Introducing Ella

INTRODUCING ELLA

I have already introduced Warren Ackerman, the man who managed to pay a pittance for a whole village at auction. The New York Times article that reported how he did that, nearly blow by blow, also reports that Warren already had in mind using it as a place for guests to stay. Creating not just a few cottages for friends, but an entire resort might have been in his mind, but it would not have been possible without some other individuals who fortunately showed up in Warren’s life.

One of these people is Ella King Adams, who with her husband, Frederic Adams, were friends of Warren’s, living at the time in East Orange, New Jersey. After one visit to the village with her family, Ella was recruited by Warren to lend him her assistance in the redesign of a mill village into a small, stylish, resort.

I first learned of Ella in a recollection from Anna Molloy Walsh, who lived and worked at the village during much of its resort period. She tells the following story:

A visitor to the Deserted Village was a family by the name of Mrs. Fredrick [sic] Adams—took a liking to the house [which Anna’s family had been living in] for a summer—so Mr. Ackerman repaired the adjoining cottage for us.

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

Warren Ackerman “did just that”—with five years of Ella’s help. Indeed, this was a fact so momentous as to be highlighted in both of the obituaries I have found for her. In the Summit Record, her obituary states:

For five years, the family spent their summers at Glenside, better known to old residents of this region as Feltville and saw that romantic spot transformed by the owner, Mr. Warner [sic] Ackerman, from a ruinous manufacturing hamlet into an attractive summer resort. To this result the activity and good taste of Mrs. Adams largely contributed.¹

Her obituary in the Summit Herald contained a similar description:

Upon the invitation of Mr. Ackerman, Mr. Adams and his family occupied one of his cottages for the summer, and Mr. Ackerman’s disposition to improve the estate was greatly aided for five years by the good taste and enthusiasm of Mrs. Adams.²

I have already described in previous posts some of the many resorts to which Ella could have taken herself and her family. Indeed, many stylish resorts were readily accessible by train in New Jersey, without the need to travel out of state. I wanted to get to know Ella, as a means of better understanding the decision she made to throw five years of her life into the making of a new resort.

So, I have searched for all the possible sources on Ella’s life and where possible, her thoughts. Ella, like many women of the nineteenth century, is more elusive than, for instance, her lawyer/judge husband. So, in searching for who Ella was, I have looked beyond her to the traces her beloved family has left as well.

ELLA AND HER FAMILY, SOME BASICS

Ella King was born in New Rochelle, N.Y. on February 26, 1848.³  Her father, John S. King, married Martha Messer and the two had their first child in 1844.⁴ Martha died two years after having the couple’s fifth child. Ella’s Summit Herald obituary says she spent her early life first in Geneva, NY, then in East Orange, New Jersey.⁵ The same obituary says that Ella’s father, probably after Martha’s death, moved the family to Putnam, Ohio (which the obituary indicates became a part of Zanesville, Ohio). Ella was living in Ohio in 1870, when Frederic Adams (often incorrectly written as Frederick Adams) came to marry her. Ella was 22 years old, and Frederic was eight years older, 30 years old.

In applying for a marriage license, Ella and Frederic were given the opportunity to certify that they were not closer kin than first cousins; the word “first” is crossed out and “second” hand-written in. Thus, the two certified they were not closer than second cousins, which suggests that they may have been second cousins.

Frederic had also lived in East Orange, although given the age difference between him and Ella, it is not clear if the two were ever living in that town at the same time prior to their marriage. Frederic’s father, Frederic Augustus Adams, who had trained and worked as both a minister and teacher in various parts of New England, moved his family to East Orange in 1847, the year before Ella was born. I will refer to Frederic Augustus Adams as “FA,” in order to distinguish him from his son Frederic, Ella’s husband. In the 1850 census, the family members listed in FA’s household are FA himself, his wife Mary Jane Means Adams, and his sister-in-law—Mary Jane’s sister—Nancy Ellis Means.⁶ I will discuss the unique circumstances of the family’s move to East Orange later in this post.

Over time, I have taken special notice of “Aunt Ellis.” Nancy Ellis Means never married, but became beloved “Aunt Ellis,” first to young Frederic, and later to Ella and all of her children. There is a cache of documents called the “MaryJane Means Adams Family Papers, 1846 to 1956” in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society.⁷ Many of the letters in this collection are letters to Aunt Ellis, who seemed to move around a bit. She also stayed for extended times with various family members; as noted, she lived with her sister and his husband in Orange/later East Orange for some years; subsequent letters suggest she later lived with Frederic the son, and his family in Summit and East Orange.

Frederic, the son, himself was the only surviving child of the four children born to Mary Jane and Frederic Augustus Adams. He and his family have proved significantly easier to trace than Ella and her parents.

Frederic, the son, attended Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass, graduating in 1858. He was admitted to Yale College and graduated with an A.B. degree in 1862. A biography found in the Mary Janes Means Adams Family Papers indicates that “During the years 1863-1864 he pursued a course of study at Harvard Law School and after study in New Jersey and New York, was admitted to the Bar of New York City in 1864.”⁸ However, it was New Jersey where he ultimately decided to practice law, which he did for the rest of his career life, being admitted to the New Jersey bar as an attorney in 1868 (and as “counselor” in 1873).

After marrying Ella in 1870, Frederic settled the two of them in East Orange, a few blocks away from where his parents were living. By 1880, ten years into their marriage, the couple was living on Baldwin Street in East Orange, at the corner of Baldwin and Williams.⁹ They had three children by this time, Constance, born 1874, John King, born 1878, and Ellis, born in 1880. Two Irish women lived with the family as servants.

The couple subsequently had two additional children, Rebecca Appleton Adams, in 1881 and Frederic Atherton Adams, in 1889. Frederic was so moved by the birth of his daughter Rebecca, that he composed a poem in her honor, apparently stopping to do so under a streetlight on his way to tell his parents the happy news.¹⁰

There are tantalizing references in both of Ella’s obituary to a move, apparently around 1889 to “a farm near Berkeley Heights.”¹¹ The move appears to have coincided with the end of Ella’s work at the resort, but I have not found further details on this. In 1891, the family, or perhaps Frederic, decided to move to Summit “to which community his family had become attached by ties of personal, church, and school associations.”¹² Ella died in 1896, at the age of only 48, after the family had moved to a new home built on the Fernwood Road of Summit.

Frederic was still living in Summit in 1900, and Aunt Ellis had moved back in with the family.¹³ He subsequently moved the family back to East Orange.

EAST ORANGE AND NEWARK

As noted above, Anna Molloy Walsh, who will make her appearance in a future post, has left us a list of many of the individuals who came to stay at the resort created from the Deserted Village. I was struck by how many of them were from Newark. People were using the lovely small Glenside Park resort as a place to escape the City of Newark.

Rather early on in my research, it became evident that the city—and seemingly, Newark in particular—was an unhealthy place to be during the summer in the late nineteenth century  if one had the means to escape. It was Stuart Galishoff’s Newark, The Nation’s Unhealthiest City that introduced me to the hazards of disease in that city, where in 1881, infant deaths were 21 percent of all deaths in the city, and “almost two of every ten infants died before their first birthday.” ¹⁴ In a table on page 96 of his book, Galishoff shows that for every year between 1871 through 1890, except 1880 and 1881, Newark’s death rate exceeded that of Northern and Western Cities in the United States. The diseases which might strike infants or anyone included malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases.

Nor was it only the poor who died from these diseases. John Holmes Ballantine, one of three sons of Peter Ballantine, the founder of P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, which by 1879 was the sixth largest brewery in the country, was among Newark’s wealthiest citizens. In 1885, he moved his family away from the factory, into a fashionable and presumably safer part of town, where he built a mansion where every detail was meant to denote wealth and status—no white walls, which were a sign of poverty¹⁵ but the beautifully decorated walls he did create, had to be washed regularly to remove the buildup of coal smoke endemic in the city. By this time, John had already lost four of his eight children. Historic displays at the Newark Museum, of which John’s home is now a part, revealed that the family lost their three eldest daughters to cholera.¹⁶

Ella did not live in Newark, but East Orange, a suburb which had split off of Newark. What was her home city like? I wanted to know what she was leaving behind during the summers she went off to Glenside Park/Feltville, and gauge whether she was seeking, as much as other guests of Glenside, a respite from potentially killing summer conditions.

What is now East Orange was originally part of New Jersey’s Newark Colony, known as the Mountain, or the “great Mountain Watchung.”¹⁷ According to historian David Lawrence Pierson, it was acquired in a second wave of land acquisitions for the colony. The initial Newark colony was started roughly contemporaneously with the Elizabethtown colony introduced in the last post. Pierson identifies the native groups involved in this transfer of the mountain land as “the Winacksop and Shenacktos Indians.”

Land hungry white colonists were quick to settle, finding a “paradise where the family could flourish on little or nothing from outside sources,”¹⁸ Pierson describes all manner of wild fruits and herbs, and fertile soil which could support any colonial crop, once the trees were removed. Regarding tree removal, he notes that the more mountainous territory was more heavily forested than the original colony lands. He further notes that New Jersey’s first historian, Samuel Smith, writing in 1750, indicated that “two or three men in one year will clear fifty acres, in some places sixty, and in some more,”¹⁹ which they did, as quickly as they could.

The mountain settlement was traversed by the Mt. Pleasant Turnpike, which Don and Marietta Dorflinger describe as running from Newark to Morristown, and beyond that, to Easton Pennsylvania, placing the community in a good position for commerce and giving rise to various early hotels for travelers.²⁰

Starting in the early nineteenth century, the area became known as Orange, and would later splinter into several towns including East Orange. In their 1964 book A Centennial History of East Orange, Mark A. Stuart and Jessie W. Boutellier credit the building of a “handsome home” by Matthias Ogden Halsted with a first building boom in the future East Orange.²¹ Henry Whittemore provides more detail in his book Founders and Builders of the Oranges: comprising a history of the outlying district of Newark, subsequently known as Orange, and of the later internal divisions; viz.: South Orange, West Orange, and East Orange, 1666-1896. Whittemore describes the home Halsted built as a “large elegant mansion with Corinthian pillars,” and indicated that the “building attracted great attention at the time as there was nothing like it in this part of New Jersey.”²² Halsted bought additional adjoining land, and laid out lots, building homes for his daughters and for “his New York friends” whom he “induced . . . to settle there.” He is credited with being East Orange’s first commuter, traveling to work via the D.L., & W. R.R. When he began commuting, there was no local station, so the train would make a stop at his home “for his individual accommodation,” according to Whittemore. Halsted subsequently used his own funds and land donated to the railroad to build a permanent railroad station, the first Brick Church station.

Frederic Adams was seven years old when his father moved the family to the portion of Orange which would later become East Orange. He left a recollection of what the community had been like when he arrived in 1847:

I wish I could show you Orange of 1847, the single track railroad along which a few trains drawn by queer little engines, passed at the beginning and end of the day, while in the interim (John) Sharp’s solitary horse car trundled over the rails to Newark and back again; Main street, unpaved, with sidewalks unflagged, lined for the most part with modest white houses, which were dark at night because of the inveterate practice of the residents to close the front windows with solid wooden shutters and to live in the rear rooms; the intersecting streets were hardly more than country lanes; Cherry street, now Arlington avenue, inhabited mostly by Baldwins; the sparsely settled road now, Prospect street, by which we boys used to go down to the lovely brook and millpond at Doddtown, or still further, to Bloomfield pond, an extensive sheet of water that long ago vanished like a mirage of the desert; that other quiet road, now Washington street, leading to Rosedale Cemetery, which then as now testified to the reverence of the living for the dead; Harrison street, lined with orchards and farms; the fields and woods, with brooks and ponds, that stretched eastwardly from Harrison street with hardly a break to Munn land; my own father’s home and schoolhouse, at the corner of Main street and Washington place, guarded by elms, in which the orioles loved to build their nests, with the garden and apple orchard extending to the railroad; the cheerful fire of the blacksmith’s forge across the way; the dignified and hospitable residence of Matthias Ogden Halsted; the Brick Church, with its wooden belfry like a bird-cage; the schoolhouse that stood behind it; Pierson’s hill, at the corner of Main and Hillyer streets, where there was coasting in the winter, at the top of which lived Doctor William Pierson, the elder; the old parsonage of massive stone, a little west of where Grace Church now stands, fallen from its high estate, presenting an aspect of “looped and windowed raggedness,” filled with miscellaneous tenantry, and whose roof was supposed, like charity, to cover a multitude of sins; over the way (across the Common), the neat home and shop of Deacon John Nicol where the shrewd and saintly whitesmith would administer to children the fearful joy of an electric shock, the only electricity then employed in Orange; here and there a hot shop or shoe factory, the nucleus of our manufacturing interests; the clear stream of Parrow brook running across Main street near the westerly end of Military Common and joining the Wigwam brook at Washington street; the First and St. Mark’s Church, in outward guise, much as they are today; the small frame structure of the Methodists, by the side of the Masonic Temple; the old Graveyard at Scotland street; the picturesque vale of Tory Corner; Eagle Rock, which it was just possible to reach by breaking and entering the close of a farmer and committing sundry trespasses thereon; the substantial homes of Bishop Whittingham and Simeon Harrison, where the Northfield road begins to climb the mountain; and most wonderful of all, the fine mansions and grounds of Mr. Pilot and Mr. Heckscher, where youthful eyes gazed with delight on the lions’ heads that flanked the gateway and spouted water into the basins below; the crystal rill flowing from the mineral spring over stones yellowed with the stain of iron and sulphur, the trim lawns the fountains, the gold fish, the pond where—

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“the swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet.”²³

There is also another shorter paragraph in the quote, but I will spare you, the reader. I confess I included the entire first paragraph above—one long, run-on sentence—partly in the pure delight of finding someone more guilty of overlong sentences than myself.

Orange was “detached” from Newark on November 27, 1806, and elected its first government the following year, but it was not until 1860 that it was officially incorporated as a city. Shortly after Orange’s incorporation, its First ward split off and became East Orange, which incorporated in 1863. In his book, East Orange in Vintage Postcards, Bill Hart indicates that East Orange seceded from Orange Township in order to avoid the desire of the Orange Township Committee to raise taxes, which the Orange city fathers intended to use “to create fire and police departments, pave roads, and erect street lamps.”²⁴ He also indicates that Orange opposed the separation of East Orange, at least in part because it was the wealthiest ward in the original Orange. Orange feared the loss of this ward would adversely impact the amount of taxes which could support desired improvements.

By splitting off, East Orange may have temporarily avoided the creation of roads, fire and police departments and erection of street lamps, but a later historian suggested that this left the new town in a backward state. In his 1890 book The Oranges and Their Points of Interest, Embracing Orange, East Orange, West Orange, South Orange and Orange Valley, John Austen Williams describes the condition of the town in the early 1860s, which may reflect their desire to avoid costly improvements:

Few regions have within the last thirty years exhibited such complete changes in social and material aspects, as has the vigorous and progressive township of East Orange. Thirty years ago the beautiful streets known now as Arlington avenue and Grove street, were then known as Cherry street and Whiskey lane. Both were narrow, dark roadways that were mudholes in the Winter and in time of rain, and in Summer were inches deep in dust. The houses on both of these avenues, as well as on Munn avenue, all of which are filled now with elegant residences, then had nothing but farm houses upon them, and these were few an far between. . . . Now, however, East Orange is growing in a much greater ratio than any of the other Oranges in population and wealth, as well as in local improvements; in fact, it is often called the banner township of Essex County.²⁵

East Orange’s citizens soon thought better of their desire to resist development of infrastructure. Main Street was “macadamized” in 1869, and other streets soon followed.²⁶ Installation of street lights were begun in 1868.²⁷ East Orange’s first water company was a private company which began to sell water to private customers in 1881²⁸ In 1885, steps for construction of a sewerage system were begun, ²⁹ and the entire town received sewerage services as of late 1888.³⁰ A fire company was created in the 1870s.³¹ A police department was apparently not needed until 1884.³² A board of health was created in 1885.³³ The City got its “first newspaper all its own,” in 1873.³⁴

By the later nineteenth century, East Orange had a very robust system of transportation connections, with stations on both the Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western Railroad (DL&W) and the Erie Railroad, which had extended its line into the town in 1876.³⁵ During the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century, the city eventually had three trolleys. Its first and only line (until 1888 and 1890 respectively), the Orange Trolley Line, ran into East Orange and Orange from Newark. Beginning with one track, It was originally horse drawn. It expanded to two tracks in 1869 but was prohibited from Sunday operation through East Orange until April 13, 1873, because of a concern that it would “desecrate the Sabbath.”³⁶

Ella and her family lived within a short distance of the Brick Church station; from here the train line ran east to Newark, where Frederic had his law office, and west to the town which would eventually be the carriage pick up station for the Glenside Park resort.

We don’t have Stuart Galishoff to tell us whether the East Orange of the 1880s had caught up with Newark in terms of disease and unhealthy conditions. The East Orange of the end of the decade is described thus:

The Township of East Orange, which is one of the most prosperous and enterprising municipalities in the County of Essex, contains only about four square miles of land, yet its population increases, as appears in the census of 1890. Its streets are well built up with handsome residences, as well as with imposing business structures, and it has the appearance of a thriving suburban city, which, in fact, it is. Its streets are all paved with Telford pavement and lighted with gas, and sewers are laid in nearly all of them. There are excellent police and fire departments, and the public schools of the town are admitted to be the finest in the State.³⁷

East Orange had gone from the country haven of Frederic’s childhood memory, to a proud and ever growing city. 

FREDERIC AUGUSTUS ADAMS STRUGGLES WITH A SCHOOL

I am making a deeper dive into one piece of East Orange history, examining the interesting educational effort which first brought the Adams family to East Orange. It was Frederic’s father, also named Frederic (who you remember had the middle name Augustus, and whom I am calling FA), who brought the family to the future East Orange. As I writer, I was very struck by the choice of words used by author William H. Shaw to describe how FA Adams was called to lead a newly created school, and by the description of the “enterprise” itself:

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THE BRICK CHURCH YOUNG LADIES’ SEMINARY

An important enterprise, which drew much attention at its beginning and during the years of its continuance, came to the front in the year 1847. Matthias O. Halsted, a prominent citizen of liberal views residing in the vicinity of the Brick Church, saw growing up around him many young ladies of various ages not favored with educational advantages commensurate with their possibilities, and the claims which they had upon the society in which they moved. Regarding this state of things as furnishing some one an opportunity for usefulness, he conceived the idea of a seminary of a high order for the benefit of this class of young people, as well as for our own citizens as for any such who might be attracted from abroad.

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In pursuance thereof, he fitted up a two and a half story building, standing upon the west corner of Main Street and Washington Place, a building with had been erected about twelve years before by Amos W. Condit, another prominent citizen of that neighborhood, for a store and manufactory. This building had fallen into disuse upon the death of Mr. Condit, and by a proper arrangement of partitions and stairways, with a hot-air furnace in the cellar, was soon in the condition for the reception of pupils.

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Rev. F. A. Adams, a graduate of Dartmouth, was selected as the principal of the institution, and he was domiciled in the dwelling-house adjoining thereto, a building now standing, and in about 1875 converted into a store.

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The seminary opened under the most favorable circumstances. Thirty-six persons were enrolled the first day. Regarded as a necessity of the time and place, it was soon filled with the class of students for which it was designed, drawing also some from abroad, who were domesticated in the family of the principal.

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Continuing for five years in its original location, furnished at the sole expense of the founder, it became necessary to have enlarged facilities for the grand purposes of the institution, which necessity led to the organization of a company of gentlemen for providing the means for placing the enterprise upon a larger basis. The company purchased the property extending from Main Street to the railroad, including a large and eligible vacant lot, upon which they erected a concrete building, planned to suit the wants of the school. In this building Mr. Adams continued as principal another five years, when finding rest and recreation to be a stern necessity, he retired from the position, with the regrets of patrons and pupils. After the retirement of Mr. Adams the institution passed to the management of other instructors, who, yielding to adverse circumstances, abandoned the field, and the seminary building is now occupied as a dwelling.

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The ten and more years of this young ladies’ institute mark a very important era in our history. Its advent was exceedingly opportune, supplying a great popular want at a period in which the material aid necessary to create and continue it was ready at hand. No one ever felt poorer for patronizing it, and all became richer for the intellectual stimulus and force which it was so highly instrumental in providing.

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After a season of refreshment, and two years’ management of the Newark Academy, Mr. Adams resumed his labors in Orange, and for about twenty years conducted a select school for boys with such continuity and success as to fully justify the popular regard for him as the veteran teacher of the city.³⁸

This passage is interesting on many levels, including the careful selection of words by author William Shaw in describing the students to be served. Who are these “young ladies of various ages not favored with educational advantages commensurate with their possibilities, and the claims which they had upon the society in which they moved?” The section later refers to them as “this class of young people,” distinct, apparently, from “our own citizens.” Why is the author calling them “young people” or “citizens,” which are gender neutral terms—when the whole aim of the institution was to serve an underserved population of “young ladies” in the first place?

The passage states that the school was “soon filled with the class of students for which it was designed, drawing also some from abroad, who were domesticated in the family of the principal”—the latter, being FA Adams. Seeking to find out who these “domesticated” students might be, I looked at the census of 1850 for the listing on the home of FA Adams.³⁹ The household included four family members, FA, his wife Mary Jane, their son, Frederic and Mary Jane’s sister, Nancy Ellis Means. There were eight additional female residents: Elizabeth Page, age 22, from Vermont, her sister Abby Page, age 24, Saphronia Jerrett, age 15, from Ohio, Josephine Day, age 15, from New York, Elizabeth Tompkins, age 17, from New Jersey, Anna Reford, age 15, with no place of origin specified, Bridget O’Conner, age 21, from Ireland, and Ellen McCarty, age 19, with no place of origin specified, but likely also Ireland. In the margin of the census record book, the census taker had written “Select School.”

If “domesticated” means that the young ladies to be educated were or would be servants, what does Shaw mean when he suggests that the school was meant to provide “educational advantages commensurate with their possibilities, and the claims which they had upon the society in which they moved?”

Finally, why was the school such an “important enterprise in Shaw’s mind? Why did the leading of such an important enterprise apparently drive FA to a need to “retire,” apparently retiring to a position out of town at the Newark Academy? Why did the Seminary ultimately fail, after Adams had left its employ?

ELLA’S VIEWS OF HERSELF AS A WOMAN

I was drawn to the description of FA’s attempts at a school for certain young ladies partly as a means of gaining insight into views he might have had on the education of girls and women, views he might have perhaps passed to his son on the abilities of women. If Frederic wrote Ella’s obituaries, he was celebrating the skills and talents she exercised in helping Warren Ackerman design Glenside Park, the resort. But the Summit Record obituary, even though an obituary ostensibly about Ella, credits Frederic with being the decision maker for a move to Summit in 1891. Again, as a writer observing word choice, I found it a bit odd to suddenly be focusing on the actions of someone other than the subject of the obituary—and I instantly suspected Frederic of being the obituary’s author. But the Summit Herald obituary instead says that “the family” moved to Summit.

Much better evidence on Ella’s own attitudes towards the abilities of women comes in a letter to her Aunt Ellis about a year before her death. Ella recounts the following exchange with the architect engaged in creating the plans for the family’s new home:

The Architect called one day last week and we spent nearly three hours together over the plans—making a few alterations and discussing matters. When we got through he said, Mrs. Adams you ought to have been an Architect. I told him if I had my life to live over I thought I should study to be one. I am sure I think women could be.⁴⁰

Ella’s Summit Record obituary says that she “inherited from both her parents a generous and sunny nature, with great force of character and executive capacity,”⁴¹ suggesting that whoever wrote the obituary recognized her “executive capacity.”

I also thought that Ella and her views on what women were capable of might be reflected in the choices her two daughters made for their lives. Constance went off to be an actress. She married Cecil B. DeMille who went on to be one of Hollywood’s early movie makers. Cecil, in his autobiography indicates that Constance was only able to begin her career as an actress after her “father, a New Jersey judge, had finally succumbed to her campaign to go on the stage against all objections.”⁴² The couple spent their early career going from place to place following acting opportunities, before ending up in Hollywood, where Constance ended up supporting Cecil’s career more than her own. Constance, with her stepmother, (the second) Ella King Adams, became full partners with Cecil and Neil McCarthy in Cecil B. DeMille Productions, one of Cecil’s companies.⁴³ Cecil’s autobiography shows how much he relied on and valued Constance’s input into business decisions.

Rebecca apparently went on to be a nurse and never married. An envelope in which she had sent clippings to a relative in 1923 ended up in the Mary Jane Means Adams Family Papers. The reverse of the envelope reveals that she was working at the New Jersey State Hospital at Greystone Park, NJ in that year. On June 15, 1927, The Montclair Times, on page 16, contained the following short announcement:

Meeting on Occupational Therapy

An invitation to those interested in the development of occupational therapy to attend a luncheon and meeting at the New Jersey State Hospital at Greystone Park on Wednesday, June 22, from 1 to 3 o’clock, has been extended by Miss Rebecca Adams, of Greystone Park. It is pointed out in the invitation that occupational therapy has won its place in the life of the modern hospital, each year showing an increase in the variety of institutions which have added one of more occupational therapists to their staffs.⁴⁴

Although the piece indicates that occupational therapy is gaining ground in “the modern hospital,” Rebecca’s hospital, Graystone, served the mentally ill. The field had grown as a result of the need to treat “shell shocked” soldiers who had been involved in the First World War.⁴⁵ A trained architect who had seen the benefits of “directed occupation” in his recovery from mental illness is credited with first using the term in a meeting in 1914; by 1917 the United States had its first national organization, the National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy, later the American Occupational Therapy Association.⁴⁶ Rebecca would have been still among the early exponents of the practice.

ELLA PASSES ON A LOVE FOR NATURE—AND APPARENTLY A LACK OF FEAR

One of Ella’s most striking characteristics, and one relevant to her work at Glenside Park was her love of the country and nature. Ella’s “fondness for the country was intense,” declares her Summit Herald obituary. Indeed, later in life, when she arrived in Summit, although her health precluded her from herself joining many activities, including outdoor ones, she seems to have instilled a lack of fear in her children about outdoor activities. She probably influenced the family decision to move there based on the fact that Summit was still much more “country” than East Orange, which, as has been discussed above was celebrating its arrival at being a suburban city. In a letter to Aunt Ellis dated January 2, 1895, Ella reports on what seem to be nearly nonstop coasting and skating excursions and parties for all of her children. She reports that Rebecca had an “accident in coasting, her poor nose seems fated, it was badly bruised and scratched but the swelling went down and she looked quite presentable at the grand skating party last evening—and on Monday she had another accident while coasting on the hill up by the [Schulz]—they were on some arrangement like enormous snow shoes that you guide by a spiked stick—and the one she was on caught on the root of a tree that was sticking up in the ground –it scratched her very badly and twisted her so that the inner muscles of her legs high up were strained and swelled—she could hardly walk.” ⁴⁷ After “hot water applications and carbolic salve” Rebecca is recovered enough to go to a dance. Ella’s youngest child, Frederic also scrapes his cheek, leaving him looking “quite disfigured.” Ella never suggests that she used these injuries as a reason to keep any of her children from any future such activity. She merely comments “the ice cold snow is very hard on ones skin if they come in contact and yet it makes great fun as both skating and coasting are good.”

Even Constance seems caught up in the constant whirl of coasting parties, shirking her duties to help “Miss Patsy,” whomever that is, with sewing.

Further evidence of the fearless attitude instilled in Ella’s children towards the outdoors and outdoor activities comes from a letter written by Aunt Helen, sister to both Ella’s mother-in-law and her beloved Aunt Ellis. Aunt Helen sends six and a half year old Rebecca “the smallest note you can think of.”⁴⁸ In the letter, Aunt Helen thanks Rebecca for a photograph she has sent of herself, saying:

It reminds me very much of the little girl who drove me in the donkey cart at Glenside, and sat so upright and at home, unconscious of the cold, while the donkey joggled us over the road, & raced us down the hill, faster than I ever through a donkey cart could go.

Clearly, Ella took Aunt Helen to Glenside Park during the years Ella was working on the resort, and more tellingly, allowed her daughter to jaunt around the rather rustic village as she pleased in a little donkey cart.

Ella’s love for country and the outdoors also extended to a love for nature. In a letter dated October 24, 1887 from Ella to her father in law, FA, she describes her “little School,” where she is teaching her children at home.⁴⁹ Of course, she knows that FA Adams, the consummate educator, will be interested in this. After discussing her success with efforts in teaching spelling, figures and tables, reading and Geography, Ella goes on to tell her father in law that every day she reads the children a chapter from The Child’s Book of Nature.

The Child’s Book of Nature was originally published in 1857, a three-volume work by Dr. Worthington Hooker. Hooker spent at least 15 years as a faculty member at the Medical School of Yale University (then, Yale College), and wrote for both children and adults. His book Patient and Physician, published in 1849, and various other essays and addresses dealt with the weighty topics of medical ethics, proper disclosure from physicians to patients, and medical quackery, both intentional and that based on physician error.

The version of The Child’s Book of Nature which I found online is dated 1882, which is after Hooker’s death, but no editorial note indicates that it has been revised in the 30 years since its first publication.⁵⁰ The book has three parts, Part I being on Plants, Part II on Animals, and Part III on Air, Water, Heat, Light, &c. Each part has a series of short lessons, 3 or 4 pages in length, with useful sidebar boxes reminding the user of the subject being covered in the adjacent paragraph. Each lesson ends with a series of review questions.

Hooker’s book starts with a description of a “radical error in education:” the fact that shutting a child up in a school room, and teaching nothing but “spelling, reading, arithmetic, geography, etc.,” keeps a child from learning and observing nature. Hooker believes that parents and teachers often ignore teaching about the natural world because they themselves have not been “taught aright,” and are “not in possession of the information which is needed for the guidance of children in the observation of nature.”⁵¹ He aims to rectify this with his book, which can be used by both teachers at school and mothers teaching at home (he assumes all his users will be female). Hooker works his way to making more difficult topics accessible to his readers by proceeding through a careful progression. His preface suggests that the book and its divisions are meant for children from around ages six to eight. I suspect his approach resonated heavily with Ella. At the time of her letter, Constance seems to be absent (Constance almost always seems to be absent, off visiting relatives or making trips to New York). Ella is teaching ten-year-old John, eight-year-old Ellis, and seven-year-old Rebecca.

I have read only selected parts of the lengthy book. One thing which struck me are the integration of Christian Biblical teachings into the various lessons. For instance, in the very first lesson, entitled “Our Love for Flowers,” Hooker tells the reader:

It was a garden in which Adam and Eve were placed. While they were innocent and pure God surrounded them with beautiful things, because he loved them so much. Before they sinned they lived among the flowers and trees of the garden of Eden. It was more beautiful than any garden that had been seen since that time. It was so beautiful that God would not let Adam and Eve stay in it after they had sinned.⁵²

The same chapter also includes a story about a man imprisoned for supposed treason by Emperor Napoleon, whose release came about because he loved a flower which appeared and grew in the prison yard—not “by chance,” Hooker assures us, for “God sent that seed there, and made it lodge in the right place to have it grow.”

Hooker does get to the scientific understanding of the time. He tells his readers that every part of any plant is “made from the sap,” and similarly, that every part of a human being is:

. . . made from the blood. The blood, then, is to your body what sap is to a plant. It is the common building material of the body.

Perhaps most striking is Hooker’s desire to instill curiosity and a lifelong desire for learning in his young (and not so young) readers. Hooker’s conclusion promises the child that if he or she goes about the world with “your mind wide, you will see and hear, as you go about, a great deal many interesting things that I have not mentioned.” He goes on to exhort:

To know much about things, you must not merely look at them. You must examine them—that is, you must think while you look. You must think what this is for and what that is for. In this way you can find out a great deal for yourselves. You will not merely see that what I and others tell you is true, but you will find out things that no one has told you, and perhaps some things that no one has found out before you.

Ella reports that her children are “very much interested in” the daily chapters read from The Child’s Book of Nature.

Separate from Ella’s daily readings, her husband Frederic:

. . . has bought a new book called the Book of Worthies by Miss Yonge—he reads it to John and tells it to him at the same time for it is rather too deep for John—last eve, we had Alex the Great and to day King David—it is a very interesting book and would just suit Constance—

The Book of Worthies was written by a well-known nineteenth-century writer, Charlotte M. Yonge, who published hundreds of books in her lifetime, most of them for younger readers. One of her novels, the romance The Heir of Redclyffe, was so financially successful that Yonge was able to donate the proceeds from the book to the Anglican Bishop of New Zealand to finance a missionary ship.⁵³ Yonge was one of the most popular and most read authors of her time.

The Book of Worthies is based around the premise that the world has been a battleground since sin came into it and uses stories of thirteen individuals to demonstrate “the characteristics of every true and rightminded man, woman, and child.”⁵⁴ The individuals profiled in the book are Joshua, David, Hector, Aristides, Nehemiah, Xenophon, Epaminondas, Alexander, Marcus Curius Dentatus, Cleomenes, Scipio Africanus, Judas Maccabeus, and Julius Caesar.

I skimmed the chapters Frederic was reading to the children and found each very long and rather dull—and, as Ella pointed out, requiring substantial explanation for children of John’s age and younger. It is interesting that Ella believes that the book would suit the absent 14-year-old Constance.

ELLA’S DEVOTION TO CHURCH

It is likely that the integration of Christian belief into The Book of Nature was attractive to Ella, since she demonstrates a devotion to Christian faith. In one letter, she describes a tragic accident which took the life of a young man known well to the family, Will Grant, and she seemed concerned that he had not been religious, in spite of having “had a religious training.”⁵⁵

Ella’s devotion to Grace Episcopal Church in Orange was enough that her former pastor was one of the two officiants of her funeral, even seven or more years after the family moved away from East Orange.⁵⁶ Rev. Alexander Mann is identified in the Summit Record obituary as “assistant rector of Grace church Orange, an old friend and former pastor of the family and godfather of its youngest member.”⁵⁷ The other officiant was the rector of Ella’s Summit church, Calvary Episcopal Church, Rev. Walker Gwynne.

Interestingly, during the same year in which Ella had married Frederic and moved to East Orange, her father in law FA Adams had been instrumental in establishing a new church, the Trinity Congregational Church in the Brick Church area of East Orange. ⁵⁸ FA’s obituary indicates he had also been a member of the Brick Church.⁵⁹ It appears that Ella was a devoted Episcopalian, and thus not inclined to join either of the churches of her father-in-law.

NEXT MONTH—ELLA AND WARREN DESIGN A RESORT

As with all of the “characters” involved in this research project, I am limited to occasional snippets in the character’s own voice, bolstered by formal records and more general historical context. In piecing together enough of Ella King Adams to understand the decisions that she made in signing on to redesign Feltville into Glenside Park, I feel lucky to have had the serendipitous fortune of Ella’s letters, and those of other close family members, found in the New Hampshire Historical Society. I am indebted to them for their courtesy and assistance to me.

Profiling Ella has made her seem less of a jumble to me. Ella appears to have been a woman devoted to family and church, and intensely interested in nature and the outdoors, and wanting her children to have the same passion. She was satisfied and happy with her life, but still feels that if she could do it over, she might have become an architect, expressing full confidence that women could pursue such a career.

Next month I will delve more into the beginnings of the resort. Until then!