This Week in Ocean County, 1921! (November 11th)

11/12/2021

Welcome to another era in Ocean County's past, one century ago this week!

Let your mind wander as you consider life around November 11th, 1921, courtesy the New Jersey Courier weekly newspaper and Ocean County Library archives, and peppered with items of maritime interest (around a 5 minute read).

BREVITIES AND EDITORIALS

(written by NJ Courier editor, William H. Fischer, as he sat at his desk above Main Street near Washington Street; it was much like a collection of online social media updates seen today)

Armistice Day.
Election is over.
Rain wanted badly.
Yep, moonlit evenings.
Full moon next Tuesday.
Seven weeks left in 1921.
Six weeks more and—Christmas.
Once more the country is saved.
Ice in the fountain election morning.
There was a good corn crop, to judge from the full cribs seen about the country.
The trees show their bare limbs—but the flapper now wears transparent silk, as the bathing season is over.
The School Board have had a number of plans for new school houses submitted to them by various architects.
The street has been widened on Washington Street, at Main, north side, and a new sidewalk laid, the township and county splitting 50-50 on the expense. It makes an easier job turning that corner.
Red Bank defeated Toms River High School at football on Saturday last, with a score of 18-0. Red Bank also had a record of not winning a game in two years. Toms River can still make that boast, but Red Bank can no longer.
The Poultry Producers' Association packing house last week sold over the counter to local purchasers $1200 worth of eggs, beside shipping several times that value to New York. Mr. Dunton, of Indian Hill, is gathering up eggs for the association from the membership.
The blue birds, seldom seen around here in summer time, are now back for the winter.
Most of our summer birds have gone south. A few robins linger in the swamps and in the red cedar thickets.
Willard H. Eddy, of the Philadelphia Record, arrived Wednesday, for his annual gunning trip. He and his crew (Charles B. Grover, Hadley (Buck) Woolley and Charles Applegate) are starting down the bay in their houseboat for the duck and brant shooting at the inlet.
The fund for the cow has been increased another dollar, sent in by Cephas Johnson through Charles Herflicker. Mr. Borga says that luck seems to have turned for him since kind friends bought him the cow. He has been given a job at the garage of the Novins Bros., on West Water Street, and can now see daylight ahead for this winter, while a few weeks ago things looked dark for his little family.

HEADLINE NEWS

STONE RIPRAP SEA WALL TO SAVE BARNEGAT LIGHT
Washington, D.C., November 2.—What may prove to be the final step in the preservation of the historic Barnegat Lighthouse, was taken today when Senator Frelinghuysen, Congressman Appleby and Robert F. Engle of Beach Haven, a member of the New Jersey Board of Commerce and Navigation, had a lengthy conference with Secretary Hoover relative to the most desirable type of sea wall and jetties necessary to be constructed. Because of the cost, as well as the question of their durability, the Department of Commerce has consistently opposed the construction of jetties of which wooden framework was an essential part, and sought the cooperation of the New Jersey Board of Commerce and Navigation in a recommendation for a type of jetty that would be permanent.
Last summer, after thoroughly inspecting the conditions surrounding the Barnegat Light, Congresman Appleby suggested to the board that in his estimation the rip-rap type of jetty, which has been successfully used for protection in the Sea Bright and Sandy Hook section, would be the most desirable, as well as the most economical...

YACHT CLUB GAINS 18 MEMBERS
Eighteen new members were elected at the meeting of the Toms River Yacht Club on Friday night last, as the first fruits of a membership drive started by Commodore Horace A. Doan, and entered into heartily by the bulk of the old members. The new men are: Martin Schwarz, Jr., Joseph E. Abbott, Vernon P. Sutton, Daniel S. Holmes, James W. Lillie, Bernard Hough, Daniel S. Priest, Sidney R. Harris, Francis G. Taylor, Clarence A. Case, Charles F. Burkhard, Frank Richie, Reginald Potter, Tilden Kirk, Franklin H. Doan, Edward G. Crabbe, Daniel McE Crabbe, Allan Brouwer.

CONVICTED OF STEALING CRANBERRIES AT BURLINGTON
One of the cranberry thieves, operating with an auto in the pine belt, was convicted last week in Mt. Holly courts. Maurice Anderson, of Medford, was found guilty of stealing thirteen bushels of berries from the cranberry house of Henry S. Lippencott, and trying to sell them as his own berries to Harry L. Knight. The car was traced by its tire marks. Anderson's defense was that he bought the berries from some unknown man.
Several similar charges will be tried at Mt. Holly soon, as the cranberry growers are determined to break up this kind of theft at its beginning.

OIL MENACE ON COAST AN INTERNATIONAL MATTER
Congressman Appleby's efforts to abate the nuisance of crude oil refuse being dumped in the sea off the Jersey coast has reached the point where international complications have set in. It is found that foreign vessels, as well as American ships, are burning oil, and dump the refuse from their oil tanks before entering New York, and if they dump this refuse outside the three-mile limit they snap their fingers at Uncle Sam. Beside, who is to tell when or what ship dumps the oil unless patrols are thick enough to watch every vessel.
The result of this complication is that the Congressman has offered a resolution, referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, asking the President to take this matter up with other maritime nations and secure their consent to a conference which will consider ways and means of reaching this menace, which must be as much a nuisance outside and inside the harbors of other countries.

75 HORSES INOCULATED; TWO MORE DIED LATELY
Seventy-five horses were inoculated on Wednesday in the territory between Toms River and Tuckerton, for the dreaded botulinus infection or “horse sickness,” as it is more commonly known. Two more deaths from this disease were reported the past week, both from Manahawkin—Luther Paul losing a horse on Monday, and James T. Corliss on Friday last.
The inoculation was done by men from the State Bureau of Animal Husbandry, accompanied by County Agent Waite. Early in September a large number of horses were “shot” for this disease, but the inoculation seems to give immunity only for a space of from six to eight weeks, and next year plans will be made to inoculate the horses in this territory twice in the fall. The disease is similar to spinal meningitis. It is caused by a vegetable organism, like mould, which seems to leave its spores in the earth, and which grows rapidly with a few damp days.

MARK GRAVE OF SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
On Armistice Day Tennant Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, will mark and decorate the grave of a Revolutionary soldier, John Chamberlain, at the old burying grounds in West Point Pleasant. John Chamberlain is the ancestor of several members of the chapter, one of whom is Mrs. Rachael Van Note, of Point Pleasant.

SPRINGS AND WELLS LOW
The lack of rain that has characterized the last six months is having the natural effect on wells and springs, drying them up all through the countryside. In some places farmers in the dairy business have to haul water for their stock. Others have found it necessary to haul water for their house use.
Last week's rain was not heavy enough to sink in the ground. November generally brings rains, and in this belief the dwellers in the country on farms and villages are now pinning their hopes.

CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS SENT ABROAD BY JR. RED CROSS
This week the Ocean County Junior Red Cross has been packing and shipping abroad their contribution of Christmas stockings to the little children of what was formerly Austria, Roumania and Serbia. Wednesday there were 270 of these stockings packed and shipped, and Lakewood is expected to have from 200 to 400 more. In each stocking was toys, picture cards or books, home-made candies, nuts, toilet articles, etc. Each stocking contained a self-addressed card, so that the child receiving it could write to the one sending it. The gifts will be distributed by the American Red Cross workers, who can write these cards for the little folks overseas in English, for the American children to read.

WILL REVIVE GRANGE AT TOMS RIVER THIS FALL
District Deputy Jones, representing the State Grange, was here from Freehold last week, seeing various men prominent in the farming industry of this section, and was very hopeful of being able to revive the Toms River Grange [a fraternal organization of farmers], which died a natural death during the war.
A meeting for this purpose will be held at the courthouse, Toms River, at 8.00 p.m., Saturday, November 18.

RECENT DEATHS
William T. McKaig
William T. McKaig, for the past forty years a prominent figure in Ocean County politics and otherwise, died on Monday, November 7, at Kimball Hospital, after a long illness, of a complication of diseases. He was a native of New Egypt, 66 years of age, and with his father and mother and brothers moved to Island Heights when that resort was started, in the late seventies [1870s], his father, Henry McKaig, having a number of contracts there. He married a Miss Adams, of Philadelphia, and leaves her a widow with three daughters, Mrs. Helen, wife of Alvin Hurley, of Camden; Mrs. H.C. Bartholomew, of Dixon, Ill., and Mrs. G.A. Mills, of Eau Claire, Wis., the latter being now in Florida for the winter.
Mr. McKaig early showed an aptitude for politics and was many years chief lieutenant of the late Capt. Ralph B. Gowdy and Judge Albert C. Martin, when these men were the arbiters of political affairs in the county. About the only office he aspired to, however, was the Assessorship of Island Heights Borough, which he held many years. He was in the real estate and contracting business most of his adult life. Charles H. McKaig, of Island Heights, and Jacob A. McKaig, of New Egypt, are brothers. He had a wide acquaintance in the state and in near-by cities, and was a man of much more than ordinary abilities.

PERSONAL
Mr. Farrall, the head of the Farrall Construction Co., which built the Traco Theatre here, and is now building the Palace Theatre, at Lakewood, was in town over Monday night.
Joseph Priest, of Princeton, father of Daniel S. Priest, of Toms River, and of Carl Priest, of Bay Head, celebrated his 83d birthday on Friday of last week. He is hale and hearty and is on the job every day at his famous Princeton pharmacy, known to every boy who has attended Princeton for the past generation.
Edward Crabbe, Jr., a Princeton student, spent the week end at home, coming home Saturday with his father after the Princeton-Harvard game.
Capt. Henry Ware, of the Coast Guard Service, was in town from the beach on Monday. Captain Ware said that the fishing in the bay and surf was all over for the season.
James A. Price, a former Tuckerton man, is keeper of the Angelsea [North Wildwood] coast guard crew which came in for much criticism last week, as the result of their failure to see the capsizing of two pound boats, in which accident eleven fishermen were drowned. Harrison Chadwick, of Barnegat, was also a member of the crew of guards. The eleven men went out to take up the pound poles on the morning of Monday, October 31. The had two heavy pound boats lashed together with heavy timbers, and the poles when pulled were put on timbers between the two boats. They had apparently finished the job and started back to the inlet with the poles and struck on the inlet bar. No one knew of the disaster till one of the bodies came ashore about six o'clock that evening. The coast guards were severely criticized because their lookout did not see the disaster. The pound fishery belongs to Hilton and Hilton, old-time fishermen, and in the fishing crew were three boat captains, the crew all being experienced surfmen. The bar is a mile or so off shore, and the coast guards assert that the weather was so thick it was impossible to see that far.
Charles Grafly, a well-known Philadelphia sculptor, who some years ago had a studio at Island Heights, was last week awarded the Potter Palmer gold medal and $1000 [$15,451 in 2021 dollars] for a portrait bust exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute, at the thirty-fourth annual exhibition of American art.

TOWN LIFE

BARNEGAT
Some years ago our streets were dark at nights, and we did not expect anything else. After a time we got oil lamps, and they made us think of Broadway, N.Y. They were followed by gas lights—oh, my, such dazzling lights! For some time past we have again been without lights, and on some nights even the moon refuses to shed its silver light over our quiet little burg. Now our Main street corners are so dark and dreary that our cemetery seems like the Atlantic City Boardwalk by comparison.

FORKED RIVER
A Hallowe'en party was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Jackson. Dancing, music and games were enjoyed to a late hour and refreshments were served. All had a fine evening.
On Saturday Farley Wilbert, Walter Frazee and Frank Brower bagged 25 ducks, 5 shelldrakes and 5 brant.
Edward Roch, a former resident, stopped here this week, on his way back from a coon hunting trip in South Jersey. He had two coons.
David A. Parker, who is in charge of the gunning club at Sedge Island, reports black ducks and shelldrakes plentiful, also some brant in the bay.
Winter flounders are in the inlet. Frank Penn and son report catching some the past few days.
Thievery is going on around here, something we generally are free from. Somebody on Sunday night stole a big wagon from Charles Woolley; the same night a shock of corn was stolen from Joseph Parker.
The large barn on the Hanford place has been sold to Mr. Cranmer, of Chesterfield, who will tear it down and use the lumber to build himself a barn at Chesterfield.

ISLAND HEIGHTS
Charles K. Haddon has sold his auxiliary yacht Mabel to parties who will sail her on the Shrewsbury River.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wallace are making great improvements to their place enlarging their greenhouse, making it four feet wider and ten feet longer.

PINE BEACH
Who says the old Pine Beach Inn stage coach has outlived its usefulness? It participated in the Hallowe'en parade in Toms River and won a prize.

SEASIDE PARK
Nearly all boats have to be laid up for the winter which makes the club house look deserted.
Harry Cross has laid the power houseboat Mercy up for the winter after a very successful summer as far as pleasure and comfort figures.

WARETOWN
John Eiseman arrived home last week from Panama, where he has been for two years in the army.
Corliss Brothers are clearing up their cranberries for the Christmas market.
John Mick recently lost a horse from the horse disease.

ADS OF INTEREST

MISSED AN ISSUE?

If you missed any issues of Ocean County 1921 and want to catch up, use the links below!

November 4th, 1921
October 28th, 1921
October 21st, 1921
October 14th, 1921
October 7th, 1921
September 30th, 1921
September 23rd, 1921
September 16th, 1921
September 9th, 1921

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