Legendary Locals of Rumson

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INTRODUCTION

Some are born great;

Some achieve greatness,

And some have greatness thrust upon them.

—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

From its early years, Rumson has been the home of well-known and highly successful people who were legends in their own time. In the days before air travel, New York’s elite vacationed at elegant resorts that were a short journey from the city. Trains and steamboats made the Jersey Shore a preferred destination, and families came here with their household staffs to tend them. From the mid-19th century, steamboats brought vacationers to Washington Street, where Thomas Hunt built the Port Washington Pavilion Hotel on property that he had purchased in 1840. To ensure a steady clientele, Hunt created a regular steamboat service to the hotel’s dock, and built Bingham Hall as a church available to any denomination that could succeed there. The Presbyterians eventually owned the building, and many years later, the Borough of Rumson acquired it. Bingham Hall has been useful as a meeting and event site and has also provided space when schools were badly overcrowded. Thanks to a generous benefactor, the 1842 building is in like-new condition and continues as a center of activity for the entire town.

The village section of town was renamed Oceanic after it became known that the early name of Port Washington already existed in New Jersey. Oceanic is still reflected in the names of the fire company and library. In 1853, Thomas Hunt divided some of his acreage into lots for sale, and the business section and residential streets were created. The new stores, blacksmiths, and contracting firms had business opportunities as the big estates built up, and the Victorian-style homes that were built along Bingham Avenue and Church, Lafayette, Allen, and Washington Streets housed the shopkeepers and craftsmen who worked in the town. On larger pieces of property, industry thrived, and from 1867 to 1938, the Mop Factory of Rumson operated on First Street near the river making mops for tarring and corking boat seams and swabbing decks. On the current site of Rogers Park, Martinus Bergen canned tomatoes that he grew on his 100 acres. At one time, steamboats delivered barrels of beer brewed at the Turtle Bay Brewing Company in Midtown Manhattan, which were rolled up Lafayette Street to be bottled and distributed. We had industry.

This book was written to remind us of the people who made the past history and present success of this unique community so fascinating and to add to the body of knowledge already done so well by the History of Rumson volumes created in 1944 and 1965 and Randall Gabriellan’s three diligently researched Rumson books, Rumson Volume I and Volume II and Rumson: Shaping a Superlative Suburb. The main goal is to instill a sense of reverence, appreciation, and respect for the unique character of our historic and beautiful community, and perhaps, along the way, encourage the restoration and preservation of historic Rumson structures, which are rapidly disappearing. Their loss has changed the landscape and character of the town.

The people in this book are a scant few compared to those who could and should be included. Some are famous and still spoken of today. Some names have been lost in the shadows of history, and it was an education to find what high profiles they once had here and in the world. Yet, these absolute luminaries have not been well remembered in modern times. The River Road trolley stopped at what was called the Gillig Stop on West River Road, a property owned by that family for 50 years. But they were forgotten until a descendant came to visit 70 years later.

It has been a joy researching and rediscovering so many legendary locals. It was to be expected that many people would eschew the limelight while others revel in it. Many current local legends were not included because they did not wish to be. One eminent scientist sent the message that he prefers to hide his light under a bush, and a well-known businessman said essentially the same thing couched in modest terms. So, apologies to those who are noting obvious omissions. It may be that the subjects were unwilling to be included. From long lists of names, it quickly became apparent that due to space limitations it would be possible to include only a fraction of the eminent and deserving names considered. A large number of Rumsonites have been included in Who’s Who. The Rumson–Fair Haven Regional High School (RFHRHS) Hall of Fame was consulted, and input and suggestions were extensively solicited. There are many people who should have been included, and apologies go to all who were not. Brevity was necessary for the captions, and fascinating stories had to be left out. For example, Monsignor Doc Kelley’s autobiography gave an interesting sidebar to our history. When Major Bowes, who was Doc Kelley’s neighbor, passed away, he left his Rumson estate to the Catholic Church and in the hands of Cardinal Spellman in New York City. In an effort to interest a potential buyer, the cardinal let him stay at the home for a vacation of several weeks. Bing Crosby and his wife, Dixie Lee, enjoyed their time here in Rumson but decided that it was too far from Hollywood for them.

This town has been the home of and has hosted a multitude of legends. It is a place that brings together people of varied interests and walks of life yet still remains a warm and comfortable small town where children are nurtured and well educated in excellent schools, and residents enjoy a lifestyle that encourages sports, culture, and fine living. The town itself is legendary, and from its earliest years, it has been the beloved home of the notable and legendary luminaries of their time. They walked among us.

CHAPTER ONE

Long Ago and

Not So Long Ago

Giants of finance, industry, politics, commerce, science, and the arts arrived in the late 1800s by train or steamboat and summered in fashionable Long Branch and Seabright (written as one word in the early days). Across the river from Seabright’s elegant mansions and hotels was a verdant peninsula that became more accessible when the Jumping Point Drawbridge was built in 1870. Construction of country estates with elegant cottages and farms soon began along the Rumson Road. Although the early estates still claimed Seabright addresses, Rumson quickly became a fashionable destination. The cottagers, primarily residents of New York City, became dedicated to their second hometown, created churches and clubs, encouraged local businesses, and became integral parts of the community that became Rumson, New Jersey.

Colonial-era families settled here in 1665, and descendants farmed river-to-river properties. In Rumson’s earliest times, one route from New York to Philadelphia began by boat and continued by stagecoach from the dock at the northern end of Navesink Avenue, where those intrepid souls who fled the summer heat and pestilence of the cities landed. Even earlier, the Burlington Trail, now Route 35, Rumson Road, and Navesink Avenue, was traversed by Native Americans coming to the shores for cedar to build canoes and shellfish and beach plums to preserve for winter. In 1665, they sold their summer campgrounds to English settlers through the Monmouth Patent in exchange for warm blankets and coats, guns, metal tools, and kettles. The story that Rumson was purchased for some rum is just a legend; however, two anchors of liquors, about 20 gallons, were listed as part of the deal.

Many of the Monmouth Patentees were Quakers who had learned that, although America was settled in a quest for religious freedom, tolerance for any religion other than that of the Puritans was not in the plan. The Quakers were not tolerated in New England or Gravesend, the south central section of Brooklyn, but they flourished here. Eliakim Wardell, a Quaker, owned the area along Bingham Avenue, and the very innermost center of the Bingham Hill house has remnants of his original 1665 residence. The Hance family farmed a 550-acre plantation. Meadow Ridge Park is situated on the site of the nationally known Hance Nurseries. Col. Lewis Morris and later, his nephew Lewis Morris of Passage Point, lived near Black Point and kept slaves, one of whom murdered the younger man. Thomas Hartshorne owned vast acreage along what is now Hartshorne Lane. Seabury Tredwell, James Borden, Richard Salter, Christopher Almy, and Asher Corlies were all early residents of the peninsula.

Not so long ago and still well remembered, other fascinating people brought their own excitement, adventure, and glamour to Rumson. They left their marks in varied fields of endeavor as well as on Rumson.

The following pages highlight just a few of the fascinating men and women who settled here long ago and established the pattern of elegance that still echoes today.

William Bingham (1752–1804) and Ann Willing Bingham (1764–1801)

William Bingham was a member of the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia legislature, and served as a US senator from 1795 until 1801. During the Revolution, he served as the consul to French Martinique and as agent in the West Indies for the Continental Congress, where he worked to secure food supplies and munitions for the Revolutionary army. There, he became involved with privateers and amassed a great personal fortune. He was a key financier of the Revolutionary War. Among his business successes was his part in founding the Pennsylvania Bank, the first American bank, in 1781. It evolved into the Bank of North America. He seldom visited the sites, but his extensive land speculation yielded holdings that gave his name to places as distant as Binghamton, New York; Maine; Massachusetts; and Western Pennsylvania as well as Bingham Avenue in Rumson. He was reputed to be the wealthiest man in America, and his friendships tied him to most of the early patriots, including Benjamin Franklin, for whom he served as a pallbearer at his funeral. Ann Willing Bingham was so beautiful that her likeness, designed as Miss Liberty by Gilbert Stuart, was used on early coins by the US Mint.

It was far from a quick drive to the seashore in 1791 when William Bingham purchased more than 200 river-to-river acres in Rumson from Joseph Wardell, whose family had held the property since 1665. It was an arduous journey by ship from Philadelphia into the Atlantic Ocean and to New York harbor and a transfer to another vessel for the trip to the dock at Black Point. The Binghams sought an escape from the heat and summer