Sea Girt treats Vagrants best

The decline of the wealthy visitors caused the locals to help each other. The economy modestly improved in 1935, and then the Depression’s second dip hit the country hard through 1940. Families moved from cash-strapped cities to get the small class size at Manasquan High School and the Manasquan and Spring Lake schools.

Manasquan 1936 class included a number of Sea Girt students

Local realtor, Henry S. Schwier tried to bring support to the area businesses. He formed an “All-Year-Round” club to promote the Monmouth shore and to bring visitors to hotels for the planned 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The club recognized the growth of full-time residents as the depression saw summer home owners seek the lower cost of living at the shore.

Henry started in real estate in Sea Girt in 1926. He lived in Spring Lake on Union Avenue with his wife Louise. They were decidedly local. Her father, George Mueller, owned a farm on 13 acres along Sea Girt Ave. He also owned a popular local farm restaurant, also called Mueller’s. When George died in 1936 at age 48, the older boys took over the farm and began to expand into the wholesale flower business.

Henry and Louise took over as buyers of last resort for many of the properties that changed hands during the depression. In the late 30s, they acquired the property at the corner of Sea Girt and Washington for a new office.

The building still carries the Henry S. Schwier name

The decline in home values, and delinquencies seriously eroded tax revenue all over the Shore and debt spending caused both Atlantic City and Asbury Park to default on their convention center debts.

Sea Girt struggled. The list of delinquent taxpayers took up a whole column in the Spring Lake Gazette. 41 properties owed money, and many for every year 1931-1936.

48-year-old Former Naval Lt. Commander Henry Forgus committed suicide with a shotgun at his home on 406 Chicago. He was an instructor at the Naval Academy and was despondent at his forced retirement from an injury.

Vagrancy was a problem. Police Chief Panz had a complaint with the Police Department of Manasquan. The custom at the time was that vagrants who wandered into town or were caught sleeping in the woods were regularly taken to the local jail until morning. They were offered a cot and a stove (they needed to maintain the fire themselves).

Wandering homeless men were everywhere during the 1930s. Vagrants, hobos, bums were often given shelter in town jails as long as they moved along.

In the morning, they were asked to leave town. Panz had a recent vagrant walking from Lakewood to Long Branch. He had wandered all the way from Minneapolis. He echoed a familiar tale.

Chief Panz claimed that for years vagrants that had been caught in Manasquan were told that they would find a warmer and more comfortable jail in Sea Girt. Chief Longstreet denied this, and told the newspapers the Minnesota man thought he was in Sea Girt, and they just gave him directions.

The town revenues caused arguments between the Finance Committee President and the Borough Clerk. There were shortages in some of the operating accounts due to freezing in the water system over extra cold winter weather and the need to connect more new homes to the system. When the clerk used money destined for other purposes, there was contention at the meeting.

Borough hall needed treatment for termites.

A foreshadowing of the war to come floated above Wreck Pond in 1936. The Hindenburg with its swastika markings was the largest airship of the German Line. It made ten trips to Lakehurst across the Atlantic in 1936 holding up to 60 passengers, 300 pounds of express packages and another 358 pounds of mail. In 1937, a hydrogen gas leak ignited a blaze that took down the ship in a ball of flames as it was docking at the Lakehurst airfield.