Ocean City: America's Greatest Family Resort

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INTRODUCTION

Slogans have been coined for years to attract visitors to many seaside resorts. In the 1880s and 1890s, the new town of Ocean City, New Jersey advertised itself as A Christian Resort and A Moral Seaside Resort; Not Excelled as a Health Restorer. Since Ocean City had recently been founded by Methodist ministers, the slogans were quite fitting.

Known as Peck’s Beach when the ministers arrived, the beauty and serenity of the area beguiled them, as did the knowledge that the island’s seclusion made it perfect for their aims. With the island having only one resident family and few stakeholders, the men knew that getting title to the land was within their reach. For while they dreamed of a beautiful Christian seaside community, they also were businessmen who knew that here they could make their fortunes.

Originally they called the island New Brighton, but very soon changed the name to Ocean City, perhaps after another Christian resort called Ocean Grove. But Ocean Grove was purely a summer place of worship at the time, and these businessmen wanted more. They planned to create a year-round community, with schools, businesses, and a thriving population. However, they had another reason for wanting to obtain title to all of the land: they intended to tightly restrict all commerce and recreation on Sundays, and be sure that liquor and gambling would be banned forever. By deed restriction, they ensured that no spiritous malt, intoxicating or vinous liquors ... shall be manufactured, bought, sold, or kept for sale. Nor could any building be used as a house of prostitution, bawdyhouse, or house of ill fame or dance or gambling house. Except for the Sunday restrictions, their land deeds covered it all; specific ordinances banned sales of any kind, driving, ocean bathing, or other amusements on Sunday and also listed strict codes of dress for beach and public wear.

As time went on, Ocean City changed, and some of the Founders lived to see the relaxing of the Sunday restrictions, especially after they gave up the governance of the town and allowed it to become incorporated. But the deed restrictions remain, giving a different feel to Ocean City than to most seashore resorts. The slogans changed as well from The Ideal Summer Resort, The Greatest Cottage Seaside Resort in America, and finally, in 1920, to America’s Greatest Family Resort, which has endured for over 80 years.

This slogan certainly describes the Ocean City of today, bounded as always by the rough, sometimes stormy ocean and the calmer waters of the bay, and first and foremost a community—a community of year-round residents, nonresident landowners, and summer vacationers. This community actively seeks the involvement of its citizens, with churches, schools, and year-round and seasonal businesses, still a place of beauty and worship, just as the founding ministers had envisioned.

Many occasions and people have made Ocean City what it is today. Night in Venice, America’s oldest Baby Parade, New Year’s Eve First Night, the Ocean City Pops Concerts, and King of the Grille are just a few of the events that keep visitors returning year after year to our town with its beautiful beach and exciting Boardwalk. The Lake Brothers, Mayors Champion and Headley, the Kellys, Jack Jernee, and so many other people have helped define our city. Even the tragedies like the great fire of 1927, the hurricane of 1944, and the destructive storm of 1962 have only made us stronger.

Open these pages and learn more about our community as we celebrate our 125th birthday, still America’s Greatest Family Resort!

This decal is a souvenir of America’s Greatest Family Resort.

1. PECK’S BEACH

The Lenni-Lenape Indians of the Algonquin nation, also called the Delaware, were the first known settlers of South Jersey. This small, peaceful group used the shores of the mainland and the island that became Ocean City as summer camping grounds. This island was less than a mile wide with most of its western edge consisting of meadowlands, marshes, and mud flats. Bounded on the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean and on the northwest by the bay now known as Great Egg Harbor, the island was divided from its neighbors by inlets to the northeast and southwest. Dutch explorer David Pietersson DeVries wrote what is believed to be the first reference to the island in 1633 as flat sand beaches with low hills between Cape May and Egg Harbor. In 1648, an account quoted a letter from Lieutenant Robert Evelyn, who left England in 1634, that wanted to describe to you the north side of Delaware unto Hudson’s River, in Sir Edmund’s patent called New Albion, which lieth between New England and Maryland and that ocean sea. I find some broken land, isles and inlets, and many small isles at Eg Bay. From this description of the Bay which is now called Great Egg Harbor Bay, there is little doubt that Evelyn visited this area.

A variety of wildlife was abundant on the beach for years prior to its habitation and for 20 years afterward. The back bay and its marshlands provided feed for wild birds, geese, and ducks. Until almost 1895, wild cats also roamed the beach. They had come to the island from a strange source. Young people from the mainland often sailed across the bay for days of fishing and bathing, and evenings of parties that included dancing and drinking on what they called Party Island. Some party-goers brought cats from home; these were turned loose and left at the beach. Gradually, the number of cats increased and they became wild.

All land titles to Ocean City date to a grant that Charles II of England made to his brother James, the Duke of York, in 1664. York conveyed the following to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret:

and to their heirs forever, all that tract of land adjacent to New England, and lying and being to the westward of Long Island; bounded on the east part by the main sea and part by the Hudson River, and hath upon the west the Delaware Bay or river, and extendeth as far as Cape May, at the mouth of the Delaware Bay ... which said tract of land is hereafter to be called by the name, or names, Nova Caesarea, or New Jersey.

Berkeley lost interest in his part of the land that was called West Jersey and sold it in 1673 to Edward Byllynge, a Quaker who, unfortunately, quickly lost the land when he went bankrupt. William Penn also played a role when he was named a trustee in Byllynge’s bankruptcy.

The area that became Peck’s Beach apparently was first surveyed by Thomas Budd of Burlington, New Jersey in 1695. Budd wanted to buy large tracts of the mainland, but was forced by the West Jersey Society, which by then owned all of the land in Cape May County, to also buy the seemingly useless island properties nearby. Budd sold some land to John Somers of Pennsylvania and used the island that became Ocean City for grazing cattle and harvesting herbs, which he sold to Holland and other countries.

As early as 1631, the Dutch had established a whaling settlement in Delaware, and there were sheltering places for whalers in the area of Cape May. But the Lenni-Lenape were whalers before then. They set out in their canoes and shot the whales full of stone or bone-headed harpoons attached to log drags; eventually, the whales became exhausted and the Lenni-Lenape towed their prizes home. This industry became the most important business of the time and it was so profitable that, in 1693, the West Jersey Assembly approved a tax of 10 percent on the value of whale products extracted by non-residents. John Peck, one of the whaleman, operated illegally in the area around 1700. He is listed as a party to a court action concerning ownership of a stranded whale. Peck may have used the beach as a base to render out blubber from harpooned whales. From then on, the island was known as Peck’s Beach. Early accounts describe the area as wooded, especially in the north end. As the land narrowed southward, there was less timber and more brush, although there was a large cedar grove at the south end called Cedar Beach. Eastward was a savanna that was overgrown with salt grass, weeds, brush, and an occasional tree. In wet weather, this low land contained a chain of freshwater ponds, which were good for cattle raisers.

In 1726, Richard Townsend, who raised cattle, applied to the West Jersey Society and bought 663 acres of the extreme south end of Peck’s Beach. Townsend wanted to graze his cattle on the beach grasses since free ranging of stock was no longer legal on the mainland. Townsend’s will of 1737 left his land to his sons Samuel and Daniel. They sold it in 1755 to James Willets of Upper Township for £180, an increase in value of nearly 400 percent in 29 years. A deed dated June 15, 1774 states that John Willets and Sarah Garrison conveyed 200 acres of Peck’s Beach to mariners Nicholas and Enoch Stilwell.

Other cattlemen besides Townsend also grazed their stock on the island. Getting the cattle on and off the beach was easy for the owners from Cape May County to the south; the stock was driven across the mainland meadow where they swam across the narrow channel to the beach. But the people from the northern side of the Egg Harbor River had a harder and longer trip crossing the wider channel from Somers Point. Halfway, the drovers rested the animals at an area called Cowpens Island until low tide made the rest of the swim easier. Cowpens Island is now a bird sanctuary.

Whales, like this one that washed up on the beach in 1911, were hunted by whalers as early as the 1600s.

The society also sold 550 acres of the island to Richard Somers of Egg Harbor who had already inherited part of it. Known as the Somers tract, the land remained in the family for over 150 years until about 1880. Richard Somers’s will of 1752 contains the first mention of a house on Peck’s Beach.

Great Egg Harbor, located back of Peck’s Beach and accessible only by a dangerous inlet, was a safe place for boats in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as a haven for pirates, and several used this area for hideouts. Captain William Kidd spent much of his professional life sailing in and around South Jersey. The area was conducive to pirating because nearby Philadelphia lacked military strength and the Quakers there were reluctant to hang anyone, including pirates. Kidd began his seafaring career as a privateer in service to England. He amassed a fortune and invested in property along the New York and New Jersey shores. Because of some bad moves in the late 1690s, Kidd’s job description changed from privateer to pirate. Hoping to regain his honorable title, he decided to plead his innocence to Governor Bellomont of New York. Not certain the governor would believe him, Captain Kidd, according to legend, anchored at Peck’s Beach for the purpose of burying his treasure. One of his hiding places was supposedly along the shore near Cape May and farther north. These stories prompted many treasure seekers to excavate the beaches, especially near an old tree known as Captain Kidd’s tree on Cape May Point at the very tip of New Jersey. There is, however, no record of any treasure ever being found. In the mid-1940s, an Ocean City resident whose last name was Hand revealed the existence of a tattered and faded document he said would show where some of Captain Kidd’s treasure had been buried. The man told the press and researchers that the paper had been passed down through his family for centuries and that a dying member of Kidd’s crew gave it to his great-great grandfather at the time of the Revolution. Since two of Kidd’s crewmen did settle in South Jersey, perhaps this is a true story. Kidd was eventually found guilty of piracy and hanged on May 23, 1701. Sea Captain Lew Risley, a resident of Ocean City from 1880, said that indeed Kidd did bury treasure on Peck’s Beach! Captain Risley’s father often told a story about seeing an old square rigger creeping into the inlet between Ocean City and Longport one weekend. The following Monday, Mr. Risley sailed to the place where the ship had been anchored. He went ashore and discovered a large hole in the sand with the marks of a chest still visible on its walls. Captain Risley believes that the ship was manned by men who had come into possession of an old map and who may have found some of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure in that chest.

Many pirates operated along our coast during the classic era of piracy, from 1650 to 1750.

The South Jersey coastal islands’ slanting beaches and numerous sandbars made it extremely treacherous for ships and many foundered there. Great Egg Harbor Bay, for example, was dangerous for mariners with large craft because its sands continually shifted. Thus, a chart of one year varied greatly from that of another. One of the first shipwrecks recorded was that of the brig Fame, which capsized in a heavy gale in February 1781. The ship’s mission was to protect Cape May County from incursions by the British. Help reached the vessel at daybreak, but 20 out of the 28-man crew had already perished from exposure to the cold. In the early 1800s, the Perseverance, traveling from