Hearing Anna’s Voice: Anna as the Source of Revelations

HEARING ANNA’S VOICE: ANNA AS THE SOURCE OF REVELATIONS

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Last month, I let Anna Molloy Walsh, tell you about the connections her family used to get her out of Newark and into the country, to a place where she could recover from malaria and live to grow up. This month I bring you more of Anna’s voice, given to us in a set of letters to and interviews from 1964, when both James Hawley, author of The Deserted Village and the Blue Brook Valley, and my grandfather, Edwin A. Baldwin were in touch with the 84-year-old Anna. Anna’s reference to malaria, the disease which sent her to the Village, was not the last of the revelations in the documents she left. Anna’s voice, lovingly preserved in the letters and interviews and in additional oral recollections she passed down to her grandchildren, have alerted me to crucial elements in the Village’s history as the resort Glenside Park.

A DOOMED MANSION

After describing how her father secured a job and place to live from Warren Ackerman, Anna described her first impressions of the Deserted Village.

. . . in May 1884, we moved over to the Deserted Village and occupied the old mansion house which I remember as being large. I lived in a room with shelves all around the room (library, perhaps). We were only there about a month when the house was condemned as being unsafe, so we moved to one of the front cottages which had been fixed over for us.¹

This contained a bit of information every bit as significant to me as the malaria discovery—Anna remembered living with her family in David Felt’s mansion!

In order to understand the momentousness of this, I will have to tell you just a bit about who David Felt was, since I have not yet done detailed posts about him on this website. I also have to introduce you to some of the members of what we have been calling the “Feltville Research Team,” which has existed somewhat informally since the 1990s.

David Felt was the person who changed a landscape of family farms into a self-contained, New England style mill village. His village, Feltville, operated successfully from 1845 to 1860, when Felt sold the Village and moved back to New York. There is a summary of his activities in the Village history that Matt Tomaso, Carissa Scarpa and I wrote at Historic Overview of Feltview.

Matt and Carissa; two professional archaeologists, and I are part of the Feltville Research Team. Mstt and Carissa have also done considerable on-the-ground-work at the Village as part of the Feltville Archaeology Project, which Matt directs. Dan Bernier, Natural and Historic Resources Manager for Union County Parks, is the founding member of the Feltville Research Team.

At the time I first found Anna’s letters and interviews, I had not yet met Matt or Carissa, but I already knew Dan. Dan was the first one to support my idea of writing a book on the Village to succeed the Hawley book. One of his earliest examples of support was to put out a press release about the research efforts I was undertaking. That release netted me not only the contact who led us to Roberto de la Selva, the muralist of House 7, but many other contacts.

When I met him, Dan had already been studying history for the Village for some time, and we learned much from each other. But we found that we had two issues of historic fact that we differed on. One of these issues was whether or not David Felt had maintained a mansion at the Village.

Anna’s description of living in the mansion one of two purportedly eyewitness accounts of the mansion, the first being the travelogue-type article entitled “A Deserted Village,” by Elizabeth Shepard, which appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 7, 1888. This article described a walk through the Village, probably around 1883 or 1884, and describes the mansion as being in rather poor condition. You may recall that I picked the article apart in my post at The Persistence of the Deserted Village Part 1. It is not to be wondered at that Dan might have a similarly skeptical opinion and think that what she described as a mansion was a fanciful interpretation of some other building. There had been no physical evidence found of a mansion.

Dan’s skepticism about the existence of a mansion was shared by Matt Tomaso when he began working at the Village on the Feltville Archaeology Project. While I was respectful of their expertise—Matt had led numerous archaeological explorations at the Village and Dan actually lives there full time, besides being Natural And Historic Resources Manager—I still trusted the accounts of the mansion, particularly Anna’s account. Matt was particularly skeptical of the mansion location shown in the Hawley book.

The Hawley book contains a line drawn map specially created to accompany the book, identified as “done by James B. Hawley and Mrs. Robert Badgley,” which shows their understanding of the location of buildings and other built features throughout all periods of Village history. The book also contains a sepia toned picture that takes up the two pages of the book’s centerfold, and is meant to be a picture of Feltville as David Felt created it, from 1845 to 1860 (the latter probably done by “Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Young”). There is a smaller reproduction of the same Feltville picture on the page before, which serves as the key to the larger picture.

The map and picture have some very obvious errors. The first building on the left is identified as one of the workers’ cottages, rather than what we now believe it to have been, namely David Felt’s Village office or control center. The tall tower/two story structure attached to the right side of the Church-Store (looking from the front) did not exist during Felt’s time but was one of the Adirondack style additions made when the Village was converted into a resort. The map and picture also include many buildings which no longer exist or have not been shown to ever exist. Several of the workers’ cottages are known to have existed and known to have been demolished. But other structures or features may simply have been imagined by Hawley and Badgley.

Thus the mansion was one of a number of buildings shown whose existence was questioned. Two others in question are structures designated in the map and picture as men’s and women’s dormitories for the single workers in David Felt’s mill village.

Then Matt found the mansion. He has stated that he was channeling his “inner Priscilla Hayes” (okay, I like telling that part of the story way too much), chatting up an older visitor to the site to find out some tidbit of history. All the visitor wanted to talk about was blackberry bushes, so Matt was scuffing the ground impatiently with his shoe. His scuffing unearthed a corner of the mansion’s ruins.

How had the mansion disappeared in the first place? The original road through that area of the Village had made almost a right-angle turn; when the road was rerouted later to accommodate automobile traffic, with a more gradual curved turn, much of the mansion disappeared under the newly paved road.

THE REAL LESSON BEHIND THE “DISAPPEARANCE” OF THE MANSION

The real lesson behind the skepticism about and later discovery of the mansion, is that history and archaeology are sister disciplines. At their best, each gives valuable insight into the narratives of history eventually created for a place or a set of events. Here, historical accounts were suggesting that there had been a mansion, but there seemed no physical evidence. Archaeology was eventually able to confirm that there had been a mansion, albeit with a footprint that turned out to be no bigger than other village houses—so it was not a grandiose mansion as we might think of that. Anna, you may recall, described the mansion as “large,” but after all, she was about four years old when she briefly lived there. But at least Hawley and Badgley hadn’t imagined it.

That is not so clear with many of the other features shown in the map and picture, for which I have found no evidence of the sources for the depictions in the book. And then there is the downright error which Hawley and Badgley allowed in the picture, which is supposed to show David Felt’s era, but includes Ackerman Road, not created until Warren Ackerman bought the village long after Felt had departed.

I have mixed feelings about the existence of the dormitories, since I interviewed an early twentieth-century resident of the Village named Roy Minton, who I recall having told me that he had camped out as a child in the dormitory area, sleeping against ruined walls of a building there. However, I cannot find a reference to that statement anywhere in my notes, and Roy is no longer around for follow up questions. In the meantime, Matt and the rest of the Feltville Archaeology team have found no trace of these buildings with either ground penetrating radar or any other archaeological exploration.

Matt uses the dormitories as an example of how fictive elements can creep into the passed-down historical narratives. The purported dormitories represent our notion of what a dormitory should look like, large buildings with plenty of space. More likely, groups of single men and of single women lived in parts of the existing cottages—half a house might have functioned as a “dormitory.” Matt sees the role of archaeology as being that of an “orthopedic surgeon” to history, “deconstructing strongly held views about the past that have been passed down through the telephone came of oral and even written history.” I changed this quote slightly to fit the sentence. Please watch the presentation that he and Carissa did in 2020 to get a better sense of this, and to hear Carissa’s wonderful analysis of the evidence of the development of consumer culture in the area, as shown through ceramics found at a home associated with Feltville.

What you will also learn from the presentation is that Hawley and Badgley left out a number of important features in both the map and the drawing the individuals Hawley credits with having illustrated his book. These are things like privies (outhouses) and even formerly existing roads. These features have been located and described through archaeology, giving insight into day to day life and routes of transit through the village

Privies, you say, imagining the nasty evidence there. Archaeologists often find privies to be treasure troves of information, since, especially before the advent of door-to-door trash service, privies were a place to dispose of all sorts of empty bottles, broken items and even the bones left behind after dining. While people may say one thing about how they acted at any particular time in history, their privies may show them to be less than truthful or at least less than completely accurate. You can see some of these features including the vanished “Scotch Plains road” on the two maps from the Feltville Archaeology Project.

Used by permission from the Feltville Archaeology Project

Used by permission from the Feltville Archaeology Project

And now we can go back to Anna.

THE MOLLOYS SETTLE IN AND MEET ANOTHER IMPORTANT FELTVILLE INDIVIDUAL

Almost as soon as the Molloys moved into the mansion, Anna tells us they moved again, into a cottage fixed over for them.² But that stay was short lived, as well. The summer the Molloys arrived was also the one in which Warren first invited Ella King Adams to stay at the Village, and she fell in love with the cottage which the Molloys had moved into. You will recall that Anna was the one who tipped me off about Ella King Adams, and her subsequent work with Warren Ackerman getting the resort underway. The Molloys moved on to another unidentified cottage.

Both of Anna’s parents eventually worked at the village, probably running the resort together, since Anna speaks of them taking over at the resort (see below). Anna doesn’t mention her mother’s exact work in the 1964 letters and interviews, instead speaking about her father’s roles at the Village. Thomas was clearly put to work at once. In those first days at the Village, Anna’s father was also learning the ropes at the resort from Warren Ackerman’s Superintendent there, Frank Hossinger.

Anna’s description of Hossinger’s role in the creation of the resort is another of the important revelations found in her documents. If Warren Ackerman and Ella King Adams together put forth the ideas for converting the Village into an Adirondack-style resort, where the visitors would be surrounded by beautiful and healthful landscapes, and be fed fresh food from a working farm, Hossinger was the one to whom the physical effort of creating the resort was left.

From newspaper and genealogical research I have learned that Hossinger was a German immigrant,³ who had started working as a gardener for one of Warren Ackerman’s brothers in 1873, subsequently coming to work for Warren as Superintendent of the Village. That job apparently commenced with Warren’s purchase of the Village, when Warren began using the site for farming purposes—i.e., before Warren initiated the resort conversion.

Anna’s 1964 papers say that Hossinger “laid out all the grounds, roads, paths, flower beds and supervised the entire renovation of the cottages.” ⁴ Ackerman also had Hossinger build a reservoir, pumping station, steam laundry, greenhouse, and tennis court. As previously described, broad Adirondack-style porches, complete with tree limbs as supports, were added to the cottages. Anna reports:

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.

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He lived in Scotch Plains opposite the Ackerman estate.⁵

Anna’s father initially worked as onsite staff under Hossinger, who did not live at the village:

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. 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 . . . ⁶

Anna says that Hossinger also “taught my father all about gardening, farming and plumbing which stood him in such good stead later on.” ⁷

In some ways, Anna’s descriptions of Hossinger’s work at the village constitute an almost more robust picture of who Hossinger was than the newspaper and genealogical traces he left. Census records indicate that he was married to a woman named Albertina, and they had two daughters and a son. But it was only when he drowned (see below) that Hossinger received newspaper coverage.

He was prominently indentified (sic) as a member with a number of secret societies, among them the Knights of Pythias, of which he was a District Deputy Past Chancellor, the Westfield Lodge of Odd Fellows, and the Royal Arcanum, his life being insured in the Knights for $2,000 and for $3,000 in the Royal Arcanum. He was also a Chairman of the Fanwood Township Committee, and a man generally respected and well thought of in the community. ⁸

The account above indicates that Hossinger was “Chairman of the Fanwood Township Committee;” in a twentieth century article long after his death, Hossinger is described as having been mayor. Likely the two articles refer to the same position, based on how positions on the town’s governing bodies were characterized at different times.⁹

FRANK HOSSINGER DIES

For four days in March of 1888, a blizzard dumped enormous amounts of snow across the northeastern United States. Union County, where the Village is located, apparently got the most snow of any of New Jersey’s counties, at 25 inches. Alan A. Siegel, author of Disaster! Stories of Destruction and Death in Nineteenth Century New Jersey, says that the storm would have been only another “forgettable late winter storm hand not its gale-force winds and subfreezing temperatures transformed it into what we remember still today as the Blizzard of ’88.”¹⁰ The storm was a surprise, since it was preceded by an unusually mild winter, and some springlike days. Railroads had to be shut down, businesses and roads were closed, and people were trapped in their homes—or worse, at their places of work or at railway stations. The impacts of the storm were devastating with numerous people freezing to death. One reporter in Jersey City’s Evening News chose a bit of levity, saying: “Brewers’ wagons were abandoned in every direction, and since then, no lager has been supplied to the saloons. This threatened famine affects the Fourth District seriously. The majority of its inhabitants can dispense with milk, but a scarcity of beer disarranges everything.”¹¹

In the spring, as the snow melted, concerns grew about the impacts of flooding on the two Feltville-era dams just below Glenside Park, on the Blue Brook. Anna remembers that the lower dam blew out in early summer, inflicting damage downstream. Concern for the upper dam grew. In July, 1888, concern had grown to the point that Frank Hossinger, Superintendent for the resort, decided that he needed to reduce the pressure on the dam by raising the floodgate at the bottom. Anna still remembered the situation vividly more than seven and a half decades later:¹²

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.

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It should be noted that Mr. H had entered the water immediately after eating and the water, as always, was very cold from the springs.

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The dam was then lowered 4 feet and last time I was there five or six years ago, it was evident where it had been taken down. The guests never used it for boating or swimming. The history of the Pond was that several had drowned there—among others two sisters buried in the cemetery (nothing but hearsay). There were some headstones but only one with an inscription (Wilcox).

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The pond was very deep in places and as I said fed by cold springs. Father cut ice every winter; enough to last for the entire Summer. He stored it in an ice house on the bank of the pond quite near the dam.

Hossinger’s death was reported in the Plainfield Daily Press and the Plainfield Evening News.

Frank Hossinger Drowned¹³

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A Well-Known Scotch Plains Resident is Stricken With Appoplexy and Dies in the Water

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THE PRESS was issued too early, yesterday, to record the drowning of Mr. Frank Hossinger, one of the best known and universally esteemed citizens of Scotch Plains. The sad event has cast a gloom over the entire neighborhood, and is the talk of the town today.

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Mr. Hossinger was the general superintendent over Mr. Warren Ackerman’s large tract of land, which extends to and includes Feltville. On the property there are two beautiful lakes, the upper or larger lake emptying into a smaller one through a raceway. The flood gate at the head of the raceway, became disabled and in company with a workman named Thomas Malloy [sic], the two men started out between one and two o’clock yesterday afternoon to make the necessary repairs.

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Arriving at the lake, Mr. Hossinger attempted to swim out to a raft about 300 feet distant, but before reaching there he was stricken with apoplexy, and sank to the bottom. Malloy being unable to swim waded out until the water was up to his neck, and with a pole tried to rescue the drowning man. The latter, however, did not again rise to the surface.

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Malloy hastened to the nearest neighbors and got assistance, and after an hours work the body was recovered. When taken from the water the head and chest were purple. The deceased was in his 41st year. A widow, one son, and two daughters survive him.

Concern for the dam remained high the following year, as was reported in two New York newspapers, the New York Times and the New York Tribune. On Friday, August 2, 1889, the New York Tribune contained a front page story noting that residents of the City of Plainfield, a wealthy town downstream of the village, were alarmed, and reporting that Warren Ackerman was utilizing a plan put forward by the Mayor of Plainfield meant to spare the city from effects of the dam blowing out and the feared flooding that would result. Oddly, apparently an article published three days earlier in the New York Times erroneously reported that the Feltville Dam was among several above Plainfield that had already blown out.

At 4:30 o’clock the great dam at Feltville gave way, and the rush of the water down the valley proved too much for the little Green Brook, so that the torrent divided and part of it made its way to Cedar Brook. This brook flows through the choicest resident portion of Plainfield, and the elegant houses there were badly damaged. An area in the town covering three square miles was entirely submerged.¹⁴

It is not clear why the New York Times carried this mistaken report. In a New York Times article on August 1, 1889,¹⁵ it was confirmed that the feared blowout of the Feltville dam had not in fact happened, and Plainfield residents thought themselves safe. However, Plainfield did indeed still flood. According to an article in the Plainfield Daily Press, the floodwaters from the Green Brook “carried Martin’s blacksmith shop to the middle of Somerset Street, partly tore down French’s carriage factory and grist mills, twisted a Chinese laundry all about . . . tore a gap thirty feet wide and ten feet deep through the street itself, and flooded the entire central section along the line of Green Brook.” But the dam at Feltville which flowed into the Green Brook held, and the flood happened without its influence. ¹⁶

THE MOLLOYS TAKE OVER

For the first three or four years of the resort’s existence, Frank Hossinger acted as the superintendent in charge of the grounds and the farm operations, but there was a separate “manager,” presumably to handle the guest interactions and functions, including meals. Anna was the one who indicated that at least the first manager, and likely the first two, were selected by Ella King Adams:

Mrs. Norris—wife with 2 children (daughters). Friends of Mrs. Adams from Norfolk, Va. operated the place for two years. Mrs. Hamilton one season, she married Charles Drake.

“Then my parents took over,” Anna declares.¹⁷ Anna says that a “new dining cottage” was created in 1889, and a new barn, now called Masker’s Barn, in 1890. The barn had space for horses and carriages, and a large portico supposedly to keep the rain off of carriages as they unloaded. I say supposedly, since the barn was somewhat distant from the guest cottages, and I have questions about the functionality of a covered portico there, since one would still have had to get people and luggage from there to the cottages.

Anna also says that it is hard to remember dates that far back—and it appears that some of her dates may be somewhat off. A newspaper article from the Plainfield Evening News from April 1886 indicates that the construction of a “large hotel”—presumably the “dining cottage”—is already underway, so Anna’s 1889 recollection is incorrect. The article also mentions some of the other improvements Warren Ackerman had made or was making. I include the text of the short article here since I am charmed by what the author says about the persistent naming of the Village as the Deserted Village, and thought my friend Matt might find it funny:

FELTVILLE

There is not a place in the vicinity of Plainfield that has seen greater changes than Feltville. Once a thriving village, the home of a busy people, then again the world renowned “Deserted Village,” a theme for poets and without an inhabitant. A few years ago Warren Ackerman of Scotch Plains bought the whole village at a nominal price and prosperity dates from that sale. He has had a stone breaker erected, roads repaired, the buildings repainted, many new houses built and a large hotel is in the process of erection.¹⁸

The newspaper article seems to confirm that Warren Ackerman paid for the buildings and building improvements, and Anna tells us he also paid to furnish all the cottages.

The article mentions Warren’s work on the existing Feltville roads. As noted, he also built a new road at the Village, shown on the maps as Ackerman Road, remnants of which still exist. It turns out that, beyond Feltville, Warren had an intense interest in roads and was an active part of a state level campaign to have a bill passed that would give counties responsibility for public roads. Many public roads, passing as they did through various municipalities, had very uneven quality from town to town. The campaign was successful in getting the passage of the “County Road bill.”¹⁹ Clearly, Warren was obsessed with well-constructed and well-maintained roads.

However, Thomas Molloy himself paid for the construction of a 9-hole golf course. This may have reflected the changing relationship between the Molloys and Ackerman; initially they came to the Village purely as employees and later began contracting with Ackerman to operate the Village as a business. Anna proudly states that the resort’s promotional brochure was reprinted three times in one summer, as a measure of the success the resort was having under her parents’ management of it.

With the changing relationship came a change in what the Molloys paid Ackerman.

First year Mr. Ackerman charged them no rental for the use of the cottages and the rental per year for the cottages for the Molloys was 350 dollars per year until Mr. Ackerman’s death in 1895. ²⁰

Warren actually died in August 1893, another misremembering of dates by Anna. Regardless of exact date, if the Molloys had been tiptoeing into a completely arms-length contracting relationship before, his death formalized that relationship. Anna reports that the rent for the Village jumped to “1200 dollars per year” after Warren’s death, when some of Warren’s nephews took over administering his land holdings, including the village. The Molloys were no longer simply employees.

AT THE RESORT

As noted, after Hossinger’s death, the Molloys took over both his functions and the functions of various managers who had probably been in charge of guest amenities. Anna has some general description of various parts of the resort:

In the beginning Mr. Ackerman furnished all the cottages. After he died, Mr. Molloy had to pay for all the replacements. All the floors were covered with matting. It was quite attractive as I remember. Some more items about the Resort. There were two summer houses, both were intact when he took over. One summer house was across the road from the mansion and was circular in shape—something like the band stands. The other was square and located on the edge of the bluff and it had a roof over it. [handwritten note—“Not in handwritten original”] Mr. Molloy put up the flag pole, it had been replaced in later years. It is hard to remember dates so far back. The cottages, originally, were two family dwellings having an entrance on each end with small steps leading up to the doors. The kitchen for the dining cottage was in the basement and the food sent up on the dumb waiter. It had a large brick fireplace.²¹

The activities available to guests included tennis, golf, long walks and hanging out on the Adirondack porches.

Father ran the green himself and raised all the flowers for the many flower beds in the resort. He took care of all flower beds and lawns, pumped the water up to the reservoir.²²

Guests apparently took all their meals at the building which has been variously called “the Inn,” the Dining Cottage,” and a “large Hotel.” Much of the food served there was fresh from the farming operation, which Thomas also oversaw.

Father raised all the vegetables used on the tables and also oats, rye and good clover hay and corn for the cows and horses.²³

Anna remembers fruit trees from the orchard, which supplied the resort—oxheart cherries, and russet apples. The orchard may have included trees planted by David Felt or even earlier, or may have been among the farm elements Warren added.

We know from the letter to Ella’s daughter Rebecca King Adams from one of Ella’s aunts that there were apparently donkey carts to ride around in:

[A photo sent by Rebecca} 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 thought a donkey cart could go. ²⁴

Even though the Village originally had two bodies of water along the Blue Brook (one of which ceased to exist after its dam blew out in 1888), guests at the resort did not engage in swimming or boating. In an apparent explanation, as noted above, Anna says:

The guests never used it [the lake] for boating or swimming. The history of the Pond was that several had drowned there—among others two sisters buried in the cemetery (nothing but hearsay). There were some headstones but only one with an inscription (Wilcox).²⁵

As I have noted in a previous post, archaeological evidence suggests that indoor plumbing was not immediately installed. Anna does not supply details regarding running water or working bathrooms in the cottages:

The water we got from a well in back of the cottage. There were no baths in the houses at that time.²⁶

Anna does describe the Village getting another amenity:

Father had the first telephone in that section (involved getting permission from all the property owners along the road from New Providence). The number—Summit 70.²⁷

The newspaper covered the success of the resort under Thomas and Annie Molloy:

Plainfield Daily Press of October 14, 1903:

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.²⁸

SOME CHILDHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF ANNA

In the letters and interviews she gave to Hawley and my grandfather, Anna did not talk about her own childhood experiences growing up at the Village,. However, she told many stories to her granddaughters. It is through Anna’s granddaughters, Nancy and Judith Walsh, that we have other snippets of Anna’s voice. They enlarged upon the stories told to them by “Nana” with some genealogical research of their own.

Judith remembered having the impression that Anna was ill for some time while young and believed that a black woman that she found listed in 1900 as a cook at the Village was also taking care of Anna. Both granddaughters remembered Anna talking about the one-room schoolhouse that she attended for at least part of her childhood, suggesting that the schoolhouse at the top of the Village road created by David Felt might have still been in operation.²⁹ The latter possibility seems confirmed by a report dated August 31, 1882, shortly after Warren Ackerman bought the Village, that there was a “new schoolhouse at Feltville” which had been “completed and furnished ready for the new school year.” Reportedly it could seat up to 65 children.³⁰

Anna also talked often to her grandchildren about spending a lot of time in the kitchen at Glenside, including learning to cook from “the Southern ladies.”³¹ Judith provides details:

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.

Judith Walsh remembers “Nana” telling the following story about her mother:

Nana would tell the story of her mother, Annie, working in their garden one summer with a hoe and feeling something on her calf. Well, it was a snake that had wrapped itself around her [high topped shoes]. She killed it with her hoe and went back to work.³²

ANNA TURNS DOWN COLLEGE FOR A TRIP TO IRELAND

In the recollections shared with her grandchildren, one of Anna’s favorites was to tell about her trip to Ireland with her father. Thomas “wanted to see the old country before he died” and Anna decided to go with him. Anna faced a choice in 1899—would she use monies earned from the management of Glenside Park to be one of the first students to attend the newly established College of St. Elizabeth, or would she take the “trip of a lifetime”—to Ireland, her father’s birthplace, with her father as guide. The College of St. Elizabeth, founded in 1899, was one of the first Catholic colleges in the United States to admit and offer degrees to women. Anna chose the trip, which she talked about for the rest of her life, with such details as seeing “the ships go off to the Boer War,” passed down in stories to her granddaughters. ³³

PARTIES AND SOCIAL SUCCESS

Anna—Nana—managed to convey to her granddaughters her sense of having made it socially. Indeed, local newspaper articles covered parties and other Molloy activities as part of their coverage of social events.

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.³⁴

I hadn’t noticed all the many places from which the guests came for the party, until I transcribed the article here. I wonder if many of the party guests from cities and towns not local to Glenside Park were people whom the Molloys had met as resort guests, which would mean that those guests had become something more than patrons of the resort to the Molloy family.

In August of 1899, the Plainfield Daily Press reported Molloy family trips involving Mrs. and Mrs. George Schick:

Mr. and Mrs. Thos. Molloy, of Glenside, have been visiting Mr. and Mrs. George Schick.³⁵

And

Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Hand, Mr. and Mrs. George Schick and Miss Molloy of Glenside, enjoyed a day’s crabbing at Tremley Point yesterday, and last evening Mr. Hand entertained a few of his friends at a “crab layout.” ³⁶

Another bit of social page coverage from the same year describes a party given as a sendoff of Anna with her father Thomas to the once in a lifetime trip described above:

(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. [sic, see note below]³⁷ Molloy leave shortly for a European trip. The evening’s pleasure was arranged by their daughter, [sic, see below] Miss Mamie, as a bon voyage gathering of their many friends.³⁸

The special correspondent who wrote this article made a number of errors. It was Miss Molloy, i.e. Anna, not Mrs. Molloy, who was leaving for the European trip with her father, Thomas Molloy. The article also erred in saying the party was arranged by the Molloys’ daughter, Miss Mamie. The Miss Mamie (Mary) Walsh, who arranged the party, was one of Anna’s closest friends and eventually became her sister in law, when Anna married James Walsh in 1907.

Another article in the Plainfield Daily Press about the same party on the same date also stressed “dancing” as the highlight of the evening.³⁹ That brief article had none of the errors of the one above:

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.

On March 3, 1903, the Plainfield Courier News contained two social items about the Molloys:⁴⁰

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Molloy have again leased “Glenside” for three years and will continue to conduct it as a summer resort.

And:

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

What a change the Molloys had gone through from being poor immigrants in Newark, New Jersey, to having the local press regularly do social report on their comings and goings!

NEXT MONTH

Next month, you can look forward to hearing about some of the resort’s more colorful guests and learning what Thomas auctioned off when he retired from running the resort—all those “toilet sets!” Until then!