The Man Who Made Monmouth Beach & More

By Greg Kelly

Monmouth Beach residents have long known they live in near paradise. All beginning as “Wardell’s Beach” some 350+ years ago. The founder and first settler of the New Jersey shore area today known as Monmouth Beach (other than the true first settlers, Native Americans) was a man named Eliakim Wardell.

This same person who made Monmouth Beach (along with Sea Bright) was there at the creation of three other communities (Long Branch, Rumson and Little Silver). Sadly, there is little if any official recognition of the man or his family in any of those places. It’s a pity. Shore residents should remember and respect him for starting a culture that we so richly enjoy today.

Born in November 1634 near Boston, Wardell was a devoted Quaker (known as the Society of Friends). Prior to puritanical banishment from New Hampshire, Eliakim and his wife, Lydia, had been beaten and imprisoned for their religious beliefs. Lydia was particularly combative in her protests, “appearing naked in Newbury as a ‘sign’ unto her persecutors who had stripped women to whip them.” Amidst all the turmoil the marriage would produce 7 children.

In 1667 learning of low cost, low tax land, the couple moved to New Jersey (then a British colony). Original settlers had little interest in coastal areas, with most farm-centric pioneers thinking it worthless. After arriving Wardell was named an associate of the original Monmouth Patent group (formed in April 1665) which also guaranteed “liberty of conscience” regarding worship.

In April 1668, Wardell would watch as the North Jersey Shore -- today among the nation’s most desirable locales – was made. According to local folklore, five associates from the Monmouth Patent (John Slocum, Eliakim Wardell, Jasper and Peter Parker and George Hulett) wanted to resolve a land acquisition dispute with Native American locals.

Beginning at dawn under a tree on the southwest corner of today’s Ocean Avenue and Broadway in Long Branch, Slocum engaged in a “two out of three falls” wrestling match with Lenape tribe member, Vow-a-Vapon. Under the terms, if Slocum won he could buy all the land that he could “walk off” in one day. If he lost the group left with nothing.

A man of “great size and strength,” Slocum won a tough three-round match — defeating an opponent covered in “goose greased from head to foot.” Payment was “20 shillings per acre.” Slocum got about 375 acres and the family held it for some 200 years. Others to share from the blowoff -- the Parker’s took Rumson/Little Silver, Wardell received Monmouth Beach/Sea Bright, and Hulett disappeared.

Myth or fact, the contest story has considerable weight — being cited in the 1940 Long Branch city-bio book, Entertaining a Nation. Plus, the city Daily Record — “the people’s paper” in Long Branch — repeats the tale in its July 1951 “Golden Anniversary Edition.”

For his part Wardell bought the rights to today’s Monmouth Beach (about 454 acres including Sea Bright) for the equivalent of 4 pounds (about 11 cents per acre). Payment was in blankets, clothing and hardware for all the land north of Long Branch, below Sandy Hook, and between the Shrewsbury River and Atlantic Ocean.

The Wardell land deal -- “the most fortuitous all” – was unquestioned too. The family held clear title to the property for nearly two centuries. “Wardell’s Beach” was marked on maps of those times.

Square one Monmouth Beach was a farmhouse he built near today’s Beach Road, River Avenue and Club Circle – on the high-grounds settled safely between ocean and river. Made from massive stones -- previously ballast on ships coming to America from Great Britain – it was probably up before the end of the 17th century.

Oddly enough, in the late-1800s, Wardell’s “sea-view farm” and humble dwelling would evolve becoming a “vacation place of notables” and “one of the most popular hotels on the Jersey coast” for Glided Age tycoons. It was even an early “Summer White House” -- at least two American Presidents (Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley) stayed there. The “aristocratic” Monmouth Beach Clubhouse Hotel burned in 1929.

Among the few to give Wardell credit was the late borough historian, Rosemary O’Brien. In her 1975 book, Monmouth Beach: A Bicentennial Publication, she acclaimed the early “spirit of neighborliness” exhibited by Wardell -- something that has prevailed though the centuries in Monmouth Beach. No question there.

After Wardell died in 1710 his descendants (Joseph, John, Ebenezer, Jacob, and Henry among them) helped shape our magnificent coastal area. Many Wardell family members still live locally and are proud of their pioneering stock. Monmouth Beach, its neighbors and generations to come are the true beneficiaries.

Greg Kelly is a local writer and historian who blogs at MonmouthBeachLife.com. A former reporter, editor, and columnist for the Atlanticville News (1985-2006), he authored “Monmouth Beach: A Century of Memories” (2009), a history book on his native town.