come to Hammonton and vice-
versa, so it’s a natural. We’re try-
ing to reach out and expand our
business base, and it’s good for
both ends,” Runfolo said.
Hunter noted that, given the
similarities between Hammonton
and Vineland, it was surprising
that something like this hadn’t oc-
curred sooner.
“We’ve never done anything to-
gether, which is a shame, because
we have a lot more in common
than people realize. We were very
excited about it, and hopefully it
will become an annual event,”
Hunter said.
During the course of the
evening, two speakers gave brief
presentations on the histories of
the two municipalities. The first,
Kathy Mascioli Farinaccio—orig-
inally a Hammonton resident—
credited her husband Vince with
most of the research for her pres-
entation.
“I feel like I’m entitled to talk
about Vineland’s history, mainly
because I’m a Hammonton gal
married to a Vineland guy. He
gave me some great information,
and I’m going to pass it on to
you,” Farinaccio said.
Farinaccio gave a brief
overview of the city’s early days,
starting with the first stake driven
by Charles K. Landis on August 8,
1861.
“Charles Landis envisioned
Vineland as an aggressive settle-
ment that would champion
women’s suffrage. It was a very
forward-thinking kind of town,”
Farinaccio said.
Landis, Farinaccio said, offered
three lots on Plum Street to a
group of freethinkers called the
Friends of Progress. The society,
which formed in 1864, constructed
a meeting house on one of the lots
and christened it Plum Street Hall.
“It soon became a popular gath-
ering spot for all of Vineland, and
a venue where there were lots of
readings and musical events and
where visiting celebrities spoke,”
Farinaccio said.
Among the visiting speakers to
Plum Street Hall were American
Equal Rights Association member
Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass,
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton.
The second speaker, Gazette
Publisher Gabriel Donio, gave a
brief history of Hammonton in the
context of Landis’s involvement.
Donio said that he has been taken
with Vineland since he was a
teenager.
“I remember coming down Lan-
dis Avenue and saying, this is im-
pressive. This downtown, this
area, this is an impressive town.
Our town was smaller, and you
were a city. As a 17- or 18-year-
old, I always thought to myself,
this is the kind of city or town
we’d like Hammonton to be some-
day, even before I knew there was
a connection between our two
towns,” Donio said.
That connection came via Lan-
dis, a Philadelphia resident who, in
1856, along with financier Richard
See VINELAND, Page 14
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