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    Ocean Grove
    Ocean Grove
    Ocean Grove
    Ebook202 pages2 hours

    Ocean Grove

    By Wayne T. Bell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In 1869, a group of ministers and religious faithful established a permanent Methodist camp meeting community on the North Jersey shore. A state charter was issued one year later, and the community of Ocean Grove was born. Following the example set by other camp meetings, Ocean Grove became a center for religious revivals. The town continued to flourish as railroad and steamship lines transported passengers eager to escape the nearby crowded cities. For more than one hundred years, Ocean Grove has provided a retreat to those wishing to return to a life of religious renewal and recreation. Ocean Grove is a detailed look at the growth of this unique seaside community. Home to the largest aggregate of Victorian and early-twentieth-century structures in America, Ocean Grovecontinues to provide its visitors with a glimpse into the past. Ocean Grove has maintained its custom of holding summer camp meetings for over one hundred-thirty years. These annual revivals have attracted such notable speakers and guests as William Jennings Bryan, Booker T. Washington, and Presidents Grant and Roosevelt to the Great Auditorium. Since its conception, Ocean Grove has been home to an uncommon history, making Ocean Grove a treasure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439627365
    Ocean Grove
    Author

    Wayne T. Bell

    Wayne T. Bell's priceless history of Ocean Grove is composed of pictures from the Ocean Grove Historical Society, the Neptune Museum, and members of the community. The curator of the Ocean Grove Historical Society, Bell has linked over seventy years of images with over one hundred years of captivating history in Ocean Grove.

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      Book preview

      Ocean Grove - Wayne T. Bell

      Grove.)

      INTRODUCTION

      The historic district of Ocean Grove, located in Neptune Township on the northern New Jersey coast in Monmouth County, is an example of an old Camp Meeting ground. Camp Meetings and religious revivals are as American as apple pie. Camp Meeting lineage can be traced to the Great Religious Revival period (1781—1805) that began on what was then the southern frontier of Georgia and the Carolinas. One religious Camp Meeting in 1801 involved some 3,000 to 5,000 people traveling to a farmer’s field and woods near Cane Ridge, Kentucky. The four- to five-day outdoor revival featured ministers preaching from rustic planked platforms and freshly cut tree stumps, leading their flocks both night and day with sermons on sin and atonement. The emotionally exhausted worshipers would retire to their covered wagons and tents for rest, only to reassemble again when the camp bell rang the call to worship and, hopefully, to salvation. Over the next two centuries, attendance at Camp Meetings and revivals would ebb, flow, and evolve, depending upon economics, social conditions, and leadership.

      The end of the Civil War in 1865 brought rapid social change, due in part to new technologies that had provided more efficient methods to produce war materials. Farmers left the farms and rural churches to move to the cities, where work and better wages offered new opportunities. Railroads and steamship lines provided fast and easy transport for middle-class families eager to escape the crowded cities for a summer vacation at the fashionable watering resorts such as Saratoga and Coney Island in New York and Long Branch and Atlantic City in New Jersey. This new mobility coincided with a new era of religious awakening and the emergence of revivals within various Protestant denominations.

      In 1867, Reverend William B. Osborn, a Methodist preacher, attended a week-long outdoor Holiness Camp Meeting at Vineland, New Jersey. Osborn’s enthusiasm was boundless, and he eventually found an ideal Camp Meeting site: a secluded community on the northern New Jersey coast, where spiritual and physical health could be renewed. Thus, on July 31, 1869, a group of ministers and friends camped at what is now called Founders Park. After a candlelight prayer service, they dedicated themselves to establishing a permanent Christian Camp Meeting community called Ocean Grove. From this simple beginning there would emerge a permanent town by the sea with police and fire departments, postal and telegraph offices, and other public services that would meet the needs of a growing Christian resort.

      A petition was presented to the New Jersey legislature for incorporation of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. On March 3, 1870, a state charter was issued to the newly formed association. This charter granted the 26 trustees (13 ministers and 13 lay people) the authority to purchase and hold real and personal estate, to construct and provide all necessary works to supply said premises with water and artificial light and other improvements deemed necessary or desirable. The charter also gave the trustees the power to appoint peace officers as deemed necessary for the purpose of keeping order on the camp grounds and premises of the corporation.

      Streets and eventually 1,971 lots were laid out. The first lot was purchased by James A. Bradley for $86. Another 372 lots, 30 by 60 feet in size, were quickly sold by the end of 1870. (Bradley, a New York businessman, would later purchase and develop the land to the north as the city of Asbury Park.) A new planning design was the setback concept. Beginning two blocks from the ocean, each structure approaching the beach was successively set back from its adjoining neighbor, thus assuring a view of the ocean from each home.

      The growth of this unique 19th-century religious community was remarkable considering that the New York and Long Branch Railroad did not extend rail service from Long Branch to Ocean Grove until August 1875. By 1877, about 710,000 railroad tickets were sold for the Ocean Grove and Asbury Park railroad depot.

      Ocean Grove established various rules and regulations, including perhaps the most famous: the banning of all carriages and automobiles on the streets on Sunday. Others included restrictions on beach bathing on Sundays and the prohibition of the sale of liquors within a one-mile radius of Ocean Grove. On one Sunday in 1875, Pres. Ulysses S. Grant arrived by carriage to Ocean Grove. When he encountered a set of chained gates barring his entrance, he simply tethered his horses there and walked the remaining half-mile to his sister’s house on Wesley Lake. From there, he continued to the open-air auditorium where 5,000 children, adults, and Civil War veterans welcomed him in voices of praise.

      In 1975, Ocean Grove received the designation of a State and National Historic District as an example of a 19th-century planned urban community. The district contains the largest aggregate of Victorian and early-20th-century structures in America. The Board of Architectural Review was established in 1976 to create exterior design standards, ensuring that the district would maintain its existing architectural heritage of Victorian seaside cottages.

      At one time, 660 tents were leased or owned on individual lots throughout Ocean Grove. Today, only 114 tents remain, standing in a semi-circle around the Great Auditorium. Each spring, by May 15, the canvas tents are brought from their backroom shed to be erected over the front wooden platform transforming it into a living room, to be furnished with couches, chairs, rugs, lamps, and pictures. Meanwhile, outside along the walks, flowers are planted by the tenters, many of whom are proud to be third- and fourth-generation summer Ocean Grovers. Similarly, throughout the historic district, pre-season events begin in the Victorian seaside cottages as hotel owners rush to complete that last-minute paint touchup on

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