Sunday, July 20, 2014

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOMERS POINT, NEW JERSEY



Your 2014 Hurricane Sandy mission team, Pat Bradley, Rev. Marshall, Ron Smedley and Frank Wassilak, have been assigned to a host camp site at the Somers Point United Methodist Church.   As a matter of introduction to our trip blogs, we thought it would be helpful to provide you with some background on the area where we’ll be working.

 
Description

As the satellite photo above shows, Somers Point is located on a low, narrow peninsula, surrounded by salt marshes, within Great Egg Harbor and about ten miles southwest of Atlantic City.   The shorelines are liberally sprinkled with small-boat marinas.    Somers Point is primarily a residential community, with a relatively large proportion of its residents employed in professional services or executive positions in Somers Point and neighboring communities.  At the 2010 United States Census, there were 10,795 people, 4,655 households, and 2,826 families residing in the city.   The largest employer is the local hospital.

About two miles southeast of the town, on one of the barrier islands, is Ocean City, a community founded in 1879 by four Methodist ministers as a “proper Christian summer resort”.   No liquor has ever been allowed to be sold at this popular resort, which includes an eight-mile long beach and  many family recreation, shopping and dining opportunities.

 
History

Somers Point was once known as the Somerset Plantation.  Its settlement started around 1693, making it the oldest settlement in Atlantic County.  Somers Point was designated as a port of entry in 1791 and remained one until it was abolished in 1915.

Quaker John Somers and the other early settlers lived and worked in the area, mainly in fishing, farming, wood-cutting, and other small trades.

Although most of the area was quiet during the revolutionary war, many Somers Point ship owners were privateers holding “letters of marquee” permitting them to seize British ships. Knowledge of the deep channel streams passable by large craft allowed these privateers to hide the booty of ships and their valuable contents nearby, which they would later sell at auction.

Shipbuilding increased after the Revolution and was a dominant industry up to near the end of the 19th century.   Toward the end of the nineteenth century and following the development of Atlantic City, Somers Point, like other shore towns, began to attract tourists who had discovered the joys of recreational swimming, sailing, and fishing.

The most famous son of Somers Point is Master Commandant Richard Somers, who is the great-grandson of settler John Somers.    Somers is remembered for his daring effort during the Barbary Coast Wars to destroy the remaining ships of the Libyan fleet. He, along with 11 volunteers and a stow-a-way sailor, rechristened a captured ship called the Intrepid as the Inferno, and packed it with explosives. They then sailed it into Tripoli Harbor where they were to light a 15-minute fuse and escape in two rowboats.   After more than an hour the black harbor mouth was split wide in a blinding flash, and the roar of a great explosion rumbled out.   There were no survivors.  Somers’ courageous deeds are immortalized in the words of the US Marine Corps song “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…”

Frank Wassilak
 

Sources:
Google Earth
Wikipedia
"Completion of the Historic Preservation Project Report and Plan Element” http://www.imhistories.org/somerspoint/
City of Somers Point
Bay Front Historic District
http://www.livingplaces.com/NJ/Atlantic_County/Somers_Point_City/Bay_Front_Historic_District.html

 





 


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