Estate sale buys!

This morning we went to a nearby estate sale, see the listing here - http://www.estatesales.net/estate-sales/131541.aspx

It was the estate of a family that owned a store in Sea Isle City for many years. The sale was a mix of old store items, personal items and farm equipment. The old store stuff was very cool - old tin beach toys, toy guns, tin wind-up toys, blow-up water tubes in great 1950-60s graphics, bathing caps etc. many items still in their original packages. Unfortunately there were no racks of 1950s swimsuits like I was dreaming of finding!
But there was a rack of some personal clothing which was a great surprise. I bought 14 clothing items, mostly dresses, 1940-50s, including the 3 1950s tulle dresses  shown above. There was also a cool 1930s costume of some sort which was a jumper with halter top and wide legs, made of cotton fabric that had the names of colleges on it. That's soaking right now.
Since there ended up being clothing at the sale, now I'm wondering where all the old Summer/beach clothing ended up, since they had that shop near the beach for so many years. They had to have sold some beach clothing items in the store and they definately had to wear some themselves.
I also bought 2 boxes with a total of 190 patterns! Most are 1940-50s, but there are a few 1920-30s and maybe a dozen early 60s. One box was in very good condition, the other box of patterns are kind of beat, just from years of storage. Most look to be 34 bust. These were personal patterns, they weren't sold in the shop.




Here are some favorites that I pulled out of the lot -

The only item that I bought from the old store stock was this pair of old rubber beach shoes. I love old beach shoes and I've always wanted a pair. Not to wear, just to have, even though this pair is my size! They were only $1. This is the only item that I'll be keeping for myself, everything else will make it's way onto the website.

Upscale Vintage from Boston

I made another vintage stock purchase this week. Many of the dresses appear to have come from upscale shops in Boston. One dress has a label from 'Jays' - see below. And included in the lot were the two cardboard dress insert shown above, which also came from Jays. It seems that they wrapped your purchase and put these inserts in the dresses to keep them from getting wrinkled. Those are going to be mine so don't bother looking for them on the website!

There are about 10 dresses in the lot with the label below - 'C. Crawford Hollidge Boston Wellesley'. They were upscale enough to even have their own hat boxes made, and I got 3 of those in the lot too.
Checking online for info about the shop, I found this blog post with many great images of the shop on Shopping Days In Retro Boston - RH Stearns was their competitor across the street and I also have a hat from there too.

The Mystery of the Missing Cemetery

My parents own an old house in Strathmere, built in 1902. It was the annex of a hotel called the West Jersey Cottage, which was built in 1895. Louise & William Petersen built the hotel, and it was managed by Louise's brother Gus Wittkamp, and he took over ownership after the Petersen's deaths.
In the house we found a box of old papers with two bills for burials and an old cemetery plot from the late 1890s. The bill and the plot were for Woodland Cemetery. But trying to find it online previously and asking people where 'Woodland Cemetery' was got us no answer. No one had heard of it before.
What little info we were able to find was that it was opened in the late 1800s. The graves of a well known family in the area were eventually moved from Woodland after being vandalized, to another cemetery. Not many people were buried there for some reason and it changed owners everal times over the years.

The plot that we found the deed for was obviously never used and the family was eventually buried in another cemetery. But Louise and William Petersen, who built the West Jersey Cottage, had definately been buried in Woodland Cemetery in 1898 and 1899 according to the burial bills that we had.

So finally trying another search on Google maps, we found the cemetery. It is a big lot, mostly wooded, located between a golf course and campgrounds. The sign out front calls it the Ocean View Cemetery, which is why no one knew the Woodland name.

These are aerial views that I snagged from Bing. Above shows the long dirt road leading from the street back into the woods. You have to park on the street and walk the path to get to the graves at the back of the property.
Below are the few graves that are there, maybe 20. Most are from the late 1800s to early 1900s. The latest 4 were 1933, 1936, 1946 and 1986. The ground is all cleared and mowed, the current owners are taking good care of it. Huge ground, only 20 graves way in the back.

It turns out that the grandfather of this guy that my dad knows used to own the cemetery. The guy used to  help the grandfather take care of the property when he was a kid. He said that there was a peach orchard on it that they used to pick, and they also mowed the grounds. Because it's back in the woods and near campgrounds, it was apparently a big party spot and kids would go back there and drink. They would also vandalise, and some headstones were overturned and broken over the years.

He told my Dad about having to lift a tall memorial back into place on several occasions, usually around Halloween, because kids would knock it over. Below is that tall memorial, we had been toppled so many times over the years, and we were very surprised by the name - James P Carothers. This man built the Deauville Inn in Strathmere, originally called the Whelen Hotel, back in 1881. So it's amazing to find that 2 early settlers in Strathmere, who both built hotels, are both buried in this little cemetery! The island was nearly empty when these people settled there, just a few houses. Now they are out in a very sparse cemetery, together.

This was the grave that we were seeking!

Here are a few other shots from the grave.

The digger and the boats belong to the campground and the golf course.

A broken headstone.

The mystery about why the cemetery was hardly used still remains. We are planning on going to the historial museum in the fall to do some research, maybe they'll have some info about Woodland. But I was glad to find the Petersen's grave safe, especially after hearing the story about vandals.