Anna and Her World

ANNA AND HER WORLD

INTRODUCTION

Most of my posts here at feltvillefeatures.com posts for the last year or so have centered aroung the Deserted Village’s resort period, which spanned from sometime shortly after Warren Ackerman’s purchase of the village in 1882 through 1916. The outline with which I started for resort posts received many additions because I have constantly been led by my research to additional focus points. My recent post on golf is a good example—golf is so popular and widespread now that it was difficult for me to realize that when it was introduced at the resort by Thomas Molloy it was still regarded with some skepticism. Researching and writing history has repeatedly called assumptions into question and has allowed fascinating explorations.

All of this is to say that there are probably dozens more of such explorations possible for the resort period, but it feels like it is time to finish my resort posts and move into a deep dive of one of the village’s other historic eras. I am planning to finish with three posts. This month I will circle back to one of the resort period’s most important characters, born Anna R. Molloy, later Anna Molloy Walsh. In my next post (in two months), I will explore what I call “the Summer of Writers,” when three of the then most prominent authors in America stayed at the resort. In the post following that, I will allow myself to do a kind of reader’s guide to all the posts to date on the website, which you (and I) can use to decide which ones to circle back to and what each one covers, by way of history.

ACCOUNTS LEFT BEHIND BY ANNA MOLLOY WALSH

And so we turn to Anna. You may recall that Anna’s parents, Thomas and Annie Molloy, arrived at the village with Anna as a result of their desperate attempts to find a way to make sure that their young daughter, stricken with malaria in Newark, New Jersey, would live to grow up. Anna did indeed grow up at the village, from the age of about 4 or 5 until she was 26. Her surviving letters describe her looking back with a ” great deal of pleasure on my young life spent at Glenside Park (Feltville or Deserted Village).” To my mind, it was the opportunity to grow up at the village which made Anna who she became, one of the most fascinating of the village’s many characters. This post will first discuss who Anna was and then dive into how some of her recollections illuminate life at the resort, using additional newspaper research for more detail.

Anna Molloy Walsh was “discovered” as a source of village history by the two historians who worked on the last book of history about the Deserted Village, James Hawley, and my grandfather, Edwin Baldwin. Both men interviewed Anna at her home, and received letters from her about her experiences at the village, providing us with the first source of Anna’s personal recollections.

These recollections were expanded when Linda Brazaitis, a researcher working for the County of Union, tracked down two of Anna’s granddaughters, Judy and Nancy Walsh. The Walsh sisters indicated that Anna had lived with Judy and Nancy’s family while the latter were children, and that Anna had told them many stories about her time at the village.

Glenside 1914 Anna as Driver

So many of the stories are lost in time. We were little when we’d drive around with her in the car and she’d tell them. But she lived with us ALL of our lives and although we loved every minute, we just never appreciated the richness of our heritage.¹

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ANNA GETS TO GROW UP AT THE VILLAGE

In the letters she has left, Anna tells us considerable detail about how her family arrived at the Deserted Village, where her parents would be working for its owner, Warren Ackerman:

At age eighty four and six months I look back with a great deal of pleasure on my young life spent at Glenside Park [Feltville/Deserted Village]—I was a delicate baby and my parents moved from Newark, N.J. where I was born on North Fifth Street—about four blocks from the Morris Canal which was used in those years to bring mostly coal from Penn—used mules to draw the canal boats. I developed malaria. Our doctor said if they wanted to raise me, they must take me out to the country. Father’s circumstance was modest—so that became the question—

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Our doctor’s sister had been a friend of my grandmother’ (who had just died). Doctor took it up with Mrs. Halstead whose husband General Halstead had been in business with Mr. Ackerman during the Civil War—had a factory in Elizabeth and did government work. The title “General” was a complimentary one for his wonderful work in supplying the government with boots, blankets, saddles, etc—

The General contacted his former friend and secured a job for father.²

Just a note here—what Anna doesn’t mention is that the family had far more direct connections to “General Halstead” (the correct spelling is Halsted, but Anna’s letters go back and forth with that and “Halstead”) than through their doctor’s sister. Anna’s grandmother had worked as a servant in Halstead’s home for more than a decade, as I have described in an earlier post.

Anna goes on to tell us about the house where the Molloys lived when first at the village, how they happened to move to another house, and how they moved on from that house as well, because another of my favorite characters, Ella King Adams, also known as Mrs. Frederic Adams, had arrived on the scene, with plans to work with Ackerman to turn the village into a resort:

We lived at Tower Hill for a year and May 1884 we moved over to “The Deserted Village” and occupied the old Mansion House which I remember as being large. I got pneumonia and was sick in a large room surrounded with shelves (library no doubt). We were only there about a month when the house was condemned as being unsafe. So we moved to one of the front cottages with was fixed over for us—a visitor to the deserted Village was a family by the name of Mrs. Fredrick [sic] Adams—took a liking to the house for a summer—so Mr. Ackerman repaired the adjoining cottage for us—

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Mrs. Adams was the one who induced Mr. Ackerman to turn the place into a summer resort—and he did just that.³

Anna and her family lived at Glenside Park year-round and Anna went to a local school like other local children. But, on her off hours she apparently spent considerable time hanging out in the kitchens of the Glenside Park resort, as she told her granddaughters.

She also spoke of the ladies in the kitchen. It seemed she was parked there much of the time as a child. Later in life, she didn’t cook the way our mother cooked. My father (Anna’s son, James Walsh) said, “. . . because your grandmother spent a lot of time as a child at Glenside in the kitchen and learned to cook from the ‘Southern ladies.’” Fatback in the vegetables, dry beans (which she soaked), and things we’d giggle about: pigs knuckles in jars, tongue, lambs kidneys (which we grew up loving). And from her mother, Irish Christmas Pudding made with suet! I guess it was all pretty usual for a country upbringing.⁴

It is useful to contrast this with her mother Annie’s experience. At the age of 14, Annie, an immigrant who had arrived with her mother from Ireland, was already living and working as a full-time domestic servant, living in Newark in the home of the family of Edward and Harriet Parker, probably caring for the Parker family’s youngest members, two twins less than a year old. Edward is described as a feed merchant, with a personal estate valued at $3000. Annie was separated from her mother, who was then working as a domestic servant for General Halsted. There had been no casual hanging out in the kitchen for Annie.

Anna’s father Thomas, also an Irish immigrant, had also been a servant prior to his time at the village. Indeed, at the village, he may have been destined to remain a servant, or at least an employee. When the family arrived at the village, Thomas worked for Warren’s superintendent there, Frank Hossinger. It was Hossinger’s death that gave Thomas the opportunity to rise beyond the status of servant or employee, and become his own boss, managing the resort.

Anna’s written recollections tell us about the moment when Warren had Thomas manage the resort, at first under what may have been a sort of trial lease of zero dollars, and then a full lease, paying $350 per year. After Warren died in 1893, the arms-length leasing arrangement continued, with the executors leasing to Thomas for $1200 per year. Thomas was no longer a servant to anyone.

But Anna never was a servant.

DID ANNA GO TO COLLEGE?

Anna’s granddaughters indicated that she had had the opportunity to go to college at the newly created College of St. Elizabeth, an early New Jersey women’s college. According to the story which the granddaughters related, Anna instead accompanied her father, Thomas, on a trip to Ireland, apparently using the funds which would have supported her college enrollment.⁵ Although both Thomas and his wife Annie, Anna’s mother, were Irish immigrants, it was Thomas—and daughter Anna—who were the ones who took a trip back to “the old country.”

While there, Thomas and Anna reportedly watched ships going off to the Boer War (which fact impressed the granddaughters very much).⁶

Of course, I had to look that war up. Briefly, the Boers were descendants of Dutch, German and Huguenot origin who had colonized southern Africa. They formed their own independent countries, and successfully fought off efforts by the British, who held territories further south, to the tip of Africa, to take control of their lands. The British redoubled their efforts starting in 1899 and successfully took control of the territories claimed by the Boers.

Did Anna indeed give up her unique opportunity to be one of the early students at a women’s college and use the money to go to the “old country” with her father? Although there seems no way of ever knowing for sure, there is one tiny snippet article from September 1901, which raises the possibility she actually attended college after she returned from the trip:

Miss Anna Hyland, of Long Island, is spending a few weeks with her college chum, Anna R. Molloy, at Glenside Park.⁷

Newspapers get things wrong all the time; indeed, there had been reports (see below) in the newspaper that Thomas was going on the trip to Ireland with Annie, not Anna. But I like to think Anna got the chance at both the trip of a lifetime and college.

SOCIAL ITEMS ABOUT ANNA

The little piece above is just one of a number of social interest items about Anna and her activities, which appeared often in social columns in local papers such as the Plainfield Courier News, demonstrating that the newspapers found Anna to be of social interest. The following are just a sample of such items.

On Wednesday, June 28, 1899, the Plainfield Courier-News reported that “Miss Malloy [note: Molloy is often misspelled in the newspapers] of Glenside Park, has returned home after a sojourn in Philadelphia.”

One of my favorites is from January 3, 1901:

A Merry Party at Glenside Park

Miss Anna R. Molloy, of Glenside Park, is entertaining during the holiday week the Misses M.A. Walsh, of West Summit, Anna Meechan, of New Brunswick, and Kittie Connor, of Newark. A skating carnival on the ice at the upper lake will be held Friday evening.⁸

Another news item about Anna doesn’t misspell her last name, but still makes an error:

The Misses Molloy will give a large house party after Lent at their home in Glenside Park.⁹

Were the hosts of the party Anna and her mother (since there was no other Miss Molloy)? Alternatively, it could have been Anna and one of her friends.

Oddly, in the same column of social announcements, is another one about Anna:

Miss Anna R. Molloy, of Glenside Park, has returned home from a visit among friends at New Brunswick, Trenton and Bordentown. She had intended taking the ill fated train which was wrecked a few days ago near Trenton, but she was persuaded to remain a few days longer at Bordentown.¹⁰

On March 21, 1902, the Plainfield Courier-News reported, in a column called “PERSONALIA,” that “Miss Anna Meedham, of New Brunswick, is visiting Miss Anna R. Molloy, at Glenside Park.” This seems to be the same individual identified as “Anna Meechan” in the article about the skating carnival at the lake.

In 1904, the following was reported in a column called “PERSONAL:”

Miss Anna R. Molloy, of Glenside Park, is stopping for a few days at Niagara Falls.¹¹

Even after Anna and her family left the village on Thomas’ retirement, and moved to Newark, the Plainfield Courier-News continued to follow her activities:

Engagement Announced

Miss Anna Rose Molloy, formerly of Glenside park, but now of Newark, to James Walsh, of West Summit, is announced. Both Miss Molloy and Mr. Walsh have many friends in this part of the state, who will be pleased to learn of their engagement.¹²

Another Plainfield newspaper, the Plainfield Daily Press, carried the following:

Miss Anna Rose Molloy Weds.

Miss Anna Rose Molloy, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Molloy, formerly of Glenside Park, but now of Newark, and James Ambrose Walsh, of Summit, were married this afternoon in St. Michael’s church, Newark, in the presence of a large and fashionable assemblage of relatives and friends, including a number from Plainfield. The couple will reside at Summit, where the groom as erected a find dwelling for their occupancy.¹³

CONTRASTING SOCIAL ITEMS ABOUT ANNA’S PARENTS

Although there are also social items about either Thomas, or Thomas and Annie, only one that I have found, from August 1899, involves activities with friends:

Mr. and Mrs. Thos. Molloy, of Glenside, have been visiting Mr. and Mrs. George Schick.¹⁴

Later in the same month there is a piece involving the same Mrs. and Mrs. George Schick, but this time it is Anna—“Miss Molloy of Glenside,” who “enjoyed a day’s crabbing at Tremley Point yesterday.”¹⁵

Several of the social items involving Thomas and Annie actually seem to revolve around their daughter, Anna.

Surprise at Glenside Park

Mrs. Molloy, of Glenside Park, arranged and gave a very pleasant surprise party to her daughter, Miss Anna Molloy, last evening. There were about fifty guests present from Newark, New York, Jersey City, Scotch Plains and Plainfield. There were about eighteen persons from this city who went by one of Conover’s stages. Frazee furnished the music.¹⁶

Later in 1899, the Plainfield Daily Press also carried two items about a party which the Molloys held just before Thomas and Anna went on their trip to Ireland:

‘PLAINS AND FANWOOD

(special Correspondence of the Press)

Scotch Plains, Oct. 27,–Mr. and Mrs. Molloy, of Glenside, entertained a number of their friends at their home at Glenside Park last evening. Dancing was the feature of the evening after which the hostess furnished a collation. Friends were present from New Brunswick, Plainfield, Summit and Scotch Plains. Mr. and Mrs. Molloy leave shortly for a European trip. The evening’s pleasure was arranged by their daughter, Miss Mamie, as a bon voyage gathering of their many friends.¹⁷

As noted, it was Anna, not “Mrs. Molloy,” about to go on the trip, and “Miss Mamie,” one of Anna’s friends was throwing the party for Anna and was not the Molloys’ daughter.

The second Plainfield Daily Press piece about the same party seems to correct the mistakes and doesn’t even mention Anna’s parents:

Many Enjoyed Themselves

Miss Molloy, of Glenside Park, entertained about eighty of her friends last evening from this city, Scotch Plains, and Summit. Dancing was the feature and at midnight a supper was served. Everyone had a good time, and it was early in the morning when the guests arrived home.¹⁸

The newspaper was still having trouble keeping straight who went on the trip with Thomas, when the following appeared in the Plainfield Courier-News:

Thomas Molloy and daughter, Miss Annie [sic], of Glenside Park, arrived home yesterday from a two months’ European visit.¹⁹

Turning away from pieces about the trip to Ireland, I have found one rather quirky social piece about Thomas:

Won a Fine Horse

Thomas Molloy, of Glenside Park, was the fortunate winner of a fast road horse that was drawn for at Berkeley Heights on New Year’s eve.²⁰

The other social pieces I have found about Thomas and/Annie report on their doings relating to operation of the resort, not strictly social activities. On March 3, 1903, the Plainfield Courier News noted that Mr. and Mrs. Molloy were starting a new three year lease at the resort. Later that year, the Plainfield Daily Press reported:

The summer season at Glenside Park is fast drawing to a close, only a few families remaining. The season, under the management of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Malloy [sic], has been a successful one, every cottage at the Park being rented. ²¹

There is a similarly congratulatory piece about the Glenside Park 1903 resort season in the Plainfield Courier-News, mentioning “a most successful season under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Malloy [sic],” with all of the cottages being rented and “the occupants all expressed themselves enthusiastically over the park.”²² It should be noted that the newspapers regularly included similar pieces about the success of the resort under the Molloys’ management.

While not specifically mentioning Thomas or Annie, the following piece may be seen as a measure of the success of the resort during their tenure:

POLITICAL NOTES

Charles S. Black, the Hudson County Democratic Gubernatorial candidate, is spending the summer with his family in a modest little cottage at Glenside Park near Scotch Plains.²³

There is a series of newspaper pieces about Thomas choosing someone for a painting contract at the resort, and at least two (see below) about cutting ice in the winter for the resort.

In late 1905 and early 1906, there are pieces reporting on the auction which Thomas held to sell off items as the family left the village. The auction announcement/advertisement has been included in an earlier post. One piece reported the names of some of the individuals who had participated in bidding at the auction:

SCOTCH PLAINS AND FANWOOD

Lewis B. Codington transported a party of merry Plainfield lawyers, composed of Walter Hetfield, jr. [sic], John Owens, Robert Lee, George Johnson, David Mahoney and R. Collins, to the auction at Glenside Park yesterday. The auction will be continued today.²⁴

Another stated the following:

The auction sale of the Molloy personal property, at Glenside Park, was brought to a close after two successful days, Friday night. All the articles brought good prices.²⁵

On the whole, it seems that the newspapers considered Anna’s purely social activities far more noteworthy than those of her parents, who received attention mostly for their resort activities. However, it was the happy accident of all of them landing at the village that put them on the radar of the newspapers at all.

ANNA’S SENSE OF PRESENCE

Regardless of the fact that her activities were being reported in the newspapers, it appears that Anna never lost sight of her humble beginnings. Anna’s granddaughters indicated that Anna herself to have married above her original class when she married James Walsh of West Summit, New Jersey, whom she had known for some time, presumably through school or local activities. One of Anna’s best friends was her husband’s sister, Mary Walsh, nicknamed Mame or Mamie. Clearly, the relationships with the two Walshes grew up naturally, rather than being planned as a way of social climbing.

As the newspaper account above indicates, Anna married James in 1907 and moved into a house he had built for them. A son, also named James, was born, but within a few years the elder James became sick, and Anna and James sold the house to others in the Walsh family and moved to Tucson “very quickly for his health.”²⁶

James died in Arizona in 1911, and Anna and her son moved back to Summit. Granddaughter Nancy describes what happened then:

There was a point in time, after the death of our grandfather, Jim Walsh (II), in Arizona in 1911, that one of the sisters-in-law thought Anna and the baby (our Dad) should move in with them and be their housekeeper. That wasn’t Anna’s style (and a very snobby insult). And frankly, Jim’s other siblings agreed with Nana. Somewhere in the stuff I have was a sale of property from her sister-in-law, Mary Walsh Ramsey and her husband to Nana for the price of $1. I always assumed it was “her” house, the one that Jim built for her when they married in 1907. There were also developers’ plans for homes to be built on that land off Division.  Our assumption was that they sold her back her home (which she and Jim sold to the family when they had to move to Tucson very quickly for his health).  I doubt that the home still exists.  It did in the 40’s or 50’s.

While Anna seems to have gotten the house in Summit back, her granddaughters indicated that she, “really didn’t have any money that we know of, or her father, unless it was the money he made from Glenside before they moved to New York.”²⁷ Regardless of whatever her financial status may have been, and that fact that at least one of the Walsh family saw her as a potential servant, granddaughter Nancy Walsh recounts a prevailing characterization of her grandmother as “when our grandmother walked into a room it was as if the Queen of England had just arrived. She really did have a presence.”²⁸

Perhaps this confidence and presence arose out of the fact that, unlike her parents, who had come to the United States as poor immigrants and worked for many years as servants, Anna grew up as an individual who found herself regularly feted in the newspaper, just as many other local young women were.

REVISITING ANNA’S RECOLLECTIONS OF GLENSIDE PARK

Turning from how landing at the Deserted Village may have shaped Anna’s life, I will reconsider some of her recollections about the operation of the resort in the context of some newspaper accounts of the times.

As noted above, Anna confirms that Ella King Adams (Mrs. Frederic Adams) induced Warren to create the resort, although Anna does not mention the five years Ella spent working on the village. Anna’s letters tell us about some of the improvements which were made to convert a deserted village into a resort:

The water we got from a well back of the cottages—there was no baths in the houses at that time. [Ackerman] built reservoir—pumping station laundry—also the green house

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Tennis courts were built long before the golf course. Father paid for building golf course—not sure of date some time after Baltusrol

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The new dining cottage (as we called it) must have been built about 1889—new barn about 1890— The cottages originally were two family-having a door at each end of the front with small steps leading to the doors. Two kitchens in basement—back having large brick fireplace.²⁹

This renovation was accomplished under the direction of the then superintendent for the site, Frank Hossinger.

Frank Hossinger was Superintendent for Ackerman when we came to Feltville. According to Father, he was a very smart and accomplished man. Knew all about farming, gardening, landscaping, building and plumbing. He laid out all the grounds, roads, paths, flower beds and supervised the entire renovation of the cottages.

Anna described how Hossinger trained her father on the operations at the village:

At the time we moved over to Feltville from Tower Hill—Mr. A had a superintendent Frank Hossinger he taught father how to run the steam boiler in the pumping station—how to operate a green house and cut clippings for small plants—also taught him about running the farm and raising vegetables—as well as cultivating the large fields of rye—oats—and good clover hay—how to cut ice from the upper lake, and store it properly in the ice house which had been built on the back of the lake, and supplied ice for the entire summer—for the cottages—

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He taught my father all about gardening, farming and plumbing which stood him in such good stead later on. Father raised all the vegetables used on the tables and also oats, rye and good clover hay and corn for the cows and horses. He also grew all the flowers himself after Mr. Hossinger died.

Anna tells us about the circumstances of Hossinger’s death.

We have pointed out that there were two ponds—the lower pond one just below the Church cottage in the glen and the Upper pond, a much larger body of water—now Surprise Lake. In the early Summer of 1888 (the blizzard was in March) there was a freshet which took away the dam which formed the lower pond which did a good deal of damage along the valley. The folks living along the valley below the Upper Pond became very disturbed about the Upper Pond if that dam should give way. Mr. Hossinger decided to lower the water level by raising an iron flood gate at the bottom of the dam. He and father drove up to the Pond. Although Father could not swim, Mr. Hossinger was an excellent swimmer. After eating a hearty lunch, Mr. H dove into the pond at the dam which was very deep at that point. He carried a hooked iron rod with which he intended to hook onto the gate lever. He never came to the surface. Father who could not swim, after some minutes realized the sad truth but was unable to give any assistance. He drove back to the Park and brought help. There was a doctor and a minister, both of whom were guests that Summer and a couple of other men. The minister whose name I have forgotten dove in and recovered the body. The Doctor pronounced him dead of apoplexy.³⁰

LESSONS LEARNED FROM A DROWNING

None of Anna’s surviving statements mention that the same ponds threatened to flood again the following year, and that downstream residents besieged Warren Ackerman with requests to make sure that the dams did not suddenly break and cause a massive flood. However, newspaper coverage makes it clear that lessons had been learned from Frank Hossinger’s attempts with the floodgates and from his death.

The following year, it was not one single person who responded to the threat of Feltville’s dams breaking, but a coordinated team. A newspaper article detailing the team efforts is titled “All Danger is Past. The Feltville Dam Conquered by Human Ingenuity.”³¹ A subtitle further declares: “The Flood Gates Opened, and the Waters from the Lake Babbling Harmlessly Along their Sluiceways.—Decisive Action by Brave Men Save the City.”

The article’s description of the efforts of the “brave men” is as colorful as the long article title:

Deeming it prudent to make arrangements for warning the people if the dam should break, President J.B. Dumont and Messrs. M. Marvin Dunham and Francis E Marsh, of the Plainfield Common Council, met yesterday afternoon and decided to post watchers on the heights above the dam and to arrange a code of signals, that notice might be given if the danger should become more imminent. Chief of Police Tunis J. Carey and Julian Scott, who brought the news Wednesday evening that the dam threatened to fall and flood the city, again became volunteers in the good service, and at sundown they left the city, in company with Peter Weaver and Policeman Joseph Cooney, for the scene of danger.

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When they reached the dam they tethered their horses among the trees and prepared for a night of watching. It had been arranged that should a crisis come they were to signal by rockets to the telegraph operator at Fanwood, and he was to send a thrill of warning along the wire to Plainfield. If a message that the dam had burst reached the city the fire and church bells were to be rung, and the alarm would be quickly spread. This would give the people possibly an hour’s start of the water, and those along the banks of Green Brook, Stony Brook and Cedar Brook would have time to escape to the higher ground.

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Meanwhile, however, Mr. Ackerman’s men had been far from idle. They had worked strenuously to repair the breaks in the dam, but as the rush of waters was constantly undoing their labor they turned their attention to the flood-gates, which had been closed for many years, all choked with mud, weeds and debris. They labored patiently to open the gates, but for some time all efforts were without avail. At length. However, they built a raft, floated out on the lake to the top of the gates and by applying almost superhuman strength and coupling with it admirable ingenuity they forced an opening and gradually enlarged it to its full extent. Through the sluice-way now poured the waters, and during the remainder of the night, despite the severe thunder-storm and the consequent heavy ingress of swelling streams, the level of the lake steadily sank lower and lower.

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The attempts to open the gates were attended with much peril. During a freshet nearly two years ago [note, it was just a year earlier] Frank Hossinger was drowned while engaged in the selfsame work.

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Chief Carey and his companions spent an adventurous night. At a quarter past eight o’clock there arose a violent storm, a repetition of the heavy rain-torrents which had prevailed since Monday. Vivid lightenings [sic] flashed almost incessantly, and the clouds poured forth a deluge. In the forests about the men trees smitten by nature’s batteries crashed to earth, but they pluckily remained at their posts until six o’clock this morning, when they returned to Plainfield with the welcome news that all danger was past.

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The great Feltville dam runs straight across the mountain gap, and Mayor Male yesterday afternoon proposed to Mr. Ackerman, the owner, that two massive stone piers be erected below it, and that a horseshoe of rock be built, with the ends against the piers and the keystones against the centre of the dam, the space between being filled in with broken stone and cement.

“It shall be done”—said Mr. Ackerman.

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The front page of the Plainfield Evening News, which carried the above article also included descriptions of some flooding which did occur in Plainfield, which required the rescue of a “Mrs. Hawley and her mother, who were rescued from drowning at the rear of French’s Mills,” and the following:

While the waters were rising Tuesday Borough Fire Chief H.J. Martin was shoeing a horse in his shop. The water drove him out and he had to finish his work in the street. Soon afterwards the dams burst and his shop was wrecked.

It is not clear which, if any dams, did indeed burst, since the newspaper indicates that the ones at Feltville held, following the partial opening of their flood gates by the team whose efforts were so lauded.

MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE SCHOOLHOUSE

There is a brief tantalizing mention in emails from Anna’s granddaughters of the one-room schoolhouse, which had been built during the days when Feltville was a mill village, and which was located up at the top of the road through the village, at the place where it intersects with current day Glenside Avenue. The site is now a parking lot. When Judy Walsh read copies of the letters Anna had written in the 1960s to James Hawley and my grandfather, Judy was sorry to note that “There was nothing about the one-room-school, which she’d talked about to us.”³² Unfortunately, Judy did not expand on what Anna had said about the schoolhouse.

But even the brief mention of conversation between the granddaughters and Anna about the one-room-school house sets up a bit of a mystery about what the building was used for during the resort period. While there is information suggesting that Warren Ackerman used it as a kind of gate house for the resort, Researcher Linda Brazaitis found a report of it being refurbished for expanded use as a schoolhouse in the same year Warren bought the resort:

Here is one interesting tidbit I just read in the “Report of the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, For the School Year Ending August 31^st, 1882”: “The new school-house at Feltville, No. 16 (school district number), has been completed and furnished ready for the new school year.” It could comfortably seat 65 children. Hum, what to make of that? Warren Ackerman bought the property August 9, 1882.³³

What to make of that, indeed? It seems likely to me that the state would want to get the value of their renovations, and continue use of the schoolhouse, although the building as we understand it hardly seems large enough to seat 65 children. Was there another Feltville schoolhouse somehow being referenced?

THE ICE HOUSE

The Walsh sisters were intrigued by their grandmother Anna’s stories of the ice house, where Anna’s father stored ice cut from the lake for the resort months, although, as with the schoolhouse they did not recount more than that they had heard Anna talk of it. I was fortunate to find two Plainfield Courier-News articles about cutting the ice in the winter of 1901:

The ice on the Feltville pond is six inches thick. It is clear and of an excellent quality. As soon as it becomes eight inches thick it will be cut.³⁴

This was followed two days later with the following item:

Thomas Malloy [sic], keeper of Glenside Park, started to cut the ice on the pond yesterday. The ice is as hard as flint and is ten inches thick. It will take several days to harvest the entire crop.³⁵

A NOTE ABOUT HORSES AND CATTLE AT THE RESORT

I was very pleased to find the little snippet about Thomas winning a “fast road horse” Thomas had won in a New Year’s Eve drawing in 1903, which I included above. Although the granddaughters did not have stories to tell about horses at the resort, they were charmed when Linda Brazaitis found the 1905 auction announcement (a great source for some cultural history explorations). The announcement lists three horses and one cow to be auctioned off.

Apparently a local person provided additional horses for use during at least the 1902 resort season:

John Alberts has furnished the Summer visitors at Glenside Park with two horses and carriages for use during the season.³⁶

I can imagine the resort guests taking fine carriage rides with John Alberts’ horses and carriages—and maybe, with Thomas’ fast road horse.

Similarly, locals were sending cattle to the village for the summer:

James Guttridge, William Linden and B.J. Elliott have taken some of their cattle to the Malloy [sic] farm at Glenside Park to pasture.³⁷

ONE DOWNRIGHT WEIRD ARTICLE MENTIONING GLENSIDE PARK

In 1896, there appeared the weirdest newspaper piece I have found mentioning Glenside Park:

Twelve thousand Spaniards hold themselves in readiness to invade the United States. All they want is guns and a place to land. That shouldn’t bother them. Let them land anywhere, at Greenbrook or Glenside Park.³⁸

Presumably this is an indicator that war with Spain, which did actually occur in 1898, was imminent.

AND A NOTE ABOUT BASEBALL

No, neither Anna nor her granddaughters ever mentioned baseball at Glenside Park. But, in the spirit of building on my previous post about golf, which Thomas did establish at Glenside Park, I present one other little item from Thomas’ and Annie’s last season at the resort:

The local ball team will cross bats with a team from Newark at Glenside Park tomorrow afternoon.³⁹

ANNA’S DUAL ROLES IN THE SUMMER OF 1914

The granddaughters’ emails contain considerable discussion and speculation about where the Molloys lived after leaving Glenside Park upon Thomas’ and Annie’s retirement from managing the resort. As for Anna, as noted above, she married fairly shortly after the Molloys left the village, had a child, moved with her husband to Arizona in an effort to keep him alive, and moved back to her previous home in Summit when he died. While still living in that home, she took on the management of the resort for the summer of 1914.

That summer is a big deal in my mind, because the resort hosted three then-well-known authors who will be profiled in the next post. However, at the same time, Anna’s Summit home was the location where a number of Fresh Air children were being hosted, as noted in articles found by Sergei Kent (a colleague of Linda Brazaitis):

Fresh Air Work in Summit

The first group of children from the ‘Slums of New York and Brooklyn who have been given two weeks of good Summit air, were returned to their homes on Friday, and the second group of twenty children have arrived. The camp, which is under the direction of the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn, is located in Mrs. Anna Walsh’s house on Division avenue near Valley View avenue. Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Collins, of the Boulevard, who were formerly members of the Brooklyn church, have been actively interested in this work and have served on the committee for several years, and given a great deal of personal attention to the details from season to season. The matron is Mrs. Fred Oltman.⁴⁰

Another article described spoke of the second group of Fresh Air children at Anna’s Summit home:

Fresh Air Children.

The second group of children from the slums of New York and Brooklyn, who have been given two weeks of good Summit air, were returned to their homes last Thursday, and the third group of twenty children arrived on the same evening. The camp, which is under the direction of the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn, is located in Mrs. Anna Walsh’s house on Division avenue near Valley View avenue. The matron is Mrs. Fred Oldman.⁴¹

One last article was found:

Summit Fresh Air Work

Eighty-six poor children from various parts of Brooklyn, have this summer two weeks of Summit’s fresh air and sunshine. Coming in parties of about twenty each, the children have enjoyed this rare treat under the direction of the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn. This fresh air home here has been in Mrs. Anna Walsh’s house on Division avenue near Valley View avenue. Mrs. Fred Oltman, the matron in charge, has rendered excellent service in her work with the children throughout the past two months as in previous seasons. The last group of children returned to their city homes on Thursday last. Throughout the season the people of the vicinity have been most kind and generous to the home in many ways. Fruit, vegetables, clothing, and best of all, time, thought and service have been given freely.⁴²

Granddaughter Nancy remembers visiting the house once:

She took us up to the house once and we stood on the porch. She pointed to where our Great Aunt Mame [Mary Walsh] lived and her daughter would run through the fields to Nana’s home. She was proud of the house that he built her. And, her comment that there were fields, lends itself to the idea that is was vaguely rural/suburbia).

Nancy goes on to speculate how the Summit home—and the nearby Glenside Park resort—may have been used for the Fresh Air children.

So maybe there were tents. And maybe, in 1914, she brought them out to Glenside to swim and run around in the woods.

A SUMMER OF WRITERS

You can look forward to a post about three writers who stayed at Glenside Park during the summer of 1914, Anna’s summer of resort management. One of them is the author still famous for the lines “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.” Until then!