USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. II > Part 29
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Bounty!" He scarcely dared to sleep, fearing that he would be robbed. One petty officer followed him constantly, and seemed to wish to tempt him into lonely places.
After this almost fruitless attempt to spare the poor men from con- scription Mr. Murray returned to his home and, during the absence of those whom he could not spare, he made every effort to sustain their families. He gave away many bushels of potatoes and corn and hay to keep alive a horse or cow which became the dependence of the family. Mr. Murray then received the title of the "Poor man's friend."
After the close of the war, during an exciting political campaign, the "New York Tribune," especially, was very violent against the men who had been drafted, but had gone away supposedly to escape conscription, claiming that they were traitors, deserters, etc., and insisted upon their being disfranchised. Mir. Murray carefully looked up the law in the mat- ter. When election day came, he was made judge of election. About fifteen men presented their votes and were challenged as deserters, an edi- torial in the Tribune being produced as authority for the challenge. Mr. Murray read the law, as he had found it, administered the oath of alle- giance, and accepted the votes according to that law. The excitement was very great. The Union League had been organized and was holding secret sessions every evening. One day one of its members came to Mr. Mur- ray and advised him to go away from home, as his political enemies were determined to have him indicted for accepting illegal votes. The pen- alty for this would be five years in the State's prison and five thousand dollars fine. He replied, "I will be right here on my place. ,If there is a grand jury in Monmouth county that will indict me for doing my duty, I am willing to stand nty trial." He remained at home until informed that the grand jury had refused to listen to the complaint against him.
While he had been absent in Washington he had been nominated and elected assessor for the township of Middletown. This office he held for a number of years. Some years later, when land along the Shrews- bury river was becoming very valuable for summer residence and the taxes had been increased, Mr. Murray found that the weight of the burden was being carried by the poor property owners along the bay shore. He determined to equalize taxation by a correct valuation of property. The result was, as had been anticipated, the making of many enemies among the rich and influential, but he believed this to be his duty and he performed it regardless of himself.
In the summer of 1865 his father died, and Mr. Murray succeeded him as trustee of the Middletown Baptist church, the third generation to hold the office. In 1872 he became clerk of the board of trustees. Dur- ing and after the war, when all the bitterness of partisan politics almost disorganized the churches of Monmouth he made every effort to sustain and uphold them.
In the execution of his father's will, Mr. Murray was obliged to mortgage his farm to pay his sister and his sister's children their legacy. During the reconstruction period farming in Monmouth deteriorated in proportion to the development of the west and south. Freights were very
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high and labor became more and more expensive and difficult to obtain. By careful experiments and accounts he soon learned that the yearly crops raised by the conservative farmer resulted in heavy yearly losses. He abandoned them, and raised those products requiring least labor and yiciding highest profits. As far as possible he sought to supply the want of laborers by machinery of his own contrivance and construction. Dur- the decade from 1865 to 1875 he carried on in his laboratory a course of experiments in converting the fruits and materials of his farm into products of higher commercial value. Many of the experiments which he then made have since become practically applied and successful because of more recent scientific discoveries, which make production cheaper. In these experiments he always kept a strict account of profit and loss; therefore, he entered into no extravagant schemes or speculations. Farming was unprofitable and he sought patiently to convert his farm into a factory, anticipating the transition of New Jersey from an agricultural to a resi- dence and commercial state. He was like a scout, too far in advance of the main body, and he fell before the victory was won.
During the era of extravagance and demoralization which followed after the war (1872-6) Monmouth county suffered severely by the em- bezzlement of township monies by certain tax collectors. It was now that Mr. Murray gave another evidence of his strict probity and unswerving integrity in his conduct in the prosecution of George W. Patterson and Alvan B. Hallenbeck, tax collectors of Freehold and Middletown town, ships. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain. He would not con- demn a man without positive evidence against him, nor would he attack him without first warning hini and giving him an opportunity to make good his errors. The letters, tabulated documents prepared by Mr. Mur- ray for evidence, affidavits, briefs, subpoenas, etc., now in possession of his family, all prove that he calinly prepared evidence and dared to make affidavits upon which was based the suit brought (September 13, 1875) by the inhabitants of the township of Middletown against Alvan B. Hal- lenbeck and his bondsmen, of whom Mr. Murray was one. In one of his affidavits he states that he expected to be called upon to make good his share of the deficiency for which he was responsible as bondsman. Few men care to believe that a man will take a stand against his own best in- terests for pure motives of honesty and principle, therefore, the motives assigned to him become as numerous as the individuals in the community to which he belongs and as various as the shades of difference in their characters. Calumnies and the loss of old friends, or supposed friends, are very painful to an honorable and warm-hearted man, but his courage in facing them makes his stand for what he believes to be right the more heroic.
Judgment in this case was still pending when a private suit was brought against Mr. Murray in one of the lower courts in New York City. He held certain property for a debt. The owner in a letter ordered him to sell to make good his claim. After due advertisement it was sold at auction. Immediately the former owner brought a suit in his wife's name, claiming that the property belonged to her. Judgment was obtained
REV. A. E. BALLARD.
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for about two thousand dollars. This, with the judgment already pending for about the same amount, induced the mortgagee then holding the mort- gage which had been placed upon the farm years before, to foreclose. At the sale in June, 1880, Mr. Murray lost everything but a little personal property in household goods. For days he maintained the bitter strug- gle between despair and moral courage. The stronger of the combatants. prevailed, and he took up the task of moving away from the home he loved. and beginning life anew. In IS50 he had for his mother's sake laid aside all his bright prospects, hopes and ambitions in the world of action, to be a farmer. Thirty years later, having cheerfully, earnestly and faithfully striven to hold his place during the most difficult period of social and po- litical upheavals, he must return to that world of action. It was too late. He was no longer young ; he was lame and penniless. After the first shock he patiently and cheerfully took up the task and never again lost hope. He never forgot the friends who stood nearest to him in that hour-Hon. George C. Beekman and ex-Governor Joel Parker.
Having apparently recovered from a short illness, he died suddenly on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1884. Feeling weary, he had laid down to rest, and, falling asleep, never awakened. On his face was the fixed calm of perfect peace. There was no doubt of the evidence and judgment in the last great trial.
Mr. Murray's greatest happiness was in his home life. He had three children and he and his wife were their only instructors. The children are: (5) Mary Crawford; (5) Ella Cooper; and (5) George Crawford.
(5) Mary Crawford Murray was born December 29, 1855, and mar- ried Doctor Ovid Allen Hyde, of Brooklyn, New York, on July II, 1887. Since that time they have resided in New York City. Their children are : (6) Chester Ovid Hyde, born July 22, 1888, and (6) George C. Mur- ray, born December 23, 1890, and died September 25, 1891.
(5) Ella Cooper Murray, was born September 6, 1857, and married William T. Van Brunt, of Middletown, New Jersey, on June 1I, 1889. Their children are: (6) George C. Murray, who died January 23, 1897, and (6) Catherine Eleanor, born September :4, 1900.
(5) George Crawford Murray, born April 15, 1868, and married Gertrude Whitman, of Brooklyn, New York, June 23, 1897. She died March 3, 1899, leaving one child, (6) Gertrude Dorothy, born February 4, 1899.
(5) George C. Murray, Jr., inheriting the talents and predilections of his father, has become a successful practical electrician.
M. C. MURRAY HYDE.
REV. AARON E. BALLARD, D. D.
The Rev. A. E. Ballard, D. D., vice-president of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association since 1872, and from that time until the present its active manager and also president of the Pitman Grove Camp Meeting Association. traces his ancestry to an English family (probably from 15*
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Wales) which came to America in the year 1600 and settled in New Eng land, whence its members dispersed to the west and south. The imme- diate branch from which Dr. Ballard descends located in Springfield, New Jersey. His paternal grandfather was a captain in the Continental army during the Revolutionary war, and several of his great-uncles fought during the same struggle, either as officers or privates. The father of Dr. Ballard, Jeremiah Ballard, removed to Bloomfield, and there the sou . was born.
The education of young Ballard was a matter of personal acquire- ment in greater part, his attendance at school being limited to a few quar- ters during his early childhood. When he was between ten and eleven years of age he began to earn his own living, engaging in mechanical pur- suits, in which he continued until twenty-four years of age, when he en- tered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal church.
In his first ministerial appointment he was entrusted with the over- sight of a charge, instead of being appointed a junior preacher under the superintendent of an older minister. His second charge was in a village where the church was feeble and little regarded. Against the remonstrance of the official board he held a revival.service, which continued without re- sult for several weeks, when, as if through a pentecostal visitation, a gen- eral religious feeling became manifested and proved contagious. In this some eighty souls were received into membership with the church, af- fording it a position of commanding and enduring influence. In his next charge the work was light, and he was enabled to devote the greater part of one year to those studies which he was so ambitious of following, and for which he had heretofore been unable to find time.
At this period it was the policy of the church to station unmarried. ministers for but one year in a place, and he was removed to a church of eighty members, a number which he reduced to fifty-six by the exclusion of those whose religious life did not comport with their profession. But almost immediately he restored the church to about its original number of members by the reception of a new class of worthy converts. He was next assigned to a county town, then the acme of honor for a young minister, and here his labors were rewarded with a fair measure of suc- cess. It may be noted, incidentally, that he here gave display of his ath- letic powers by accomplishing the climbing of the Saw Kill Falls. In his next charge, also in a county town, he was allowed to remain two years. During this time he married, and had for his first home, one room ( with a pantry ) and he has frequently said, in his later years, that in this hum- ble domicile were passed some of the happiest days of his life. He was next sent to a town of considerable importance, but where the church membership was small, the greater number of the people poor, and the church edifice encumbered with a debt which exceeded its value. He devoted himself to the work of liquidation, and finally succeeded, but only at the cost of great self-sacrifice, he devoting to the purpose one-third of the three hundred dollars salary allowed him. His next charge was in one of the great educational centers, where overwork and close applica.
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tion to his studies undermined his health and necessitated his retirement from pastoral labor.
For a year following he served as secretary of the American and Foreign Christian Union for the Middle States -- a position in which his labors were ardnous, but different in character, and during this time he regained his health. He was then appointed to one of the largest churches in the conference, with which his effort was abundantly successful in numerous accessions to membership and in securing the erection of a church edifice in an outlying village. He was next appointed to a charge in the city where he had passed his early boyhood, and he made the latter fact the reason for voicing a protest against his appointment-the only objection he ever raised against an assignment. His superior insisted, however, and he entered upon his work and during the two years of his pastorate succeeded in completing the unfinished church edifice and in liquidating the heavy debt with which it was burdened. Upon the con- clusion of this successful work, he was appointed to a church in Minne- apolis, Minnesota, but the serious illness of his wife forbade his going to stich a distance, and he was assigned to a charge in southern New Jersey. In his new field he was eminently successful, and added largely to the church membership. But his experiences in that field were personally sad- dening, for he found himself in a malarial region, unaware of its dangers until his two little boys had died. After a year's pastorate in an educa- tional center, where the church membership was largely increased, he was appointed to a village station, where it was only possible to keep it from being irretrievably overwhelmed by its debt embarrassment.
The early days of the Civil war found Dr. Ballard in the pastorate of a strong church in a large city. Firm in his devotion to the Union, he constantly preached loyalty to the government, but, by invariable courtesy and consideration for others personally, he held his congregation to- gether, although there were among his parishioners many border state people whose sympathies were antagonistic to his own. His experiences were similar in the next church to which he was appointed. After this he was located with a church which had been deprived of a large portion of its membership for the formation of another, but he was successful in bringing it up to its full former standard. For eight years following he served as presiding elder, having in charge one hundred churches, neces- sitating incessant travel and several discourses each week, to which was added the constant intercourse with the various pastors and official boards in the settlement of difficulties and the devising of ways and means look- ing to greater efficiency. In 1895 the Doctorate of Divinity was conferred upon him by Warrenville College. He was elected a member of the gen- eral conference of his church.
For some years thereafter Dr. Ballard served various charges, his work habitually resulting in numerous accessions to church membership. Following this, for a period of fourteen years, as president of the Church Temperance Commission, he devoted his efforts to temperance work, seck-
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ing the suppression of the saloon. He afterward served pastoral terms at Pitman Grove, Sea Isle City and Merchantville.
In 1872 Dr. Ballard was called, by the death of Dr. Stokes, to a cir- cuitous charge in the Grove Camp Meeting Association, and in this po- sition he has continued to serve to the present time, the duties of the man- agement largely devolving upon him, under the advisory superintend- ence of Bishop J. N. Fitzgerald, D. D., LL. D. His labors in this position have been incessant and arduous, and he has his share in the great suc- cess which has attended the enterprise. In 1895 the Doctorate of Divinity was conferred upon him by Harriman College. In this connection a promi- nent journal recently said :
Dr. Aaron E. Ballard, vice-president of the Ocean Grove Associa- tion, although eighty-two years of age, is still a picture of robust health and wonderful activity. He is of average size, sturdy, ruddy complexion, of the General Grant or Phil Sheridan build, bearing himself as erectly, and is as active and energetic as most men of half his years. He is proba- bly known to more people in New Jersey than any other man in the state. His sixty years' connection with the ministry, constantly changing loca- tion, covering a large part of the state in a presiding eldership of his church; his fifteen years presidency of the Church Commission of Tem- perance, which included all the Evangelical denominations and made his occupancy of their prominent churches a duty; his secretaryship of the American and Foreign Union; his intimacy with the late Senator Sewell -- of whom it was said there was nothing he would not do for Dr. Bal- lard because Dr. Ballard would not ask for anything that ought not to be done-familiarized him with the leading men in the political field, ex- tending to the rank and file in political contests; together with his active co-operation in the organization and nurture of the Ocean Grove and Pit- man Grove Associations, where there has been founded and developed the great principle of summer resort in connection with active religion -all these have justified this statement of the wideness in which he is known.
"He has never had what is called a vacation, and has never seemed to need any. When asked how he accounted for his phenomenal youth- fulness, he answered : 'I do not know how to account for it. I never kept what are called the laws of health. As a boy I worked all day, played dur- ing the evenings and read and studied at night so that I formed the habit of doing with but four to four and a half hours of sleep which has con- tinued all my life. I have never regulated the times for retiring to rest, or how many hours I should work, whether ten or twenty. I have eaten and drank what I chose, except alcoholic spirits, new bread and veal. I used tobacco for forty years, when I abandoned it because the church to which I belonged disapproved it. Most of my thinking has been done upon my feet, and my perplexities solved in long tramps in the mountains. I come of a long-lived ancestry on both sides -- Welsh and Holland. I know 1 am an old man, but do not feel it. I walked recently fourteen miles, preaching two sermons between, without feeling any weariness. The
G. C. BEEKMAN.
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general management of Ocean Grove is performed with less sense of labor than would have existed twenty years ago. I have no reason to give for this except that I do not take suppers, and do take sulphur and Turkish baths, and a towel bath every morning.'
JUDGE GEORGE CRAWFORD BEEKMAN.
Judge George Crawford Beekman, of Freehold, Monmouth county, New Jersey, is one of the oldest and most capable lawyers at the bar, has served with signal ability upon the bench and in the legislature, and has made various valuable contributions to New Jersey history. His own an- cestry and that of the family into which he married relate him to many of the most honored of the old Colonial families-Dutch, English and Scotch- whose genealogies are found in various works treating upon such subjects.
He was born July 2, 1839, on the old Beekman farm now ( 1902) owned by his brother Edwin, situated at the west end of the ancient village of Middletown, in Monmouth county. He descends directly from Martin Beeckman, as the name was then spelled, according to Pierson in his "First Settlers of Albany," New York. He came from Holland to Amer- ica in 1638 and settled at Schodack Landing, on the east side of the Hud- son River, in the present county of Rensselaer, New York. One of his sons, Hendrick, was married in 1685, at Albany, to Annetje, a daughter of Pieter Quackinboss. Hendrick Beeckman was an official of Albany in 1695. In 1710 he purchased a tract of two hundred and fifty acres along the Raritan river in Somerset county, New Jersey, on which his three sons settled. His eldest son, Martin, was married June 21, 1724. at Harlem, New York, to Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Waldron and Nettje Bloetjoet, his wife. Riker, in his "History of Harlem," gives a full ac- count of the Waldrons and this branch of the Beeckmans. The second son by this marriage was Samuel, born November 26, 1729, who married his cousin, Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Waldron and Anne Delamater, of Newtown, on Long Island. (Sce Riker's History of Newtown, Long Island.) Their eldest son was also named Samuel. He was born Sep- tember 21, 1766, and married in 1786, Helen, the youngest daughter of Hon. Cornelius Ten Broeck, of Harlingen. in Somerset county, New Jersey, and died March 4, 1850. The third son by this marriage was Jacob Ten Broeck, named for his maternal grandfather, Isaiah T'en Broeck, of Kingston, Ulster county, New York. For an account of him see Schom- maker's History of Kingston, New Jersey. Isaiah Ten Broeck Beckman was born on the Ten Broeck homestead near Harlingen, New Jersey. April 10, 1801, in the old dwelling erected by Hon. Cornelius Ten Broeck, paternal great-grandfather of Judge George C. Beekman, prior to the Revolutionary war, and in 1902 still standing. Jacob T. B. Beekman was graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York. He was a divinity student in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed ( Dutch)
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church in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and on completing his course be- came a licentiate of the denomination named. He was a man of much ability, and lived a most useful ministerial life. He first became pastor of the Reformed church at Holmdel, which was until 1825 comprised in the historic Dutch Reformed church of the Navesink, later known as the Brick Church of Marlborough, and he remained with it for nearly ten years. In 1836 he took up his residence in Middletown, which was his home until his death. He liberally gave aid with his effort and means to the erection of the Reformed church edifice in that place, and after its completion sup- plied the pulpit for three years without compensation, until the congrega- tion had so increased in numbers and financial ability as to assume the support of a settled pastor. Throughout his life he labored arduously in the interest of struggling churches in various portions of the state, and preached nearly every Sabbath. He married (in 1833) Ann, a daughter of George Crawford by his second wife, Eleanor Schenck. Mrs. Beek- man was born February 22, 1801, on the homestead farm at Middletown. She lived here all her life and died May 18, 1876, and her remains were laid by the side of her husband, who had died in the previous year, April 23, in Fairview county.
George C. Beekman passed his boyhood days upon the homestead farm, and labored often on the farm when not attending school. He laid the foundation for his education in the neighboring schools, and when about fifteen years of age entered the freshman class of Princeton Col- lege, from which he was graduated in 1859, in the same class with Hon. George Gray, of Delaware, Judge Frederick Stump, of Maryland, and Samuel Hepburn Pollack, of Milton, Pennsylvania. The two last named, both of whom have passed to the silent land, were his most intimate and congenial friends.
In 1860 he began his law studies under the preceptorship of Hon. Joel Parker, was licensed as an attorney in 1863, on examination before the supreme court of the state, and at once entered upon the practice in which he is yet engaged, in Freehold, the county seat of Monmouth county. From 1874 to 1882 he was associated with Holmes W. Murphy, and the law firm of Beekman & Murphy were during this period counsel for the board of chosen freeholders of Monmouth county, the town and township of Freehold, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association and kindred in- terests in the shore region. During his long professional career of very nearly forty years, Judge Beekman has been an indefatigable practitioner, and has been concerned in many of the most important causes brought before the New Jersey courts, some of which are of sufficient moment to be cited.
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