Grandpa Mort Austin’s school board tax cost 80 cents in 1891!
1891 school tax
Posted in Echo Hill and Mountain Grove
Leave a comment
1890 Centenary Collegiate Institute, Hackettstown, New Jersey
Mort Austin received an acceptance letter from Centenary Collegiate Institute, a seminary in Hackettstown, New Jersey, in October 1890.
Centenary was founded by the Newark Methodist Episcopal Church in 1867. It was built at a cost of $200,000. George H. Whitney, D.D., was president from 1869 to 1895. In September 1884 the tuition and board was $275 for 36 weeks.
Geo. Whitney, Hackettstown, N.J., to Mort Austin, Eldred
October 20, 1890
Dear C. M. Austin:
My Dear Sir:
Your favor is rec. We shall be glad to have you come on the 3rd of Dec., the day of our term opening.
I enter your name for that time, we shall be glad to do what we can for you.
Sincerely yours,
Geo. H. Whitney, President
Centenary Collegiate Institute
Posted in Echo Hill and Mountain Grove
Leave a comment
Chapter 6: An Old Bachelor
Mort Austin wrote to his brother Lon:
“I have made up my mind to live an old bachelor the rest of my days. Don’t you think I would make a good one?
“But I think you would do well to take Nell for I guess she is a real good girl and I think you would be better off with a good wife than single.”
Life as you know, does not always work out how we think it should.
Nell, though she loved Lon, married a man she did not love at the request of her father out of a sense of duty to him.
My grandfather Mort Austin, fortunately for me, met and married Jennie Louisa Leavenworth. But in 1890, the year chapter 6 starts, Jennie was 10 years old, and Mort Austin, 25, started Centenary Collegiate Institute in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
Posted in Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, People
Leave a comment
Stege Pond Bridge
Robert Greig’s brothers Thomas and Bennett Greig wanted to create a high class hunting and fishing club on Mill Pond (later called Stege’s Pond). They had rice growing on the upper end of the pond to benefit the large population of wild ducks.
Thomas Greig died in 1886, a few months after completing the stone wall to the west of Mill/Stege’s Pond and the lovely stone arched bridge with the water falls at the south end of the pond. The stone wall was later the entrance to the Seven Oaks Estate.
Seven Oaks, Eldred, New York
Seven Oaks, owned by George and Elizabeth Beck, was another huge, beautiful boarding house. It was set back some distance north of Mill/Stege Road and west of Mill/Stege’s Pond. It was north of the Greig Home.
Two more pages of the Seven Oaks Brochure Continue reading
The Greigs of Eldred
The massive Greig home built in the early 1890s, was south of Mill/Stege’s Pond and Road. Robert, Kate, Isabelle, and Bennett Greig lived in the huge Greig House. Robert’s sister Jane, his sister-in-law Julia and her daughter lived there also.
The Greigs owned over 100,000 acres in Highland, Lumberland, Tusten, and Bethel. They bought the land in lots of 400 acres or larger for the water rights because they believed steam power was the wave of the future.—Ed G. as told to Kevin M.
The Becks and Greigs of Eldred, N.Y.
The Beck and Greig families, both from England, lived less than a mile north of Eldred Corners near Mill Pond (later called Stege’s). Their houses were not far from Board Road which went north to Bethel, New York, some 13 miles from Eldred Corners.
The Greigs had owned knitting mills in Manchester, England, and lost all their ships running the blockade during the Civil War. In 1869, they paid all their debts and sailed for New York.
Both the Greigs and Becks lived in Eldred by 1870 as their locations were shown on the 1870 Beers Map. Neither home is in existence today.
The next 2 or 3 posts have photos related to the Beck’s and Greig’s homes that are courtesy of Ed G. (a descendant of the Griegs) and Kevin M. who sent me Ed’s family photos.
Posted in Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, People
Leave a comment
New York Herald Building
The New York Herald Headquarters at Broadway and 34th Street was designed by McKim, Mead, & White in 1890. The building was completed by 1895.
James Gordon Bennett Sr. had founded the Herald in 1835. His son James Bennett Jr. took over when James Sr. died in 1872.
The building was a Renaissance Revival building, designed after Fra Giacondo’d Palazzo del Consiglio in Verona. It was demolished in 1921.
Pneumatic tubes, speaking tubes, and a telephone system connected the offices. On the roof along with about 24 bronze owls with blinking eyes (electric lights), was a flock of carrier pigeons who brought the latest distant news events.
The New York Herald under James Bennett Jr. financed Henry Stanley’s expedition to Africa to find David Livingston.
New York’s Herald Square was named after the New York Herald newspaper. Times Square, named after The New York Times (the Herald’s rival), is north of Herald Square.
The New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald after Bennett Jr.’s death in 1924, and created the New York Herald Tribune.—wikipedia.org., nytimes.com.
Ellis Island opens January 1, 1892
On January 1, 1892, the U.S. Immigration Station on Ellis Island at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor opened. Previously, the states were responsible for immigrants.
The first structure on Ellis Island burned down in 1897. A new building opened in late 1900. Over 12 million immigrants had entered the U.S. through Ellis Island when it closed in 1954.
Posted in Echo Hill and Mountain Grove
Leave a comment
1937 New Year’s Card and Poem
In 1937 Aida Austin sent this card to her brother Ell Austin. On the back she wrote the first verse of a poem by Sallie Ward Barns (1836–1919).
Posted in Cards
Leave a comment
