Big Sea Day
In 1892, Ellis Island opened its doors as a US immigration inspection station - it would go on to be the gateway to the US for more than 12 million people. James Naismith published the rules for a new game he invented for the YMCA, Basketball.
The Coca-Cola Company is incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia. John Pemberton’s 1885 drugstore formula contained coca leaves and the cocaine would not be removed until 1903.
The "Pledge of Allegiance" was written and Grover Cleveland was elected for his second term and would be the first to serve non-consecutive terms. Mrs. William Astor invited 400 guests to a grand ball and “The List of 400” became a measuring stick for who mattered in New York society through the gay 90s. Lord Stanley presented a silver challenge cup for hockey (Stanley Cup). Martin Maloney moved to Spring Lake and occupied a cottage designed by Willis Hale.
At Sea Girt, in the second weekend of August, for as long as anyone can remember, farmers from all over Central Jersey converged on the Wreck Pond Inlet. They called it Big Sea Day, or Salt Water Day. For many years they were undisturbed. Families camped in the woods. They set wagons back to back and women changed inside. Men swam in their overalls and there they celebrated with clambakes, bonfires and dancing.
View across Wreck Pond to Spring Lake. The inlet jammed with farmers. All but the last photo are from the Marriott C. Morris Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia
The tradition for area farmers was to gather and celebrate before the harvest. The work on a farm never truly stopped. The following weekend was Little Sea day, for those farmhands who remained behind.
It was not until the resorts were built that the practice became a spectacle.
The press in pejorative terms called it “Jersey Wash Day”, implying an annual bath for the farmers. Big city reporters would come down and report on the gathering of the “Grangers.” By the early 1890s Wash Day had become a tourist attraction of its own. Fakirs and carnival men from New York came to sell food and set up booths for games of chance. The press only made more farmers and gawkers show up.
Wheel of chance on left, Clam chowder stand to right. 1885
“The cry of the fakir has echoed all down the beach from Sea Girt to Spring Lake today, mingling with the surging swish of the summer surf and the multitudinous dull thuds of several thousand pairs of raw-bide boots stamping over the sand. It was the famous "Farmers' Wash day," also known as "Salt Water day”
Another article under the title “A Great Annual Bath”
“The simultaneous plunging of a thousand dusty Jersey farmers and their families into the bosom of old ocean must necessarily result in unusual high tides throughout the world.”
Knock down the Baby was just one of the games of chance on the sand. An Ice Cream wagon is to the left. It is not clear how they kept their product from melting, Henry Yard owned Seaside Ice which was cut from Spring Lake and Lake Como each winter.
..the Jerseyman of the present annually celebrates the day by taking a dip in the sea, removing the accumulated strata of sand, clay and hay-seed, and laying open to the full, free glare of heaven's sunlight the genuine, honest human skin which he possesses in common with other mortals who do not reside in an alien State”.
“Nobody seems to remember just how the second Saturday in August first came to be set apart in the calendar as Farmers' Wash-Day. Probably if the matter was properly and scientifically traced back by some oblong-headed anthropologist it would be found the second Saturday in August marks the original discovery of the first Jerseyman by the washing away of his primeval coating of red clay.”
There was a rope line set up by the bathing master. Most dipped in their overalls and old dresses. Horses and bonfires on the beach left a mess.
Another screamed:
“A GREAT ANNUAL BATH. However this perfectly plausible explanation may be regarded the learned world, the fact remains that the Jerseyman of the present annually celebrates the day by taking a dip in the sea, removing the accumulated strata of sand, clay and hay-seed, and laying open to the full, free glare of heaven's sunlight the genuine, honest human skin which he possesses in common with other mortals who do not reside in an alien State.”
Turning the horse around provided some privacy to change clothes
The reporters mocked the old vehicles, dress and practices of the farmers.
As the noise and revelry around the day grew, the owners and hotel men began to discuss ways to control the circus.
"'Beats anythin' I ever see," said old Josiah Bilkins, the well-known sage of Redripetomatville, with a pull at his sunrise whiskers, "and I've been 'tending 'Farmers' Wash' for twenty year, too, by gum." Indeed everybody with any degree of experience in the "Farmers' Washes" of the past, agree with Josiah that this was the greatest "Farmers' Wash" that ever had been seen.
“And then every train over the Pennsylvania Railroad brought in vast crowds, until all the tribes of the Jerseyites were assembled, even from the humble tents of 'Squan to the odoriferous banks of Shark River. And what an assemblage it was! Father Neptune puffed his cheeks and blew his very hardest breezes through the multitudinous assortment of tawny chin whiskers which every where fringed the beach as though with an aureole of glory.”
It had become a carnival. Marriott Morris set up on the Roof of the Tremont’s bathing Pavilion and shot his glass negative photos from 1884 into the 1890s. He also got onto the sand and into the crowds to record the games and the sasparilla salesmen.
"Every time you puts a ball in you gets a good cigar; put three in you get haff-of-a-dollar! The hole is big, the balls is small! Three shots fur-ernickel!" Such was the wail of the man who let you fire base-balls at a hole cut in the end of a flour barrel.“
The Sarsaparilla & Root Beer cart. There was no liquor allowed on the beach
Most of the women wore old dresses in the water, but by the 90s the Tremont rented the signature blue dyed Sea Girt uniforms for those who wished to look like the hotel girls. Fireworks ended the evening and slowly the wagons left the beach to head back to the farms.
The standard blue Sea Girt rental costumes were preferred by those with money. John Shibles Garage Collection
The 1890s commercialism of the whole experience turned off the residents of Spring Lake and the limited homeowners in Sea Girt. Throughout the 90s the event continued. Rather than a mere curiosity, it was becoming a nuisance.
