(MARI)TIME WARP! 1893: HALCYON BAY HEAD SUMMER

Welcome to Toms River Seaport Society’s (Mari)Time-Warp, taking our supporters back through the nautical history of the Barnegat Bay and Toms River watershed areas!

This time we reprint a look into the idealized co-ed summer life of Bay Head, August 1893, courtesy the Philadelphia Inquirer and Newspapers.com.

Special Correspondence of The Inquirer.

Bay Head, N.J., Aug. 26.--Bay Head in the summer is almost a college town. The boys from the big universities are the fad here, and none others can find favor in the eyes of the fair and charming maidens who bask upon the beach and promenade the boardwalk. Tall, athletic fellows, with huge shocks of tangled hair, clad in white duck trousers, spotlessly clean; flannel shirt or sweater, with the name of their "varsity" in its own proper colors; closely-fitting yachting caps with six-inch visors, bearing the initials of their baseball, football or boat club; their brawny arms and legs, sunburned to shoulder and knee--they make a close phalanx in the social world here that has never been broken. The young business man off on his vacation has tried it and failed, and even a brace of West Pointers, in their last year at that, with uniforms and military glory galore, failed to make the least headway against the irresistible though unseen influence.

Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia and University of Pennsylvania--these are the colors that form the prettiest and most striking costumes that are worn by the individual admirers of each young collegian among the summer girls, who are proud of their allegiance to learning's shrine, and who never fail to emphasize the fact. The lads, in addition to the other athletic sports, all affect yachting, and most of them can handle a catboat like a born Barnegat bayman. And in this, as in the others, the orange and black vies with the blue or the blue and red, so that there is no lack of pleasurable excitement.

As might be expected, this rivalry extends also to the fair sex, and gives rise to many amusing situations, but that only adds to the aforesaid pleasurable excitement.

Half-back Knipe, of the University of Pennsylvania football team, is a frequent and familiar figure on the beach and a favorite with both lads and lasses.

A pretty dance at the Ocean View was one of the pleasant features of the week. It was given by Mrs. Lincoln Eyre and Mrs. Howard Clark.

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Local Notable Side Note:
Alden Arthur Knipe (June 1870 – May 22, 1950) was an American football player and coach. He served as the sixth head football coach at the University of Iowa, serving from 1898 to 1902 and compiling a record of 30–11–4. Knipe was also the first head baseball coach at Iowa, coaching two seasons from 1900 to 1901 and tallying a mark 25–8. Knipe played college football at the University of Pennsylvania. After retiring from coaching, authored numerous books for children with his wife, Emilie.

Alden Knipe Wikipedia Page
Alden & Emilie Knipe on Writing Children's Books (The Writer, Vol. 30, 1918)
Knipe Children's Books Available Digitally Online

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