Chief Crazy Horse and his Sioux warriors were defeated by the US Cavalry, while Sitting Bull retreated his Lakota into Canada. The first Wimbledon Tennis Championships were held. The Washington Post is first published. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first recording of the human voice. Swan Lake has its world premiere in Moscow. There was labor unrest. A coal miner strike was broken by forces of the US Army. Ten members of the secret Irish immigrant tenant rights group, the Molly Maguires are hung after a Pinkerton’s investigation. The contested 1876 election was fought well into 1877. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the President two days before his inauguration. The loser spent the summer in Sea Girt.
In the summer of 1877 the impressive guest list at the Sea Girt’s Beach House included US Supreme Court Associate Justice Swayne, the families of the heads of the Pennsylvania Railroad (Scott) and the B&O (King), Alexander Biddle (PRR Director & Head of the Ridgeway Library), Evangelistic Preacher Rev. A.A. Willets, William Weightman (Quinine manufacturer and largest landowner in Philadelphia) , General TJ Cram, (Negotiated Michigan from the Chippewa Tribe) and Judge John Cadwalader (another Biddle family member who served as US Rep and Federal Judge).
Zelda Seguin was one of the biggest stars of the day, when live entertainment was the only entertainment.
A noted celebrity, Edward Seguin and his wife Zelda were both singers in the most famous American opera family of their time. Zelda was a noted suffragist who was noted for her eloquence in speech as much as her singing. After she gave a solo performance at the Beach House, Edward almost drowned in the surf in front of the hotel. The second-tier guests who could not get into the Beach House enjoyed the Tremont, also opened by the Land Company and run by Sarah Leeds.
Hamilton Fish, who had just left his position as Secretary of State, initiated his retirement at the Beach House that July. He gave a rambling two-and-a-half-hour interview to a New York Tribune reporter in “the glorious breezes of this romantically situated resort”. Fish enjoyed cigars on the piazza “while he watched the beautiful moonlight glimmering in the glorious expanse of ocean in front of the Beach House” and commented on the new Hayes Administration and the contentious political environment.
A few weeks later, the Beach House hosted Samuel Tilden, the recent loser of the 1876 Presidential election while its fury was still hot with many people over the most dramatic US election ever.
Tilden, the former Democrat governor of NY had won 51% of the national total votes cast over Rutherford B. Hayes. The Electoral College was tied and three southern states, South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida were too close to call. Both sides cried foul.
Tilden’s loss nearly reignited Civil War
Republicans reported significant violence and intimidation at the polls of African-Americans by Democrats. There were also Democrat charges of Republican ballot stuffing. In the end, the states could not agree and a panel of congressmen along with five Supreme Court Justices finally called Florida for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in late February.
Gracious Governor Tilden relaxed at the nicest spot on the coast
The Democrats threatened a filibuster to extend the chaos past the mandated March inauguration date. The nation feared a second civil war. The press openly called the President-Elect, “His Fraudulency, Mr. Hayes”. Two days before the inauguration, the election stalemate was broken by a compromise reached behind closed doors. Hayes was allowed the Presidency while the Union Army would have to leave the South, end Reconstruction, and allow for home rule of the southern states. The downside to the abandonment of Reconstruction would also usher in an ugly period for southern states.
The Dixiecrats, left to their own devices, imposed Jim Crow laws, mandating segregation and restricting voting rights, and reversed many of the gains made by African Americans in the decade since emancipation. For example, the 1875 Civil Rights Act required hotels to allow access to customers of all races. Several closed their doors or became private rooming houses rather than open to ‘colored’. When the Hayes deal was struck, the laws were reverted or new laws passed to allow segregation.
Beach House guest Thomas A. Scott, President of the PARR, whose son was an investor in the Sea Girt Land Improvement Company worked behind the scenes to reach the compromise. The Pensy Railroad did not need the unrest, and Scott, helped sweeten the pot by promising railroad investment in the South in an effort to bring his Southern Pacific project to fruition.
James Hunter welcomed Tilden to vacation at the Beach House who was gracious in defeat:
“I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office.”
Villa Park, founded by Reid and Rogers was between Spring Lake and the main road along Wreck Pond. West of the tracks it is now part of Spring Lake Heights.
1877 Advertisement placed by William Reid, stagecoach owner and developer
“The Villa Park House and Store;
Beautiful place along the shore;
Thirty rooms and halls all new;
Fine business place -money for you.
With capital $2 or more;
It may be doubled before;
The year 77 goes out;
With a stirring man about.
Location first rate we say,
Twix Spring Lake and Sea Girt bay.
Call soon and see what you may need
Terms easy by Wm. V. Reid.”
The house still stands on Rt 71 and Ocean Road.