In Another Time > Merger was once a hot topic in Wildwoods

Last Updated on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 05:09 pm Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Tuesday, May 14, 2013 04:44 pm

During the 33 years since 1980 there have been ten different mayors and two recall elections in this popular resort, whose year round population swells from 5,325 to 73,358 in the summer, according to the last census figures. Apparently the voters in that city prefer variety.

The other communities on the island like to keep their mayors in office for a while. Wildwood Crest has had five, North Wildwood four and West Wildwood three. In some cases there were mayors who served, left office and then made comebacks, but the totals do not reflect comebacks.

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In Another Time > A life of adventure followed by 45 years in the lighthouse

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Wednesday, May 08, 2013 08:36 pm

 In the telling of the story of the Wildwoods, much of the focus is usually placed on the three Baker brothers who are credited with having discovered and developed the southern section of the island now known as Five Mile Beach.

To the north, however, before anyone had an inkling of an idea about a place called Wildwood, there was a man who fought in the Civil War, who sailed to Cuba, served as a lighthouse keeper for 45 years, built a store for his wife, was a North Wildwood councilman, an overseer of the poor, clerk of the school board, chief of the Anglesea Fire Company and an organizer of the First Baptist Church of Anglesea.

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In Another Time > A tragedy in the early history of Catholics in Wildwood

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Tuesday, May 07, 2013 04:24 pm

Before it happened, before the grim news traveled from the city to the ocean, optimism exuded at the first Catholic church in the town of Holly Beach on the island that was born to be known as Five Mile Beach.

As the 20th century approached, the construction of the house of worship of St. Ann Roman Catholic Church of Holly Beach was nearing completion, so near, in fact, that there was enough room for the first mass to be held in September of 1897. In a spirit of ecumenical cooperation it was to be built on land at the corner of Roberts and Holly Beach Avenues donated by a Methodist and an Episcopalian.

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A tragedy in the early history of Catholics in Wildwood

Last Updated on Thursday, May 02, 2013 04:35 pm Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Saturday, May 04, 2013 12:00 am

Before it happened, before the grim news traveled from the city to the ocean, optimism exuded at the first Catholic church in the town of Holly Beach on the island that was born to be known as Five Mile Beach.

As the 20th century approached, the construction of the house of worship of St. Ann Roman Catholic Church of Holly Beach was nearing completion, so near, in fact, that there was enough room for the first mass to be held in September of 1897. In a spirit of ecumenical cooperation it was to be built on land at the corner of Roberts and Holly Beach Avenues donated by a Methodist and an Episcopalian.

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In Another Time > Sports have always been a big part of Wildwood life

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, April 25, 2013 12:00 am

Much like today, many of the very early visitors in the Wildwoods spent their free time swimming, fishing and running on the beach. The big difference was that there were few organized recreational opportunities for them to view or to do at that time.

Lacrosse was created by the Iroquois. It is a matter of conjecture whether the Lenni Lenape, believed to be the first people to visit New Jersey’s barrier islands, ever played it on the cluttered foliage of the Wildwoods.

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In Another Time > High school in Wildwood had a tough start

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Wednesday, April 17, 2013 12:00 am

The incentive to start a new school district in Wildwood was not exactly at the top of everyone’s priority list when the calendar turned to the 20th century.

Wildwood and Holly Beach were then still separate municipalities, not to come together as one until 1912.

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In Another Time > Schooling on the island started small

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Tuesday, April 16, 2013 10:18 am

The arrival of formal education at Holly Beach was not without controversy and right in the middle of it was the mayor’s 15-year-old daughter, who was said to be the island’s first teacher. It was a story, bitter at times, that ended in romance and everyone seemed to live happily ever after.

In 1883, two years before it was officially incorporated as a borough, there weren’t that many children living in Holly Beach to justify a school building. (Some outsiders not familiar with the existence of the island thought Holly Beach was the name of a woman.)

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Snapshots of another century

Last Updated on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 02:08 pm Written by Staff Reports Wednesday, April 10, 2013 01:41 pm

James Magee stands with his wife, Ida, and daughter, Sallie, in front of a truck delivering the Wildwood Leader in 1911.

To the editor,

Recently I attended the dog show in Wildwood and picked up a copy of the Wildwood Leader.

The name of the paper sounded familiar. After searching through my mother’s (Sallie) photos I found these photos.

My grandfather, James M. Magee, sold the Wildwood Leader in 1911. In one photo, that’s my grandmother, Ida, holding my mother, Sallie.

Evelyn Sheppard

Newfield

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In Another Time > Firefighting grew with the town

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, April 04, 2013 01:00 am

 Benjamin Franklin never visited Holly Beach. He had left this earth almost a century before Holly Beach was incorporated as a borough in April 1885. But, long separated that he was, Franklin probably had an early historical influence on the way they first fought fires at the burgeoning seashore resort.

At the age of 70, Franklin was the oldest to sign the Declaration of Independence, which he helped draft. He had other talents too, not as prominent as the big signing but still significant enough to earn mention in historical accounts. He was a printer, a musician and a volunteer fireman who helped start his own fire company, which may have set the standards for what was to happen in Holly Beach about a century later.

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In Another Time > Among early police duties: Lighting lamps and rounding strays

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Wednesday, March 27, 2013 12:00 am

It was a sign that the Wildwoods were beginning to grow up when Holly Beach, still a community on its own, formed its first police force in 1907. Since its incorporation as a borough in 1885, the municipality’s law enforcement department had amounted to a marshal and some part-time policemen when needed.

Read more: In Another Time > Among early police duties: Lighting lamps and rounding strays

In Another Time > No battles, but Wildwood saw plenty of wartime flying

Last Updated on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 10:15 am Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Wednesday, March 20, 2013 01:00 am

The tide in the Second World War had turned for America and its Allies by May of 1944 when a Wildwood woman thought the Germans were bombing her island.

Since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, two-and-one-half years of pain and anxiety followed in the United States as its young men, and some older, fought on the blood-soaked soil and waters of Europe and the Pacific.

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In Another Time > From battles in Europe to election to City Hall and Trenton

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Tuesday, March 12, 2013 04:44 pm

He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, so he knew what adversity was all about when he entered politics years later in Wildwood.

Friends, in fact, warned Guy F. Muziani that he would be facing new battles if he sought public office, as he indicated was his plan. The bullets this time, they said, would be verbal ones and they would be fired at him often with little time for rest and recreation.

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Wild cattle once roamed the Wildwoods

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:53 pm

How now brown cow?

How now, indeed, is the question about the brown cows that were present on Five Mile Beach, reportedly as far back as the 17th century, mooing apparently contentedly until people began to settle on the island much later. But how now did the cows get there in the first place?

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In Another Time > King of the Boardwalk came to town at 17

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Friday, January 11, 2013 02:16 pm

 Sebastian Ramagosa came to Wildwood as a 17-year-old in 1914, and built a kingdom on the boardwalk.

Wildwood, with a year-round population of 3,858, larger than Ocean City’s 3,721, was at that time starting to draw crowds.

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In Another Time > Competition was fierce for visitors a century ago

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, January 03, 2013 03:58 pm

The first decade of the 20th century posed new challenges and decision making for the four major municipalities on Five Mile Beach. The choices their leaders made were to shape what exists today, albeit not in the size that anyone then had envisioned.

Holly Beach, a borough since 1885, was weighing in the 1900s whether to give up its identity and merge with the borough of Wildwood, its neighbor a bit to the north. Wildwood, which became officially incorporated in 1895, was deciding whether it should accept Holly Beach and change its own status to that of a city, and Wildwood Crest was planning to join the others as an official borough in 1910.

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In Another Time > Christmas 1941 was one to remember

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Monday, December 17, 2012 05:26 pm

 The Christmas spirit was building in the Wildwoods as the calendar turned in 1941 from November to December. They were singing Christmas carols and decorating their homes and businesses in wreaths and holly, and the merchants, in a not-unfamiliar slogan of the future, were urging the people of the county to “Do Your Christmas Shopping in Wildwood.”

Then on the seventh day of that month, the mood changed from joy and merriment to fear and tragedy and uncertainty as the news surfaced that in a faraway awiaanHawaiian harbor named Pearl many Japanese air warriors had dropped their devastation on the ships of the American Navy and the military assigned there. It was to mark the entrance of the United States into the biggest war in the history of mankind and in the hysteria of the time there were fears on the Wildwoods home front that its shores might be invaded. The concern came as German submarines prowled the ocean waters and sent their torpedoes against shipping, not far from the beaches which people had enjoyed in happier, more peaceful times.

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In Another Time > Hotels were a key part of resort’s development

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, December 13, 2012 01:00 am

There was no great rush, of course, to build hotels when the Wildwoods emerged as a seashore resort in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Atlantic City had arrived earlier with its boardwalk and some of its grand accommodations, and the Wildwoods had a lot of catching up to do .

It’s not that some were not trying. In 1880, for instance, five years before Holly Beach officially became a borough, The Inlet House, looking more like a farm house, was built on what is now Rio Grande Avenue. It is claimed it to be Holly Beach’s first hotel.

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In Another Time > Building the boardwalks was a big project

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Saturday, December 01, 2012 09:31 pm

Building a boardwalk may seem like  an easy task  once the carpenters arrive and begin hammering away. But the history of the Wildwoods shows there was a lot of hammering in the council chambers, too, before things got nailed down elsewhere.

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In Another Time > Old names still have resonance in Wildwoods

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, November 08, 2012 01:00 am

 It is an irony in the long history of Five Mile Beach that today’s centerpiece municipality was nameless and virtually non-existent at the beginning, and the then-prominent communities no longer exist except in memory.

The early trailblazers as official municipalities in 1885 were Holly Beach at the southern end of the island and Anglesea in the north. It was not for another 10 years that Wildwood was to join them as an incorporated borough. Holly Beach was to lose its identity 27 years after its founding when it became part of Wildwood and Anglesea 21 years after it was official when it changed its name to North Wildwood.

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In Another Time > Claims of health benefits helped Wildwood grow

Written by Jacob Schaad Jr. Thursday, October 18, 2012 10:41 am

The lure of the ocean, of course, was the main reason why the virgin territory of what is now called the Wildwoods had emerged into five vacation municipalities that have attracted many millions of tourists for more than a century.

The seascape, however, would not have gone from dreams to realities had it not been for the local pioneers.

Read more: In Another Time > Claims of health benefits helped Wildwood grow