EGG HARBOR CITY, NEW JERSEY 1858 Courtesy of Mayor W. H. Maxwell,
Color print made in New York City Egg Harbor City
EGG HARBOR CITY: NEW GERMANY IN NEW JERSEY
By DIETER CUNZ
Egg Harbor City, a charming and pleasantly sedate town of 3,800
inhabitants, inland between Philadelphia and Atlantic City, is neither a
city nor a harbor. Remains the egg, for which the Jersey folklore has a
quick and ready answer, to us so unconvincing that we have to relegate
this information into a footnote.¹
The average tourist who rushes through the town on his way to the New
Jersey seashore will probably not notice anything in particular. Perhaps
he will make a remark about the exceptionally large number of well kept
gardens with beautiful trees and shrubbery. A tourist who has an ear for
German sounding names or a college student who ever took a course in
German civilization will probably look somewhat perplexed if he opens
the local telephone directory or if he sees the names on the street signs.
There is Suenderhauf's Bakery, Weisbecker's Cleaners, Von Bosse's Winery,
Messinger's Grocery, Theilacker's Flower Shop. People live on Hamburg or
Bremen Avenues, or on streets named for Beethoven, Buerger, Campe,
Claudius, Diesterweg or Duerer.
The explanation for this abundance of Germanic sounding names every-
where in Egg Harbor City would have to be found in the early history of
the town, a history of exactly one century, because the Egg Harbor story
began in 1855. Here as so often in American history the railroads brought
a new political and economic impulse. In the year 1854 a new railroad had
been built, the Camden & Atlantic Railroad, connecting the big East coast
lines running through Philadelphia with the newly opened seashore resort
Atlantic City.² A railroad was an all-year-round business. It could not
exist exclusively on the summer seashore traffic. Thus the railroad company
had a vital interest in filling up the demographic white spots in the thinly
settled stretches of land between Philadelphia and the coast. Towns would
have to be founded along the line.
On the Board of Directors of the railroad company there were several
men of German descent. They may have conceived the idea of a German
settlement. However, this alone does not account for the fact that Egg
Harbor City was planned as a pure German town and that this project
soon became known to German-Americans all over the country. The decade
preceding the Civil War was a time of turmoil and unrest, of tension and
prejudice. The biggest wave of anti-immigrant resentment in American
history, a nativistic movement called Knownothingism, swept the country.
Irish and German immigrants became the main targets for this militant and
aggressive group. Germans in Baltimore and Buffalo, in Richmond and St.
Louis were haunted by the fear of mob violence and persecution. Many
German newcomers who had felt the pressure of the Knownothings were in
1
According to local tradition the first Dutch settlers entered upon the scenery in spring when gulls
and other birds laid eggs in great quantities. Impressed by the sight of the countless eggs they named
the place "Eyren Haven," Dutch for Egg Harbor. Alfred M. Heston, South Jersey, A History 1664-
1924 (New York, Chicago, 1924), II, 727.
2
For further details on the ups and downs of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad cf. Heston, South
Jeney, II, 719 f.
[9]
a receptive mood when they read the advertisements inviting them to a
purely German settlement in the New World.
It was this combination of two phenomena, both typical of the United
States in the midcentury, railroad expansion and anti-immigrant feelings, to
which Egg Harbor City owed its existence.
When on July 1, 1854 the first train of the new railroad left Camden
and puffed eastward, the official party included a good number of prominent
German-Americans from Philadelphia, among them William and Henry
Schmoele and Philip Mathias Wolsieffer.³ On November 24, 1854 they
organized in Philadelphia a corporation, the "Gloucester Farm and Town
Association." In the midst of the New Jersey woods they bought about
38,000 acres, mostly second-growth pine land, on which a German settle-
ment should rise.
4
The first railroad station for the settlement-to-be was
named Cedar Bridge.
In their initial plans the promoters went completely overboard. They
visualized two cities, one, called Pomona, stretching over four square miles
immediately north of the railroad tracks. A second city, called Gloucester,
should be erected a few miles further north around Gloucester Lake.
5
Soon
the scheme of twin cities was dropped and the project was considerably
reduced to still unmanageable proportions: one great commercial metropolis
and harbor should be built on the seven-mile tract between the railroad
and the Mullica River and should be named Egg Harbor City.
The Gloucester Farm and Town Association was incorporated on De-
cember 14, 1854. The charter of the city bears the date March 16, 1858.
6
The population of Egg Harbor always considered September 1855 the
beginning of their history, probably because the first settlers arrived at
that time.
The original idea seems to have been to develop simultaneously an
urban core and a loosely settled farming area. Stock was issued, the first
series at $300 per share, the second at $400. With each share the new settler
and stockholder acquired a 20 acre farm and the claim for a building lot
100 by 150 foot within the "town" (in the narrower sense of the word).
Settlers who were interested only in the city ground could purchase a city
lot for $78.00. The Association added a good number of additional enticing
advantages, gifts and promises: trees would be planted along the streets, a
park of almost 100 acres would be laid out, schools would be constructed:
"in brief, every dollar that we receive will be spent again in the settlement
and for the settlement."
7
The far-reaching plans of the promoting Association were revealed in
3
William Schmoele was well known among the Germans in Philadelphia. He was born in West-
phalia and studied at the University of Marburg. After his arrival in the United States he became
instrumental in the establishment and expansion of some German-American newspapers (Susquehanna
Democrat, Pennsylvania Staats-Gazette) and after 1835 made a name for himself as a physician in
Philadelphia. He was very active in German-American affairs and helped to organize several building
and loan Associations. The Egg Harbor project was very much in line with his interest in cooperative
ventures. Georg yon Bosse, Das deutsche Element in den Vereinigten Staaten (New York, 1908), 116 f.—
Deutsch-amerikanische Geschichtsblätter, X (Chicago, 1910), 141, 144.
4
Heston, South Jersey, II, 745 f. This whole area was generally known as Gloucester Furnace Tract.
An iron foundry and furnace had been operated here for many decades.—The minutes of the stock-
holders meetings of the Glouscester Farm and Town Association are still preserved in the Municipal
Building in Egg Harbor City. The first entry is dated November 24, 1854, the last January 5, 1869.
5
In the Municipal Building of Egg Harbor City there is still a little expository pamphlet describing
this first monumental plan, Vollständiger Plan der festbegründeten, soliden und volksthümlichen Gloucester
Land-und Stadt-Gesellscha/t zur Anlegung zweier Städte und 1500 Landgüter in der Nähe Philadelphias
(Philadelphia, Gedruckt bei King und Beird, 1855), 29 pp.
6
New Jersey Session Laws, 1858, Chapter 152.
7
Advertisement in the Baltimore Correspondent, February 3, 1858. Cf. also George F. Breder, (Egg
Harbor City, Its Past and Present, Golden Jubilee 1855-1905, (Egg Harbor City, 1905), 13. The various
sources of information about the conditions of settlement are not always in accord. They probably
underwent some changes within the first fifteen years.—Die neue deutsche Heimath der Gloucester
Landgut-und Stadt-Gesellschaft, (Egg Harbor City, 1858, 16 pp. Only copy in the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania).
[10]
an article by its president, published in the Unabhängige Heimstätte of
March 29, 1856.
8
Here, he said, was for the Germans in America the chance
to build a flourishing agricultural colony, a great commercial and industrial
center and to preserve all the national qualities of the German element in a
homogeneous Germanic population. German-Americans, living elsewhere in
the United States, might consider a move to the new city. Direct immigra-
tion from the German fatherland might be channeled into Egg Harbor to
swell the ranks of the settlers.
In 1859 the Association put out a special pamphlet under the heading
"Was wir wollen—What we want." The answer developed the entire pro-
gram of the project. What did they want? "A new German home in
America. A refuge for all German countrymen who want to combine and
enjoy American freedom with German Gemütlichkeit, sociability and undis-
turbed happiness. A place to develop German folk life, German arts and
sciences, especially music. A place around which we can build German
industry and commerce, a practicable harbor and railroad connections to
all parts of the country."
9
It was an appeal in hymnic emotional prose
which was even turned into rhyme and meter, culminating in the words:
Hier, geliebte deutsche Brüder,
Findet ihr die Heimat wieder.
These two lines became a sort of a themesong or leitmotif in the advertising
campaign and were frequently repeated as a motto at the beginning of
advertisements in German-American newspapers.
The Association evidently invested a great deal of money in a vigorous
and far-reaching advertising campaign in all American cities with a sizable
German population. The waves of propaganda were beamed only to Ger-
man-Americans or to newly arrived immigrants from German speaking
countries. An advertisement in the Baltimore Correspondent in 1858 men-
tions regular Egg Harbor agents in Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
Newark, Buffalo, Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington. Two years later
the Association had agents in twenty-nine cities of the United States, as
far west as St. Louis and Milwaukee.
11
Egg Harbor in the fifteen years
after 1855 was not a local New Jersey affair, but a nationally advertised
German-American undertaking, an experiment which the Germans all over
the country watched with intense interest.
In January 1858 the Germans of Baltimore were invited to a mass
meeting at which Dr. W. Scheible, one of the founders of "this biggest and
most beautiful German enterprise in America" informed his fellow Germans
about the advantages of Egg Harbor.
12
It is interesting to note that in
many of the articles, reports and advertisements the promoters emphasize
that the new city would be free of all the disadvantages which compelled
many a German to leave his home in the Old World: free of the obsolete
and oppressive spirit of class distinctions and free of all social, political and
economic restrictions such as prevailed in the atmosphere of the German
states.
13
Beyond such generalities the advertisements skillfully took note
of special local conditions. Baltimore, for instance, was particularly plagued
8
Quoted in Breder, Egg Harbor, 13.
9
Breder, Egg Harbor, 15.
10
Correspondent, February 3, 1858.
11
Egg Harbor Pilot, August 18, 1860. We found running advertisements for Egg Harbor in both
Baltimore German papers Correspondent and Wecker as well as in the Washington daily Tägliche Metro-
pole. We may well assume that similar notices appeared in most German-American papers around 1860.
12
Correspondent, January 2, 1858.
13
Ibid.
[11]
by the Knownothing fever.
14
Again and again German festivals and meet-
ings were violently disturbed. German immigrants were beaten up or in-
timidated. It was in these years that the city acquired the name of
"Mobtown." An article in the Baltimore Wecker, addressed to the Ger-
mans of Baltimore, took this situation into account: "You had courage
enough to leave your beloved fatherland, to escape the hands of the tyrants
and to search for a new home here. In Baltimore you found all this for
only a short time, since during the last years neither your life nor your
property has been safe. Are you chained to the soil? Did your former
courage evaporate? Do you want to be robbed and killed? No. Leave a
city in which you and your children are threatened by misfortune and
contempt. Thus I invite all of you who still have some courage to leave
this town of robbers and murderers. Come and be informed about a new
free home."
15
A perusal of the German newspapers in Baltimore indicates that the
German element here took a very strong interest in the Egg Harbor experi-
ment, to such an extent that later the idea arose that the project had
originated among the Baltimore Germans. "Egg Harbor is so to speak a
daughter of Baltimore," said the Correspondent in later years, "for the
colony was founded by Germans of Baltimore."
16
Egg Harbor City had its beginnings in the offices of some wealthy
Philadelphia financiers. However, a settlement of human beings does n