200 Plus
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•January 15, 2015
Rescuing the Shipwrecked Along Jersey Coast
Last fall the national media ran stories of a contractor digging up a piece of a wreck while building a seawall in Brick Township. Hope ran high that the remains were those of the immigrant ship…
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•January 7, 2015
Head of Class or Dunce’s Corner?
We made it through one of the warmest and wettest Decembers in memory; the Eagles, Jets and Giants have all cleaned out their lockers and headed for sunny vacations while the rest of us prepare for…
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•December 18, 2014
The 2014 Final Exam
If you are a longtime reader of The Sandpaper, you know that it goes silent for the last week of the old year and the first week of the new. If you follow “200 Plus,” you might remember that each…
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•December 11, 2014
Christmas Not Much to Celebrate
The American Civil War was finally winding down. The Union had captured Atlanta, and William Tecumseh Sherman was marching through Georgia. Abraham Lincoln had won reelection in November, and his…
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•December 3, 2014
Unexpected Reason for Thanksgiving Holiday
Following the Union capture of Atlanta, Ga., in September 1864, Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the peace candidate George B. McClellan in the presidential election was assured. In response to the…
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•November 27, 2014
Lincoln’s Win Means Longer War
The fall of 1864 was a crucial time for the nation and those who fought for the Union. The men of the 9th New Jersey Regiment, whose ranks included most of the men from Ocean County, had received…
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•November 20, 2014
The Dark Summer of 1864
In some ways, the summer of 1864 was the darkest of the entire Civil War. After the failure of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, Abraham Lincoln adopted a policy of total war. Desperate to…
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•November 13, 2014
The Walker Leads to a Somers Mystery
Sometimes as you dig into one chapter of history you stumble onto another. That’s what happened when researching the sinking of the 132-foot Coast Survey vessel Robert J. Walker off the Jersey Shore…
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•November 6, 2014
No Hope for the Walker’s Missing Crewmen
With the coming of dawn on June 21, 1860, the results of the night’s tragedy became apparent. Within sight of Absecon Lighthouse, the two masts of the side paddle wheel Coast Survey vessel Robert J.…
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•September 25, 2014
British Repulsed From New England Takeover
There are times when history glorifies the unimportant and ignores the significant; so it has been with the year 1814. The assaults on Washington, D.C., and Baltimore were raids, simply a diversion…
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•September 18, 2014
Fort McHenry Stands Steadfast Against British
On Sept. 12, 1814, the British army attacking Baltimore halted 2 miles from the city in front of the strong defenses commanded by U.S. Gen. Samuel Smith. The British paused to regroup because their…
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•September 11, 2014
British Turn to Take Baltimore
Today the word “crisis” is so overused by the U.S. media that it has lost most of its impact. But for several days in mid-September 1814, the crisis was real, and the nation itself was on the brink.…
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•September 4, 2014
Washington Abandoned to British Forces
With the coming of dawn on Aug. 25, 1814, the awful truth became apparent to the citizens of Washington, D.C. They had been abandoned by the Army and Navy and their government to the hands of the…
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•August 14, 2014
British Ship Harasses the Jersey Shore
The state of New Jersey had been strongly opposed to the War of 1812. Most of its representatives in Congress had voted against the declaration of war in June and had cast its electoral vote for…
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•August 7, 2014
1614: The Dutch Explore the Jersey Shore
Four hundred years ago the coast of New Jersey was mainly unexplored. Giovanni da Verrazano and Henry Hudson had sailed along it, but what lay beyond the white, sandy beaches was still a question…
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•July 31, 2014
400 Years of Jersey Shore History
This summer New Jersey is in the midst of celebrating NJ 350, which is a bit strange and a little insulting. The year it marks, 1664, is when the British took the territory of New Jersey away from…
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•July 17, 2014
1916: Aerial Hunting, Sharks and Ducks
It has been said by many that the age of innocence for America ended with World War I. The summer of 1916 would be the last the Jersey Shore would enjoy. That year the war in Europe raged on both the…
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•July 10, 2014
Flying Fascinates Beachgoers
One hundred years ago as Europe was preparing to march into the abyss of the Great War, the Jersey Shore had become a Mecca for the new, thrilling sport called aviation. The nation’s pioneers in the…
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•July 5, 2014
Curtiss Hydroplane Not Ready for Prime Time
The summer of 1914 was supposed to be one filled with the milestones of aviation. Glenn Curtiss, 36, who had first demonstrated aerial bombing on the beach at Atlantic City and set up a flying…
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•June 23, 2014
Curtiss Buzzes, ‘Bombs’ the Beach
When you think of the Jersey Shore and history of aviation, your mind usually turns to blimps and dirigibles flying gracefully over the beach, but there was a time before World War I when the nation…
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•June 12, 2014
Auto Causeway a Bridge to Nowhere
During an eight-day period In June 1914, several events would take place that would change life on LBI and in Southern Ocean County forever. One of these events, the linking of the Island to the…
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•June 5, 2014
The Devastation at Cold Harbor
Some historians call the 1864 battle known as Cold Harbor Robert E. Lee’s last victory. Others call it the end of Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland campaign, and others simply say it was senseless. But one…
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•May 29, 2014
Welcome to Andersonville
Immediately after their capture at the Battle of Fort Darling outside Richmond, Va., on May 16, 1864, the men of the 9th New Jersey, their commander, James Madison Drake, and the brigade commander…
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•May 15, 2014
The 9th New Jersey Abandoned in the Fog
May 16, 1864, would be the darkest day in the military history of Ocean County since the burning of Toms River in the American Revolution. Most of the county’s men belonged to the 9th New Jersey…
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•May 8, 2014
Rumor of Success Proves Premature
In May 1864, the men of the 9th New Jersey Volunteers were about to embark on their largest expedition of the entire war. As part of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s grand Overland Strategy, the Army of the…
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•May 1, 2014
Wilderness Battle Devastates Both Sides
In May 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had begun his grand Overland Campaign to capture Richmond, Va., by marching more than 100,000 men into an area called the Wilderness, near Fredericksburg, Va.…
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•April 24, 2014
The Horror of the Wilderness
In May 1864, the new commander of all Union forces, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, ordered his armies to attack on all fronts. In Virginia, the object for Grant, as it had been for the eight generals who had…
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•April 10, 2014
9th NJ on the Road to Smithfield
The Civil War was made up of months of boredom in camp, weeks of marching on dirt roads and hours of pure horror on battlefields. As the spring of 1864 began to turn Virginia green, the great Union…
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•April 3, 2014
N.J. Volunteer Veterans Return to Duty
As the winter of 1864 was drawing to a close, it was becoming apparent that it might be the critical year of the bloody Civil War and that the men of New Jersey and Ocean County would be in the thick…
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•March 27, 2014
Veteran Jersey Muskrats Re-enlist
In the opinion of most historians, 1863 and the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg marked the turning point for the American Civil War, but we only know this 150 years later, with the knowledge of…
