HISTORIC OVERVIEW OF FELTVILLE
By Priscilla Hayes, Matthew Tomaso and Carissa Scarpa.
Every chapter of the history of the Deserted Village of Feltville offers insight into vanished national trends that, in so many ways, impacted far more people than wars and Presidents.
Settlement and the Willcocks Period – New Jersey’s colonial period was a stage for cultural and ecological clashes. Settlers of European descent began to impose their own notions of property and wealth on a land whose resources dazzled them, mining for copper and iron, damming up streams to power hundreds of mills, chopping trees for lumber, charcoal, and for farm fields, killing off much of the wildlife (deer were the most popular).
The land the village would ultimately be built on was part of a purchase agreement for a large tract of land extending out from the coastline into the interior of New Jersey. The agreement was made in 1664 between a group of New Englanders called the Associators (later Elizabethtown Associators) and several Native American sachems. There are as many questions as answers about this agreement, including deep and fundamental questions arising from the different understandings of property rights and who could convey or receive them in the two vastly different cultures. Moreover, the agreement was immediately nearly nullified by land grants from the King of England to noblemen who would become New Jersey’s Proprietors, its royally designated owners. These land grants conflicted with the explicit instructions that the king had previously given to a loyal team sent to subdue New Netherland—rather a flagrant example of double crossing of that team.
In 1736, Peter Willcocks.and his wife Phebe (Badgley) purchased a large tract of land from the Elizabethtown Associators along the east branch of the Blue Brook in the area of present day New Providence, New Jersey, apparently in the tract originally created in 1664, and thus subject to conflicting land title claims between the Proprietors and the Elizabethtown Associators. Peter and his family built their house on the Second Watchung Mountain above the Blue Brook where Feltville would later be established. Phebe’s brothers, James and John Badgley, settled east of the Willcocks’ land on the First Watchung Mountain, near present-day Lake Surprise. Other families began to settle in the valley and to intermarry. Eventually, the area of Peter Willcocks’ homestead became known as Peter’s Hill and his relatives populated a dispersed hamlet. Peter Willcocks constructed a dam along the Blue Brook and built a grist and lumber mill. New Providence, then called Turkey, was the nearest village and was located northwest of Peter’s Hill along one of the colonial valley roads (later called “New Providence Road”).
Peter Willcocks and Phebe Badgley represented a new kind of colonist—they did not come directly from any European country, as those in New England and Virginia had, and even those in New Netherlands and New Sweden had. Instead, they were among the children of those original colonists who were already leaving New England, and wanted to find fresh, undeveloped, land on which to establish themselves. This might have meant that as younger siblings, they had not inherited enough land to support themselves, but more likely, they were seeking land that had not yet been denuded of trees, deer, and other hunted animals; these were commodities that colonists were stripping off and converting into ready wealth. Peter and Phebe and her brothers were among those who had come to Long Island, on the edges of English settlements, in wait for opportunities to claim land in still largely unsettled New Jersey.
The American Revolution: At least four members of the Willcocks and Badgley families served on the American side of the Revolution. William Willcocks served as an early military lawyer; John Willcocks Senior and Junior both were members of the Essex County militia. John Senior was able to get home to die of wounds incurred during his service. Joseph Badgley also died of wounds sustained fighting, and was buried with his cousin and other Willcocks relatives in their small cemetery.
Contextually, the Willcocks military service exemplifies a historical period which would lead, within about two decades, to the passage of the Second Amendment. Militias, designed to organize state or local defense, were seen as necessary to retaining American freedoms and were composed differently from the fledgling national military. Despite the prescient lobbying efforts of Alexander Hamilton and others there was great fear of the power of a standing, federally-supported professional army to subjugate the people, especially in the absence of the local militias which could fight back. This would play directly and centrally into Antebellum concerns about state rights and the rise of federal supremacy.
After the Revolution, the site which would become Feltville began to pass from a frontier with immense resources for creating relatively quick wealth to simply a developing rural area, producing resources for the urban areas springing up nearby. Seeking new economic opportunities, at least one Willcocks moved west to the new physical and economic frontier; another to the city, which represented a different kind of new economic opportunity as the northern states began to industrialize. Women’s roles were also changing at this time, as their work, not easily translatable into cash in the evolving urban economy, became even more invisible. As a very slowly changing rural settlement, Peter’s Hill offers a counterpoint to the increasingly urban focus of northern state histories between the post-revolutionary period and the Antebellum. Archaeology and primary source material relevant to the Raddin-Badgley site, located just outside of the Feltville Historic District, help us to examine the lives of women and other quiet contributors during this time.
Another significant window into the early nineteenth century locally is a diary and letters from a woman who lived just north of the Willcocks family tracts, and what would become Feltville. Betsey Mulford Crane was not only the wife of a local farmer who also doubled as the coffin maker, but the mother of a child who married into the Willcocks family and moved to the new frontier, to the west. Her diary and the letters between her and her brother Daniel, who left to attend Yale, provide remarkable insight into daily life—and especially the roles of women—in that time and in that place.
Feltville – In 1845, David Felt, a printer/stationer from New York, purchased 660 acres from the Willcocks family and moved his business from New York City into the community of New Providence. The land had qualities that would have appealed to Felt when he chose to relocate his business there, not least of these was the recognition, which would be repeated in a future iteration of the Village, of the health benefits over city conditions of its rural setting, with fresh water and open space. Felt constructed a large but very conservative water-driven mill – rejecting steam power – an extensive mill pond and a complex hydraulic system. Up a steep hill from the factory, along the road which would later be named Cataract Hollow Road, he built a number of double houses to serve as workers’ living quarters, a combined church and store, and a schoolhouse, all within a span of two short years. The village was planned around natural drainages and laid a broad grid pattern down upon the area’s few relatively flat terrains, reserving the nearby ridge’s broad, well-drained footslopes for agriculture and arboriculture. Although based upon a New England Mill village concept, the village’s pattern-book architecture and suburban-looking viewsheds represent a surprisingly forward-looking approach to planning.
Between 1850 and 1860, approximately 140 people occupied the village and most of the employed residents worked directly or indirectly for David Felt. Most of his workers lived in the village with their families in two-family houses. Single men and women also lived in the village and they occupied opposite sides of the largest duplex. In addition to running the factory, Felt’s workers are believed to have cultivated 600 acres of land.
David Felt was a member of the Unitarian congregation in Brooklyn prior to moving out to New Jersey. He followed the theological teachings of liberal Unitarian religious leaders such as Orville Dewey, who was the minister of the First Congregational Church of New York, later the Unitarian Church of All Souls from 1835-1848. Felt’s strong connection to Dewey is clear from his publication of Dewey’s sermons through his publishing business, Stationers Hall Press. In his memoirs and other writings, Dewey decried factionalism and espoused a surprisingly modern-sounding and open view of Unitarian doctrine – emphasizing the mystery of religious faith and the importance of kindness and charity over the redolent sectarian arguments of his time. Felt, faced with a population of Christians of various denominations, including Catholics, hired Austin Craig, a self-styled “Christian” minister, to preach in his church at Feltville. Craig had been admitted a member of the New Jersey Christian Conference, first as a licentiate, then with full ordination, in the spring of 1845. Importantly, Craig had already begun to write on the need for Christian unity, laying aside denominational differences, and relying directly on the Bible for guiding principles. While this may have been a practical approach to addressing the religious needs of a population with diverse, though wholly Christian, backgrounds it may also speak to Felt’s religious and social motivations for founding the village. In his writings, Craig described the village as a “Free Religious Society” and there are indications that there were religious overtones to the administration of the village.
Felt’s association with the somewhat utopian Unitarian movement, his connections with Dewey and Craig, his apparently liberal and paternalistic approach to labor relations and his conservative approach to industrial development situate him and his mill village among the many community experiments and utopian colonies of the Antebellum Remarkably, another prominent Unitarian from Massachusetts who was directly acquainted with Dewey, Marcus Spring, founded the Raritan Bay Union and North American Phalanx in New Jersey at roughly the same time.
Archaeological evidence and historical accounts may indicate that alcohol was forbidden in the village, since no bottles have been found for alcoholic beverages for this period. Additionally, it seems that Felt printed his own money or extended credit which was only good at the company store so villagers were restricted to purchasing food and other necessities there. This would have given Felt a great deal of control over what the workers living in his company housing purchased and consumed. Felt developed the town’s separate industrial, education, agriculture, residential and commercial zones around his adopted Willcocks-era house, located near the town’s small business center. This may be seen as indicating that he had significant interest in directly overseeing the village’s operations and participating in all aspects of its life.
The rural setting and the highly ordered quality of the village has led some to characterize Feltville as a utopian community. However, Feltville contrasts with many other social experiments and utopian societies of the antebellum period in that Felt embraced individual religious freedom, emphasized education and does not appear to have been interested in joint stock economic schemes or other primitive forms of socialism. Rather than a utopian experiment, Feltville might be characterized as a paternalistic but socially liberal, industrial community.
Just fifteen years after its founding in 1860, Felt sold his village. While folklore has passed down Felt’s frustrated parting quote as being “King David is dead, and the village will go to hell,” one of the many things the historical record has not told us is what Felt’s true motivation may have been for abruptly ending his venture at Feltville. Records indicate that he had political and economic troubles, probably resulting from the economic recession of the 1850s and 1860s and possibly relating to his ties to businesses in the South. Further speculation around motive for abandoning Feltville center around the fact that his brother and business partner fell ill and died around this time. After leaving Feltville behind, Felt spent the 1860s consolidating his other business interests back in Manhattan. By1875 Felt had sold off most of his remaining business interests and his primary business Stationers Hall had filed for bankruptcy.
Various Owners and Entrepreneurs – Following Felt a number of others attempted diverse economic enterprises at Feltville. One of these was Samuel Townsend, who operated a sarsaparilla bottling business. “Patent medicines” such as sarsaparilla, with their exaggerated claims as to what health problems they could cure often contained unsafe and even toxic ingredients. These “cures” are what led to the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which cracked down on false and misleading labels and listed banned, addictive and dangerous ingredients in food. The Act still serves as the underpinning of the authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Although this period (1860-1882) has been characterized as the village’s first period of “desertion” both primary historical sources and archaeology have revealed that the village was, in fact, occupied during the time. However, Townsend’s enterprise, and a subsequent effort at creating an business built around a turning mill failed, and the village went into receivership, and was sold at auction in 1882 for a fraction of the amount David Felt had received when he sold it in 1860.
Glenside Park – Starting in 1882, entrepreneur Warren Ackerman—with the stylistic help of his friend Ella King Adams—adapted Feltville’s property and structures for use as a resort known as Glenside Park by making simple but profound cosmetic changes to the existing structures. In fact, Ackerman constructed only one new building, a carriage house and stable now known as “Maskers’ Barn” and enlarged another into a dining facility. Ella’s and his choice of the Adirondack Rustic motif for the workers cottages may hint at a goal of appealing to the status-conscious developing middle class of the Late Victorian era, a time when the upper class was building elaborate camps and visiting expensive hotels and spas in the Adirondack Mountains in Northern New York to escape the polluted and disease-ridden urban centers in the summer months. The Watchung Mountains offered an affordable alternative—but also a way to get out into “nature” in a controlled environment, with creature comforts. In addition to the cottages, meals featuring produce grown on site in the dining cottage, and access to a steam laundry, visitors to Glenside Park would eventually be able to enjoy the pleasures of a golf course and tennis courts.
Glenside Park, and similar resorts, were refuges for those with sufficient affluence to leave the cities in the summer. While conditions in the city could spell death for both rich and poor (One of Newark’s premier families, the Ballantine family, lost several children to diseases promoted by city conditions), during the summer city disease conditions and vectors could become far more deadly, and those that could leave, did. Working class individuals generally did not have such opportunities—a notable exception is the family of Annie Malloy, who were able to save their greatly ill daughter Anna by moving to the Deserted Village—not as a summer resort, but as their work venue.
In a strange set of coincidences that is one of the hallmarks of many of Feltville’s historical chapters, and which lends to its ability to teach us about the impacts of historical trends, Annie’s first marriage was to a Civil War veteran, who had returned wounded and dying from the war. Warren Ackerman, who arranged for Annie and her family to work at Glenside Park, had made his fortune selling “gum blankets,” rubberized blankets issued to soldiers, which had helped reduce their probability of dying from non-battle caused problems over previous wars, such as the Revolution, where far more many individuals died from disease/exposure. Gum blankets were not the only thing which made a difference in mortality rates, but they were a significant—and largely unknown—factor. While rubber blankets were unable to save Annie’s soldier husband, Ackerman personally was able to save Annie’s only child by moving the family to Feltville.
By 1916 many upper-middle class families were purchasing mass-produced automobiles and relying less and less on railways for vacation transportation. The suburbs were expanding into the surrounding Watchung Mountains and at the same time the era of the Adirondack camps was dying out. Furthermore, New Jersey tourism was shifting its focus to its beach resorts that were becoming increasingly more accessible. The Glenside Park property was subdivided and sold in pieces by Ackerman’s heirs in 1919.
Grassmann and the Artist: – Edward Grassmann, a civil engineer whose work took him all over the world, but whose reported primary love was the buying and selling of real estate, worked to purchase as many of the village lots as he could, starting in 1919. Grassmann seems to have accumulated the eastern half of the district, including most of the Commons, and several lots in the west by the mid-20’s. Grassmann had wanted to turn Feltville into a private country club, reusing Glenside Park’s golf course and guest houses, and even commissioned a notable Nicaraguan sculptor, Roberto De La Selva, to paint murals on the interior walls of one of the cottages. The murals were only rediscovered a couple of decades ago during a process of wallpaper removal. They are the only murals de la Selva is known to have done. It is hoped that these murals will be properly restored and conserved in the future.
Watchung Reservation: In 1927, most of the original Feltville property was purchased by Union County. During the Depression some of the cottages as well as the school building were rented out to county employees or other families, who created their own small community at the village, with its own newsletter and regular community gatherings. Various residents have provided fascinating oral histories, along with photographs and copies of some of the newsletters. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did some work in and around the village at this time. Little was done in the intervening years beside maintenance. A master plan for the village’s rehabilitation was adopted by the County in the 1980s, but despite the village’s success, funding for the plan the plan has been slow in coming. In 1998, the church/store was restored for use as a museum and visitors center and by 2013, Masker’s Barn had been thoroughly rehabilitated into a popular event venue. Both buildings maintain their historic character, which is seamlessly integrated with requisite modern amenities.