FOUNDER ENGINEER DEVELOPER NJ SHORE COAST TOWNS ASBURY PARK DOCUMENT SIGNED 1883

Description

ISAAC C. KENNEDY
(1850 – 1923)
FOUNDING FOUNDER and 19
th
CENTURY DEVELOPER OF THE NEW JERSEY SHORE - FROM
THE BEACH COAST OF
LONG BRANCH, and ASBURY PARK SOUTH TO BARNEGAT BAY,
PROMINENT CIVIL ENGINEER, SURVEYOR and RAILROAD LAWYER IN ASBURY PARK, NEW JERSEY
&
SURVEYOR, CITY PLANNER and DEVELOPER WHO LAID OUT OCEAN GROVE IN 1870, ELBERON IN 1871, and ASBURY PARK IN 1872-1874!
These NJ summer resort areas Kennedy developed were the forerunners of the wonderful chain of 19
th
century resorts that lined the Jersey shore from Long Branch southward to Barnegat Bay!
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HERE’S A MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENT SIGNED BY KENNEDY, 1p., DATELINED AT ASBURY PARK, NJ DEC. 29,
1883
– A LEGAL RECEIPT, IN CONNECTION WITH A PROPERTY FORECLOSURE, SIGNED BY KENNEDY CERTIFYING, IN FULL, THAT HE,
“
Received from John Remsen Esq Bond and Mortgage of Mary J. Tennison for 00 dated Sept. 1, 1882 for purposes of foreclosure also Insurance Policy and Searches.
Isaac C. Kennedy, Solr.
”
The document measures 8½” x 4” and is in very fine condition.
*PROVENANCE
: This correspondence came out of the John S. Applegate Red Bank, NJ Estate.
John Applegate was a prominent State Senator and notable 19th century lawyer who did much legal work in connection with the Railroads and telegraph Companies.
He worked with Civil War General T. T. Eckert in railroad/telegraph company litigation.
In 1893, he wrote a rare book about his friend Colonel Arrowsmith who was killed in action at Gettysburg, Titled,
"
Reminiscences and Letters of George Arrowsmith of New Jersey, Late Lieutenant-Colonel of the One Hundred and Fifty-seventh Regiment, New York State Volunteers
"
Col. Arrowsmith was KIA at Gettysburg from a bullet to the head. (Red Bank, NJ: John H. Cook, 1893. 254 p.).
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BIOGRAPHY OF ISAAC C. KENNEDY
ISAAC C. KENNEDY—A half a century is not
far to travel back into the past, but he who stood
on the site of Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a half cen-
tury ago would have found little there except a
beautiful beach, a thick scrub pine thicket and the
stakes driven by Isaac C. Kennedy, and his father,
Frederick H. Kennedy, to locate the comers, metes
and bounds of a place called by some enthusiastic
Methodists Ocean Grove, F. H. Kennedy & Son be-
ing the engineers employed to plot and map the
tract. A little later another enthusiast, one James
A. Bradley, a brainy New York City business man,
had a vision that materialized in another place
that was called Asbury Park. Isaac C. Kennedy
was the engineer who plotted that second wonder
community that was to grow up at this point, then
seven miles from the nearest railroad, and prac-
tically uninhabited. These two men, Kennedy &
Son, had a great deal to do with the development of
the Jersey coast from Long Branch south, they as
engineers planning and laying out Ocean Grove in
1870, Elberon in 1871, and Asbury Park in 1872-74,
these resorts being the forerunners of that wonder-
ful chain of resorts from Long Branch southward
to Bamegat Bay.
Isaac C. Kennedy, the subject of this sketch, was
Born at Peapack, Somerset county. New Jersey,
November 27, 1850, but since 1853 has lived in Mon-
mouth County. Long Branch becoming the family
home in that year, and Deal, in the same county, in
1857. He attended the district schools, and after
completing his school years began the study of civil
engineering and surveying under his capable father.
He was twenty years of age when they plotted and
surveyed the tract which was bought by the Ocean
Grove Camp Meeting Association, and named Ocean
Grove, and twenty-one when he accepted a commis-
sion to plot, survey, lay out and provide a system
of drainage for a place opposite Ocean Grove, to
be knovm as Asbury Park. The drainage system
was a problem, but Mr. Bradley would listen to no
compromise, and Asbury Park was the first seaside
resort in the United States to have a perfect system
of drainage.
With his work completed and Asbury Park a cer-
tainty, Mr. Kennedy retired from engineering in
1877 and began the study of law under the precep-
torship of the late John E. Lanning, then prosecu-
tor of the pleas for Monmouth county. He was ad-
mitted to the bar at the November term, 1881, of
the New Jersey Supreme Court, and at once began
the practice of law in Asbury Park, New Jersey,
and has there been engaged in the practice of his
chosen profession until the present time, specializing
in the law of real estate, chancery, probate and corp-
oration practice. He is an authority on land titles
and has always ranked with the strong men of the
Monmouth County bar.
His corporation practice
included the public corporations, Atlantic Coast
Electric Railroad Company, The Seashore Electric
Railway Company and West End and Long Branch
Railroad Company, successfully piloting those corp-
orations through much litigation. He was solicitor
for the Atlantic Coast Realty Company, a million
dollar corporation, from its inception in 1897 to its
successful winding up in 1912-20. At the present
time he is counsel for the estate of James A. Brad-
ley, founder of Asbury Park. He possessed Mr.
Bradley's confidence, and hand-in-hand with him
founded the principles upon which a successful en-
terprise can be built. It is to such a man as Isaac
C. Kennedy that Asbury Park owes its very being,
and it is right that the new Asbury Park should
know these facts.
Kennedy married, January 9, 1884, Rebecca
Jennette Metz, of Wilmington, Delaware, who died
November 5, 1890, leaving a son, Frederick Lau-
rence Kennedy, born November 17, 1884, who died
August 9 1904.
Isaac C. Kennedy died on Jan. 26, 1923, and is buried
The Old First Methodist Church Cemetery, West Long
Branch, Monmouth County, NJ (Section B).
Sources:
·
History of Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1664-1920 (1922)
·
Find A Grave Memorial ID 73954741
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