Elliston Morris purchases an oceanfront plot

This is the first of 150 years of Sea Girt's history. Join me each day.

In the recently re-united United States, Civil War General Ulysses Grant was President in his second term. He summered in his Oceanfront home on the bluffs in Long Branch, and lingered long into September, reluctant to return to Washington DC. The Civil Rights Act passed, later to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Tensions between north and south were still high.

The West was still wild, and tales of brazen crimes and gunfights sell newspapers. Poor communications allow more mobile criminals like the Jesse James Gang to rob trains and stay one step ahead of the law. Cattle rustler and horse thief Billy the Kid would eventually kill 21 men.

The Long Depression was in its fourth year, with another four to go and the cities are filling with immigrants from countries in Europe with even worse economic problems. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC) is incorporated. It was the first in the US to help stop the abuse of children, “After all we already have a Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals”.

Sporting is on the rise. The first college football game in uniform was played, first nine-inning baseball shutout was pitched, and the first recognized ice hockey game is skated. The first running of the Kentucky Derby takes place in a world still dependent on the horse.

The radial map was unique, and would prove problematic

150 years ago, after witnessing the success of Long Branch, then Ocean Grove, and then seeing the plans for Asbury Park, a collection of real estate speculators from Philadelphia filed paperwork with Monmouth County to expand Commodore Robert Stockton’s old mansion on the ocean with two additional wings, to create the Beach House Hotel, and planned another at the foot of Clinton Avenue (Chicago Blvd), to be called the Tremont. A sister group with many of the same men also planned the community of Spring Lake Beach to the North around Forman Osborne’s farm. They planned a massive new hotel, the Monmouth, and hired Lucious U. Maltby a renowned hotel manager from Baltimore to run both the Monmouth and the Beach House. They imagined a more reserved, exclusive resort.

They set Sea Girt’s streets in a radial pattern and produced a brochure to sell home lots to upscale vacationers. Paul Thurlow organized the syndicate. The officers of the Sea Girt Land Improvement Company boasted James P. Scott the son of and assistant to the President of the Pennsylvania Rail Road, America’s biggest company, Joel Parker the former Governor of New Jersey, George D. Krumbahaar, Treasurer at the PRR, and councilman in Philadelphia, George Bedford the future President of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the “Most Honest Man in Philadelphia”, John Hunter.

They hired his brother James Hunter as President and property manager. They borrowed $100,000 in 7% notes against the property value.

They advertised, “Pure Water, Perfect Drainage, Superior Roads, Unequaled Railroads, Beauty of Shore and Inland Scenery, Good Boating, Bathing”.

Morris’ handwriting at the top notes the brochure he got in 1875

Quaker businessman Elliston P. Morris and his builder Hibberd Yarnall of Germantown purchased the first two home sites along the beachfront fronting Crescent Park in 1875 for $2,400 each. Yarnall built two houses that Morris would come to own. Avocado was his original cottage, and Cedar Mer he purchased from Yarnall’s widow after Hibberd was killed falling off a building a few years later.

Avocado was the first home built from Land Improvement Company sales. (Marriott Morris Photo Collection)

The Sea Girt resort was up and running.

The business activity and antics of the members of the Land Improvement Company are documented in my 2017 book Sea Girt, The Last Town at the Jersey Shore.