Instruction Books for Fashionable Travel

 

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INSTRUCTION BOOKS FOR FASHIONABLE TRAVEL

TOURIST GUIDEBOOKS OF THE NINETEENTH AND
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

One of the first primary sources I found in my research on the Deserted Village of Feltville was a tourist guidebook published in 1890 by Gustav Kobbé, The Central Railroad of New Jersey: An Illustrated Guide-Book (With Road-Maps). As the title of Kobbé’s book suggests, his guidebook describes destinations along the route of the Central Railroad of New Jersey; specifically, the railroad’s routes westward across the state from the cities of Newark, Jersey City and Elizabeth. He ends his guidebook somewhat shy of New Jersey’s western border, at Lake Hopatcong.

Feltville, then in its resort phase, and renamed Glenside Park, merits two mentions in the book, the first of which is in a book section about Fanwood, where the Central Railroad of New Jersey had a station:

In the valley beyond the notch at Scotch Plains is Feltville, once romantically known as the “Deserted Village,” because, when the factory there ceased operation, it and the dwellings about it were vacated. It is now a pretty place of residence called Glenside. Fanwood is the nearest station to it. Feltville Lake is a very pretty sheet of water.¹

The railroad’s next station is in Netherwood, which Kobbé describes in some detail for potential tourists (including having the “most spacious and best-kept hotel in Central New Jersey”).² Here Glenside is a potential stop along a drive on the excellent “macadamized” roads in the area:

Driving along Stony Brook toward Plainfield, there is another pretty fall formed by a mill-dam . . . Instead of taking the Johnston road one can continue through the notch to Feltville of Glenside . . . The return from Glenside can be by way of Baltus Roll . . . Often the drive to Glenside is extended on to Summit, and the return made through Springfield . . , a route of about twenty miles³.

Kobbé’s book was not the first tourist guidebook in America. Richard H. Gassan’s fascinating book, The Birth of American Tourism: New York, the Hudson Valley, and American Culture, 1790-1830⁴ discusses what he identifies as the first tourist guidebook in the United States, arguing that such guidebooks became one of the factors which taught America how and where to vacation.

My research has shown me that nineteenth century/early twentieth century tourist guidebooks could easily be the subject of an entire book or thesis on their own. This post will take a small dive into nineteenth century American guidebooks, from their inception, as identified by Gassan, and end with late nineteenth/early twentieth century guidebooks which specialize in New Jersey resort destinations. Along the way, we will see some of the progression in thinking about resorts—or at least what each author thought his readers would find interesting or useful.

AMERICA’S FIRST TOURIST GUIDEBOOK

Gassan identifies a book published in 1822, The Fashionable Tour, or, a trip to the Springs, Niagara, Quebeck, and Boston, in the Summer of 1821, by Gideon Minor Davison, as the first tourist guidebook ever published in America.⁵ In identifying Davison’s book as the start of a new literary genre in America, Gassan notes certain elements that distinguished Davison’s work from the tourist literature which had preceded it, largely atlases/gazetteers and first person travel accounts. In common with atlases and gazetteers, Davison’s book contained information about accommodations, transportation, and other tourist tips. Unlike atlases and gazatteers, Davison’s book guided readers along specific tour routes, rather than simply setting out an alphabetical or other list-based compendium of basic information about possible travel destinations. Davison’s book was also unlike travel accounts, which were first-person narrative descriptions of what someone (often a European visiting America) had done and seen, without explicit information and direction for tourists.

Gassan notes that Davison was using the phrase “fashionable tour” in the first application of that phrase to a series of destinations in America. Gassan also notes that there had long been the idea a “fashionable tour” in Europe, which was based on an initially British tradition of a sort of coming of age tour for young men, generally wealthy young men, across the continent, stopping at certain commonly recognized destinations for a length of time. Those who had embarked on the European version had included not only young European men, but also wealthy Americans. Engaging in this tour—sometimes called “The Grand Tour”—had declined somewhat during a long period of European conflict starting with the French Revolution. Davison’s framing of an American “fashionable tour” had the audacity of asserting that American tour destinations could have something of an equal footing with the European ones.⁶

Davison, although he may have used the term “fashionable tour” for the first time in America, did not, according to Gassan, make up the stops on the tour. His book was a recognition of destinations that wealthy people, particularly young men—especially slaveholding states in the South—were already recognizing as fashionable to visit. I have a reproduced copy of the fourth edition of the book. It describes a set of trip segments which the fashionable traveler may choose, including segments along the route from Savannah, Georgia to Lake George, New York, with additional sections such as “Excursion To Niagara Falls, Erie Canal, Lake Ontario, Northern Canal,” and “Routes To Boston.” Davison’s book recognized the wealthy Southern travelers who had the means and the slave labor to afford them lengthy periods of time for travel, by starting his “Fashionable Tour” at Savannah, Georgia. At the same time, Gassan argues, Davison made the “Fashionable Tour” seem accessible beyond the wealthiest classes, essentially, giving the impression that following his directions could allow those less affluent or not from the South to emulate the fashionable tour of people who might be socially a class or two above them—and perhaps raise their own social cachet in doing so.

Davison’s book was especially aimed at raising the status of Saratoga and its Springs beyond that of neighboring Ballston and its Springs. The latter had been America’s premier health spa resort before Saratoga’s developers set out to overtake it. Originally from Vermont, Davison had already embarked on this promotional campaign with the starting of a new newspaper which would represent and promote the town and resort.⁷ The newspaper, The Saratoga Sentinel, had been backed by some of the leading citizens of Saratoga, who presumably were among those with financial interests in the success of their town. It was not the first newspaper established there, but, unlike previous papers in Saratoga and nearby Ballston, through Davison’s connections it was assured of being distributed in New York City, which would certainly draw attention to Saratoga and its resort destinations at Saratoga Springs. As a measure of both how American literacy was increasing and the draw that access to books and other publications had, Davison was also creating “a competent Circulating Library, composed of valuable, various, and well selected books” with a “spacious Reading Room [stocked with] the important … newspapers of our country [emphasis in original],”⁸ which enhanced the town’s status, and served as a draw for potential tourists.

The first edition of Davison’s book was published only a few years after he began publishing the Saratoga Sentinel. Davison’s first edition was cheaply produced, but his book went on through at least three other editions, which were more elegantly produced. Gassan sees Davison himself as something of a middle class social climber, and one who had wisely discerned that engaging in fashionable tourism, once only the province of the wealthy, but becoming increasingly popular, could be—or at least seem—a way of raising one’s class status. Tourism required enough income and time to undertake it—which, as more people joined the middle class, became more possible for those beyond the upper classes. At a fashionable tourist spot, one might hobnob with people of a class above you—and Davison’s book gives you directions which might help you seem in the know, someone who could find acceptance at these fashionable resorts.⁹ Gassan suggests that Davison exaggerated the welcome the non-wealthy would meet at some of the destinations, which Gassan characterizes at having “remained distinctly genteel” for some years after the book was first published.¹⁰

The book not only gives tips as to what to expect, where to stay, how much to expect to pay, but in a sense tells readers what sights are worth seeing, and, by omission or explicitly, which are less to be sought out. Naturally, Saratoga, and its Springs, were made to seem preferable to nearby (and older) Ballston Spa, with more than twice as many pages devoted to Saratoga Springs, and a prominent and lengthy description of “The Reading Rooms,” a tourist attraction which apparently required a paid admission:

There is in the village a printing office and book-store, with which is connected a reading room, a mineralogical room and a library, under the superintendence of the same proprietor. These rooms, a few doors north of the U.S. hotel, are continued in the same building with the library and book-store, but have their separate apartments. That appropriated for the reading room is large and airy. It is ornamented with a variety of maps and charts, and is furnished by the daily mails with about 100 papers, from different parts of the United States and from the Canadas, besides several periodical publications. . . .

These rooms afford a pleasant retreat from the noise and bustle of the boarding establishments, and are much frequented by ladies and gentlemen of taste and fashion. The terms are reasonable, and are scarcely an equivalent considering the extent and usefulness of the establishment.¹¹

“THE FIRST TOURIST GUIDEBOOK WAR”¹²

Gassan insists that Davison’s guidebook would have been “destined to land in the dustbin of history,” were it not for the fact that two other authors published competing guidebooks soon after.¹³ Gassan notes that the other two authors were from more affluent backgrounds, and perhaps were writing for a slightly different niche than the social climbers that Davison was targeting. Their competing guidebooks, borrowed from—and sometimes criticized—Davison’s book. At least one of the other authors, Theodore Dwight, had already been involved in tourist literature, since he had taken the substantial travel correspondence left after his uncle’s death and edited it into four volumes entitled Travels in New England and New York, books of travel accounts which Gassan describes thus:

The language was casual as if Dwight [Timothy Dwight, Theodore’s uncle] were writing letters home to a friend, a common device in the travel literature of the day. The book contained a vast amount of statistical and geographical information, but it also had lengthy discourses about the character and look of his various hosts’ homes, the nature of the towns he visited and the relative beauty of a number of prominent sights.¹⁴

Thus, the younger Dwight, Theodore, came by his interest in travel literature naturally, and presumably had a great deal of material to mine for his guidebook, entitled The Northern Traveler, published in 1825. This didn’t stop him from using whole sections from Davison’s book, while at the same time suggesting that other guidebooks—presumably Davison’s, would not adequately serve the needs of those of wealth and taste.¹⁵

The second competitor to Davison’s guidebook was from an author named Henry Dilworth Gilpin, whom Gassan characterizes as aiming “at those who wanted to be part of the cultural avant garde;” that is, he was writing for Romantics, “a small but growing set of privileged, educated Americans who took their cues from the decades old romantic movement of Europe.”¹⁶ Gassan takes as one bit of evidence of this the fact that “at Niagara, a place that did not need such embellishment, Gilpin truly lost his head and was transported in romantic ecstasy as words momentarily failed him . . . “¹⁷

In Gassan’s estimation, Gilpin’s defining contribution was:

Gilpin’s most important contribution to this first decade of guidebook literature was that he was the first advocate for undertaking American tourism explicitly as an act of patriotism. In the preface, he claimed that a “large portion of the citizens of the United States” had in the past wanted to “pass the summer and autumnal months in a tour through the northern section of the Union.” He noted with satisfaction that this had been at the expense of travel to Europe.¹⁸

Gassan’s study references the impact of prevailing currents of American culture on the creations of a tourist culture. These include the development of an American republican identity, the growth of the middle class and even the growth of literacy in America. All of these spawned a concomitant hunger for books, including those that touched on tourism and tourist destinations. As more Americans learned to read, there was an explosion of written material—which included, but wasn’t limited to almanacs, pamphlets, periodicals and books. Moreover, as seen by the amount of attention Davison gives to his reading rooms as an attraction for which tourists apparently paid, we are reminded that many vacationers didn’t have access to a broad array of reading materials at home and were hungry to spend time in a library.

It didn’t hurt that there was something of a mutual relationship between guidebooks and some of the most popular literature of the time—many of which show a fine sensibility of their authors to growing interest in tourist destinations. Much as people visit the locations where popular movies are filmed or set today, people wanted to visit the locations which were the setting for stories of Washington Irving (examples) or James Fennimore Cooper.

NEW AUTHORS, NEW GUIDEBOOKS

The first tourist guidebook war was surely not the last—the race to publish guidebooks was on. I have chosen two of the most prominent ones from the mid-nineteenth century to continue the discussion of guidebooks and their influence on the American traveling public. Both of these books include destinations from large areas of the United States and Canada. More to my needs in documenting what led up to the creation of the resort Glenside Park, each includes some New Jersey destinations.

In 1868, Charles Humphreys Sweetser published Book of Summer Resorts, Explaining Where to Find Them, How to Find Them, and Their Especial Advantages, With Details of Time Tables and Prices. The title page of the book describes it as having been published in New-York, at the “Evening Mail” office, No. 229 Broadway (quotes in original)—although on the reverse of the title page, John A. Gray & Green are listed as the printers of the book.¹⁹ Sweetser lists himself as “Author of the ‘Guide to the Northwest,’ and Editor of the ‘New-York Evening Mail.’”

Sweetser’s background and life are not well documented. After attending Amherst College, he went on to found several publications, including the New York Evening Mail, and The Round Table, “one of the earliest literary weeklies of American printing.”²⁰ Sweetser was a cousin by marriage of Emily Dickinson, and his literary magazine, The Round Table, published one of her poems—among the 10 or fewer Dickinson poems actually published during her lifetime.²¹ Sweetser died at age 30, only three years after his guidebook was published.

The book’s “General Introductory Chapter “sets out five” PRACTICAL HINTS TO THE TOURIST:”

THERE are five things that an experienced traveler always makes a particular care:

I.	He owns a good trunk.
II.	He carries thick clothing, even in the hottest weather.
III.	His hand-satchel is never without camphor, laudanum, and brandy for medicine.
IV.	He does not drink water in unaccustomed places.
V.	He buys through tickets, even when not going beyond a local station.22

This introductory section summarizes a few possible tour routes, including the amount of money needed for each, for example the following, which includes two New Jersey destinations:

The tourist should not visit Niagara, Long Branch, Newport or Cape May, intending to live at the best hotels, without providing himself with money at the rate of fifty dollars a week.

Curiously, the language switches back and forth between “the tourist” and “a young man,” with some “if you” phrases sprinkled in. This, and the fact that the “practical hints” seem geared to individuals traveling for some length of time, make the book seem particularly aimed at young men traveling on their own. Notably, the introductory section includes brief descriptions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota fishing destinations, and even where to go “if you want a grand old buffalo hunt.”²³

In this introductory section, the author sets out some established multi-destination trips which our intrepid traveler can make if “he has four weeks and two hundred and fifty dollars:” “Lake Superior Trip, White Mountain Trip, Virginia Springs Trip, St. Lawrence and Saguenay Trip.”²⁴ But the rest of the book does not track these tours to set out specific destinations for each of these trips, leaving me a bit confused. Also in the introductory section, Sweetser notes that “Long Branch, Saratoga, and the White Mountains are incomparably the three great summer resorts of the country.”²⁵

Some of Sweetser’s language is particularly colorful. For instance, he describes Washington Heights as a possible point of departure for tourists traveling along the Hudson, and adds the following details:

Revolutionary memories are most plentiful here, and one can almost perceive the struggle going on between the bones of the martyrs of ’76 and the cabbages of our wealthy butchers and bakers, etc., who have purchased and are metamorphosing the ancient ground.²⁶

A number of New Jersey destinations are listed, including Fort Lee and Englewood, the latter a place which “boasts the Palisade House, a large hotel, where many summer boarders find delightful escape from the city.”²⁷

The book is divided into sections describing various kinds of resort areas: “Lakes, Rivers, and Mountains,” “Springs and Falls,” “Seaside Resorts,” and separately, “The Dominion of Canada.” His organization within each section seems a bit confusing and disjointed, with locations near each other not always treated in proximity to each other in the book. He leads off each section with what he deems to be the most prominent resort area of that type: the Hudson Valley for “Lakes, Rivers and Mountains,” Saratoga Springs for “Springs and Falls,” and Long Branch—the “Branch” for “Seaside Resorts.” Some of the sections follow railway routes, seeking to give tourists direction as to which sites they should look out the window for, and where they may tarry for a bit of a visit. But the destinations don’t necessarily seem to be organized along settled tours.

In a section describing the Delaware Water Gap, Sweetser demonstrates that he can be quite cutting. After describing Brodhead’s Kittatinny House (in Pennsylvania) as “headquarters for the Delaware Water Gap,” and a place where “the season here is always a gay one, and the hotel is ever filled to overflowing, ²⁸ he goes on to say:

If you fail of accommodation at the Kittatinny, temporary sleeping accommodations may be obtained at the little Senape House, opposite the depot—a house, by the way, which can barely be styled a trap to catch travelers, where the landlord “doesn’t take lodgers for Brodhead when the Kittatinny is full”—and whose husk matresses and straw pillows would be fully indorsed [sic] by any prison superintendent or almshouse commissioner.²⁹

For his section on Long Branch, there are no derogatory comments about bedding or other conditions at any of the hotels or boarding houses, but the author describes a typical beach scene:

. . . when the white flag indicates the proper bathing hour, the most grotesque groups, clad in parti-colored [sic] costumes, are congregated, sporting in the surf with hilarious abandon” [emphasis in original].³⁰

Sweetser follows the section on Long Branch with descriptions of other nearby New Jersey resorts, but his section on New Jersey’s Cape May is separated, appearing only after he has described a host of other seaside resorts in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York:

[Cape May] is the favorite resort of Philadelphians, and even the growing popularity of its new rival, Atlantic City, has affected it but slightly. The easiest way to reach it from New York is by railway to Camden, opposite Philadelphia, and thence by a four hour’s railway ride, passing through Vineland, and a number of other towns to Cape May. The route is not particularly interesting, the southern part of New Jersey being flat and tame, as regards scenery, but the attractions awaiting the visitor at the end of his journey are quite enough to compensate for the tedium of the route.³¹

Atlantic City, although mentioned as a rival to Cape May, does not merit its own section in the book, and New Jersey’s other seaside resorts do not even get a mention.

In 1875, John B. Bachelder published the third edition of his guidebook, entitled Popular Resorts and How to Reach Them: Combining A Brief Description Of The Principal Summer Retreats In The United States, And The Routes of Travel Leading To Them.³² On the title page, Bachelder lists his other significant publications as including The Illustrated Tourists’Guide, and then a list of other publications covering his biggest life passion, the battle of Gettysburg (with one on the last hours of Lincoln).

Born in New Hampshire, Bachelder was educated at a local academy and a military academy.³³ After graduation, he moved to Pennsylvania and started working at a school which became the Pennsylvania Military Institute, of which he eventually became principal. He joined the Pennsylvania State Militia and earned the title of colonel. Returning to his home state of New Hampshire, he married, and began a career as an artist, retaining his interest in military conflicts. He was working on a study of the Revolutionary War battle at Bunker Hill, when the Civil War broke out, and gave him the opportunity to go off to follow the Union army and study military conflicts firsthand. Union Army Brig. General John C. Caldwell praised the accuracy of his drawings and Maj. General George B. McClellan praised one of his photographs. Arriving at Gettysburg within days of the battle, he made detailed sketches and maps, interviewed those in command of various regiments on the Union side, as well as wounded soldiers. His persistent work and publication—including a history for which President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill to provide Bachelder with $50,000, is credited in part for the preservation of the battlefield and for placement of many of the individual monuments and signs there.

The federal government, in spite of the sizable amount they had spent, never published Bachelder’s history of Gettysburg. Bachelder had been the subject of criticism from both Union soldiers, who resented his being seen as an expert, without having fought in the battle, and Confederate soldiers, who complained of not having been interviewed. The editors of The Bachelder Papers, a collection of Bachelder’s interviews, etc., speculate that in the face of these criticisms, Bachelder chose to use only 10% of the considerable new primary materials he had amassed. The government felt the history was not original enough as it was based mainly on official reports they already had, and the bulk of the primary material ended up, rather by chance, in the collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

All of this was going on during the same period that Bachelder published his resort guide—three editions, at least. None of my sources on Bachelder indicate why he would have been diverting his attention from his Gettysburg passion to a travel guide.

Unlike the Sweetser guide which (apparently, since it is not clear when the first edition of the book was published) preceded that of Bachelder, the latter is set up in a more tour-oriented manner with chapters on individual “Pleasure Routes.” Although the book covers sites across the continent, even referencing, at least in passing, Sacramento and San Francisco as tourist destinations, it is dismissive, on the whole, of New Jersey destinations, which are represented only as side trips which travelers may choose to take, incidental to a primary pleasure route. Long Branch, Atlantic City and Cape May all receive brief mentions or slightly longer writeups.

The author explains his dearth of New Jersey material thus:

The State of New Jersey fails to offer any natural wonders to attract its share of the sight-hunting and money-spending thousands, who afford a summer harvest for more favored States. But her beaches are among the finest, as elsewhere described. Doubtless spots of landscape exist worthy of some delay to those flitting birds of passage; but the Jerseyites make their summer jaunts to more attractive regions than they can find at home. Their broad, extended beaches, which prove such sources of pleasure to the citizens of other States fail to interest them. Fortunately, a few hours’ ride will take them to the picturesque region of Pennsylvania, where they will find mountains and rocks to their heart’s content.³⁴

The main section of Long Branch material is printed encased in quotation marks, suggesting that Bachelder, as with many others before him, cribbed material from some earlier source. A separate Long Branch section, “New York to Long Branch,” indicates that there is a newly completed “short and quick route opened by the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, June 15, 1874.”

About ten trains are run each way daily,–a cheap and easy release from the narrow streets of the city, and equally narrow pursuits of gain, to the soul-saving worship of the great and good God through the never-quiet, never-ceasing roar of the mighty ocean. ³⁵

Atlantic City is mentioned twice, only in passing, but Cape May gets one full page, without any of the quotation marks of the Long Branch section on the page preceding it. The hotels of Cape May “are conducted in every manner equal to the principal hotels of our largest cities: the leading houses, the ‘Stockton,’ ‘Congress Hall,’ and ‘Columbia,’ each accommodating comfortably from one thousand to twelve hundred guests.” Of these hotels, Bachelder says that the Stockton “is without doubt the most attractive and commodious house to be found at any of our seaside resorts; and as a combination of mechanical and architectural beauty, it cannot be surpassed.”³⁶

NEW JERSEY SPAWNS ITS OWN GUIDEBOOKS

Although both Sweetser and Bachelder included some information on railroads and other transportation available to get to the various resorts they cover, neither author limited their choice of destinations and routes to any particular railroad. I turn now to some guidebooks focusing primarily or entirely on destinations within the state of New Jersey, each of which listed only destinations within the purview of a particular set of routes belonging to one railroad company. Printed later in the nineteen century and into the early twentieth century, these books had the apparent aim of serving not only tourists, but those who might seek out New Jersey destinations as places for homes to commute from. 

Before Gustav Kobbé wrote The Central Railroad of New Jersey referenced at the start of this post, he had already written and published The New Jersey Coast and Pines a year earlier. This earlier guidebook covers not only the few seaside resorts found so attractive by Bachelder but quite a few others, all accessible from railroad routes maintained by the Central Railroad of New Jersey. It appears both of Kobbé’s New Jersey guidebooks may have been commissioned by the railroad, but there is no specific note to that effect anywhere in either book. 

An online biography³⁷ (without source material cited) suggests that he was from an affluent family: His father, William August Kobbé, was the consul general for the Duchy of Nassau until it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866. His mother, Sarah Lord Sister Kobbé, came from a “prominent New England family.” Gustav was sent off to Germany to study composition and piano, and continued his study back in New York before enrolling first in Columbia College and then Columbia Law School, form which he graduated in 1879. He went on to earn an M.A. from Columbia the next year, and married two years later.

Kobbé became a prolific writer, especially on topics relating to music, starting as co-editor of the Musical Review, then very quickly transitioning to the staff of the New York Sun, and shortly thereafter to the New York World. The latter publication sent him back to Germany to cover the first performance of Parsifal, itself the last composition of Richard Wagner. He wrote articles for a variety of publications, including Scribner’s Magazine, and Ladies’ Home Journal, serving also as the music critic for the New York Herald for 18 years.

At the same time, he was writing dozens of books, many on musical topics, including How to Appreciate Music and The Voice: Its Production, Care and Preservation. He also wrote a series of books on famous actors and/or actresses and their homes (with photographs), some short plays, and at least one book of poetry. He wrote guidebooks about New York state soon after his two New Jersey Guidebooks, and was even commissioned to do a short book on an event being held in New York City to commemorate the 300^th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River and at the same time the 100^th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s first successful paddle steamer in that same river.³⁸ The event was a week long, and because Hudson (although English) was exploring on behalf of the Dutch East India Company when he discovered the Hudson, included an exhibition of paintings of Dutch master Rembrandt, born just three years before Hudson’s voyage being celebrated.

Kobbé’s most famous book, The Complete Opera Book: The Stories of the Operas, Together with 400 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation was published posthumously.³⁹ Kobbé had been completing the book in 1918 when he was killed in a freak accident in which a seaplane struck him as he was sailing on the Great South Bay off Bay Shore, New York.⁴⁰

Although Kobbé has a lengthy list of publications to his name, few are guidebooks, and online biographical materials about him barely mention the guidebooks. He does give a tantalizing hint in one of his guidebooks, dedicating it “To Edward D. Adams, In A Suggestion From Whose Fertile Mind The Author’s First Guide-Book Had Its Origin.”⁴¹ Apparently this refers to Edward Dean Adams, a prominent entrepreneur who at various times had positions or interests in a number of railroads, including the Central Railroad of New Jersey. According to Edward Dean Adams: Biographical Record, Adams was involved in the reorganization of the Central Railroad of New Jersey from 1886 to 1887,⁴² just before Kobbé published the first of his two guidebooks for destinations on that railroad.

While Sweetser and Bachelder guidebooks opened with some sort of general tips to the traveler, Kobbé opens each of his New Jersey guidebooks with a single page “Preface” that indicates the book will include accounts of “romantic” interest—” historical matter” or “historical incidents”—in addition to facts about and description of each location. This is followed in each book by a multi-page introduction featuring sections on New Jersey’s topography and geology (Kobbé goes into special detail in The Central Railroad of New Jersey about the trap rock ridge and the impacts of the last glaciers), as well as sections on natural history, climate, and (human) history—with a separate section on “Indian History.” Each introduction also includes some general information on transportation (starting with Indian paths, and ending with a brief description of relevant routes of the Central Railroad of New Jersey). Each book has a section on churches, followed immediately in each case by a section on “Amusement and Sport.” Additionally, each guidebook’s introduction has a section summarizing hotels to be found along the routes covered. The New Jersey Coast and Pines also includes a section “Life-Saving Service.”⁴³ The Central Railroad of New Jersey, instead, has a section on “Industries.”⁴⁴

In its section on natural history, The New Jersey Coast and Pines tells the reader that “the little fern Scizoea pusella is found nowhere else in the world,”⁴⁵ except the New Jersey Pines. We are also referred to a “capital little book by Angelo Heilprin, ”The Animal Life of our Seashore” published by the J.B. Lippincott Company, in Philadelphia” for descriptions of the shellfish, and other sea life.⁴⁶ Similarly, in The Central Railroad of New Jersey, Kobbé indicates that the area covered by the book has plants “not known elsewhere in the State; for instance, Potentilla palustris, Salis myrtilloides, Rhododendron Canadense.”⁴⁷

In the section on Indian History in both books, Kobbé recounts an identical story of a petition brought before the government of New Jersey by a Lenape band which asserted that “they had never parted with the right to fish and hunt secured to them in 1758.” The Legislature apparently voted to give the band a $2000 payment, and Wilted Grass, the Lenape individual who had been chosen to go and make the appeal for relief made the following speech:

“Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle; not an acre of our land have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for themselves and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief and bright example to those States within whose territorial limits our brethren still remain. Nothing but benisons can fall upon her from the lips of a Lenni Lenape.”⁴⁸

The following curious declaration is found in the introduction to The Central Railroad of New Jersey, which perhaps is motivated by the book’s second purpose, for those looking for a home in the New Jersey suburbs:

It may be said that thousands of the best citizens of New York are not citizens of that city at all. In the morning they flood the business districts of the metropolis; in the evening they ebb away. They are citizens of New York, in so far as the city owes to their brains and energy a great share of its prosperity; they are not citizens in that they live and vote elsewhere. If this great suburban army of intelligent men lived as well as worked in New York, we would probably hear less of the necessity of municipal reform, for there would be just so much more intelligence among the voting population—which brings us back to our starting point: that of New York’s best citizens thousands are, unfortunately for it, citizens of New Jesey, Long Island and other suburban districts.⁴⁹

In an article titled “Washington Irving’s Summer Home,” an unidentified author celebrates one of Kobbé’s “romantic” stories, about Irving’s summer home in Newark, New Jersey. The author goes on to say:

Road Maps. –Mr. Gustav Kobbé has conferred a boon on those who travel, or who drive or walk in pursuit of summer pleasure, by editing and issuing an excellent series of guide-books and road-maps, very clearly and neatly executed. This publisher has already given travelers the best guide-book to the New Jersey coast. He now takes up the belt of the same State traversed by the Central Railroad, and makes a neat hand-book, entitled “The Central Railroad of New Jersey.” It is in every respect fitted for the tourist, giving abundant information respecting local history, scenery, and hotels. . . . Publishers or booksellers in various parts of the country might profitably follow Mr. Kobbé’s lead and get up maps of the immediate neighborhood of many popular resorts that would be almost certain of very wide sale. Nothing appeals more quickly to a traveler’s eye than a practical and accurate map and text and pictures of the notable things to be seen in the vicinity of the place where friends’ recommendations have sent him. ⁵⁰

Each book has a description for each destination along the relevant Central Railroad segments. I personally love that The Central Railroad of New Jersey still includes books as a draw to potential tourists or home buyers. 

There is no indication that Kobbé ever published another edition of The Central Railroad of New Jersey, but The New Jersey Coast and Pines did go through at least one additional edition.

Another New Jersey railroad, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DLWRR) apparently issued guidebooks annually or nearly so for some years in the 1890s and early twentieth century. Unlike those of Kobbé, which may or may not have been commissioned by the railroad whose routes he is describing, these clearly identify the railroad as their producer, with the title page identifying a compiler or editor and compiler. Also unlike Kobbé’s guides, which were fairly lengthy hardbound books, those of the DL&WRR were much slimmer booklets, sort of pamphlets, with a cardboard cover not unlike those of current paperback book covers. Interestingly, both the titles of the annual versions and the format used inside vary fairly significantly from year to year. The books each have the notation “Compliments” or “Compliments of” and the name of the railroad, which is listed a bit differently from year to year.

I can locate mentions of Glenside Park in only one of these guidebooks, the 1899 one, entitled Outings on the Lackawanna 1899, first in the entry for Murray Hill, New Jersey, the site of one of the railroad’s stations:

MURRAY HILL, Union County, N.J.

A beautiful town containing the palatial country houses of several wealthy New Yorkers, and a section which is rapidly growing into favor as a place of residence. The roads in Murray Hill and through the surrounding country are macadam and afford the most picturesque drives. Glenside Park, which within the past three years has become popular as a summer resort, is situated one and one-half miles from the station. The Bassinger Home for the Aged and Infirm Ministers of the Reformed Episcopal Church is situated here.⁵¹

A second mention is in a separate table in the same guidebook, where four accommodations for Murray Hill are listed, including Glenside Park, which is one and one quarter miles from the station by carriage, with space for up to 100 visitors and an onsite golf course.⁵²

Other versions of the guidebook have different titles, e.g. Mountain and Lake Resorts: Lackawanna Railroad or Summer Excursion Routes and Rates: Delaware, Lackawanna and western Railroad Company.⁵³ All the books include some information on each station, but the small bit of detail about the character of each place which was contained in the 1899 version is dispensed with for all but the most prominent locations. In these, the entry for a particular place simply lists its distance from New York, and fare rates (adding monthly commutation rates in later versions, in addition to the daily and round trip/excursion rates).

In some, including the 1899 one, the front of the book is a mass of advertisements along with an introduction, extolling the virtues of traveling mentioning some of the destinations on the DL&WRR.  

The 1900 guidebook opens with a fanciful piece called “Sculpture of the Elfs (sic): A Story of Delaware Water Gap and Pocono Mountains.” The author of this story is listed as Will Bogert Hunter.⁵⁴ A 1904 opening piece is even more interesting: “A Chance Courtship” by Nelson Hapgood Morris, in which a young woman of 25 years of age decides to try a sort of pre-internet dating platform called Wedding Bells and gets tricked into falling in love with her best friend’s brother. Will Bogert Hunter wrote more than once for the DL&WRR guidebooks, and is also the author of a Ghost of the Glacier and Other Tales, a collection of short stories and descriptions of some destinations along the DL&WRR line, issued by the railroad. I cannot find any online material about Nelson Hapgood Morris.

GUIDEBOOKS CONTINUE

The Nelson Hapgood Morris piece is especially amusing in light of the popularity of online dating platforms now. But, in another example of how things come around again, I came across a reference to a new series of tourist guidebooks being produced by the University of California Press, A People’s Guide Series. The series is meant to target those for whom “consumption and spectacle” tourism are not the main draw and is described as follows:

A People’s Guide is a series of guidebooks that uncover the rich and vibrant stories of political of political struggle, oppression, and resistance in the everyday landscapes of major cities. Much as Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States infiltrated the standard history textbook with untold stories of the nation’s past, the series will reveal an alternative view through the format of a guidebook. These books will not only tell histories from the “bottom up,” but also show how landscapes are the product of struggle. Each book will include sites where the powerful have dominated and exploited other people and resources, as well as places where ordinary people have fought back in order to create a more just world. Entries will be accompanied by photographs, maps, personal reflections, and nearby sites of interest to create a resource that is both visually appealing and highly usable. People’s Guides are aimed at both locals and tourists, and are well suited for scholars and teachers of history and geography, activists, and those who seek a more authentic experience of place.⁵⁵

Contrast this to the nineteenth century guidebooks recounting of “romantic” incidents.