Episcopal | Catholic | Baptist | Jewish
The early history of St. Simeon’s Episcopal Church
Two determined women, devout Episcopalians, used their wealth and influence in the late 1890s to help establish an Episcopal church in the Wildwoods that has continued to serve the community for nearly a century.
Annie Starr had come to the Wildwoods from Wisconsin and built a splendid home, one of the earliest homes in Holly Beach, at what is now Leaming and Arctic avenues in the mid 1880s. Referred to as the Starr Cottage, the large, beautifully landscaped house was also called The Hollies for the many species of trees on the grounds. Annie’s daughter Frances also summered at the cottage with her mother and both women were accomplished musicians.
Frances married Karl Hasenwinkle who performed with the Melba Opera Company of New York City and, for stage purposes, had shortened his name to Haswin. During their early years in Holly Beach Annie, Frances and Carl became acquainted with the Rev. Edgar Cope, a priest from St. Simeon’s Church in Philadelphia, who spent his summers at the shore. For years the Rev. Cope held private Episcopal services for the family in their home, but it was during the summer of 1898 that Annie and Frances were able to prevail upon the Rev. Cope to conduct a public service from the Book of Common Prayer at the Hotel Dayton, the site of many historic events, on the first Sunday in August of that year.
Determined to have an Episcopal church in their community, Annie and Frances purchased ground on Pacific Avenue between Magnolia and Cedar avenues in 1899. During the summers of 1899 and 1900, services were held first in the sun parlor of the Casino on the Boardwalk and, as interest in building a church continued to grow, services were held the following year in the Wildwood Borough Hall. After the original lots on Pacific Avenue had been exchanged for a more central location on Maple Avenue, the contract to build a church was awarded to Frank Smith in 1900.
Although the church was far from done, Bishop Scarborough came to Wildwood on July, 21, 1901 to visit the mission church established by St. Simeon’s parish in Philadelphia and to hold services in the new building. It took two years to complete the church but worship services were held on a more or less regular basis with members of the congregation bringing their own chairs or standing through the service until pews were installed in 1904.
In 1903, Cope appointed his friend, the Rev. Samuel Ward from Christ Church in Germantown, as the minister in charge of the mission. Noble Bright, son of William and Priscilla Bright, was the first child baptized in the new mission church and in September 1903, R.W. Ryan and his wife Henrietta were confirmed. Ryan had first come to the island in 1889 to visit Philip Baker who convinced him to settle in Wildwood. Ryan marred Henrietta on August 12, 1889 and returned to the island that same day. He open the first store in Wildwood at 137 E. Wildwood Avenue that sold virtually everything local people needed. Eventually, Ryan owned five stores, served as the first postmaster and was one of the founders of the Marine Bank. He also was on borough council, the board of education and an active member of other civic organizations. Henrietta served as the first president of St. Simeon’s Guild, a women’s group at the church.
In 1905, using money that had been raised the previous summer at a gala affair at the luxurious Hotel Ottens, the congregation was able to pay to raise the church building and add a concrete foundation, lights and heat. The summer concert at the Hotel Ottens had featured a Senor Rosa from the Melba Opera Company with Frances Starr Haswin as his pianist. Frances also was the organist at St. Simeon’s Mission. In March 1906, the congregation, with the approval of the bishop of New Jersey, voted to incorporate and the official name of St. Simeon’s by the Sea Episcopal Church was recorded in the county clerk’s office by Oliver Bright, commissioner of deeds.
It is uncertain when Annie Starr died but presumably she lived to know that the Wildwoods would have an Episcopal church. Frances died on February 10, 1908 and her husband Karl died two years later in Texas. He was still a vestryman at St. Simeon’s and he was buried from the church on May 3, 1910.
Information for this column was obtained from the historical files of the George Boyer Museum on Holly Beach Station Mall, Wildwood.
St. Ann's celebrates centennial
Not long after settlement of the Five-Mile Beach area in the late 1800s, early residents and visitors were eager to provide for their religious needs, build churches and establish their faith. The beginning of an organized Catholic community on the island was in 1895 when the first mass was celebrated on East Andrews Avenue at the cottage of Mrs. Ann Henry. That same year Bishop James McFaul announced the name of the first parish would be St. Ann's of Holly Beach. At the time, Holly Beach was a separate community from Cedar to Cresse Avenues and Wildwood Borough was from Cedar to 26th. In 1912 the two communities joined to form Wildwood.
By the next year, Roberts and Holly Beach Avenue, later to become New Jersey Avenue, was chosen as the location for the first Catholic Church, and in an early spirit of ecumenicalism, the property was donated by Dr. Andrew, a Methodist and John Bright, an Episcopalian.
The first St. Ann's was dedicated on August 14, 1898; the Rev. John Cunningham was the priest, succeeding the Rev. Joseph Murphy who served as the first pastor from 1896 to 1898. The Rev. James Kelley, the Rev. John McCloskey and the Rev. William Tighe all served briefly as pastors at the new church and in 1905 the Rev. James Moroney arrived at St. Ann's and stayed for 37 years.
In April 1903, the church building was moved to Pacific and Garfield Avenues and plans were made to build a rectory at Spicer and Pacific Avenues. While the rectory was under construction, Fr. Tighe, the pastor, lived at the Hotel Dayton. A year later, the Board of Trustees approved the building of 10-room parish house at a cost of $3,800.
By 1907-08 the parish had outgrown the church and plans were made for a new church and rectory at Glenwood and Pacific Avenues. The cornerstone was laid August 30, 1908 and the new church was completed in November. Both the old church and the old rectory were sold to local fraternal organizations. A religious census in 1913 listed "235 white Catholics and three colored Catholics" in the parish, according to church records.
On an unlucky Friday the 13th in December 1929, St. Ann's auditorium at Glenwood and Pacific Avenues, which had served as the church and social hall for 10 years, burned down. It was quickly rebuilt and in May the new building that could hold 3,200 people was dedicated.
In 1943, Monsignor Aloysius Quinlan was appointed pastor of St. Ann's after Monsignor Moroney died December 30, 1942. That same year, St. Ann's auditorium was redecorated and named Church of the Holy Apostles.
The original St. Ann's Church on Pacific Avenue was converted to a parish hall and cafeteria in 1957, the same year the church in Wildwood was officially named St. Ann's. In the late 1960s the parish purchased parcels of land in the 100 block of East Magnolia Avenue, the 100 block of East Glenwood and the Hotel Sheldon at 2900 Atlantic Avenue. Soon after, all buildings on those properties, including the hotel, were demolished. The Atlantic Avenue property where the four-story hotel once stood was used for church parking while the other lots were earmarked for a new school.
The Catholic community actively supported parochial education for their children and in 1926 the first Catholic school on the island opened on the second floor of the church with the Sisters of St. Joseph teaching 143 students in grades one to seven. By the time the parish celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1970, a new school, St. Ann's Regional School, had been constructed and was dedicated as part of the festivities. Cost of the new school building on New Jersey Avenue between Glenwood and Magnolia is listed at $530,000 in church records. Ultimately, the old St. Ann's Church and school were razed and the area was used for a parking lot and playground for the new school.
Wildwood Catholic High School on Central Avenue in North Wildwood opened in the fall of 1948 and in June 1950, the first class of 27 seniors graduated from the new Catholic high school. Twelve rooms were added to the high school in 1959 at a cost of $273,000.
In 1955, the parish Board of Trustees authorized the building a second Catholic Church in the Wildwoods and on August 21 the corner stone was laid for a new church in the Crest. In May 1956 the Church of the Assumption was dedicated.
All the research for this article was provided by Robert J. Scully, Sr. who has compiled a book of parish facts for St. Ann's 100th anniversary. Scully is the curator of the Wildwood Historical Society.
Jeanette DuBois Meech and the Baptists
The Baptists, who had established congregations and a strong presence in the early days of Cape May County, are credited with the first religious services on the Five-Mile Beach. As early as 1878, according to George Boyer in his book Wildwood, Middle of the Island, Freeling Hewitt conducted services in the parlor of the Hereford Lighthouse in Anglesea where he was the lighthouse keeper. In the late 1800s Sunday services were held on a Boardwalk carousel as gaily-painted animals posed in silent witness to the Baptist preaching and hymn singing.
Jeanette DuBois Meech, the wife of a Baptist preacher and an educated, accomplished woman in her own right, attended that first service at the lighthouse and she continued to play an important role in the expansion of the Baptist church and the further development of the island.
Her contributions were not limited to church work, however. In 1885 as the editor of the first newspaper on the island, The Holly Beach Herald, she affirmed her Baptist faith with an editorial that admonished her readers to make the new community "a home from which intemperance and every vice that degrades a community shall be banished."
In the 1850s, the young Jeanette married the Rev. W. W. Meech, the pastor of a Baptist church in Burlington County. During the Civil War, the preacher was a hospital chaplain in Kentucky and Jeanette organized a Sunday school for the soldiers recovering from battle. In 1873, after she had served as superintendent of the Maryland State Industrial School for Girls, the couple moved to Vineland, where the Rev. Meech, although in poor health, was the pastor of the South Vineland Baptist Church.
The Meeches, along with many other people from the Vineland area, decided to move on and settle near the ocean on the Five-Mile Beach Island, an area virtually undeveloped in the 1880s. Apparently, Mrs. Meech stayed in Wildwood while her husband divided his time between Vineland and Holly Beach, bringing produce grown on the family farm to the island for his wife to sell.
A gospel tent on the beach near Andrews Avenue, financed by shares sold for a dollar each and money raised by Mrs. Meech from her lectures about China and Japan, served as an early church for all denominations. A storm in 1888 ripped the tent in two and members of various faiths again used private homes for their religious services.
In 1890 Mrs. Meech prevailed upon Gilbert Blaker to donate the use of the upper story of his pavilion for Sunday evening services. Later the Hotel Dayton was used for winter services and it was at one of the services at the hotel that J. Thompson Baker made a strong speech for a church in Wildwood. As a result of his persuasive rhetoric the hotel guests contributed $375.
Philip Baker donated a lot on Pine Avenue and $500 and, along with the tireless efforts of the Rev. James Craner, construction of a church started in 1892, the first church built in the Borough of Wildwood. Lack of heat in the new building forced the congregation to continue services at the Hotel Dayton during the winter months.
Church trustees decided in 1906 to move the church building, a fairly common practice in those days, to the corner of Maple and Pacific Avenues. On Easter Sunday, April 15, 1906, the old cornerstone was placed in its new location with J. Thompson Baker and the Rev. Craner taking part in the ceremony. Services were not held in the new location until August of that year.
Jeanette DuBois Meech died in 1911 at the age of 76 after playing an important part in the settlement of Holly Beach and the establishing of the Baptist faith on the island. The Rev. Craner died the following year.
The early years of the 20th century were a struggle for the small congregation and when the church called the Rev. Irvin Fisher to be the pastor, church membership was only 71 people. By 1923, however, when the congregation voted to build a new church, membership had grown to over 200 members. The cornerstone of the new building at Atlantic and Maple Avenues was laid in January 1924 and the first service was held in July. The cost of the church, including the organ and a parsonage was just over $100,000.
On August 10, 1924, the birthday of Jeanette DuBois Meech, the First Baptist Church of Wildwood was dedicated.
Additional information about the history of Wildwood is available at the George F.Boyer Historical Museum on Holly Beach Station Mall.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE WILDWOODS
Benjamin Gidding, an immigrant who escaped from Russia, was one of the first Jewish settlers in Holly Beach in the late 1890s, coming to America with the help of his cousin Fineman Gidding. Peddling with a horse and buggy, Gidding married a rabbi’s daughter and by 1909 he had opened a men’s clothing store in Wildwood.
Gidding met his wife, Fannie Schiff, in Woodbine, an agricultural and industrial colony for Jewish Americans. The Woodbine settlement played an important role in the establishment of a new Jewish community on Five-Mile Beach, an area more hospitable and tolerant than other seaside towns in the county to foreign immigrants and first generation families.
Soon after Gidding’s arrival he was joined by other Jews especially in the summer when they would come to the shore to earn a living in a variety of ways. At the end of the season they would go back to Woodbine in time for the high holidays and the winter, returning to Wildwood in the spring. In the early 1900s unionization of factories in Woodbine caused many Jews to question their commitment to Woodbine and many families decided to leave. Some Jewish families ventured off to cities while others looked to the small towns of Salem, Penns Grove and the Wildwoods as a place to settle.
Philip Gould arrived in America from Russia with his wife Anna, a native of Poland, in 1898. The family lived in upstate New York for a while before moving to a farm in Woodbine. Gould learned how to redo and restore old family photographs as a way to support his growing family. The Goulds spent summers in Wildwood and winters in Woodbine but in 1908 the family decided to leave Woodbine and instead spend winters in the Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia where they operated a restaurant in a four-story building on Samson Street. In addition to the Goulds’ restaurant on the third floor and the family’s living quarters on the fourth floor, the building also had an American restaurant on the first floor and a Chinese restaurant on the second floor.
During the summer the family operated a confectionery and variety store on the Wildwood boardwalk. In 1910 Philip bought property at Oak and the Boardwalk but a fire destroyed the business the next year. The family, including Philip’s mother, lived under the boardwalk where the grandmother kept a strictly kosher home. . A few years later, Anna Gould died giving birth to her seventh child and shortly after his wife’s death, Philip decided to leave Philadelphia and live year-round in Wildwood on Andrews Avenue.
Benjamin Gidding and Philip Gould along with several other Jewish men were instrumental in organizing a place of worship for Jews in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1911 the high holidays were observed in the home of Max Baker with Max Worobe, H. Schorochoter, Simon Gidding, H. Seigle (sp), Nathan Garfinkle, B.Alper, Rabbi Schiff, Gould and Gidding gathering for the minyan, the 10 Jews needed for a communal religious service. In 1913, a bar mitzvah service was held for Wildwood’s first native son, Samuel Gidding.
Keeping a kosher home and maintaining Jewish customs and traditions meant trips to the kosher delicatessen in Woodbine or kosher stores in the area of Fourth and Bainbridge in Philadelphia. It would be another decade before the Jewish community in Wildwood would have their own delis, butcher shops and hotels. They continued to use the Woodbine Cemetery and depended on Jewish women from Woodbine to help with the rituals associated with funerals.
Finally a congregation named Beth Judah was formed and in February 1914 the leaders bought land at 4200 Pacific Avenue. Services were held in a house at 4203 and on February 3, 1915 the Beth Judah congregation was incorporated and officially recorded at the court house in Cape May Court House. The incorporation reads: "And the congregation shall be conducted in strict accordance with the usage and customs of the orthodox Hebrew forms of public worship." Joseph Empol was the first president; Max Worobe was vice president, Max Baker, treasurer and Louis Senekoff, secretary. In 1919 the congregation purchased the Austin property on Pacific Avenue and converted it to a synagogue.
As the Jewish community in Woodbine declined, the Jewish presence in Wildwood would continue to grow, contributing to ethnic diversity of the island that included African-Americans, Italians and Scandinavians and other European immigrants.
The Jewish community flourishes in Wildwood - Part II
Through the early 1920s, the Jewish community in Wildwood flourished. In 1919, Philip Gould opened the first Jewish real estate office in Wildwood and within a few years Mr. Senekoff’s new kosher deli and butcher shop on Lincoln Avenue near Pacific, was selling lox for 25 cents for a quarter pound and providing fresh, live fish in for the Jewish holidays. Around the island several hotels, especially the Manor and Lindenhirst, catered to Jewish clientele with kosher meals. The number of Jewish families almost doubled in the early 1920s, from 25 to 44 families just a few years later.
To help preserve Jewish ideals and traditions, the families organized a Hebrew Progressive Club and the membership quickly decided to build a new temple. Ground was broken on March 3, 1929 and on September 22 the new synagogue was ready to celebrate the Jewish New Year 5690. It had been built with $12,000 raised from the Jewish families in Wildwood who also contributed another $3000 to convert an existing building into a Hebrew school for their children.
Life for Jewish families revolved around the synagogue which had been designed to resemble the Beth El synagogue in West Philadelphia. Although the temple had a balcony and the ritual used was orthodox, men and women sat together for services. Adolph Burger was hired as the first rabbi, followed later by Rabbi Alpert and Rabbi Shoulson.
In 1930, 200 people attended the first wedding at Beth Judah synagogue when Louis Gould married Yvette Blasany, a young woman from Philadelphia who had moved to Wildwood in 1928. Louis was born in Woodbine in 1903 and celebrated his bar mitzvah at a small synagogue at 32nd and Page Streets in the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia. His mother died when Louis was only 10 and within a few years after her death the Gould family decided to live in Wildwood year-round.
Prohibition was still the law of the land when Louis and Yvette married but that didn’t stop Joseph Blasany from providing forbidden spirits, disguised as tea, to celebrate his daughter’s wedding. A sign maker by trade, Blasany later would hand-inscribe the memorial or Yahrzeit plaque for the synagogue. This important and sensitive part of the synagogue lists deceased people by their Jewish names and the day they died according to the Hebrew calendar.
Phil Rosenburg came to Wildwood in 1929 and soon met his future wife Ruth Sagel, a native of the island. Phil had first come to the resort to make money for his education and by working for the Freihofer Bakery during the day and at local bingo games at night he was able to earn $400, enough to cover his tuition for a year at Temple University. The couple married in 1935 and operated the family candy business at Garfield and the Boardwalk in Wildwood.
Hebrew school for the children was held at Pauline and Benjamin Konowitch’s home on Pacific Avenue to save the cost of lighting the gas lanterns in the synagogue. During Purim, the children joined the fun by making chumantash, three-cornered cookies filled with prunes or cherries and taking part in plays and games that were part of the happy celebration.
Families continued to travel to Woodbine for kosher wine sold by Mayor Greenstein who permitted his customers to taste three different wines to select the one they preferred for Passover. Jews were able to fill the empty jug they brought with them for a dollar.
In 1932, with the devastating effects of the Depression paralyzing the country, the city of Wildwood asked the Hebrew Progressive Club, and all other local organizations to contribute the city’s Emergency Relief Funds to help destitute families in need of assistance. According to a letter from Mayor William Bright, 300 families with over a thousand dependents were in need of financial help during that 1932 winter. The state had promised aid of 10 cents per capita provided the city also spent 10 cents for each of the city’s 5330 residents. Dr. Hornstine, an active member of the Jewish community, also served as the overseer of the poor for an extended period including the Depression years.
Louis Gould served as secretary of the synagogue for over 20 years, from 1933 to 1954, often conducting Friday evening services when no rabbi was available. Dues for membership in the synagogue, which also served the religious needs of Jewish people in surrounding communities and tourists during the high holidays, were $6 during the 1930s.
The war in Europe and Nazi atrocities would soon influence Jewish life in Cape May County. After the war, the Jewish community had to cope with many of the economic trends and family changes that would continue to affect America for the next 20 or more years.
The Jewish community changes with the times - Part III
With America’s entry into World War II, the Jewish community in Wildwood helped the war effort on two fronts. Locally, they sponsored bingo games in the social hall of the synagogue using sugar, onions and potatoes, all scarce and precious commodities, as prizes. A Boy Scout Troop sponsored by the synagogue collected scrap iron and Louis Gould head up the war bond drive. On the international level, local Jews supported the United Jewish Appeal to help their European brethren facing the atrocities of their oppressors. Later the same organization would sell bonds, with many of them purchased by Jews in Wildwood that would help create the Jewish state of Israel.
By the late 1940s, the Beth Judah congregation numbered about 140 to 150 families and synagogue dues were $50 a year. Over 30 children were enrolled in the Hebrew School and Jewish organizations for men and women, including a B’nai B’rith group, named for Lt. Samuel Gidding who had died in the first World War, and the Wildwood Zionist District, were active under the leadership of Rabbi Nathan Levenison.
In the 1950s, the congregation purchased a home for the rabbi on East 22nd Avenue in North Wildwood, altered the bylaws and constitution, and enlarged and renovated the social hall.
In October 1963 construction started on the Rebecca and Morris Green Annex and the new building was dedicated April 25, 1965. A kosher kitchen was added for those who wanted to observe the Jewish dietary lawns and to make sure all affairs at the synagogue were kosher. Rabbi Yakov Hilsenrath came to Wildwood in the mid 1950s to serve the congregation and by 1960 the annual dues were $75. On April 24, 1966, the congregation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Beth Judah Temple.
The period of peace and prosperity of the post-war era around the country gave way to the unrest and turmoil of the late 1960s. The days of Mrs. Blumenthal being the minyan machor and gathering the required number of people with phone calls were over. People expected more of their synagogue other than a place to worship. Many of the newer members were not from the old families who had struggled to make a living and to preserve their Jewish heritage. Saul Hyman was the rabbi for a few years in the mid 1960s but from 1968 to 1970 the synagogue was without a rabbi.
On September 5, 1970 Rabbi Seymour Atlas arrived in Wildwood and found a synagogue and Jewish community is disarray. Atlas, a soft-spoken man from Mississippi, stayed for nearly two decades and led the congregation through some difficult times.
Rabbi Atlas introduced the idea of bas mitzvah for young girls and although some the older members of the congregation disapproved, parents were generally in favor of it. The rabbi also encouraged family participation in the observance of the Tashlich, a service when children and parents paraded to the beach during the high holidays and tossed bread crumbs into the ocean. The crumbs symbolized casting away the sins of the year and was followed by a service at the synagogue.
Rabbi Atlas was active throughout the community, welcoming Jewish recruits from the Coast Guard base and participating and leading the pastoral association, the only rabbi to head the group. By the late 1980s, the Jewish population had dwindled to about 115 families, a loss of about 20 families from 1970.
In 1990, Rabbi Atlas retired and returned to his southern home. Since his retirement, Beth Judah, the only synagogue in Cape May County, has continued to serve the needs of the Jewish people under the leadership of several rabbis. The once active Brotherhood Synagogue in Woodbine ceased regular services in 1980, although High Holiday services continued for several years. The building is on the National Historic Register and has the distinction of being the largest synagogue still standing built entirely by its congregation.
Information for this column was researched in "Southern New Jersey Synagogues," compiled and written by Allen Meyers.
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