USA > New Jersey > Cape May County > Ocean City > Ocean City [N.J] guide book and directory 1895 > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
F 144 O, Raz
MT. Rush
1895
LIBRARY OF COPY.
GAFSS
AUG . 6 :1895
27754 0
CITY OF WASHI!
Ocean City
Guide Book ....
and Directory
OCEAN CITY,
NEW JERSEY.
By MARY TOWNSEND RUSH.
Robert Fisher,
THE PIONEER
REAL ESTATE AND INSURANCE AGENT AND BROKER,
Conveyancer,
Commissioner of Deeds,
and Notary Public.
Can supply purchasers with desirable investments at all times. Ocean front Cottages and Hotel Sites a specialty. Parties seeking to get hold of large plots for future develop- ment can be accommodated. Lots for sale on club or syndicate plan. Rents and Renting.
Life and Fire Insurance
Given careful attention, and the utmost security guaranteed in every department.
BUSINESS OFFICE ON MOST PROMINENT CORNER
Seventh St. and Asbury Ave , Ocean City.
1
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
A Well Spent Quarter of a Century.
We read almost every day of anniversaries, celebrated or to be celebrated, of various benevolent or beneficent institutions. Some are twenty-five, some fifty, some a hundred or more years old, and are all celebrating years of use- fulness and well doing.
One of these beneficent institutions, though a private one, is soon to enter upon its twenty-fifthi year of usefulness, having accomplished wonders of heal- ing in diseases of long standing, many of them pronounced incurable, relieving and curing a great number of pliysical ills, such as colds, catarrh, headache, asthma, consumption, rheumatism, dyspepsia, nervous prostration, etc.
Drs. Starkley & Palen, the sole proprietors of the Compound Oxygen Treatment, are ever ready to furnish unimpeachable evidence and any infor- mation required, free of charge, on application.
If you write or call and see them, giving an account of your case, they will give you a candid opinion. If the case is a desperate one, even for Compound Oxygen, they will tell you so. Whether you decide to try the remedy or not, there is no charge for consultation. Book of 200 pages sent free.
We give below a letter from Bishop Wm. Taylor :
"The Oxygen Treatment you sent me a year ago for C. O. Harris, one of my missionaries, whose life was in jeopardy on account of lung troubles and a severe cough, he now testifies has greatly benefited him. He has entirely re- covered his health, married a wife, returned to his work in Africa, and taken his wife with him.
BISHOP WM. TAYLOR, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
We are permitted to refer to many members of the Philadelphia and New Jersey Conferences who have been benefited by the Compound Oxygen.
Dr. Palen is a well known summier resident of Ocean City, and Treasurer of the Ocean City Association.
DRS. STARKEY & PALEN,
1 529 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., TORONTO, CANADA.
ii
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
The Ocean City Real Estate Exchange.
.......
W. E. MASSEY & CO.,
Real Estate and Insurance gents.
Lots for Sale or Exchange. Houses to Rent. Deeds, Bonds, and Mortgages Drawn. Loans Negotiated. A number of Bargains in Lots.
We respectfully solicit a share of your Real Estate patronage.
W. E. MASSEY & CO.,
811 Asbury Ave., Ocean City, N. J.
NEXT TO THE POST OFFICE.
P. O. BOX 335.
16 YEARS EXPERIENCE.
THEOPH CLUNN,
Practical - Upholsterer,
OCEAN SIDE OF WEST AVE.,
ABOVE TENTH,
OCEAN CITY, N. J.
Carpets Made and Laid Curtains and Shades Made Up and Hung Furniture Repaired Awning Work a Specialty
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
iii
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
J. S. RUSH, Sign Painter
COR. 11th ST. AND CENTRAL AVE.
Work done on Glass, Tin, Iron, Wood, etc.
Ornamental Designs of all kinds.
LIBRARY OF PH.
AUG : @ 1895 CIT 244540a
/
Frescoing and Decorating in Oil and Water Colors
SPACES TO LET AT STEAMBOAT PIER ON BUILDING FOR
Sign Display Advertising.
iv
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
OCEAN CITY SENTINEL
Ocean City, New Jersey.
R. CURTIS ROBINSON, Editor and Prop'r. ...
A spicy seven-column weekly paper, with a very large circulation. Published on the border aud circulates in three adjoining counties, as well as nearly every State of the Union. Advertisers will be wise in giving the SENTINEL a trial order, as our city is visited by thousands from a distance.
RATES REASONABLE.
Obe Ocean City Daily Reporter Will be issued every afternoon (Sundays excepted) during July and August. BRILLIANT WITH LOCAL NEWS. HOTEL ARRIVALS.
R. CURTIS ROBINSON,
Real Estate and Insurance Agent,
Cottages for Sale, Rent or Exchange. Desirable Building Lots at Bargains. Insurance Placed in Reliable Companies.
744-46 Asbury Ave., Ocean City, N. J.
1895 ...
... OCEAN CITY ...
Guide Book and Directory
Ocean City, New Jersey.
... Containing a list of ... Permanent and Temporary Residents, Street Directory, Historical, Biographical and Descriptive Sketches, Wrecks, etc.
A L.E
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1895, BY MARY TOWNSEND RUSH, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. (All rights reserved.)
Location and Boundary.
Ocean City is located on an island on the new Jersey Coast formerly known as Peck's Beach, sixty miles southeast of Phila- delphia, ten miles south of Atlantic City, and thirty miles north of Cape May. The island has for its boundary these waters, and is noted for its margin of seven miles of hard, smooth ocean strand, two hundred feet wide, and eleven miles of Bay, Sound and Inlet shores :
Dorth - Great Egg Harbor Inlet. South-Corson's Inlet. East-Atlantic Ocean.
West-Great Egg Harbor and Thorofare Sound.
Ocean City is easy of access by way of West Jersey D. G., which follows an almost direct line from Philadelphia across the State of new Jersey, and conveys passengers by express trains, without change, to the heart of the city.
F 144 aty 10.
ROBERT FISHER, MAYOR OF OCEAN CITY.
COUNCILMAN S. B. SAMPSON.
COUNCILMAN H. C. SUTTON.
COUNCILMAN IRA S. CHAMPION.
" Merrily carol the revelling gales Over the islands free * * And the spangle dances in bight and bay From the green seabank the rose down trails To the happy brimme'd sea."
" Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows
From lands of sun to lands of snows, This happier one Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun."
HE wonders of Nature must forever stand unrivalled. Man, with all his ingenuity, backed by the marvelous developments of modern science and intellectual progress, will remain in the background in his efforts to produce any- thing so beautiful as the glory and magnificence with which the heavenly architect adorned the world.
The physicians of modern times, reinforced by all the para- phernalia of medical science and the schools of learning, have been taught lessons from the healing breath and the healthi- laving waters of the grandest of these creations, the Ocean. Down to its shores flock invalids, worn and weary with the bur- den of the body ; school children, white and wan, and business men with nerves unstrung and shattered. Nature lays hier hand upon her children and restores the waning strengtli to tlie weary body, paints the white face with the ruddy hue of health,
4
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
looses the tension, and soothes into an indescribable peace and rest the overtaxed nerves. The gratitude beaming through the results of these ministrations arises in the sincerest psalın of praise and adoration ever offered to the Creator. Nature lias smiled in peculiar beneficence on the island upon which Ocean City is located. It lies near the thirty-ninth degree of north latitude ; on or near this parallel are the Azore Islands, noted for their equable climate; the Balearic Islands of the Mediter- ranean Sea; Southern Italy, with her vineyards and orange groves, bearing fruit in winter; the Ionian Isles; Arabia, the land of the date-palin and tamarind ; the central belt of the Flowery Kingdom, and the Yosemite Valley of California. Whether some upheaval of nature of a period known only to Him "Who laid the corner-stone thereof when the morning stars sang together," or, to judge by its alluvial character, the ocean in its ever encroaching, ever receding surges, laid at the feet of the continent this emerald jewel in its setting of silver sands, we know not. That it was created for our enjoyment is sounded in the murmur of the ancient cedars, in the ripple of the waves and in the full diapason of the north wind as it lashes into fury the turbulent billows.
The happy location on the continent, equi-distant from the bleak rock-bound shores of Maine and the sandy borders swept by the hot breath of the tropics of the land of Florida, favors it with an unparalled climate. Added to these advantages, the Gulf Stream, sweeping up the coast, tempers the winter and renders the island at that season a mild, healthful and delight- ful resort. So equable is the temperature the seasons seem to drift imperceptibly into one another.
The variety and abundance of its flora is a source of constant wonder. February ushers in the season of flowers with the tiny scarlet blossoms of an arctic plant nestling close beside the tropical cactus, which later on bursts into yellow gorgeousness. March sends a thrill through the invisible underground life
EX-MAYOR H. G. STEELMAN.
-
EX-COUNCILMAN, J. C. STEELMAN. EX-COUNCILMAN J. F. HAND.
EX- MAYOR J. F. PRYOR, M.D.
.K
EMMA L. SACK-CAPTAIN LEWIS RISLEY.
5
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
and in quick reponse crocuses, hyacinths and tulips spring into bloom1. April develops into infinite beauty a wealth of wild flowers indigenous to the soil of both tropical and temper- ate regions.
Among the gnarled and straggling branches of the cedars and in the boughs of the berry laden hollies, the cardinal or Virginia mocking bird trills in an abandon of ecstacy to his busy inate ; the brown thrush lilts in full clarionet tones of the Southern rice fields, as his cousin, the robin, sways and bows on a neighboring branch in sublime indifference to every sound save his own liquid melody. The yellow oriole darts hitler and thither like a sunbeam, while the ubiquitous song sparrow, recalling the prowess of his ancestor in killing cock robin, challenges alike the blue bird, swallow, lark and nuthatch to intrude upon his domain, in the firin conviction of his ability to conquer the entire feathered tribe. Long wavering lines of wild ducks, geese and brant inove rapidly overhead froin the bay to the ocean, while the bald eagle, albatross and sea gull, in their majestic sweeping flight, render by contrast the con- fusion greater of the fluttering flocks of curlew, plover and snipe.
Deer were once upon the list of its fanna. These have long since disappeared from the island but are still frequently shot on the neighboring mainland. A strange feature of animal life was seen up till a few years ago in numbers of wild cats. The island became inhabited by them in this manner : "Beach Parties," the memory of which is dear to the hearts of all the old residents of the adjacent mainland, consisted of young people who sailed across Great Egg Harbor Bay to the island for a day's recreation in fishing and bathing, never forgetting to bring along a fiddler, and down on the beach at low tide a terpsichorean fling was indulged in with a hilarity that would startle society now. These parties frequently brought super- fluous cats from their homes which they turned loose. Tabby's
6
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
antipathy to water prevented her return, but, nothing daunted by this misfortune, she exercised her nine life prerogative and commenced to forage on her own responsibility. Gradually her numbers increased and from a sleek, velvety, luxury-loving creature she developed through successive generations her original size and ferocity.
About the time of the disappearance of wildcats the last of a herd of wild cattle, which had undergone a transformation from a domestic to a wild nature, were also exterminated. This herd originated in some stray calves which were not claimed when the island was used for pasture land only. Many an old sportsinan remembers Great Egg Harbor Bay and its treasures of oysters and shellfish of every description, long before the island was inhabited. How they sailed over its waters or out of the inlets upon the ocean for deep sea fishing, returning from both ocean and bay laden then as now with drum fish, sheepshead, snapping mackerel, blue fish, hague croakers, weak fish or mullet, each in its stated season. September, 1890, snapping mackerel chased a school of weak fish into the surf and it was estimated that eleven tons were caught by the residents of the city. This frequently occurs, though they seldom come in in such great numbers. Among the curiosities of the finny tribe are the quaint little sea horse, the sea robin, burr fish, shovel-nose and hammer-head. sharks, sting ray and toad fish. The sea spider sprawls back to its native element in all its ungainliness when brought up by a sly wave, the king crab burrows silently beneath its huge umbrella like covering till it disappears under the sand. The pugilistic soldier crab scut- tles over the ground, bearing defiantly aloft its huge lone claw in flat contradiction to all known laws of gravitation. Here may be found ample material for reflection upon the saying, "As happy as a clam at high tide," for those who understand the nature of a bivalve, which to the casual observer is not at any time given to evidences of an exalted degree of levity.
REV. E. B. LAKE.
AL
---
GREAT EGG HARBOR IN THE DISTANCE.
ELECTRIC RAILWAY.
BIRD'S EYE VIEW.
7
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
At the north point of the island, where the waters of the inlet wash across the sands, manose and razor clams find seductive ground. It is no unusual sight to see the shore on the opposite side dotted with visitors of the beautiful resort of Longport, as well as the Ocean City side, engaged in gathering these delicate and toothsome shellfish. The quahog of the bay and the surf clam of the ocean are always in demand. A sword fish was captured in the bay November 21, 1883, weighing two hundred and forty pounds ; the sword measured four feet. A sunfish washed ashore in front of the Hotel Brighton June 27th, 1883, weighing five hundred pounds. October 8, 1891, a rorqual whale, sixty-eight feet long, was cast on the beach. May, 1894, a dolphin was thrown up on the shore where it gave birth to a young one. The skeletons of the whale and the large dolphin, and the body of the young dolphin are now on exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, where there is scarcely a specimen in the New Jersey collection of shells and ocean forins that may not be found on the beach at Ocean City. A wealth of ocean life is continually coming up on the strand, from the highest and mnost gigantic forms on down through the lower orders, arousing our admiration at every step in the auro- ral tints upon the curved scroll of the shell, the delicate carving of the sea urchin, the prismatic lights of the medusa, still down to those dubious forms which mark the confines of the two great divisions of organic life, animal and plant, apparently having so little in common with each other, though always mingling with the former, specimens are cast up from sub-aqueous forests, in a wonder of profusion.
In the fairy pencilled seaweed, That floats in the quivering deep : In the soft wind's magic music, As it lulls the waves to sleep ; In the storm king's wild battallions, And the seabird's screaming brood, In the unwritten lore of nature, Is revealed the Creator, God.
8
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
Great Egg Harbor
" Where gulls and eagles rest at need, Where either side by sea or sound, Kingfishers, cranes and divers feed And mallard ducks abound.
" Where, busy in their grassy homes Woodcock and snipe the hollows haunt."
YING on the opposite side of the island from the ocean is this picturesque, land-locked sheet of water, teeming with blue-fish, sheepshead, sea trout, oysters and shell-fish of every description. It received its name from the great number of gulls' eggs found in the surrounding meadows. The gentle ebb and flow of the tide, submerging and revealing the emerald beauty of its tiny islands, the white-winged sea craft passing rapidly to and fro, or resting lazily on the blue waters, the throbbing steamers, with their long wakes of white foam, form an endless panorama, from which the weary toiler, the dispirited pleasure seeker, or the invalid can never grow weary.
Away to the southwest, Thoroughfare Sound sweeps out through the meadows, till it is lost to view in the shadow of the pines. Following the line of the bay, now curving to the west, Beasley's Point is plainly visible. Sweeping down past this little hamlet the waters of Tuckahoe, Middle and Great Egg Horbor rivers empty into the bay. In the dim perspective, masts and sails are outlined against the sky ; in nearer view schooners, laden with wood, oysters and freight of various kinds, are hurrying out of the ocean, bound for different points all along the coast.
TRAY MÓRY
1
THE TRAYMORE. A. C. CRETH, PROP.
V
-
HOTEL BRIGHTON, 7th ST. AND OCEAN AVE. R. R. SOOY, PROP. THE FIRST HOTEL BUILT ON THE ISLAND.
THE STRAND, R. W. EDWARDS, PROPRIETOR.
FULL OCEAN VIEW
ELECTRIC LIGHTS
THE EXNETT
THE EMMETT.
9
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
Historic Somers Point next marks the curve of the shore. From its wharves have sailed out brave soldiers of the Revo- lution and many daring and skillful navigators. Many of these left behind them wives, sweethearts and mothers, who differed only from the heroines of fiction in that the tragedy and pathos of their lives was real, for as they left the port, they sailed out of the lives of those standing on shore, and all that ever floated back was a rumor, perhaps, of a fragment of wreck cast up on some distant coast, bearing the name or some trace of the ves- sel. Still following the line of the shore, now lost to view, and now clear and distinct, Anchoring Point greets the eye. This was a noted spot during the Revolutionary War. Its tradi- tional lore is wildly romantic. A number of attempts have been made to unearth treasure said to be buried there by pirates. The last were made by a wealthy but eccentric iron and oil prospector, of Pittsburg, who came for the purpose also of loca- ting, with a peculiar divining rod, the Spanish vessel Lagadere, said to have sunk near that place, laden with gold and silver coin. The superstition that those who search for the buried treasure will meet death by drowning was strengthened when his body was cast up on the beach at Longport. Beneath the one lone tree left of a forest of pines are said to lie the bones of one of the most noted pirates of those who infested the waters of the Atlantic.
Longport is located on the point of land which forins the last boundary of the bay, and is divided from Ocean City by Great Egg Harbor Inlet. On the opposite side it is washed by the ocean for miles. This place was founded by M. Simpson Mccullough in 1882. Its elevation above the sea level and the absence of swamp lands and marshes, together with acquired sanitary arrangements, complete in every detail, render it pecu- liarly pleasing and healthful. A short ride on the electric cars. along the beach, in full view of the ocean, receiving all the benefit of the cool breezes, brings one to Atlantic City, where
IO
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
every means of amusement and the finest markets in the State may be found. The architecture of Longport is imposing and beautiful, and is in perfect harmony with the entire plan of the city, which promises to rise to a degree of refined elegance not excelled on the coast of Southern New Jersey.
THE ALBANY, 945 ASBURY AVE. MRS. CHAS. BROWN, PROP.
J S.RUSHI PAINTER
FRESCOCA
DECORATOR
RESIDENCE OF J. S. RUSH, COR. HIth ST. AND CENTRAL AVE.
J.S.QUIRK PHILA.
EX-COUNCILMAN PARKER MILLER. FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS THE ONLY RESIDENT OF THE ISLAND.
....
THE VANDALIA, 725 CENTRAL AVE. MRS. BURLEY, PROP.
II
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
Historical and Descriptive.
HE Island was formerly known as Peck's Beach. There may be found still further back in the archives of London a document, in which it was known as Pete's Beach.
Of the primitive inhabitants we have no history save the meagre records and traditions of the white man. In 1623 Captain May sailed up the Delaware Bay and gave his name to its north cape, from which the county in which Peck's Beach is located takes its name, and he, together with other navigators, report Indians all along the coast. Prior to this time we are told of two tribes which held the land from "Sandy Barnegate down to the south cape " (May) whose chiefs bore the naines of Tirans and Tiascans. These are doubtless the tribes of Keche- ineches and Sorgehunnocks, branches of the great tribe of Dela- wares or Leni Lenapes mentioned by De Vries in his journals of 1631-2-3, in which he frequently refers to the Indians of what is now Egg Harbor. But little remains to 11s, however, of
" These legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams."
In the flight of the same water fowl we hear no intelligible sounds. To us is not given to understand the language in which they imparted to these children of nature her mysteries.
" All the wild fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fenlands, Chetowaik, the plover, sang them ; Mahng, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa ; The blue heron, the Shushugah."
12
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
Of his conquests of battle, his council fires, his deer-skin wigwam, the hunt and chase, the records are fast locked in the graves and shell mounds* which alone remain. As is well known, Captain May was followed by other navigators, who, in turn, established and abandoned settlements until 1664, when the first permanent settlement was made by the English, at Elizabethtown. On the twentieth of March, of the same year, Charles II. made an extensive grant of territory to his brother, the Duke of York, and on the twenty-third of June, a portion of this territory, consisting of over five million acres, was conveyed to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Cartaret. The following is a portion of a copy of the instrument of conveyance, secured by the publisher from England, and in this the bounds of New Jersey are, for the first time, regularly defined :
" This indenture, made the three and twentieth day of June, in the sixteenth year of the Raigne of our Sovereign, Lord Charles, the Second, by the Grace of God of England, Scot- land, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith- -
Anno Domini 1664. Between his Royal Highness James, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, Lord High Admiral of England and Ireland, Constable of Dover Castle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Governor of Portsmouth, of the one part, John Lord Berkeley, Baron of Stratton and one of His Majesty's most honorable Privy Council and Sir George Cartaret of Sattrum, in the County of Devon, Knight, and one of His Majesty's most honorable Privy Council, of the other part, Wit- nessetlı, that said James, Duke of York, for and in consideration of ten shillings of lawful money of England, to him in hand paid, by these presents doth bargain and sell unto the said John Lord Berkley and Sir George Cartaret all the tract of land adja- cent to New England, and lying and being to the westward of Long Island. Bounded on the east by the main sea and part by
*Remains of these may also be found by the antiquarian upon the neighboring Longport Beach.
W.A.
A HANC
CORNETBAN
Cean
N.J.C
City N.J
W. A. MANAHAN CORNET BAND.
EXCURSION HOUSE, ELEVENTH STREET AND BOARDWALK.
13
OCEAN CITY GUIDE BOOK.
Hudson's river, and hath upon the west Delaware Bay or river, and extendeth southward to the main ocean as far as Cape May at the mouth of Delaware Bay, and to the northiward as far as the northerninost branch of said bay or river of Delaware, which is in forty-one degrees and forty minutes of latitude, and worketh over thence in a straight line to Hudson's river-which said tract of land is hereafter to be called by the naine or naines of Nova Cesarea, or New Jersey."
But sixteen years later one hundred and fifty-one of the inhabitants of the part of the State then known as West New Jersey signed the first constitution of government created by the people themselves. The thirtieth name on the list of signers was that of Thomas Budd, to whom, on October 7th, 1695, the first survey of Peck's Beach was made. The land was held by him for fifty-five years ; its chief use was for grazing cattle and obtaining medicinal plants, of which sassafras and bayberry were the principal ones, and which, together with the great quantities which grew on the mainland, were shipped to Hol- land and other foreign ports.
We are also informed that Thomas Budd was present at the death scene of the great Delaware chief, the Christian Ocka- nickin, to whom he addressed his last words. These words were of a religious character, and are preserved in literature as one of the gems of poetic beauty left to us by a race whose peculiar gift of oratory was unequalled by any other uncivilized nation.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.