Contributions of the Black Community in Brielle

As a “transplant” to Brielle from Northwestern Pennsylvania, I had often wondered about the people who settled in this area.  What was it that brought them here even before Brielle was incorporated in 1919?  I was especially curious about how African Americans settled here.  My home town was a known stop on the underground railroad and, over time, a sizeable number of African Americans settled there.   I wondered whether the people here helped African Americans in getting work and in making Brielle their hometown.  On a lovely April afternoon in this Centennial Year, Jackie Morgan Stackhouse, the great grand-daughter of Jasper Morgan and Mattie Harvey Morgan, two of the first African Americans to settle here, explained the when, how, and why they came to the area that became Brielle and the how and what they contributed to its development.

Let me preface what I learned by a quick summary of how Union Landing became Brielle.  From reading about Brielle in the “Images of America” series, I learned that Union Landing was the first name given to this part of Monmouth County and that it has had a maritime history that goes back to well before the American Revolution.  Located about a mile from where the Manasquan River opens into the Atlantic Ocean, it was well suited as a protected harbor for goods coming from overseas markets.

Because of the brackish water at the mouth of the river, very early on, Union Landing also became a source of salt production.  During the Revolution, when the British cut off our supplies of salt, Union Landing was a major source of salt that enabled the colonists to preserve food so that its army could be fed.  After the Revolution, Union Landing became an early American seaport that was linked to overland trade routes and, thus, played a key role in maritime shipping.

The coming of the railroads somewhat diminished the importance of maritime shipping, but it also marked the beginning of tourism to the area.  In the late 1800’s, a group of investors from New York and North Jersey saw an opportunity to create a development for tourists in the Union Landing area.  They bought up land from the several local farmers and began to build and sell vacation homes.

At the time, there were many windmills in the area.  These windmills were used to pump fresh water from underground aquifers.   Because one of the developers thought the area resembled Brielle, Holland, the new development was named “The Brielle Land Association”.  Soon, visitors were drawn to the beaches and to the opportunities for recreational boating, sailing, and fishing.  Hotels and resorts began to spring up in the 1870’s; and, at the time of its secession from Wall Township in 1919, it was already an established tourist center.  Before becoming independent Boroughs in 1919 and 1887, respectively, both Brielle and Manasquan were part of Wall Township.

Not long after the Civil War and at the beginning of the “Great Migration,” African Americans from the South began to explore new opportunities that were opening in the North.  One of the first African Americans to settle in Brielle was Thomas Laws, who was born in Glouster County, Virginia in 1867.  He was the youngest of ten children; and, as a child, he loved to play near the docks so he could watch the boat men unloading the ships.  He started running errands for them–doing odd jobs and generally making himself useful.

Thomas was only ten years old when his mother died, leaving his father to care for the family.  It was then that he was befriended by one of the boat captains, Captain Osborn, whose friend and neighbor was Captain Bailey.  Captain Osborn knew that Captain Bailey’s mother needed someone to help her around the house, so he told the Baileys about young Thomas.  It was through Captain Osborn’s first getting consent from Thomas’ father to allow his son to go to New Jersey and then actually bringing the boy to Manasquan by an oyster boat in 1877, that Thomas Laws became one of the first African Americans to settle in Brielle.

According to Mamie Hughes Moon who authored an article titled “The Contribution of Blacks to the Building of Brielle” as part of Brielle’s 50th anniversary of its founding, young Thomas did not have an easy time of it.  He was a great help to Mrs. Bailey, helping her by chopping wood, making fires, bringing in water, cleaning lamps, and more.   But Thomas desperately wanted to go to school; and, at that time, Black children were not allowed to go to the school in Manasquan.  Thomas was not treated kindly by the Manasquan children who used to throw stones and eggs at him if they saw him on the street.  Incensed, Captain Bailey used his influence to see that a law was passed that prohibited this ill treatment and also allowed Thomas to attend school.  Thomas was allowed to be in the school, but was not allowed to participate in any of the classes.  Instead, he had to work, washing the black- boards, getting water, sweeping the floors, etc.  It was Mrs. Bailey who taught him to write his name, and this was all the formal education that he received.

Although in his youth he was ill-treated and denied an education, in time, Thomas Laws became a respected landowner who owned property in both Brielle and Manasquan.  He continued to work for the Bailey family until Captain Bailey died.  By this time, he had married and had two sons, both of whom were well educated.  He then became a landscape gardener who, as Mrs. Moon puts it, “left a legacy of beautifully sculptured hedges that became a tradition that carries on to this day.”

Jackie Morgan Stackhouse traces her family’s presence in Manasquan/Brielle to her great-grandfather, Jasper Morgan, who was born in 1870 in Rice, Virginia to Robert and Indiana Morgan. Like many other migrants who lived near the coast, Jasper made his way north by ship.  He first went to Boston and later traveled to Plainfield, New Jersey where he met his soon-to-be wife, Mattie Harvey, who was also from Rice, Virginia.  It is not entirely clear how Jasper and Mattie ended up in Manasquan/Brielle.  It may have been by word of mouth that they learned about the area.  As she explains, there were a lot of African Americans who would come north to work for relatively short periods of time and then go back to their homes in the South again.  No doubt, these migrants exchanged stories about the pros and cons of the areas where they had worked.

Jasper Morgan is known as being Brielle’s first Black entrepreneur.  According to Mrs. Moon’s account, at the age of 23, Jasper came to Manasquan to work as a coachman for Mr. Van Note who owned a funeral home.  He later worked with the Hardy Poland Company house movers.  In 1900, he married Mattie, and they had five children—Edward, William, Mable, Jasper Jr., and Magnolia.

Jasper Sr. was a man of high energy and many skills.  In 1905, he started his own business hauling and carting sand off the local beaches.  He prospered and eventually owned three teams of horses, and later had a “fleet” of horses that offered the “taxi service” of the times.  He operated a large stable in what is now the military base in Sea Girt.  Before coming to New Jersey Jasper had worked on his father’s farm, and he knew how to make a farm profitable.  He and Mattie planted vegetables and raised hogs.  Mattie canned some of the vegetables and sold the rest.  As their farm grew larger, Jasper recruited helpers from his family and other young men they knew in Virginia.  Because he knew a lot about masonry, carpentry, and construction and also had a crew that could handle large jobs, Jasper’s assistance was always in demand.   Among other things, his workers seeded lawns, picked up garbage, built homes and other buildings, and graded the first streets in Brielle.  Jasper, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps and became a skilled mason.

As Jackie explains, traveling in the time of the Great Migration, when many African Americans were moving north in search of better opportunities, was not easy.  Often the travelers had no place to stay and little to eat.  Word was passed along that one could always get something to eat at the Morgan family.  Sometimes the travelers would stay and work for a while before they moved on.  Others decided to stay in the area, and the Morgan family would help them settle down and make a new life for themselves.  In time, all of them owned their own homes; and they came together to help each other build those homes. As can be seen in the composition of the African American community that evolved, many of the newcomers came from Virginia.

In time, there was a substantial African American community.  Jackie tells of how, little by little, the area that tended to be marshy was gradually filled in by African American workers.  These workers also excavated for building streets and homes and built many of the buildings – and what a lovely town they built!

Morgan Parkway was so named to acknowledge all that Jasper and his workers did to create streets in Brielle.   Many of the buildings and homes built in that era still survive.  There was plenty of work for the women as well—as cooks, housekeepers, seamstresses, laundresses, care-givers, caterers, and more.

As African Americans in Brielle began to prosper, they earned the respect of their fellow citizens, and some of them became actively involved in the community.  To cite just a few, Maude Goode Moon, born in Luray, Virginia in 1887, worked for a doctor in Luray for many years before moving to Brielle in 1924.  The mother of sixteen children, she became the town’s first Black mid wife.   Harvey, born in 1896 in Rice, Virginia was brought to Manasquan by his brother, Frank Harvey, Sr., in 1913.  Corbett first worked with the Van Sickle Company where he learned masonry.  He worked with the Van Sickle Company building roads, buildings, bridges, and highways until 1941 when he went into business for himself as a contractor.  Leroy Mack, a skilled carpenter who went into business for himself after World War II, became the first Black member of the Brielle Board of Education.  He served on the Board from 1950 to 1964.  He also served as President of the Brielle Men’s Club and on the Community Development Block Grant Committee.  Alfred Oscar  was Brielle’s first Black Police Chief.  He was graduated from Manasquan High School in 1954 and then served in the Air Force until 1962 when he returned to Brielle and served on the police force until his retirement in 1989.

When I asked Jackie about how she remembers the school system, she spoke of having fond memories of going to school in Brielle and how the teachers encouraged students to seek further education. Certainly, Mr. Mack’s involvement in the Brielle Board of Education speaks to his having an influence in encouraging Black youth to continue their education after graduation.  Some graduates chose the military as a way of pursuing leadership and other training…and Mr. Kenney is certainly an example of someone who made the most of the educational opportunities he had.

Jackie has many fond memories of growing up in Brielle and hearing the stories told by her elders.  Like all kids, her parents loved snow days when there was no school.  They used to attach their sleds to the back of a bus and ride into town.   She said that, when her parents became seriously interested in each other, her grandparents allowed them to sit together on the front porch after church.  She remembers the Black community having parties to help feed a family in need.  As Jackie characterizes her upbringing as an African American child, the adults in her life treated her with both gentleness and sternness.  As she puts it, “as kids we just knew when not to cross the line.”

Although there is a smaller representation of African Americans in Brielle today, with 42 Black families remaining, it is still considered the hometown for many others.  They come together here for their annual family reunion.  Jackie is the genealogist of the family and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the family, where they have moved, what they have accomplished, and more.  Given the advent of DNA testing as a tool for identifying people who are related, she now finds that many “lost” members of the family are reaching out to her to learn more about their family.  As she explains it, tracing the genealogy of African American families is different.  Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to marry because, if they married, their owner would be required to sell the husband and wife together.  So, instead, “unions” between men and women were registered as co-habitants; and few of such records were kept.

For African Americans, DNA testing has opened a whole new understanding of their families—who they were and what they experienced in their life journeys.  Jackie marvels at all that she has learned about her family in recent years.  In talking with her, one senses the excitement she feels when another family member reaches out to her for the first time.   She was so inspired by these new connections that, in 2018, she, along with several other family members, made a trip to Rice, Virginia to see where so many of the stories she had been told about actually took place.  Her first impression of the Rice area was that time had stopped in that town and that it probably does not look much different today from what it was like in the 1800’s.   There are still very big farms there; and the High Rock Baptist Church in Rice, founded by Jackie’s great, great grandfather, Robert, and his brother, Thomas, still stands.

Clearly the Church was and still is an important part of the Morgan family heritage.  In 1909, after four years of holding church services in their home, the African American community in Brielle, led by Jasper and Mattie Morgan, founded and built Shiloh Baptist Church on Highway 71 in Manasquan.  Now 110 years old, Shiloh Baptist Church has survived and now serves a diverse congregation.  Jackie’s brother, Michael Morgan, is the pastor of the Church, and Jackie serves as its Director of Music and President and Director of the Choir.

When I asked Jackie if she thought there were common values that have held the Morgan family together for generations even though, at times, they were separated by long periods of time and by a variety of circumstances.  She responded by saying that faith in God and the importance of the church were at the top of her list.  To that she added, a willingness to work hard and to help each other, the importance of education, and gratitude.  In particular, she is especially grateful to have been able to buy back her family’s home in Brielle that had been sold in 1985.

As I listened to her speak of her family and the many challenges they faced, I could not help but respect their willingness to accept whatever life brings and to do what they could do make life better for their families and for the communities they lived in.  Jackie’s genealogic research has given her a greater understanding, not just of her own family, but of how all of us contribute to what our towns, states, and our nation become.  All of us benefit from a deeper understanding of the lives of those that have gone before us.

• Mary Jane Barretta, Ph.D., Union Landing Historical Society of Brielle