Jersey Shore Magazine

j e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 7 53 share what they heard, saw, or did at Island Beach. Ron Brower, a descen- dant of the Harings and Reeds, early settlers on Island Beach, and his wife Jeanne were exceptionally gracious in sharing their archives of photos and newspaper clippings—some from the 1890s. Fifth generation decoy carver Art Birdsall was also a wonderful resource and put me on the trail of valuable information. The internet and Library of Congress also provided a great deal of information, especially about the Life-Saving Service, U.S. Coast Guard, shipwrecks, World War I, and World War II. Did you know much of Island Beach's history before you started research? Did you find any of it surprising? I knew little about the history of Island Beach before I started researching. As I grew up in Lavallette, it was known as the Phipps Estate. (In the 1920s, Henry W. Phipps Jr. bought out several smaller landowners with plans for a vacation resort on Island Beach. He constructed a 4.5 mile road and three of his dwellings remain today: The Governor's Mansion, the Freeman House, and the Bay House.) As for surprises, there were many. The biggest one was that Pauline Miller, who is venerated as having been Ocean County's historian, was not beyond spinning a yarn and treating it as history! The gripping drama of the ships that wrecked and both the survival and loss of lives was spellbinding. One wreck in particular, the packet ship New York, took me a year to flush out the details. It started from finding just one sentence about a sailor being buried in the dunes. It turned out the sailor came from a ship with more than three hun- dred passengers that ran aground in December 1856. It took two days to bring all ashore and ended with an attempted mutiny. The second section of the book con- tains personal recollections of people who lived, worked, or vacationed on Island Beach. It's really special and should make for an important historical record as time goes by. Was it hard to find people? Did you interview them yourself? I was surprised that some people from Island Beach were hesitant to speak to me and did NOT want to be interviewed. They liked privacy, were suspicious of publicity and, in general, were self-reliant. Many seemed to want to go back in time to more simple living and eschewed cellphones and television. They saw these devices as hindrances rather than conveniences. Then, in large measure, were others who wanted to leave a mes- sage about this unique environment and their antecedents. Some, like Penelope Hartshorne Batcheler, the daughter of Judge Hartshorne (owner of the "Judge's Shack," one of only seven "lifetime leased" shacks remaining from seventy-four that were active when New Jersey pur- chased Island Beach in 1953), related accounts of the joys of simple living and sights as evocative as cedars cov- ered with butterflies "blinking" their wings. Before he died, Glyn Erwin, who grew up on Island Beach in the 1940s and '50s, sent me a 125-page memoir that he had written for his grandchildren. We never met, but had an extensive correspondence by email. What do you find to be the most interesting/special aspect of Island Beach? What are your hopes for its future? My experiences at Island Beach have been so unique. Every time I was Alfred "Glyn" Erwin, shown here as a boy in the 1940s, sent Hesse a 125-page memoir (excerpts of which appear in the book) that he had written for his grandchildren about growing up at Island Beach. Erwin had a front row seat to the diversity of Island Beach experiences and spent many days hunting, trapping, fishing, clamming, crabbing, and picking berries. He also cut down cedar trees to carve decoys and build boats. This undated photo of one of the shacks at Island Beach (the Van Schoick's Red Shack) shows a day's catch of more than fifty fish lining the railings. Writes Hesse, "During lean years, fishing was more than just a sport, but also a means of subsistence and barter. The Red Shack, which was located at the south end of Island Beach, must have had a clubhouse atmosphere on days of plenty." continued on page 54 collection of Ocean County Historical Society collection of Alfred "Glyn" Erwin

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