While three brothers were making history at the southern part of the island that is now known as Wildwood, a father and son five miles to the north were doing their share to bring the same success to where they lived, which was once a fishing village.

Edward Marmaduke Shivers, who it is said walked miles on the railroad tracks to and from his work as a plasterer, served as the third mayor of Anglesea from 1890 to 1893.

Hi son, Herbert Marmaduke Shivers, whose sailing career took him on the high seas to England and Africa, was mayor of the renamed North Wildwood from 1923 to 1925.

Another son, Joshua, was a boat captain and acquired fame when he transported 280 alligators to the Wildwoods from Florida.

The father, married three times, was born in Camden in October of 1832 and first migrated to the Mayville section of Middle Township where he opened a store before settling in the  borough of Anglesea in 1888, prior to changing its name to North Wildwood in 1906.. He also was a plasterer and in 1869, while still in Mayville, he was awarded a contract to plaster Cape May’s new prestigious Stockton Hotel. It was then, it has been reported, that he hiked the railroad tracks to Cape May back and forth each day to plaster the Stockton, which held its inaugural ball on the night of July 8, 1869. That event was so big that it required one master of ceremonies, 18 assistants and 61 floor managers to make it happen.

Soon after he settled in Anglesea the patriarch of the Shivers family became involved in politics and in 1890 he was elected mayor for a three year term. He also was to serve as borough clerk and councilman. Shivers succeeded in the Anglesea mayor’s spot Peter J. Munro, one of the four original councilmen who  served as mayor from 1886 to 1889. Munro followed the first mayor, Dr. William A. Tompkins, who came to Anglesea to improve his health but died  after only one year of a term  that started in 1885.

When Edward Shivers ran for mayor in January of 1890, he pledged to punish all violators of the liquor law, a big issue at that time of temperance activities.

According to the genealogy designation of Family Tree Maker Online, nothing is known of Edward’s first marriage.  But the second marriage to Eliza Crowell Hand, daughter of Matthew and Eleanor Walker Hand, occurred in January of 1859 in Camden. She was 19 years old then and he was 27. Edward was to live until 1911 when he died at the age of 79.

His third marriage on Sept. 1, 1867 was to Cornelia Buck, daughter of Samuel Joshua Buck and Mary Sites Buck. His new bride was 19 then and he was 35.

This third marriage produced five sons and a daughter, to be added to two born of his second marriage. Among the Buck children were the most famous, Herbert Marmaduke Shivers and Joshua Stites Shivers.

Herbert came into this world in Mayville on Sept. 17, 1869 and long before he was to enter politics he was seduced by the ocean. In August of 1898 Herbert was a member of the Anglesea life saving station and became a hero when he swam deep into the ocean to try to rescue 84-year-old Daniel L. Gifford, who fell overboard when a  fishing smack called the  J. A. Gault was going over a bar in Hereford Inlet. The rescue failed, and the body was never recovered. Gifford, married and the father of two children, had vacationed with his family in Anglesea for three years.

At first upon their arrival in Anglesea, Herbert worked  with his father as a bricklayer and plasterer, but spent some of his time as a commercial fisherman for the local and New York markets. In 1914, as war clouds hovered over Europe, Herbert went to sea for the Southern Steamship Company, and as America became involved in the first World War, Shivers joined the crews of ships carrying government supplies that were dodging German submarines.

When the war concluded, Shivers passed examinations for second, first and chief engineer and won the job of chief engineer unlimited on the Franco-Canadian Line aboard a ship  called the “Westmont” which sailed between New York and Liverpool. Later he switched to the Luckenbach Company and he worked  on an extensive trip to Africa and other foreign ports.

Eventually, though, he returned to the land and, like his father, Herbert involved himself in politics. He was named the tenth mayor during the heart of the Roaring Twenties from 1923 to 1925 when Anglesea became known as North Wildwood. He also served as councilman for 12 years, two of which he was council president.

Herbert was married on Oct. 14, 1897 to the former Jennie Conover of Green Creek and their marriage produced four sons. Then a resident pf 313 East Fourth Avenue in North Wildwood, Shivers died on St.Patrick’s Day of 1949 at the age of 79, the same age as his farther.

Life was not always kind to  another son Joshua of  the Shivers family. He was born in January of 1876  and he and his wife, Frances, raised a son, Francis, who was 6 years old  on a hot day in July of 1914  when he entered the surf with a friend, 7-year-old Raymond Mollet. They were caught in a strong undertow at Second Avenue and the boys were drowned immediately.

Francis’ father, the owner of a party boat Nautilus, was out to sea at the time and did not learn of his son’s drowning until later that day.

A rescue team from the Hereford Life  Saving Station was dispatched to try to save the children, but only Francis’ body was found floating on the water near a pier.

Still more tragedy stalked the Shivers’ family that year. Joshua Shivers’ nephew, 7-year-old Walter Shivers, named after his father, another son of the patriarch Shivers, was learning to ride a bicycle, given by his father, Walter,  on Lincoln Avenue  when a wagon driven by Frank Stalb suddenly rounded the corner and struck him. He was thrown from the bicycle and the wagon wheels crushed the boy’s back

James McLinden, who was to precede Herbert Shivers as mayor of North Wildwood from 1915 to 1922, was riding in his car in the area at the time. He stopped, picked up the boy’s injured body and transported him to McLinden’s home. A doctor was summoned but the boy succumbed before he arrived.

Joshua Shivers name was to make the news again, although not tragically, during the days when the rum runners were operating on land and on the sea in the Wildwoods. While Joshua’s boat was moored at Cold Spring Harbor a Coast Guard inspector suspected that a huge packing case being taken ashore contained illegal liquor. He shook the case, it nails already having been loosened, and instead of liquor out came 280 alligators on the pier and on the deck of Shivers Nautilus. Most were small alligators but there was among them a five footer called Lizzie apparently named after the killer Lizzie Borden.

Ultimately the   loose alligators were rounded up by a man named Horse Mackerel Samuel Johnson who reportedly had been a fishing guide for western author Zane Grey.

Joshua was to explain that he transported the alligators here for sale at pet shops. Lizzie was supposed to go to the Philadelphia Zoological Garden.

The alligator event received considerable publicity, especially in The New York Herald Tribune and perhaps was  a climax to the colorful life of the Shivers family.

(Some of the information for this article was researched at the reference department of the Cape May County Library in Court House.)