On the right is the second Parker Hotel built by J.Y. Parker. The building in the middle of the photo (on the northeast corner) was at one time the W.H. Wilson Store.
To the right of the Wilson store was the first Parker Hotel and bar which was owned by the Autenrieths around 1900. By 1910 the hotel belonged to the Straubs.
C.S. Bok, Hackettstown, N.J., to Mort Austin, Eldred
June 11, 1894
My dear Friend,
Enclosed kindly find eight of your pictures and I kept the other four and did with them accordingly what you told me. I have also seen Dr. Whitney about your bill, but he told me that he will not charge anything this time.
Hoping you will keep well and be successful in your business. Kindly remember me to your partner.
I am your friend,
C.S. Bok
30 East 7th St., N.Y.
Perhaps Mort’s business referred to by his friend C.S. Bok, was the Mountain Grove House, which seems to have been completed by 1893. An ad for the house appeared in the summer 1894 newspaper, with the contact name, C.M. Austin & Co.
Mountain Grove House Ad
New house; cool rooms; good board; elevation 1,400 feet; fishing and boating. For particulars apply to C.M. Austin & Co., Eldred, N.Y.—Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 4, 1894.
C.S. Bok was a friend Mort Austin met at Centenary Collegiate Institute. Mort attended the Seminary only a year due to health or financial reasons, but C.S. Bok and Mort continued to correspond and visit each other for a number of years.
One of the many Austin postcards shows Chinatown in NYC, where Dr. Bok lived, according to the note on the back of the card. The card must have been sent in 1907 or later, as 1907 was the first year writing on the back of Postcards was allowed by the U.S. Post Office.
Grandpa Mort Austin’s school board tax cost 80 cents in 1891!
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
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.
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, 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 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.
