Old Home Day and the Ton of Coal Prize, South Amboy, New Jersey, 1919

By Wednesday, August 13, 1919, the lists were counted, and Mrs. James Letts of Main Street had won. She’d had twenty-eight guests for Old Home Day in South Amboy, New Jersey. The next family had twenty-five. For having the most company in town, Mrs. Letts was awarded the big prize: one ton of coal.

The Perth Amboy Evening News, the daily paper in the city next door, printed her whole guest list. Her company came from Red Bank, Jersey City, Cheesequake, Trenton, Matawan and Philadelphia. It was a funny thing to win a prize for. It was also the whole idea of the day.

1919 newspaper item headed Mrs. James Letts Entertained Most on Old Home Day, saying she won a ton of coal for having twenty-eight guests in South Amboy, New Jersey, and listing their names

A prize for a full house

Old Home Day was a homecoming. A town picked a day and asked everybody who had ever lived there to come back for a visit. In 1919 it was the first summer after World War I, and the paper told why the day mattered: “After the families being separated during the war and the boys of the town being overseas, their relatives from out of town are making a special effort to be in this city.”

Peterson’s coal yard in Perth Amboy gave the Old Home Committee a ton of coal for a prize. Coal ran the kitchen stove and kept the house warm, so any family could use it. The committee picked a contest to fit the day. The coal would go to “the family entertaining the most guests from out of town.”

The paper cheered them on. “It is hoped that the thrifty housewives of the city will take special pains to compete for this prize,” it said, “which is well worth winning.” We found no picture of Peterson’s yard. The photo at the top of this page shows another coal yard of those years, W. H. Hessick & Son in Washington, D.C.

1919 newspaper paragraph saying a ton of coal from Peterson's coal yard will be awarded to the South Amboy family entertaining the most guests from out of town during the Old Home celebration

When farmers drove all night for a swim

South Amboy kept Old Home Day on the second Saturday in August, and there was a reason for that, too. Long before, that Saturday had been Salt Water Day. “Bathing was one of the big attractions,” the paper wrote, “and the shore front was always crowded with the farmers who came to the town to take their ‘annual bath’ in the waters of Raritan Bay.”

1865 engraving of a beach on Raritan Bay crowded with farm wagons, carriages, sailboats, hundreds of bathers in the water and families picnicking on the bluff

The farm families started the night before. “As early as 12 o’clock the night before the Old Salt Water Day,” the paper said, wagons of every kind “began to rumble into South Amboy with their loads of country folk.” A New York picture paper, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, sent an artist to the beach in 1865. It said some families would “travel 50 miles or more,” and that the trip was called “going to the salt water.”

At the shore, most families changed in what the paper called “improvised shelter.” Some hung shawls or canvas around their wagons “to insure privacy.” Farm wives stood in a ring around a friend while she “made ready to take a plunge.” The men swam in “a pair of overalls.” The women “rigged out” in “old clothes of every description.” A family with a nickel to spare had one more choice. One of the 1865 sketches shows a pen of logs with a canvas roof and a hand-lettered sign. It reads “Bathing House” and gives the price, 5 cents.

1865 sketch of a log pen with a canvas roof and hand-lettered Bathing House signs, with women in wide skirts and a man sitting on the grass beside it

1919 newspaper column headed History of Old Home Day or Salt Water Day, telling how farmers once crowded the South Amboy shore each August to take their annual bath in Raritan Bay

Then a railroad came through South Amboy in 1874, and people could ride on to the ocean beaches. Salt Water Day faded away, until a few old-timers urged William S. Dey, whom the 1919 paper calls a former mayor, “to start things going again.” The first Old Home Day was held in 1914.

Fifty thousand people and one stolen drum

In 1919 the fun began on Friday night, August 8, at Broadway and Augusta Street. Miss Alice Gunkle was crowned Queen Festiva II, and the mayor handed her the key of the city. Then came block dancing, which means dancing right in the street, “until well after midnight.” Every hotel room was taken. The paper joked that “many who remained sleepless did so by force of circumstances rather than by choice.”

1919 front-page headline Old Home Day in Full Blast at South Amboy, with the day's program of baseball, a Victory Parade, a baby parade, a five mile road race and block dancing

Saturday had a ball game, a Victory Parade, a baby parade, a five-mile road race and more dancing. The ladies of the Presbyterian church had planned for “the feeding of several thousand persons.” St. Mary’s Parish ran a carnival all week with a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel. The committee in charge promised a supper on Saturday night and was “prepared to feed the town if necessary.”

Old photo of a baby parade at Long Branch, New Jersey: mothers in white dresses with flower-covered baby carriages, one under a black umbrella, and a horse-drawn float full of women and children beside a seaside pavilion

It nearly was necessary. On Monday the paper said the crowd was “estimated at fifty thousand people.” Visitors had come “from as far south as Panama, as far west as Chicago and as far north as Portland, Me.” The police made “not one arrest.” The street cleaners hauled away “wagon after wagon load of confetti.”

1919 newspaper paragraph saying South Amboy's streets were thronged with a merry-making crowd estimated at fifty thousand people for the two day Old Home Celebration

One fellow did walk off with the bass drum from St. Mary’s carnival. Thomas Burden, who lived on Stevens Avenue, stopped him there. The man had “marched hatless and coatless down the avenue all alone and beating the stolen drum.” Asked why, he said “he desired practice, because he was going to start an orchestra.”

1919 newspaper paragraph about a man who took the bass drum from St. Mary's carnival and marched down Stevens Avenue beating it, saying he wanted practice to start an orchestra

Where the coal went

Mrs. Letts was named the winner by August 13, and that should be the end of it. But on August 18 the paper had one more piece of news. The ton of coal, it said, “is now in the coal bin of another resident of this city.” A coal bin was where a house kept its coal.

This other resident had gone “over the head of the committee.” He told Mr. Peterson, the coal dealer, “to send the coal to his home as he was entitled to it.” And that is where the coal went.

1919 newspaper paragraph saying the ton of coal awarded to Mrs. James Letts is now in the coal bin of another resident, who told the donor to send it to his home

The paper did not print the man’s name or say why he thought the coal was his. It said only this: “Steps to secure a readjustment are being made by the committee.” That is a polite way of saying the committee wanted its coal back. We read the next two weeks of the paper and found nothing more about it.

So we can’t say who burned that coal. We do know what it was for. South Amboy wanted its people home so much that it offered a ton of coal for a full house, and Mrs. Letts answered with twenty-eight guests. Whoever ended up with the prize, she won the contest.

Sources

Perth Amboy Evening News (Perth Amboy, New Jersey), Library of Congress, Chronicling America: August 2, 1919, page 5 (St. Mary’s carnival); August 4, page 5 (the church ladies’ plans); August 8, page 17 (the contest rules, the program and the history of Salt Water Day); August 9, page 1 (the queen and the block dancing); August 11, page 5 (the crowd, the confetti and the visitors); August 12, page 5 (the bass drum and Mr. Barnes); August 13, page 5 (Mrs. Letts wins); August 18, page 5 (the coal in another bin).
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York), September 2, 1865: the large engraving on page 377, scanned by the House Divided Project, Dickinson College, and “Grand Annual Picnic of New Jersey Farmers” with the small sketches on page 380, at the Internet Archive. The magazine names the place only as “Amboy,” on Raritan Bay. Its Saturday, its bay and its wagons match what South Amboy’s old-timers told the paper in 1919. Public domain.
Bain News Service, “Long Branch Baby Parade,” undated glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
All newspaper images: Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Published 1919.
Cover: National Photo Company, “Hessick Coal Co.,” glass negative made between 1910 and 1925, Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication. It shows W. H. Hessick & Son’s coal yard in Washington, D.C., not Peterson’s yard in Perth Amboy.