Cape May Diaries
16 - The grave along with Parkway
For over a decade we traveled south to Cape May this time of year, taking notice of a grave stone situated on the side of the Garden State Parkway -- just as we neared the end of our long trip from Northern New Jersey. The gravestone that seemed to mark the passage of a person important enough to demand burial on the highway's side and for the state to grant that petition. For ten years, we told ourselves we would ask someone about the grave, only to pass it again on our way back north a few days later, still as ignorant of the situation as when we came.
One year we found out who it was quite by accident, deciding finally to make an investment in the local history by taking on several tours put on by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Center (MAC). MAC is a non-profit organization that promotes -- as one guidebook put it "the restoration, interpretation and cultural enrichment of greater Cape May for its residents and visitors." For a community with a little over 5,000 year round residents, the 3,000-strong MAC membership seemed a surprise.
MAC came to being in September 1970, when several residents decided they wanted to restore the Emlen Physick estate. The 18-room 1879 mansion was near ruin. Volunteers repaired the roof, painted it inside and out, and restored many of the other features, even going so far as to beg people who had purchased the furniture to return the items to form a museum. The result was more than the restoration of one old house, but the beginning of a movement that eventually restored the popular resort itself. As a means of making money, MAC members began giving tours of the historic Cape May, walking around with groups of people to instruct them on the heritage almost lost here. Later, more mobile tours came into play, and so did additional restoration efforts.
For $15, we got to visit (the outside of) five historic buildings where actors from the local theater company took on the rolls of historic figures from 1899. We had heard some tales previously in the usual horse and buggy tours we had taken on earlier trips.
Even before we took the short walk from the information book on the Washington Street Mall to the Mainstay Inn, we knew of the vast scandal upon which the history of the house was built, how the yellow building with columned porch and tall windows had become a central institution in local mythology, serving for a time as a house of ill repute and gambling hall, and how the windows had been constructed so as to allow certain well-known and publicly presumed respectable personages easy escape if and when family members or police should arrive at the front door.
Reopened in 1971, 99 years after its construction, the Mainstay had originally been a private club for wealthy gentlemen gamblers, constructed with 14-foot ceilings, ornate plaster moldings, and expensive furniture, much of which had been preserved with restoration.
The actor that met us on the porch played the part of a neighborhood attorney, and real estate agent, Spicer Learning who had "helped to run the rascals out" and was at that moment seeking a new tenant for the place. This character has also caused the state to band gambling and prostitution for "all time," as he wittingly said.
The year, 1899, marked a moment in time when the citizens of Cap May struggled to make the local social set live up to the ideals of the Victorian era, when the artificial layers that had many flaws in the previously thought perfect society got stripped away. This was never so obvious as when we reached our second stop on the tour and met an actor playing the part of Rev. George H White, a black minister from North Carolina who had come north to help Cape May's black labor force deal with racist laws being passed here in town. The white mayor in 1899, a prominent landowner, sought to increase the value of his land by driving blacks out. One method to do this was to pass more and more restrictive laws that made life less and less comfortable for the blacks who lived here. The mayor and council claimed blacks made too much noise during Sunday morning service and passed a law to done it down. No singing, no stomping, no shouting "praise the Lord."
White found land north of Cape May the church could buy if the blacks of Cape May could raise the money. As we stood on the grounds of the historic Macedonian Baptist Church, the actor talked about these blacks and how they all bought shares at $1 each, and managed to raise enough through their labors to purchase several thousand acres that later became known as Whiteton. When White died, the community buried him in the black plot just at the northern edge of Cape May. Years later, when the Cape May spur of the Garden State Parkway was constructed, builders relocated all the graves but his. The city fathers left Rev. White's grave as testimony to his power of persuasion, and his importance to the community.
Our forth stop on this two-hour tour brought us to the porch of a Victorian house and into contact with another great issue of the late 1890s. Temperance people, seeking to rid the society of the evil of alcohol, sought support for their effort in Cape May.
The female actor -- playing the part of a temperance leader Jennie Wales at the Manse House -- told us of how seven other states had banned alcohol, but how the movement would only achieve its ends in Cape May with federal legislation -- a constitution amendment that started the decade-long era of Prohibition.
Local voters approved a bar licensing law, but only slightly over 20 were sold before prohibition came into being. This proved a curse for after the repeal of the federal amendment, Cape May was limited to the number of approved taverns -- while other town's in the state where no previous law had been enacted, all of the local speakeasies were allowed to become legal establishments. In the competition with Atlantic City, this last hurt Cape May significantly.