Drexel Comes to Sea Girt
Harley Procter patented Ivory Soap. For women washing in a tub of dirty water, floating soap was an innovation, Vaseline was widely available for the first time as a wound salve. The first store outfitted with electric lights was lit in Philadelphia. Edward Muybridge invented moving pictures. Yale began the first college daily newspaper. The Wolman and Rose Atlas of Monmouth County was printed and Sea Girt and Spring Lake are prominently pictured. The new maps of the Land Improvement Company were completed by Frederick J. Anspach, scrapping the radial layout for a more traditional grid pattern. The Thurlows bowed out selling shares to John C. Lucas, the son-in-law of Honest John Hunter. While the hotels were a success, less than ten lots were sold in the community.
The most influential man in America visited Sea Girt
Anthony Drexel was a friend of the Hunter Brothers and a frequent early visitor to Sea Girt. A banker since age 13, Drexel founded Drexel Morgan in New York with future titan John Pierpont Morgan as his junior partner. The firm was a conduit for European merchant investing in the United States and often a stabilizing factor in the markets. When Congress refused to fund the Army in 1877, Drexel stepped in and did it himself to keep markets calm.
The Beacon House, built by James Hunter as two rooming houses. It lasted as a B&B until 2021
James Hunter needed cottage lot sales to pick up. He aimed to show just how wonderful a summer in a private cottage in Sea Girt might be. What we used to call “The Beacon House” at First and Beacon was called the “Ventnor Cottages”. The Parker House was not yet across the street and he had unobstructed views of the beach, the Wreck Pond inlet and the Monmouth House just over his newly built bridge. Hunter’s own family stayed in the western cottage.
He had found the ideal renter for his second cottage to gain a stamp of approval. Anthony Drexel’s eldest daughter Emilie and son-in-law Edward Biddle came with their young family. Now he needed them to have a wonderful time.
He hired Rachel K. Letchworth, a 47-year-old Quaker housewife, and mother of two from Germantown PA. Her daughters Alice (22) and Sallie (16) were unmarried and helped their mother make the beds, cook the meals and attend to every need of the young Biddle family. The experience at the Ventnor under Rachel’s leadership would set the standard for the elite class of visitors Hunter needed to attract. The Biddles would make Rachel’s reputation for quality innkeeping and establish the value of the Hunter cottages.
The pressure was much higher because just down the road at the Beach House under the care of Col. Maltby was Biddle’s father-in-law, Anthony Drexel and his wife Ellen, now the richest banker in America. Some viewed Drexel as more powerful than President Hayes.
The family lived close together in Philadelphia, as Tony Drexel had bought Emilie and Edward a townhouse on the same block. Their relationship had taken a bad turn and tensions were high. The three-quarter mile distance between the hotel and the cottage would allow Edward some breathing room.
Edward had bristled under the dependency of his father-in-law, and the Biddle family’s 200-year history in America prided him in a way that clashed with Tony’s pragmatism. Edward’s Grandfather Nicholas Biddle was the president of the Bank of the United States, and Edward assumed that meant something. Tony’s father was a German immigrant who was “self-made”. Compared to Biddle, Tony was “nouveau-riche”.
Nicholas Biddle of the Biddles of Philadelphia ran the Second Bank of the United States at 37, poet and editor of the Lewis and Clark journals
There were reports of Edward being overbearing regarding every aspect of the household including obsessing over the shopping budget and the discipline of the young children, typically not the concern of wealthy gentlemen. Edward was likely counting the days for this vacation to end so they could leave on a steamer to Europe. He was still reeling from being fired by his father-in-law.
Biddle’s privileged attitude did not sit well with Tony. It came to a head earlier that year when Biddle was insulted by a clerk whom he had bumped into in Drexel’s vault. Edward, who fashioned himself athletic, promptly boxed the clerk to the ground.
When Tony called him into his office and asked for an explanation, Edward replied,
“There is nothing to explain, he insulted me, I knocked him down. All there is to decide is who should go.”
Upon which Tony then and there decided that Edward would be better off studying law than being a banker. He promptly fired Edward, bought out Edward’s stock for $150,000 and put his daughter on an allowance.
Late in the 1883 season, Anthony Drexel arrived in Sea Girt for the last time for a week with his family. But the vacation could not have been the same as his earlier visits without Emilie Biddle. His favorite daughter had died in 1883 of heart problems at 31 years old, months after attempting to lift a piano on a dare.
When Drexel retired, Drexel Morgan Bank became J. P. Morgan & Co. Drexel’s name lives on most prominently in the University he funded in 1891 with the equivalent of $100 million donation, intended to give a secondary education for working-class men and women.