Organized on October 25, 1870 as the New Jersey State Dental Society, the NJDA’s beginnings go back to the lecture room of the YMCA in Trenton, NJ. Twenty-seven prominent dentists in the state “called” for other dentists to join them in Trenton for a convention with the purpose of forming the society, and to “devise and adopt such other measures as may be deemed essential to our mutual improvement, and for the elevation of our common profession.”