Exploration reaches the limits - Settling down at Home

Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole, one of “the last of the firsts”. Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed more than 140 immigrant workers. Irving Berlin copyrighted "Alexander's Ragtime Band". Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by Vincenzo Peruggia. Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500. The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was incorporated as IBM in Endicott, New York.

“Come on along, come on along, Let me take you by the hand Up to the man, up to the man Who's the leader of the band”

The Titanic was launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The first aerial reconnaissance mission was flown over Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War. The Nestor Motion Picture Company established the first Hollywood studio.

In order to drum up business for the Beach House, “lawn checkers” was the game to play. Guests were treated to the best players in the world. Felix Wallstein inventor of the game was at the Beach House for the Summer. A.A. Husband, world champion from Scotland, B. Kistler the American champ of San Francisco, and Ben Sully, a blind, but highly ranked player was to play against guests.

Lucia W. Rounds wanted to bring a more community-minded spirit to Sea Girt. Lucia was the wife of Horace A. Rounds. Rounds took the Presidency of the Sea Girt Company for Charles Noble. They began summering in Sea Girt in 1909. In 1911 Lucia sponsored a fundraiser at her home. The effort was for the Rectory fund for the new Saint Uriel’s church.

Charles Noble had bought an old bungalow and had it moved to the back of the church and donated the land. The Bazaar would help restore the house. Mrs. Rounds was prominent in social circles in New York, and knew how these social fundraisers should work. She was President of the New Yorker’s Club, limited to 400 women of pedigree who had been residents of New York for over 5 years. Each of the members were required to be philanthropic and needed the support of a man of means.

Lucia had the pedigree. She was a Daughter of the American Revolution and a prominent member or officer of a number of clubs, like the Rainy Day Club and the National Pure Milk League.

The Rainy Day Club was founded in 1896. Its purpose was to educate women to wear shorter skirts and long coats that would prevent the bottom of the dress from dragging sidewalks in the rain. Germs were discovered as a scourge to keep out of the house, but garbage and horse manure mixed with grime at the curbs when it rained, often soiling the hem of a dress that would then hang in their apartment to dry.

The Pure Milk League supported milk depots for infants and small children in the cities when getting fresh uncontaminated milk was a challenge. Nathan Strauss said in 1896 “Here in New York the lives of thousands of children are sacrificed every summer, simply and solely because they are fed with impure milk. Of people who die in the state of Maine every year, children under five years of age count for less than 20 percent; of those who die in New York City, over 40 percent are children under five years of age. It is the mortality of June, July, and August that chiefly accounts for the large percentage of this annual harvest of death.” Strauss supplied pasteurized and refrigerated milk to New York’s poor, and the League expanded his efforts.

Mrs. Francis Baird was her charitable equal, and she held court at the Country Club where her husband was the director. She worked with her friends in New York to convince them to attend the polo and horse racing at the club. In 1911 she was burned badly along her jawline when she walked past a steam engine in Manhattan which shot its exhaust at her. The rest of her face was saved by the wide brim of her Gainsborough hat.

The Gainsborough hat’s wide brim saved Mrs. Baird

It was important to project the image of a “Home Resort” in order to sell cottage plots. Sea Girt had several entries in the exclusive Spring Lake Flower show that year. At First and Washington Ave. in Spring Lake over 300 specimens were on display from 56 different exhibitors, most of them members of the Spring Lake Garden Club. Membership was closed, except by invitation.

Several exotic and unique tropical plants borrowed from Martin Maloney’s home greatly improved the surroundings, and awards were presented in house plants, flowers, picked and potted, vegetables, and shrubbery. Mrs. Rounds won best vegetable in show with a prize-winning eggplant.