What Did Glenside Park’s Guests Tell Us About its Success?

 

WHAT DID GLENSIDE PARK’S GUESTS TELL US ABOUT ITS SUCCESS?

INTRODUCTION

In statements and letters to James Hawley, Anna Molloy Walsh bragged about the success of Glenside Park under the management of her parents. How can we evaluate her claims of the resort’s success?

In past posts, I have described some of the resorts across New Jersey during the same nineteenth century time period, and what made them successful. It quickly becomes clear that the class status of a resort’s guests was the primary measure of its success during the nineteenth century, and into the beginning of the twentieth century. A resort’s guests both reflected the popularity and success of the resort, and then contributed to it, by attracting people who want to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Do the guests who patronized Glenside Park confirm Anna’s declarations of its success?

I started looking at this question using a list of guests provided by Anna herself, who had stayed during her parents’ period of management. I found the list among the documents in the James Hawley files at New Providence Historical Society. It appeared that Hawley had typed up a list which Anna had provided from her memory, complete with the little personal details she gave on many of the guests. This is the list, along with the remembered details.¹

PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLENSIDE PARK’S CLIENTELE

Having done a lot of camping myself, I visualized Glenside Park with its rustic porches and the simple, mostly outdoor diversions it offered, as a place which would not attract the most upper crust of society, who might have been looking for more creature comforts. I had not yet delved into the status of most of the guests Anna listed, but I did have a sense that Uzal (U.H.) McCarter, whom she listed as a guest, was prominent in New Jersey society. I had convinced myself that someone with that status would not want to endure what I was imagining as somewhat rough conditions, and therefore, was probably only at the resort for a day visit. This seemed confirmed by a newspaper article from the Newark Sunday Call announcing that in June 1899, Uzal and his wife were having a “handsome and comfortable house” built in Allenhurst, New Jersey. Allenhurst was close to Long Branch, the place President Grant had made the “summer Whitehouse”. There were other amenities, including the nearby horse racing track, allowing it to attract a very exclusive crowd.²

The article indicated that the house was expected to be completed in August 1899 and was situated on a bluff two blocks from the ocean, “of which excellent views may be had.”³ Under Mrs. McCarter’s supervision, the interior of the house was replicating that of the McCarter’s Clinton Avenue home in Newark, New Jersey.

As with everything else in my decades long history of researching the Deserted Village, my ideas about guest status have changed. Linda Brazaitis, a researcher working for the County of Union, found an 1893 article from the New York Herald that confirmed that Uzal had made more than a day visit to Glenside. He stayed that summer at the resort, along with a “colony” of individuals, which the article said were almost all “Newarkers.”⁴

The colony now there is composed of the following Newarkers and their families:—Judge David A. Depue, Major General Joseph W. Plume, Ernest F. Munn, Uzal McCarter, John C. Downey, William H. Peck, Alfred Ayers, William Osborn. Sydney Ogden and John A. Miller. The only one in the colony who is not a Newarker is William Pinto, of Brooklyn.

Some of those listed in the article were also on Anna’s list: William H. Peck, General Plume, and Sydney Ogden. Who were these people, and what was their class status? What might their stay indicate about Glenside’s success and/or popularity as a resort?

To answer these questions, I have done some digging, mostly into newspapers of the time. I did this, realizing, of course, that newspaper accounts represent what the newspapers thought was newsworthy and would interest readers. I found social notices, business activities, career developments, and prize-winning livestock (one of my favorites). I also found things designed to titillate readers—alleged marital infidelity and scandal.

But, in many cases, I found little or no newspaper coverage on one of the listed individuals. So, my profiling of guests is necessarily skewed by the simple fact of who and what I have been able to find evidence of. Here is my foray into determining how the guests at Glenside reflect its success–and its possibility to allow intrigue.

UZAL AND THE MCCARTER FAMILY

As I had early surmised, Uzal turns out to be something of a big deal in New Jersey during his life, and especially in Newark, New Jersey. Along with his two brothers, he is profiled in a Charles Cummings column reproduced on the Newark Public Library’s site. I love that the Public Library site has an introduction to the profiles of the three brothers in all caps and bold to let us know that the McCarters were truly important, as follows: ”AMONG THE GREAT FAMILIES OF AMERICA TO COME FROM NEWARK, THE MCCARTERS WERE ESPECIALLY OUTSTANDING. NO OTHER FAMILY HAS SO ALTERED EVENTS IN THE CITY’S HISTORY IN ONE GENERATION AS MUCH AS ‘THE MAGNIFICENT MCCARTERS.’”⁵

Uzal was the second of three sons of Thomas Nesbitt and Mary Louise Haggerty McCarter, and like his eldest brother Robert, was born in Newton, New Jersey, in Sussex County, where his father was a “distinguished” lawyer.⁶ The Cummings column reports that Uzal’s parents moved the family to Newark, New Jersey when Uzal was four because that city was “the hot place to settle” in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and “the state’s business hub.”

After attending the Pingrey School and the Newark Academy, Uzal attended Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1882.⁷ He quickly established himself in a financial career, working in New York City, first for Kidder Peabody and Co., a securities firm, and then for Lombard Investment Co., also in New York City. Upon his marriage to Jane Meeker Lewis in 1889,⁸ he came home to Newark to start work with a newly established financial firm then known as the Fidelity Title and Deposit Company, which later became known as the Fidelity Trust Company, and eventually merged, in 1921, with the Union National Bank to form the Fidelity Union Trust Co.

By 1893, the summer in which Uzal’s Glenside Park stay was reported in the New York Herald, Uzal was already Secretary and Trust Officer of Fidelity.⁹ Uzal remained at Fidelity, in each of its iterations, through the end of his career, serving as its president starting in 1907. Cummings characterizes his work there as “embark[ing] upon a merger policy absorbing one bank after another under the control of the Fidelity, the theory being that each additional bank was self-sustaining.” An example of one of the acquisitions accomplished under his leadership took place in 1912, when Fidelity acquired a majority of the stock of the First National Bank of Red Bank; this followed on an earlier creation by Fidelity of a Red Bank Trust Company, described as “an offspring of the Fidelity trust company.”¹⁰ Presumably, the two institutions were meant to complement and support each other under Fidelity’s leadership.

By 1915, Fidelity was “the largest institution of its kind in the state” and Uzal announced its largest dividend distribution ever to shareholders that year, after the company sold its shares in Prudential Insurance Company upon the beginning of mutualization by Prudential.¹¹  Uzal and the board decided not to retain the additional capital thus created, but to distribute it to loyal shareholders. It appears that loyal employees also got some benefits at the same time.

Uzal also became a director of the Public Service Corporation, which provided gas, electric and trolley service to Newark and surrounding communities¹² (brother Thomas was president, not Robert, as Anna remembered). For Uzal, this particularly reflected his interests in improving transportation in the local area. In recognition of contributions he made in the area of transportation, a portion of the newly constructed Route 21 was named after Uzal as “McCarter Highway,” a name it still retains.¹³ When Senator John Kean relinquished ownership of company interests in a trolley line in Elizabeth, Uzal was one of those buying in, and became an officer of the company.¹⁴

One of the more amusing reasons for profiling Uzal is found in a posting of information about him by Andy Osterdahl, the author of a website called “The Strangest Names in American Political History: Dedicated to American political figures with strange, odd, and unusual names.” Osterdahl seems to have stretched his definition of American political history a bit, since Uzal’s “lone foray into New Jersey politics” was a 1904 selection as a Republican presidential elector at large, not exactly a lengthy career choice.¹⁵ Presumably Osterdahl was taken with Uzal’s full name, Uzal Haggerty McCarter, prompting his post.

I should briefly mention Robert McCarter, Uzal’s brother and one of the resort goers on Anna’s list, but not in the New York Herald article. As Anna had told James Hawley, Robert was a criminal lawyer. The Cummings column notes that his New York Times obituary referred to him as “one of the most successful attorneys in the East.”¹⁶ That column also indicates that while Robert was prominent as New Jersey’s attorney general, and in the New Jersey Bar Association, his greatest claim to fame was his defense work in a case in which a married Episcopal priest, Edward Hall, and a married member of his congregation, Eleanor Reinhardt Mills, were found murdered, and suspicion fell on Hall’s wife, Frances Noel Stevens Hall, and her two brothers. Robert successfully secured an acquittal in the case for Mrs. Hall. The case captured the attention of the nation.

MAJOR GENERAL JOSEPH W. PLUME

Possibly equally accomplished and renowned was another of the guests included on both Anna’s list and that of the New York Herald, Major General Joseph W. Plume. The 1898 Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark and Essex County, New Jersey proclaims that “There is perhaps no citizen of Essex county¹⁷ more clearly entitled to definite representation in this compilation than is he whose name initiates this paragraph, the elements making this representation peculiarly compatible being determined not through one source but several.”¹⁸

I was rather amused by the language the unidentified author used to begin stirring the reader’s estimation of the worth of Plume:

His lineage traces down through the past to touch intimately the ancestral honors of those who were prominent in the settlement of the New World, conspicuous in colonial annals, stalwart patriots when the struggling colonies strove to throw off the unjust yoke imposed by the British throne; those whose names stand illustrious on the pages of civic and public history through the many successive generations, and in whose deeds and lives a sterling worth reposed. He himself, to whom this brief review is directed, has gained distinctive prestige as a man of affairs, has shown that it was his to inherit the deepest patriotism and to manifest it by valorous deeds, when the cataclysm of civil war deluged the imperiled country with human blood, shed in internecene [sic] tumult, and all these are points which call for recognition in any work purporting to touch upon the history of Essex county or the state of New Jersey.¹⁹

After a description of Plume’s august ancestors (the book is, after all, a genealogical history in addition to being a biographical one), the author notes that while Plume was born in Troy, New York, he has lived in Newark, New Jersey, ever since his parents brought him there at about age four. From 1871 to the time of the entry in 1893, the biographical sketch indicates that Plume held “the exacting and responsible position as cashier of the Manufacturers’ National Bank of Newark,” which I found a bit disconcerting, as it seemed to suggest he never advanced beyond this position. Fortunately, biographical information for Plume on the website “Antietam on the Web” addressed this question, noting that “He was one of the organizers and cashier of Manufacturer’s National Bank from its founding in 1871 to at least 1892, rising to being the President.”²⁰

It is in the area of military service that the author of the entry in Newark and Essex II deems Plume to be particularly outstanding. Plume enlisted in Company C of the City Battalion of Newark in 1857, and from there became first lieutenant and adjutant of the Second New Jersey Volunteers in 1861 in the Civil War. The biography singles out twelve of the Civil War battles Plume served in as “important engagements.” Among those identified are both Battles of Bull Run, Yorktown, Antietam and Fredericksburg. During the Civil War, Plume progressed through various ranks, at least once turning down a promotion because he believed he deserved a greater one (which he was then offered), and at least once, apparently refusing a promotion, because the unit he was serving in was only mustered for 100 days. I find the descriptions of military service Plume saw during the Civil War confusing—he, himself stated in 1899 that he had done two years’ service in that war, so the other service during those years was apparently as a member of the New Jersey National Guard, After the Civil War, Plume continued to advance through various leadership roles in the National Guard of New Jersey, rising to the rank of Brevet Major General.

There the description of Plume’s accomplishments ends in Newark and Essex II. But from newspapers and other sources, I learned that Plume prepared a company of men to fight in the Spanish American War in 1898, but according to biographical information on “Antietam on the Web” his unit never actually saw service, remaining at a base in Virginia.²¹ Plume resigned from the National Guard in 1899, having earlier received a medal in 1897—the first in the State of New Jersey—recognizing forty years of military service.²²

JUDGE DAVID AYRES DEPUE

The third person on both Anna’s list and the New York Herald list is Sidney Ogden, but due to the lack of available information, he will be profiled briefly with others who left less of a historic record, below. I will turn instead to someone listed only on the New York Herald list, Judge David Ayres Depue.

Like Plume, Depue has a sizable entry in Volume II of the Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark and Essex County. The unidentified author spends the first two pages of a slightly more than three-page entry on an extensive genealogy of the Depue family side of the Judge’s ancestors. Even once Depue and his personal, not genealogical achievements, are introduced, the author still feels it necessary to note that Depue on his mother’s side, hailed back to “a knight of William the Conqueror.”²³

The author has less to say about Depue’s actual life. Depue’s parents moved to Belvedere, New Jersey from Pennsylvania shortly before Depue went off to Princeton University. Upon his graduation in 1846 (some forty years earlier than Uzal), Depue returned home to Belvedere, taking up legal practice in the office of John M. Sherrerd. As was often the case at that time, Depue apparently did not pursue formal legal education, instead simply “commencing the reading” of law in Sherrerd’s employ. His private legal career was noteworthy enough that in 1866 New Jersey’s Governor Marcus L. Ward appointed Depue as associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. At that time, Depue moved to Newark, since his assigned “circuit” comprised the counties of Essex and Union counties, New Jersey. An 1891 article refers to Depue and colleague Judge Dixon as the “Branch Supreme Court,” and describes a decision by them which “decided against the citizens who certioraried [sic] the ordinance of the Street and Water Board vacating Van Horne street where it meets Grand street, a the request of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, which proposes to erect coal shutes [sic] on the ground.”²⁴ I especially like the article’s transformation of the noun certiorari into verb form.

Depue was reappointed to the Supreme Court for four more terms by succeeding governors. In 1874, while serving on the Supreme Court, he was also asked to work on a team which included the court’s Chief Justice, and someone identified as “Hon. Courtlandt Parker,” to “revise the laws of New Jersey,” which the team reportedly completed admirably. Perhaps in recognition of this achievement, both Rutgers College and the College of New Jersey at Princeton conferred the presumably honorary advanced legal degree of L.L.D. on Depue, in 1874 and 1880 respectively. All in all, the actual description of Depue’s life and legal career comprises less than a page of the biography.

Perhaps to beef up the non-genealogical detail of the biographical sketch, the author goes on to spend a long paragraph on Depue’s son Sherrerd, who, like his father, went to Princeton, but unlike his father, actually did formal legal study at Columbia Law School, before embarking on a career which showed him, like his father, to have “exceptional ability.”

Through newspaper research, I found one purely social item for Depue—in 1894, he and his wife were guests at a wedding for the daughter of one of the other Supreme Court Justices, Justice Leon Abbett.²⁵ The guest list included many other justices and judges, and other social notables, including the Ballantines and the Kusers, both of whom have been mentioned in these posts. Also guests at the wedding were General Plume and his wife.

One other non-judicial article referencing Depue is an announcement about of the upcoming celebration for the “semi-centennial” anniversary of the New Jersey Historical Society, in 1895.²⁶ Depue is listed as having been a member of the Executive Committee for the planning of the anniversary celebration.

THE BENJAMIN H. ATHAS

In the nineteenth century (and other time periods) individuals would reuse the exact name of siblings or other relatives for their own children. This often makes life difficult for historic researchers. We have seen this already in the weird case of two women named Ella King at birth. The first became Ella King Adams by marrying Frederic Adams. This Ella’s brother named one of his children Ella King, presumably after his sister. What neither the original Ella nor her brother could anticipate was that the second Ella King would end up marrying the husband of the first, after the death of the original—becoming Ella King Adams the second. Next month, you will learn that one of Warren Ackerman’s brothers named one of his daughters Lydia Platt Ackerman after Warren’s wife.

This month, we have the case of the two Benjamin H. Athas. Neither appears on the New York Herald list, but Anna lists both as visitors at Glenside Park. She notes that the elder, uncle to the younger, did not actually stay at the village, presumably only making one or more day visits.

This first and elder Benjamin H. Atha had started a steel company with John Illingsworth, apparently around 1883, judging by a newspaper account of 1888, which indicates that the firm so created, Benjamin Atha & Company had existed for five years as of that time.²⁷ The same article, near the end, seems to apply the name of Newark Steel Works to the same firm, as will be seen below. At the time of the article, Benjamin Atha was being forced to dissolve the partnership and company in the face of patent challenges brought against the company, over “an invention to prevent piping in steel ingots.”

I find the article confusing, since in one paragraph it indicates that: “The litigation is still pending in the Patent Office with the prospect of an early settlement. There will be no stoppage of the firm’s business and it is probable that as soon as the separate interests of the parties can be ascertained a new firm will be organized to carry on the business the same as formerly.” Yet, two paragraphs later, we learn:

The Newark Steel Works is one of the largest and most important industries in that line in this country, employing several hundred men, who will be thrown out of employment by the dissolution of the firm.

If the firm was expected to reconvene business immediately under a new name, there would seem little reason for concern over men put out of work.

The unidentified author of this article was quite right about the creation of a new firm, since I found later articles about the firm of Benjamin Atha and Illingsworth, still involving the same Benjamin H. Atha and John Illingsworth. An 1894 article is about more litigation, this time by the United States government, alleging that “the great steel manufacturing firm known as the Benjamin Atha & Illingsworth Company, of Newark, New Jersey” had conspired to defraud the government by providing defective castings to the Navy.²⁸

At the time of this article, Illingsworth was President of the Company, and he, along with the Secretary of the firm had been arrested and then released on their recognizance after posting $1000 bail. The elder Benjamin H. Atha, along with two sons, were listed as the three other members of the firm, and they were all staying at “their Summer residences on Long Island”—which, incidentally, seems to confirm that this Benjamin Atha did not vacation at Glenside Park. The three Athas had also been arrested.

Speaking for the principals in the company, who were asserting that the castings sold were not actually defective, Herbert Atha, one of Benjamin’s two sons, seemed to indicate that there might indeed be tiny defects, but nothing, in his estimation, to impact usability. It seemed, Herbert seemed to think it was the responsibility of the Navy shops which received the castings to do any necessary finishing work to remove small imperfections. He is quoted as saying, “Worse casings than these for which we are under arrest are now in use at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” which hardly seems an adequate defense. Interestingly, this article seems to contradict the one above as to longevity of the company, saying that the “business of Atha & Illingsworth began thirty-two years ago in a little one-story shanty, which grew year by year into the large group of buildings now used for the casting operations.” This put the company origin date around 1862.

The company, still under the name Benjamin Atha & Illingsworth, made the newspaper on several other occasions when it was working to fill large contracts for the United States military, so clearly the 1894 controversy with the government must have been favorably resolved. In 1898, the company was forging 1,270 explosive shells for the army, in three classes of projectiles of different sizes, but apparently all “semi-armor piercing projectiles.” ²⁹ Nearly 500 tons of steel were to be used. The article references a previous contract with the army, in which the company was furnishing “150 Maxim guns.” All of this, the article declared, was giving the company “a National reputation as a maker of war material, which had previously been divided between the Bethlehem Steel Company and the Midvale Steel Company.”

Another contract, this time with the War Department, was reported in 1899, for 400 armor piercing shells in 1899. This contract was one of three awarded to three separate companies, including Benjamin Atha & Illingsworth, with a total value of $443,664 for the three.³⁰

Anna’s list identifies both Benjamin H. Athas as being affiliated with Atha and Illingsworth, but there is no mention of the younger one, the nephew, in any of the articles I found. Several articles do, however, confirm that the younger one, along with his wife, stayed at Glenside at least three summers. This was at a time much later than the colony members noted in the New York Herald article. In May 1910, the Athas, “of 24 Waverly avenue” in Newark were planning to spend the “warm months” at Glenside Park.³¹ For 1911, both the beginning and the end of the Athas’ stay at Glenside Park were reported.³² In 1912, “Benjamin H. Atha and family” were among five families or individuals who had taken cottages at Glenside Park.³³

Mrs. Atha, apparently the wife of the second Benjamin H. Atha, merits some interesting society coverage of her own. In 1910, she was the “directress” of the Home for the Friendless, which was planning a fair on November 9, in Wallace Hall.³⁴ The title “directress” suggests that Mrs. Atha was actually employed rather than a volunteer.

The website “Old Newark” has a description of the Home,³⁵ which it cites as being from the Social Services Directory of Newark 1912:

A Home for the care of destitute children whether with or without parents. Children received from the ages of two to twelve, subject to physician’s examination. They may be kept in the Home as long as may be deemed necessary by the Board. If any of the friends of the children wish to contribute something toward their support they are allowed to do so, but no charge is made. Capacity, 100. Children are not sent to public schools but are instructed within the building. There is no specific industrial or manual training.

In 1912, Mrs. Atha was a patroness of a play to be presented by the Triangle Club of Princeton University.³⁶  This volunteer role was more in keeping with roles of women at the time.

JOHN A. MILLER, SYDNEY OGDEN, AND ERNEST MUNN

None of these three guests are profiled in the Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark and Essex County. It has been more difficult to piece together details of their lives and class status.

I found two newspaper articles that identify John A. Miller as a member of General Plume’s staff, apparently serving in this capacity during Plume’s post Civil War service, when he was helping lead the New Jersey National Guard. ³⁷ In one of the two articles, Miller is referred to as “Judge Advocate,” i.e. a military lawyer. I have not found any references to any military cases he may have handled. Both articles I found simply describe Judge Plume and his staff, including Miller, standing around in military formation for formal reviews of the troops.

Miller was also listed as a Past Grand Regent and member of the Committee on Laws for the New Jersey Chapter of the fraternal benefit society known as the Royal Arcanuum [alternatively spelled as Arcanum]. This notation comes in an article about a celebration of a new building for one of the councils of the Arcanuum, the Unique Council.³⁸

In researching what fraternal benefit societies are, I found the website of the American Fraternal Alliance, which explains that Fraternal Benefit societies are “not-for-profit membership groups that unite individuals with a common bond, provide them the ability to secure their families’ financial security through a variety of life insurance and investment products, and form one of the nation’s most effective and efficient volunteer networks.”³⁹ The website further indicates that “the fraternal business model is unique to North America.” You may recall that Frank Hossinger, the original superintendent of Glenside Park, was also a member of the Royal Arcanuum, as well as a similar organization, the Knights of Pythias. Hossinger’s widow received monetary benefits from both societies after his drowning.

We know tantalizingly little about Sydney Ogden. Anna indicates that he was a “member of the Legislature Newark.” I found one article in which there is a reference to Alderman Sydney N. Odgen, the leader of the republican minority in the common council.”⁴⁰ Alderman Ogden, along with “other officials” were refusing to divulge anything about a possible inquiry into alleged malfeasance of city officials in the performance of their duties.

I will save the information I found on Ernest Munn for a section below, for reasons which will there become obvious.

AN INTRIGUING LOST GUEST

Anna lists a widow named Mrs. Donnelly as one of the guests, with the longest set of personal details in the whole list. I knew that researching the name “Mrs. Donnelly” might get me to a number of possible individuals, so I seized on researching the Charles Astor Briested who Anna reports as having married Mrs. Donnelly’s daughter, and also the sale of the New York City property for St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There is a writer named Charles Astor Bristed (not Briested), who had first married Laura Brevoort in 1847, and after her death, Grace Sedgwick, in 1867.⁴¹ Both these marriages were long before Glenside Park was created, and if one of these women was Mrs. Donnelly’s daughter, Mrs. Donnelly herself was quite aged at the time of any stay at Glenside Park. This is a disappointment, since the detail of the name, Charles Astor Bristed (albeit with a slight misspelling in Anna’s list) yields an actual historic person, a writer of some fame at the time. Similarly, my search for anyone related to a Mrs. Donnelly involved in a sale of property for St. Patrick’s Cathedral did not produce results.

ATTRACTIONS AT THE RESORT

What could have attracted such a stellar group of citizens to Glenside Park, a tiny Adirondack-style resort? The New York Herald article has a great deal of detail which might explain why the wealthy would find the resort attractive.

Warren Ackerman, a wealthy resident of Scotch Plains, purchased the deserted village and a lot of the surrounding country about five years ago. He at once began the work of transformation and when he had finished it was a veritable Eden, with long, winding drives over smooth roads; wide, sweeping lawns; picturesque bits of rockery with flowers, vines and palms; rustic observatories, fences and bridges and beautiful pieces of landscape gardening.

And more:

The families occupy the ten little one and a half story cottages, which have been repainted and beautified, but not enlarged, so that such prosaic things as cooking, eating or clothes washing never take place in them. A large community dining room has been erected, and here the families of these modern Arcadians meet every day to take their meals. A big barn and stable is also used in common for the storage of vehicles and stabling of horses. Thus ail the annoyances of housekeeping are avoided.

Another article describes the observations of guests by someone who had made a “very pleasant and romantic drive” through the village:

“The Deserted Village” is now at its best; and the well kept streets, the trim lawns and the nicely-arranged flower-beds make it an attractive and inviting spot. . . . The cottages all seem to be all occupied, and so do the residents, too, for that matter—occupied in resting peacefully in one of the most charming and secluded spots that it is possible to conceive of within so easy a distance of the roaring metropolis.⁴²

I’m thinking that “resting peacefully” was what Glenside Park’s often prominent guests were most seeking at the small resort—and the colony approach, which the New York Herald celebrated, and which, I believe, had started with Ella King Adams, who helped Warren Ackerman design the resort and populate it during its early days. Here no one, woman, man or child, had to venture onto unfamiliar streets where there might be people one was not prepared to deal with. For the women, perhaps, it was especially attractive, since they could take some servants with them, but avoid any overseeing of cooking or laundry or other general household operations.

Also, as noted in a previous post, Warren Ackerman went to great lengths to preserve the peace of his residents. This included protecting them from picnickers, i.e. by refusing to allow residents of the surrounding area to continue what had apparently been a long practice of picnicking at the Village. People could still drive, bike, or walk through, but not stop and picnic.

As described in earlier posts, in addition to resting peacefully, guests could pursue tennis, golf, long walks, and, apparently,  donkey cart rides for children and others. It is less clear that the guests could take advantage of the lake at the resort, since Anna indicates they did not swim or boat there.

Golf may have been a major draw. Thomas Molloy had himself built a nine-hole golf course for the guests. Glenside may have established a membership “golf club” to compete in local golf competitions. My research turned up an article which refers to a “team match” between the “Morristown Club” and “Glenside.”⁴³ Apparently the Glenside team lost miserably, racking up zero points to Morristown’s seven. The match apparently occurred in conjunction with a Morristown Club tournament for its President’s Cup. The article’s author was moved to provide readers with the following interesting information, which may reveal how those of the time regarded golf:

Harper’s Bazar quotes an English golf player who figures that there are 100,000 golfers in the United Kingdom and the game cost at least $125 each per year for railway expenses, lunches, caddies, clubs, balls and other items—in all $12,500,000. The Bazar says that America is bound to have more golf clubs, more members and more costly outfits than Britain. While the amount spent for golf in America is large it means much in the way of improved health for those who play this popular game, and less money spent on physicians and for medicines.

Presumably, with this type of favorable view of golfing, Thomas Molloy’s investment, himself paying for the creation of the golf course at Glenside, was paying off. It is also interesting to note that one of the losing players on Glenside’s team was named “Donnelly”—is this one of the lost Donnellys?

TROUBLE IN PARADISE?

But my newspaper research suggests that not everything was the idyllic colony of guests resting peacefully that the New York Herald article suggests. At least two articles recount marital discord between Ernest F. Munn and his wife, apparently during a summer at Glenside Park. A report in the New York Sun indicates that in 1894, Mr. Munn left Mrs. Munn behind to go to Europe, complaining of “marital difficulties” caused by “too much mother-in-law and brother-in-law.”⁴⁴ Incidentally, the brother-in-law in question was John A. Miller, one of the guests listed in the New York Herald article and profiled above.

In the same article, for her part, Mrs. Munn tied their marital problems to Mr. Munn’s alleged dalliance with a married woman, identified variously as Catherine Neumann or Niemann, wife of a naval officer. A Brooklyn Citizen article, says the officer had gone off to sea for “a three years’ cruise in Asiatic waters on the United States steamship Charleston.”⁴⁵ The Brooklyn Citizen article cites spy work by Mrs. Niemann’s concerned mother-in-law which led to sightings of Mrs. Niemann’s maid passing letters to and from Mr. Munn. Mrs. Niemann’s mother-in-law then discovered love letters from Mr. Munn in Mrs. Neimann’s writing desk.

Incidentally, the Brooklyn Citizen article confirmed another relationship among the list of people mentioned in the New York Herald article—General Plume’s wife was Mr. Munn’s sister-in-law.

Another bizarre detail—Lieutenant Niemann’s marriage to Mrs. Niemann had initially been something of a scandal, after he met her in Washington, DC and the two eloped. The newspaper article both calls her Mrs. Lawson at the time of this marriage but in its subtitle says she was née Lawson, thus making it unclear whether the elopement involved Lieutenant Niemann marrying a previously married woman—presumably adding to the aura of scandal.

This apparent inconsistency, regarding whether it was Miss or Mrs. Lawson, demonstrates some issues of relying on newspaper research. There are more inconsistencies–the people involved seem to be the very ones mentioned in the New York Herald article, but here they are cited as residents of Brooklyn, not Newark. There are references to this all taking place in 1894 while Mrs. Niemann was staying with the parents of her husband at “Glenside Park, New Jersey.” In the very next sentence, the newspaper refers to “the exclusive part of Glencoe Park,” as being where Ernest Munn and his wife and Major-General Plume and family are staying. Ernest Munn is identified as “one of the major coal dealers of Brooklyn,” which again contradicts the identification by The New York Herald article of Munn as a “Newarker.” The Brooklyn Citizen article, and the one in the New York Sun say that the Munns first went to Glenside Park in 1894, while the New York Herald lists them as staying there in 1893.

For all these discrepancies, the articles seem to indicate that there was possible intrigue and scandal lurking beneath the peaceful demeanor that the 1893 “colony” of guests presented to the New York Herald author.

UZAL AND HIS BROTHERS BUILD SUMMER HOMES AT THE BEACH

For whatever reason, whether to avoid such disturbing goings on or simply a desire for a change, Uzal built himself a summer cottage at the shore, rather than continue to take a cottage at Glenside Park. Instead of the rustic Adirondack style of the Glenside Park cottages, the house was to be “of the Long Island Colonial style, whose distinguishing feature was the broad, flat gable ends.”⁴⁶ The architect was modernizing this style “to make the dwelling comfortable and attractive according to the ideas of today.” Every room is meticulously described, and a drawing and floor plan of the first floor is included in the article.

The building of Uzal’s summer home apparently allowed him to pursue some additional leisure activities. In 1909, one of the chickens he was raising, a Barred Plymouith Rock Cock took 6^th place at the Red Bank annual fair.⁴⁷ Uzal was apparently going up against some tough and probably more seasoned competition—three of the chickens of E. H. Wilbur of Fair Haven in this category took 1^st, 2^nd and 5^th place, and Wilhemina Farm, whose chickens won something in nearly every breed, took 4^th place. At the same fair, three years later, Uzal “showed the best Jersey bull and his animal was chosen to represent that breed.”⁴⁸ His only competition in that category was a bull owned by his brother, Thomas. Perhaps Thomas was placated for his loss to his brother by showing the “best two-year-old Berkshire boar.”

GLENSIDE PARK’S GUESTS CONFIRM ITS SUCCESS

Thus, my research shows that Uzal was not the only distinguished guest at Glenside Park. The resort was clearly the success which Anna bragged about, if one judges by the class status of its guests.

Next month I will dive into the fascinating story of the estate, and the executors and heirs who were involved. Warren Ackerman died in 1893, a few months after the publication of the New York Herald article. His widow died in 1907. The resort was continued under the auspices of the estate until 1916, and the Village, along with other real property of the estate was not sold until 1919.

Until then!