The Early Days of Golf in the U.S. and Glenside Park

THE EARLY DAYS OF GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES AND GLENSIDE PARK

INTRODUCTION

At a point that is more than a year into writing posts on the resort period of the Deserted Village, I keep finding myself with almost as many topics to explore as when I started. Each post seems to lead me to new and wonderful things to research and learn. For this post, I will discuss the Glenside Park golf course, what I consider its extraordinary provenance, and how it fits into the early history of golf. I have to confess I know little of golf and am always the worst player at mini-golf. I have been grateful for this reason to my friend Nancy Tindall, an avid golf enthusiast and one who appreciates the history of golf. Nancy lent me books and counseled me—although any errors in this post are my failing, not hers.

As I have told you in previous posts, Glenside Park, the resort, was started as a joint idea and project of the property owner, Warren Ackerman, and Ella King Adams, a friend whom Warren had invited to stay at the village shortly after Warren purchased it. I have been pleasantly surprised as I write my way through the resort period to see evidence of considerable success from the start, likely jump-started initially by Ella’s invitation to her society friends to stay there.

Even beyond Ella’s years at the resort, it seems to have attracted a fairly devoted and somewhat exclusive set of patrons throughout most of its years of operation, and I have found numerous newspaper reports of full occupancy of the cottages there.

What were the attractions the resort offered, besides the chance to get away to a very private colony of vacationers in the woods? From the start, Glenside Park offered home cooked meals with fresh vegetables and fruits and meats, many of which were raised onsite. It offered tennis, probably croquet (don’t laugh, it was big then), walking, carriage rides, and if Ella’s aunt’s letter to Ella’s daughter Rebecca is to be believed, the opportunity for children to take wild rides in goat drawn carts. I am still not sure it actually offered swimming or boating—eyewitness Anna Molloy Walsh, daughter of long-time managers Thomas and Annie Molloy suggested that there was no swimming, tying that perhaps to the several drowning deaths in the lake.

With all these attractions already in place, manager Thomas Molloy decided to add a golf course. His daughter Anna says the course was built after the construction in 1895 of the nearby course at Baltusrol (still one of the most famous in the world). And it must have been built by at least 1899, since there were doings of a Glenside Park golf club reported at that time in area newspapers, which I will detail below.

Why do I find this extraordinary? Thomas, who built the course, did not own the land, and could not hope to sell or take the course with him on his retirement. Indeed, Thomas, alone among the resort’s string of managers, was an Irish immigrant, and his work before starting at the village was as a workman, not as a hotel or resort manager. Thomas and his wife Annie had been working class servants in the homes of wealthy individuals. The Molloy family had been fortunate to land at the village when a friend interceded with Warren to get the family out of Newark, where Anna was ill with malaria. From their early work alongside Frank Hossinger, Warren’s superintendent at the village, they moved up to partial management there after about three years of management by two of Ella’s friends. Their management became total when Hossinger drowned, leaving Thomas to do all the physical plant type things Hossinger had previously done. A few more details will allow you to better understand the history of the various managers at Glenside Park, to allow comparison to Thomas as manager.

Ella King Adams not only helped with the design of the resort, but chose its first two managers, “Mrs. Norris,” a widowed friend from Virginia, who worked at the resort for two seasons, and “Mrs. Hamilton,” only at the resort for one season, apparently going off to marry “Charles Drake.” While these women probably were in the position of needing to earn income, likely due to their widowed status, they are people Ella knew socially, and thus, are unlikely to have started as servants like Thomas and Annie. Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Hamilton were also fortunate to manage during the period in whidh Hossinger was still acting as superintendent, i.e. busily running the farm, landscaping the place, and presumably making any repairs or other physical items which needed attention.

Thomas (with the assistance of Annie) was the first to manage all details of resort operation, starting with the drowning death of Hossinger and continuing until retirement on December 31, 1905. Thomas was succeeded by a man with considerable hotel management experience, John D. Bailey, who managed the resort until sometime in late 1910. Then D. W. Bogert, also possessing hotel experience, took over, and ran the resort for the seasons of 1911 through 1913.

Starting in 1914, the resort had women managers once again, but again, none of whom had started life as servants. Anna, Thomas and Annie’s daughter, widowed and with a small child, managed the resort during the summer of 1914. She notes that during that summer, among the guests were a Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. After Mr. Thompson died the following winter, the widowed Mrs. Thompson managed the resort during 1915 and 1916, the last two years of resort operation.

AN EXTRAORDINARY INVESTMENT

Bailey’s arrival at Glenside Park was especially heralded in local newspapers, unlike Thomas, who simply succeeded to management after training by the ill-fated Hossinger. As will be seen below, the newspaper particularly emphasized the fact that Bailey, the lessee and manager, was planning to spend several thousand of his own dollars in refurbishing buildings, the tennis courts, and the golf course. Yet Thomas’ initial investment in creating the golf course, which was likely more costly than whatever Bailey intended to do, seems to have gone unremarked.

Moreover, Thomas decided to build the course at a time when golf was just achieving some status, particularly among the wealthy. Now, golf is so established in our country that we take it for granted; indeed, as of 2022, the United States reportedly had 16,752, or 43% of the world’s golf courses. During the Glenside Park resort period, golf was still new to New Jersey, and indeed, to the United States. Newspaper articles when Thomas decided to build a golf course reflected a decidedly questioning view of the sport.

This post, then, will start with some history of golf’s arrival and status in America and New Jersey to give context for the somewhat extraordinary nature of Thomas’ investment. I will recognize the newspaper coverage of Glenside Park’s golf team. Because I am sure that the female guests, who spent more time actually at the resort than their commuting to jobs menfolk, must have used the course, I will touch on the gendered nature of participation in playing golf at the time—and will discuss what women may have worn on the course. I will end with the chronology of what happened to Thomas’ golf course after his retirement.

GOLF ARRIVES IN AMERICA

In A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play, author Foster Rhea Dulles charts the rise of “athletic crazes” across the eastern part of the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century.¹ He cites to concerns expressed in the nation’s leading magazines concerning the country’s youths, likely male youths, turning into pasty weaklings. For example, he notes that Oliver Wendell Holmes “declared himself satisfied ‘that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic cities never before sprang from the loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage.’”²

In her book, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917, Gail Bederman confirms the crisis words being used about the nineteenth century decline of a suitably strong and healthy generation of men, and she discusses the invention, as it were, of a new disease:

White middle-class men now learned that they were threatened by a newly discovered disease, “neurasthenia.” According to doctors, neurasthenia was spreading throughout the middle class, due to the excessive brain work and nervous strain which professionals and businessmen endured as they struggled for success in an increasingly challenging economy. This discovery of neurasthenia led many to fear that middle-class men as a sex had grown decadent.³

In her dissertation, Swinging From the Ladies’ Tee: Gendered Discourses of Golf, Anne Marie Bialowas, too, explores this perceived “crisis of manliness.” ⁴

All these authors give examples of the athletic crazes starting mainly in the late 1860s, including croquet, lawn tennis, archery, and roller-skating. Athletic clubs were organized which promoted track and field events, and gymnastics. Bicycling and bicycling clubs blossomed; indeed, Glenside Park became a favorite part of many routes from such places as Jersey City, etc.

But Bialowas notes that while sport was seen as healthy activity both for the working classes and the more affluent, the wealthy kept looking for ways to create their own separate health-promoting athletic leisure activities, exclusive to their class. Dulles characterizes these attempts to limit individual athletic pursuits to wealthier individuals as follows:

The attempt was even made to monopolize them. Again and again the complacent statement may be found in contemporary articles in the better magazines that such and such a sport—whether tennis, polo, or bicycling—does not offer any attractions to the more vulgar elements of society.⁵

Dulles finds that efforts at exclusivity only awakened a desire by those “vulgar elements” to engage in the sports being discussed, as “the common man eagerly followed where the aristocrat led.”⁶ As social leaders introduced sport after sport, hoping to monopolize them, many sports became so fashionable that all Americans wanted to try them.

But some sports still required things which only the wealthy could really hope to achieve. Yachting involved considerable expense, as did horse racing. Dulles says that “Yachts and horses were expensive enough to be proof toward any alarming tendency toward democratization, and society was enthusiastic over these aristocratic pastimes.⁷

In an effort to provide exclusive venues for sports and attendant social gatherings, there was a movement towards the creation of country clubs, starting in the late 1880s. Although these clubs were not necessarily built around the sport of golf, and could act as a venue for various sports, possibly including “lawn tennis, archery and trap-shooting,” Dulles says that it was the addition of the increasingly popular sport of golf which especially encouraged a tremendous growth in private country clubs.⁸.

Bialowas underscores this linkage between golf and country clubs, noting that these private clubs allowed golfers to emphasize “European traditions of royalty to confer a sense of respect and status to the game.”⁹ Private clubs, away from urban centers allowed both the space and the geographical separation to make golf a pursuit of the wealthy. “By the turn of the century,” Bialowas says, “golf and the private country club were inextricably linked, and the sport of golf as an elite White male endeavor was already all but naturalized.”

There is some debate about where in the world golf originated, although its Scottish development is well established as pivotal. There is also some debate about which was the first golf course established in the United States, with one in South Carolina and one in West Virginia both claiming this honor. For the purposes of context for the Glenside Park golf course development, the more important courses are those closer at hand. The St. Andrews Golf Club was started with a three-hole course on the edge of New York City by Scotsman John Reid, already an accomplished golfer in his home country, and some friends.¹⁰ A larger and more permanent course for St. Andrews was not built until 1897, so a course built at Shinnecock Hills and opened in 1891 actually preceded it. Shinnecock Hills had the special distinction of being in Southampton, on Long Island, a destination for many wealthy and influential individuals.

Both of these clubs, along with one at Newport, Rhode Island, mentioned below, were founding members in 1894 of the United States Golf Association (USGA).¹¹ The other founding members were the Chicago Golf Club and the Country Club in Boston.

GOLF GETS A SKEPTICAL RECEPTION

Dulles indicates that “no other game has evoked such scorn among the uninitiated.”¹² This can be seen in five articles about golf contemporary to the time.

The first, a September 1893 New York Times article, claimed that the game was not enjoying social success at the elite resort of Newport:

An attempt to get fashion’s sanction at the Summer resort was not successful. Society people went out to look at the game, but it was too dull for them.¹³

This article had the following prediction:

To Americans, whose sentiment on all outdoor ball sports is regulated by the vivid excitement, violent exercise, and breathless hurry and rush of baseball, golf is sure to seem overplacid, and the game can never hope to attain even the comparative popularity of cricket, but it has this real advantage over most outdoor games, that it is suited equally to fat or middle-aged men and to lithe, active youths. Any one with two arms, two legs, and two eyes can play golf.

The New York Times article introduced the reader to a list of golfing terms first noting that there “is probably no game which has so many quaint technical terms attached to it as golf.” The article also contains some description of how the game is played.

The second article is an untitled August 1893 piece on golf in the New York Tribune which starts with the following interchange of conversation evincing skepticism over the movements and activities required of golfers:

“’What is golf?’ said a fair Westerner recently arrived in Newport, hearing the “Golf Club spoken of on every side as a new social centre. ‘Well,” answered the New-York girl, ‘it is a game that strikes me simply as a combination of what the boys vulgarly call ‘shinney’ and ‘tiddledy winks’; they hit the ball tremendously long distances with long sticks and then knock it into little holes which are placed in the centre of queer little patches of turf called ‘putting greens.’”

Yet, the author of this piece, unlike The New York Times author, predicts that the game will probably eventually attain general fashion. This second article also casts doubt on the notion that golf is not a social success at the trend leading resort of Newport.

The author goes on to some description of how to play and what a course is like, and ends with:

For a really scientific game the rules are too many and complex to publish in a limited space, but those who enjoy a long breezy walk, with the excitement of an interesting game, may be sure it is worth while to take up golf. For man or woman it is equally delightful and healthful, and from a sanitary point of view it is far better than tennis, for it is a game that old and young can enjoy.¹⁴

The third article, written for a September 1893 article in the New York Herald, purports to describe the experience of someone who had “always wondered what there could be in a game of sublimated shinny,” and document’s the reporter’s apparent conversion to the game of golf.¹⁵ The unidentified author describes “the essentials for producing golfish enthusiasm” as including “a colony distinctly intellectual, besides being well-to-do and fashionable,” such as the Long Island community of Southampton, near the Shinnekock Hills Golf Course. One of the reasons golf has become so popular among this set of people is that it is “light exercise [that] fits well between a hearty luncheon and a formal dinner.”

I love the author’s description of the twosome who were busily introducing him to golf:

The two brainy contestants wore Scotch plaid stockings—one pair big with muscle, the other slender but straining with nervous energy—low shoes, knee breeches, red sack coats with gold buttons and collars and on each player’s brain was a cap. The reporter slung the bag of the larger man over his shoulder and furtively took out the sticks that were in it to examine them. One was a putter (it rhymes with butter), one was a brassey, one was a driver, the last was a kniblick. Their names were learned at once, and equally quickly they were muddled up with the sticks, so that they never came right afterward.

There follows a fairly detailed description of the three men playing, and then the author concludes with:

At last a hill was mounted and the club house was in sight again, near at hand. The men had played the short course, and yet had walked nearly three miles without being conscious of the distance. They had walked briskly, urged on by the fleeing balls. They were all aglow, and damp as well. The taste of luncheon had been on their palates at the outset, and already dinner seemed a desperate distance off. A little later as the golf grounds were viewed from the club house though colored glasses they looked roseate, and a health to the game was the toast to which the glasses were drained. A health for a health, for certainly golf has charms to lure the laziest man to open his lungs and develop his muscles, to keep out of doors, and to build up a bulwark that will resist the ravages of a hard winter’s work in the city.

The fourth article, an undated one, is found among a group of 1893 clippings in a scrapbook in the collection of the United States Golf Association (USGA) museum in Far Hills, New Jersey. The article, which is from an unidentified newspaper, is titled “Golf the Game of the Day,” with a subtitle of “This Royal and Ancient Sport Has Taken Strong Hold Upon Our Fashionable Clubs.”¹⁶ Here the author claims:

It was at Southampton, on the Shinnecock Hills, so like the downs of Scotland, that the first golf course [in the United States] was formally organized, with a club house, a uniform, a book of rules &c., in the summer of ’91.

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Southampton is peopled in summer with the rotund and easy going Wall street man and merchant, too wary to omit some form of exercise from his daily regime, but too careful to expose his treasured person to cuts and bruises, to sprains and fractures.

The article goes on to describe that shortly after the course at Shinnecock was built, one was created at the equally fashionable resort area of Newport, Rhode Island, i.e., Newport is being used, yet, again, as a measure of golf’s success. The article contains considerable namedropping of apparently then prominent American businessmen who had taken up golf, and how initial scorn at fashionable clubs had given way to golf being “firmly established.”

The article goes on to note that even women were playing golf, mentioning that the first club entirely for women had been formed in Morristown, New Jersey. Here there is also name dropping, of society women—albeit, a much shorter list than those of the prominent men earlier in the article.

The article then presents a description of how the game is played, and contains a diagram of “Specimen Golf Links” which “can be laid out anywhere.”

The article discusses this diagram as follows:

As for laying out the links, so much depends upon the lay of the land which may be available in your neighborhood that it is difficult to give any very definite information.
The accompanying diagram shows the lay out of one of the most popular and fashionable links in Europe, at Cannes, in which all the diversified difficulties and pleasures of the game are artfully introduced in a somewhat narrow limit of space.

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Our own Central Park would make a superb place for a number of links, and when the game of golf becomes as firmly established among city people as it now is at country clubs, it will perhaps not be asking too much of the Prak Commissioners, that they set aside a portion of the park for the game. ¹⁷

My final article about how golf was viewed in its earliest days in the United States was also found in the Scrapbook I found in the USGA collection. This one is from 1896, and the scrapbook maker has included the top of the page from which it was taken, so that we know it was from the New York Herald. This article is prefaced by the longest set of titles and subtitles yet, so that the reader may be very sure of what he or she will find:

HOW TO PLAY GOLF,

Directions About the Great Game

Which Has Become Widely

Popular in This Country.

_______________

IT IS SIMPLICITY ITSELF.

_______________

This Fact Caused It To Be Regarded

at First with Amused

Contempt.

_______________

NOW IT HAS MANY PATRONS.

_______________

Explanations by an Expert of the Many

Mysterious Terms Used in

the Sport.”¹⁸

_______________

The author provides the following as partial explanation for the “amused contempt” that golf is experiencing:

The sight, too, of full grown men gravely knocking a little ball a long distance with a slim, big headed club, slowly walking after it and hitting it again, to finally knock it in a little hole, all with silence and solemnity, seemed at first to appeal to our sense of humor much more than if the same men had gathered around a diamond shaped field and hit a bigger ball with a thicker bat for one or more of their number to chase at top speed, while the one who struck it rushed wildly around the sides of the diamond. Such is the force of convention that the relationship of golf to baseball, cricket, hockey, polo or any other ball and club game, where the essential idea is to hit a ball with a stick, was not willingly acknowledged by the popular mind, and the so-called new game, whose origin is lost in the dimness of antiquity, had to run its gantlet of American humor.

The author suggests that the initial disdain is now past.

At present [golf] would seem to be as firmly established in this country as to assure it a permanent position as one of our most popular outdoor sports. Much of this success is doubtless due to the high standing, social and otherwise, of the patrons of the game in this country.

This author, too, is not above name-dropping, i.e. mentioning “Theodore A. Havemeyer, of the Newport Golf Club,” as head of the United States Golf Association. Moreover, insists the author, the game is popular because anyone who is once challenged to try the game will invariably move on from their earliest poor swings and continue trying again. Indeed, to help motivate the uninitiated to try the game, the author gives many basic instructions, and adds some pointers on how to avoid early beginner errors.

Clearly, this is only a sampling of articles about golf and how it was being received in the United States; I am sure I could have found many more.

EARLY NEW JERSEY GOLF COURSES AND CLUBS

As noted above, Anna’s recollections indicated that her father, Thomas, built the golf course at Glenside Park sometime after the course was built at Baltusrol.

Baltusrol, one of New Jersey’s earliest courses, was built in 1895 by Louis Keller, on his family farm just outside Summit, New Jersey, and was named after the original farm owner, Baltus Roll, whose biggest claim to fame seems to be that he was murdered. Keller, followed up creation of an early newspaper “devoted to society news and gossip” with creation of an twice yearly “Social Register,” consisting of names and addresses of individuals whom Keller had identified as socially important, and sold to those members at $1.75 per copy.¹⁹ He was able to capitalize on his social connections by inviting his wealthy friends to become members of the club he established at his Baltusrol Golf Course.

Baltusrol was not, however, the first course in the state. One of the courses which preceded it was built fairly nearby, at the Essex County Country Club. Although that club had been founded in 1887 and is considered the sixth country club to be established in the nation, golf was not introduced there until the course was built in 1894.

Perhaps even more contextually important than Baltusrol or Essex County for the purposes of discussion of the Glenside Park course are several early golf courses clearly built for visitors to New Jersey resorts. The first golf course at the Atlantic City Country Club was designed in 1897 by John Reid, who had the twin distinctions of being from Scotland—often considered the birthplace of golf—and of having already designed the above-mentioned first three-hole St. Andrew course with his friends, in Yonkers, New York. The chief claim to fame associated with the course and club is that the golf term “birdie,” denoting a one-under-par score on any particular hole, was coined there.

The Official Golf Guide for 1900 describes the patrons using the Atlantic City Course:

The players comprise the local residents, visitors who own cottages in this favorite seaside resort, and Philadelphians who stay there at the week end. The eighteen-hole course is very good, and in a year or two will be one of the best in the country.²⁰

The 1900 Golf Guide also lists courses at or near some of the other resorts I have profiled on this website, including Cape May, Lake Hopatcong, and Long Branch. The 1900 Golf Guide describes the course for the Cape May Golf Club as “situated close to the seashore, on the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and Reading Railroads. The Hollywood Golf Club was founded by the owner of the Hollywood Hotel in Long Branch. Clearly these golf courses were meant as attractions for resort visitors.

A course at the Lawrenceville School, a prep school, is listed in the 1900 Golf Guide, but there is no listing for any location where the Glenside Park course may have been considered as sited at the time. Nor is the Glenside Park course listed in a later edition of the same book, The Official Golf Guide 1902.²¹

Notably, however, two of Glenside Park’s resort guests who have been introduced in these posts, Uzal McCarter and Benjamin Atha, are each listed as an officer of one of the New Jersey golf clubs listed in the 1902 Golf Guide. Uzal is the president of the Newark Athletic Club, which has a course of 18 holes and 250 members signed up for its golfing memberships. Benjamin Atha—which could be either of the two Benjamin Athas who summered at the resort at various times—was on the Governing Committee of Baltusrol in 1902.

GLENSIDE PARK’S GOLFING TEAM

Whether or not its course was ever formally recognized in any edition of the Official Golf Guide, Glenside Park still had a golf team that competed against teams of some other New Jersey golf clubs.

In July 1899—notably, high resort time—the Morris County Chronicle reported on a number of golfing events which had just taken place at the two local clubs in its area, The Morris County Golf Club and the Morristown Field Club. ²²

The Morris County Golf Club is the one mentioned in one of the article cited above as having been founded by women. It seems to be the more elite of the two Morristown clubs, based on listings in the two Official Golf Guides I have already mentioned. Both the 1900 and 1902 Golf Guides describe this golf course as “one of the very best to be found in the country.” The two clubs have about equal membership, but the “Entrance” and “Annual Dues” for the former are far more expensive than the “Initiation fee” and Annual Dues” for the Morristown Field Club.

The Morris County Chronical newspaper article reports first on matches at the Morris County Golf Club for the President’s cup and “a bogie handicap for men,” which was won by W. Allston Flagg. Next, the article reports on a competition for the championship of the other area club, the Morristown Field Club, which was won by a player whose last name was Behr (no first name specified), who “also broke the medal record for the course.” Both Behr and someone named Holmes (also no first name), Behr’s apparent competitor for the Morristown Field Club championship, were part of a team which played against a team identified as Glenside. Glenside lost 7 to 0. Glenside’s players were identified as O’Connor, Donnelly, P. O’Connor, Bates, and E. O’Connor.

A team identified as “the Murray Hill Club of Glenside Park” had no better luck the following year in a competition in Orange, against the East Orange Golf Club, played on the East Orange course.²³ P. F. O’Connor and E. A. O’Connor were again members of the Glenside team, along with E. A. Creden and J. C. Wildrick.

A check of the names of Glenside’s golf team members against a list of guests provided by Anna Molloy Walsh seems to confirm they were resort guests. William P. O’Connor was identified as a “Banker & Broker” from New York, who had six sons and three daughters and whose address was 30 Pine Street.

Guests with last names of Bates and Donnelly were also on Anna’s list, although the guests she remembered with those last names were both widows. From Anna’s list:

Mrs. T. Bates Widow

Notes: “Husband had been with Tower Paper Co.. Mrs. Bates was a Tower who were [sic] in wholesale stationery. One of her brothers was an Ambassador (possibly Turkey).”

Mrs. Donnelly (widow) New York had three sons and her mother. Her daughter was married to Charles Astor Briested. Mrs. Donnelly’s husband sold the property on Fifth Avenue to the New York Diocese upon which St. Patrick’s Cathedral now stands.

It is easy to imagine that Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Donnelly might have been joined at the resort by sons or other male family members, who might well be on the Glenside Park golf team. I have been stymied in my attempts to find out more about any of these guests, as one might expect dealing with such common names as O’Connor, Bates and Donnelly and with little other information.

WOMEN’S GOLF CLOTHING—HOW MIGHT THE FASHIONABLE GLENSIDE PARK WOMEN HAVE DRESSED?

I am confident that the Glenside Park players listed in these two articles were men, since all the golf reports of the time that I have seen distinguish the rarer female golf contestants (in their own competitions) by prefacing their names with a “Miss” or “Mrs.” But I strongly believe that the female guests at Glenside Park must have utilized the course during their stays at the resort.

As discussed in past posts, nineteenth and early twentieth century men might leave their families at a resort on weekdays and go back to work, either from their own homes, or, as at Glenside Park, as commuters, Indeed, the relative ease of commuting to cities like Newark was one of the attractions of Glenside Park. Presumably that left the golf course largely to the women during the week, giving the ladies a time they might not have to actively brave opposition by men to their use of the links.

So, the all important question is: what did they wear?

In 1904, Genevieve Hecker, aka Mrs. Charles T. Stout, wrote the first book for women golfers, Golf for Women.²⁴ In it she includes the following suggestions for golfing clothing for women golfers:

The most common dress for the links among women is a shirt-waist and short skirt. The material for each may be whatsoever the wearer chooses, the predominating idea being to select something comfortable and light enough not to tire one in the tramp over the course. Most women vary their golfing clothes with the season of the year, just as they do their street and afternoon gowns, but this is by no means necessary.

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The most popular style of costume during the summer months is a cotton shirt-waist with a short skirt of white duck or piqué, but personally I do not like this color, because I have found it has a tendency to make me take my eye off the ball, particularly in putting, and for this reason I think a broadcloth, tailor-made skirt of any other color than white is the best to play in.²⁵

Here, it should be noted, that a “short skirt” meant one which did not reach the ankles, and is definitely not something above the knees.

The matter of shoes may also be left to the individual taste of the player. Some prefer high-laced boots of heavy calf-skin, because of the support which they give to the ankles. Others, equally good players, wear nothing but low shoes. In any case they should be of at least medium weight with broad comfortable soles and low military heels.

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No one can play good golf without a secure stance, and the shoes, consequently should be non-slippable.

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Many players trust their footing to rubber soles. These are very good in dry weather, but useless in wet, and it is a bad plan, I think, to change frequently, just as constant change of clubs tends to unsettle one’s play.

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I think the best all-round shoe, therefore, is one with hobnails in the sole. This is the kind that I wear, although I use rubber heels instead of leather ones with hobnails, because the weight in making a stroke is rested rather on the sole of the foot than the heel, which makes it necessary to have the former particularly secure, while the rubber heels tire one much less in walking than do the ordinary kind.

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I also make a point of having my shoes heavy, and have them made with a double sole, because I think they are much less apt to hurt one’s feet than are light ones in tramping over the rough ground sometimes found on golf courses. ²⁶

Hecker goes on to discuss whether or not to wear hats and gloves, leaving this far more to personal preference, ending the section with the following:

The question of corsets is one which a woman can decide for herself. In the days of tight lacing they were out of the question, but now that common-sense governs their use, they play no more important part in determining good golf than does the weight or color of a player’s skirt.²⁷

One should note that Hecker’s comments suggest that corset fashion has turned away from “tight lacing.”

A newspaper article from the Newark Sunday Call for April 22, 1900, gives us several pages of an article called “Womankind in the Springtime,” including “Seasonable Suggestions in Footwear.”²⁸ The season is, apparently, serving to “draw all women into the highways and byways,” where “The next thing of importance is to go well shod.” The article reports that

American women show a preference for low shoes or oxfords during the warm weather. Even enthusiastic lovers of outdoor sports, have given up the high lace boot in Summer. Among the popular styles for walking and out-door wear is the oxford, made of calf or kid, with a military heel. The military heel is copied from the army officers’ dress boot, and is being received with much favor by the ladies. There is a slope quite peculiar to that style only and has no similarity to any other heel. It is of medium height and very comfortable for walking. It is also to be seen on laced boots.

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The mannish walking shoe is still in evidence, principally on the golf links. It is made on the goodyear welt machine to imitate the old style hand sewed welt shoes. This shoe may be had in tan Russia calf, tan and black viol kid. In the new styles of golf boots, there is shown one of russet leather laced higher than the ordinary boot. It is light in weight by having a mock welt sole, and for that reason may find favor with many women now wearing low shoes on the links or for wheeling.

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A new traveling or cycling gaiter is knitted and should fit perfectly. It slips over the shoes and looks very much like the golf stocking, but is of lighter weight.

I have included some pictures of golf fashions for your enjoyment.

A RETURN TO THOMAS AND THE BUILDING OF THE GOLF COURSE

It is still rather extraordinary to me that Thomas spent the time and money to build a golf course at Glenside Park. Beyond just the initial expense, Thomas was also faced with the special upkeep a golf course requires, with its special turf and any special grading and features. Moreover, any land taken up by the golf course would no longer be usable to grow food for animals or humans at the resort.

I should note, however, that every time I think of a golf course there, I have been envisioning at least 9 holes, when the course could easily have included fewer holes than that—this could also explain why it did not show up on the lists in the Official Golf Guides. The guests who appear to have been team members from Glenside Park could even have been the ones who persuaded Thomas to put in some holes. Nevertheless, I still think it was an extraordinary act by Thomas.

THE GOLF COURSE CONTINUES BEYOND THOMAS

In December 1905, the Plainfield Courier-News carried an article announcing the new manager who was preparing to lease and operate Glenside Park as a resort, starting on January 1, 1906. Unlike Thomas, the new lessee, John D. Bailey, “has for some time been in the hotel business,” apparently most recently in Summit, but before that, in Plainfield. The newspaper reported that Bailey “expects to spend several thousands of dollars in improvements.” These improvements are described as follows:

[Bailey] intends to refurnish the cottages and renovate the place, equip the golf and tennis courses and renew the equipment generally. Besides the management of the cottage colony he will take charge of the large tract of land and will carry on farming for the raising of grain and garden truck for use of the colony.²⁹

The changeover in management was also reported in the Newark Sunday Call on Sunday, December 24:

[Mr. Bailey] will put the golf links in shape, renew the tennis courts and add a new equipment generally. The park consists of 1,000 acres and the part not nee3d for the cottages and the sports will be cultivated, to procure vegetables for the cottagers who are expected to occupy the place next Summer.³⁰

When Bailey left, and D.W. Bogert replaced him, the Plainfield Courier-News, again noted the former experience of the new Glenside Park manager, “former proprietor of the Huguenot hotel in Orange County, N.Y.”³¹ Bogert, unlike Thomas, did not make the resort his home during the time he managed it. The Plainfield Courier-News reported that Bogert and his wife “spent the winter at their home in Port Jervis, N.Y..” While I have not found the type of celebratory articles about the sums being spent on refurbishment for this management changeover, the resort brochure printed up by Bogert touts the fact that visitors to the resort will be able to engage in golf, so clearly the golf course continued through his period of management.³²

The active operation of the village as resort ended in 1916, but it was not until 1919 that the village, along with Warren’s other many properties, was auctioned off. I searched the large poster scale description of the properties to be auctioned for any mention of the golf course. The auction announcement contains a map with some 90 or so properties, including the Deserted Village in myriad separate tracts. Each of the cottages and some adjoining property was being offered as an individual small house lot. The remainder of the property was cut into lots of varying sizes, up to about 15 acres, and some as small as 3 acres. There is no mention of anything resembling a golf course.

The likely disappearance of the golf course before the auction of the Village in separate parcels seems reaffirmed in late 1920s aerial photographs provided by Edward Engel to myself some time ago. Logically, the golf course would have been in the area north of the cottages, in an area which shows up in aerial photographs from the 1920s as field space. Dan Bernier has observed that the aerials actually make the land look flatter than it in fact is, but the aerials also do not seem to show any traces of a golf course.

So, as usual, I am left both with many unanswered questions and with a wealth of knowledge I did not have before.

A FINAL NOTE ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF GOLF

New Jersey has its own non-profit organization separate from the USGA, whose membership includes public and private clubs across the state, New Jersey Golf (NJ Golf). NJ Golf is making a conscious effort to make the sport of golf more accessible to less affluent participants, especially with its program called “The First Tee,’ and with a separate program of scholarships for “caddie scholars from our member clubs.”³³

MY NEXT POST

You may have noticed that it has been two months since my last post. I have realized that I need to slow down to a more human pace in doing posts, so I anticipate that for the next little while I will be posting on the same schedule of every two months. I just have to resist the temptation of going down every rabbit hole, just because I have more time.

I am not fully sure what the next topic will be, but know I am still not done with the resort period. Until then!