Ocean County , NJ History

A hurricane blew through the NJ-Philadelphia region in 1818, and surprisingly got only this small write-up in the local paper: from the New Jersey Mirror 9 Dec 1818 A violent gale from the southwest commenced about 10 o'clock last Saturday evening and continued with little intermission until Sunday morning at sunrise. The damage to the port of Philadelphia was extensive. Nothing this severe has been experienced for twenty years. So a storm not seen in 20 years causes extensive damage---and this is the news? Likely it wasn't actually a hurricane---the official list of hurricanes for that year does not mention one in December.

The following article appeared in the New Jersey Courier on 14 Nov 1930: SIMMONS, KLAN FOUNDER, AND BELL, KLAN OFFICIAL, SAID TO BE NEW ORGANIZERS There is a story about the counties of Monmouth and Ocean, based on an account printed recently in the Asbury Park Press, that an effort is being made to create a new organization with the same aims and purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, but with different methods. The Press recently told of a meeting in that county addressed by William Joseph Simmons, founder of the Klan, and afterward deposed as its head, and by Arthur H. Bell, the Grand Dragon of New Jersey in the days when the Klan was in prosperity in the state. It was said that both these men talked on the new organization, the White Band. Residents of Lakewood Road, between Toms River and Lakewood, near where the cross road turns off to the Klan hall on Whitesville road, say that numerous cars traversed that road on Sunday afternoon, and from that it is assumed that Simmons and Be...

from New Jersey Mirror 15 Jul 1908 After swallowing carbolic acid in a drug store at Franklinville on Saturday night, Amos Green, a negro bartender, of Atlantic City, rushed upstairs with a club, and chased the proprietor of the store over chairs, tables, boxes and barrels, upsetting a lamp and making the place look as if a cyclone had struck it. The druggist escaped injury. Then the negro fell unconscious to the floor. He was hurried to Clayton, three miles distant, but doctors were unable to save the man's life.

from the New Jersey Courier 29 Jul 1875 The gigantic oak near the corner of H. Gogel's hotel at Deal, that it stood the storms of ages, was conquered by the storm of Sunday last. It was completely uprooted, and falling upon the end of the hotel demolished one of the chimneys. There was a terrible rain and wind storm at Long Branch , Sunday, doing considerable damage. The gale was the hardest that has blown for years, not excepting the severe Winter experiences. A carriage was overturned on Ocean Avenue, throwing out the driver, and frightening the horses into running away. Hundreds of bathers were caught in the water and the wind blowing seaward they were hurriedly got ashore by the men in charge. If the storm had burst suddenly they would have been in peril. Hotels with wide balconies shook like reeds, and it was momentarily feared they would be unroofed. Fences broken, bathing houses tumbled over, a building used as a shooting gallery was blown down, and several flag poles, in...

That was the front page headline on 14 June 1939 in the New Jersey Courier...the initial story appears below...but make sure to read the whole story! This wasn't quite what it seemed at first... "Lakewood police and county detectives are endeavoring to unravel a suspected 'tarring and feathering' crime. It was believed from bits of clothing found on trees and bushes that the unknown victim was a woman, who had been covered with paint, walked through the woods, and wallowed in the muck of a sewage tank. The suspected crime was first discovered on Sunday by Charles Galati of Whitesville, an employee of the sewage plant. Officers found the spot where a car had parked about a quarter of a mile southeast of the plant. and found also a man's shirt and a pair of slacks. The dresses were daubed with red, orange or aluminum paint and black asphalt. Two small empty cans which had contained red and aluminum paint were found in the woods near the spot. There were no signs of...

New Jersey Mirror, 4 Dec 1907 The death chair has been installed at the State Prison and an Italian, convicted of murder in Somerset county, will be the first to thus pay the penalty for his crime in New Jersey. Giovanni's execution will be followed within the ensuing fortnight by three others, two of the murderers now awaiting electrocution being the negroes who so foully slew the defenceless wife and servant of an aged Camden county farmer while the husbands of the two victims were trying to save what they could from the burning barn which the murderers had previously fired. For such brutes the electric chair offers almost too merciful an agency through which the world is to be rid of them.

From the New Jersey Courier 21 Nov 1930: County detective Ellis Parker is making efforts to identify the remains of a man found in the woods in a swamp near New Gretna on Thursday. The discovery was made by two gunners, Raymond Jeffries and William Gill, of Pleasantville. The man had been dead a long time, ad only a skeleton remained. Death probably occurred before the forest fires last spring. The bones were charred by the forest fire and nearly all the clothing destroyed. Clues that might lead to an identification are meagre: a pair of rubber boots, gold rimmed spectacles, tooth brush, safety razor, had and leather belt.

from the New Jersey Mirror of 22 May 1851 While the workmen were engaged last week in digging on the lot where the water company intend putting up a steam engine, they found a piece of bombshell, which had undoubtedly been sent on its mission of death and destruction during the Revolution, by either the American or British soldiery stationed here. It is probably not known to every one now residing in Mount Holly, that in the dark and stormy period that tried men's souls, a large number of the British quartered on the Mount, while at the same time the American troops occupied Topetoy. From some cause unknown to the people of the present day, they had no regular engagement, but we are told that to keep up communications they frequently exchanged cannon balls and bombshells, and thus telegraphed to each other the friendly feelings entertained.

This letter was found , transcribed via type writer, at the Ocean County Historical Society. It is dated March 7th, 1773 and was sent apparently to Lydia and Amos Gale, from their son in North Carolina. The letter was originally transcribed by Lizzie Gale Carter, although it does not indicate where she got it, who actually wrote the original, or where the original is now. NORTH CAROLINA MARCH 7, 1773 These lines are to inform you that I am still liveing and in good health. Thanks be to the ever lasting God for it. I shall endeavor to inform you of my misfortunes--I sailed from North Carolina Oct 27-1772 bound to Philadelphia, thinking to come home and see you all once more. I got abreast the Capes of Deleware on the first day of November, 1772. Late in the afternoon there came on a severe gale of wind fro the North West and blowed so violently I could not carry Sail--I then lay to until I had like to over set several times. The last time had much to do to right her, but our ...

The 16 August 1882 issue of the New Jersey Courier has an article, which even it admits is only hearsay and may not be true, about the death on July 25th of that year of one Sarah Condon Pease of Piney Grove. I have not been able to locate where that place is, or was, although the article implies that it was somewhere in Ocean County. At any rate, it mentions that she was known all over the area as the 'most powerful witch' in South Jersey. She is not known to have had a husband, although she had two sons, John (who deserted the Union army during the war), and Henry. She was arrested in 1845 on a charge of witch craft brought by one James Cosgrove, although the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. A few months later, there was apparently another arrest. She died in July of 1882, and according to the article, a large number of people turned out for the funeral and subsequently looted her home. So far I have found no other evidence that anyone by this name lived anywhere in...

from the New Jersey Mirror 18 May 1938: Miss Elizabeth F. Mooney, 32, of 16 Carrol street, Trenton, secretary to former Governor Edward C. Stokes, was killed late on Saturday night in a head-on collision of two automobiles near Absecon. She succumbed shortly after being admitted to the Atlantic City Hospital. Her companion, Miss Agnes Weinmann, 24, of Morrisville, Pa., was taken to the same hospital, suffering from a fractured leg and other injuries. They were returning from a visit to the Atlantic City horse show in the car of Miss Weinmann, who was driving. Miss Weinmann is noted in the Trenton area as an equestrienne. David Johns, 64, of Egg Harbor, a passenger in the other car, also was killed. Two others who were in the car were injured: Harry Johns, 33, who received a fracture of the right arm and a possible fracture of the skull, and a son-in-law, Michael Puglice, 28, who sustained a broken right leg. State police were unable to learn who was driving the car.

It's not entirely clear exactly when people began living in this place in Galloway township; in 1716 it is known that the “King’s Highway” was built over an Indian trail that had existed for many years before. This road is now known as Shore Road. It was probably still not a settlement here though, but just a road passing through the area. Then, in 1769 on a map Entitled “The Province of New Jersey Divided Into East and West, commonly called The Jerseys” (Published Dec. 1, 1778, Drawn from the survey made in 1769 and subsequent military surveys made by British troops), Gloucester County is depicted extending from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean. Absecum Beach is shown between Brigantine Beach to the north and the Great Egg Harbour River to the south. The only roadway shown in an area now called Atlantic County is a roadway now called Shore Road ( the aforementioned Kings Highway ). The road runs from the Great Egg Harbour River to the Mullica River through the village of “...

Sharing bits of information related to genealogy and history, mostly New Jersey related.  I also post the information on my website at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~batsto/ I'll also be posting photographs taken in my travels around the state for posterity.  Like this picture of a shack out on Cedar Bonnet Island taken around 2009.