Ocean County: 100 Years Ago This Week! (November 6-12, 1925) Life & Seasons

Read and experience these long-ago people with their celebrations, tragedies and seasons lived through the same shores, streets and towns we inhabit today.

Presented here is this week's New Jersey Courier Brevities column (we’ve taken a bit of editorial license and renamed it Life & Seasons), written by NJ Courier editor, William H. Fischer, as he sat at his desk above Main Street near Washington Street. Next week begins more news and features from this newspaper plus the Ocean County Review and Tuckerton Beacon.

Full editions of each week's newspapers will soon be available to Barnegat Bay Maritime Museum members to enjoy. If you haven't yet, please consider supporting us by joining today!

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LIFE & SEASONS

​November.
Eleventh month.
Armistice day next Wednesday.
October 30 brought our first snow.
Less than two months left of 1925.
Today is the 310th day of the year.
A card party and dance will be held next Wednesday, November 11, at St. Joseph's parish hall. Snyder's orchestra will furnish the music.
Rudolph Rogers and family on Friday last moved from the Schwarz and Jeffrey building on Main street, to Sandy Hook, where he is in the Coast Guard crew.
The Gilbert Conk houses on Lein street--three bungalows in a row--have had new shingle roofs put on.
November 1 was a bright, warm, pleasant day.
Hallowe'en furnished much fun for the little folks and big folks too.
Fred Gaskill has started work on two houses on Hadley avenue, between Dr. Paul Goble's and Charles B. Grover's residences. Both will be two story houses. One is for himself, and one for his father-in-law, James Allardice, now of Beach Haven. This about builds up the west side of Hadley avenue, between Washington street and Grand avenue.
There was a good attendance on Thursday last at the chicken salad supper in the M.E. Church, held by the Service Class of the Sunday-school. A nice sum was the result, the money to go toward improvements made on the church property the past summer.
A large crowd of town folks as well as out of town folks attended the mask dance Saturday evening at Cedar Grove.

​Howard Britton's new home in Montray Park is nearing completion.
Court Toms River, Foresters of America, held a district meeting last evening, in their new lodge room, the second floor of the C.B. Mathis building on lower Main street. There were visiting delegations from the Courts at Toms River and Freehold.
Under date of November 1 the Traco Theatre Company sent out semi-annual dividend checks on its outstanding preferred stock at the rate of three and a half per cent.
Some trees have lost all their leaves; some are partly stripped, and some are still clothed in green.
The Toms River Water Company has completed the concrete foundation for its new 380,000 gallon water tower on Horner street, across from the high school. As told before, this foundation is some 36 feet in diameter and six feet thick, re-enforced with iron rods, and holds the huge foundation bolts for the big standpipe.
Going up and down the Lakewood road you can see "fresh eggs" listed at any price from 75 cents to 90 cents. The explanation is that the low prices are for small eggs.

​Lieut. Chadwick, Jack Costa, and crew, had an airplane show on Saturday and Sunday, reaching here last week after a summer in New England, and striking a snow storm, Friday, the day their show was advertised to start. They took up a nice lot of passengers from the field at the corner of Hooper avenue and Cedar Grove road.
Somebody or something hit the big and heavy cement foundation to the traffic signal at Washington and Main streets on election day, moving one corner about fifteen inches. While nobody knew who did it, there was a suspicion that it was sideswiped by the Mathis Majority, coming up the shore, bound for Lakewood and Point Pleasant.
Ben Johnson says that the coal famine has increased the sale of heating outfits, and wants to know why?
John Gaskill was awarded a decree of divorce on Monday by Vice Chancelor Berry, sitting at Long Branch, from his wife, formerly Catherine Applegate, now of Trenton. Gaskill was represented by R.T. Stout.
November starts off cold and stormy, like October, but colder.
A son was born on October 15, to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Thompson and has been named Rodney George.
The Toms River Kiwanis Club coasts 100 per cent attendance for this week, the first perfect week in its history.
There are now forty pupils in the high school taking the commercial course. They keep nineteen typewriting machines busy.
Capt. Lewis Mitchell, of Island Beach Coastguard station, has his new house on Washington street all done except the interior trimmings.
Former Sheriff A.W. Brown, Jr., on Saturday last turned in his badge as a prohibition officer, and is now working for the Monmouth Title Company, and will conduct their Toms River branch.
Wells Chapel, in Berkeley, had a corner stone laying on Sunday afternoon last.
Mrs. Henry King, of Lexington avenue, boasts of violets blooming out of doors.

Doris Ulmann, Corn Shocks and Sky, ca. 1925, platinum print, sheet and image: 7 1/4 x 6 in. (18.4 x 15.3 cm.) arched top, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Charles T. Isaacs, 1994.89.3 [Colorized 2025]

​Farmers have most of their corn shockend [stalks tied together] and some husked. They don't raise much of it these days.
Vice Chancellor Berry has had the storm doors put up on his big yacht Wilanida, at her dock on the riverfront. The upper works of the yacht are entirely enclosed in a wooden covering.
J.R. Hensler has had new slips built out in the river in front of his home to accommodate his yachts.
The entire year showing a deficiency in rainfall, many farmers complain of dry well, or nearly dry, in spite of the recent rains. They say if the old saw is true, and cold weather doesn't come till the springs and swamps are full of water, we are due for a good deal of rain in pretty short order.
Poultrymen are turning the lights on their newly housed birds.

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