{"id":1566,"date":"2017-11-18T23:29:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T23:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/?page_id=1566"},"modified":"2020-07-02T06:14:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T06:14:15","slug":"what-where-was-bay-view-manor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/sample-page\/morgans-people-places\/places\/what-where-was-bay-view-manor\/","title":{"rendered":"What & Where was Bay View Manor?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Drawing<\/a>

Drawing of Morgan\u2019s Bayview Manor Compared to a Photo of the Ruins of Bayview Manor Destroyed by the T. A. Gillespie Loading Company Catastrophe of October 1918. Images Courtesy of the National Archives and the Archives of The Thomas Warne Museum & Library of The Madison Township Historical Society in Old Bridge Township, NJ.<\/p><\/div>\n

Morgan Mystery Solved \u2013 What & Where was Bay View Manor?<\/h3>\n

This write-up and one other on this topic originally appeared on this web site before the site was hacked and destroyed a few years ago. Thanks to Mike Yuhasz asking \u201cif anyone has knowledge of the Bayview Manor estate which was destroyed in the TA Gillespie shell plant explosion in 1918?\u201d on the \u201cYou know you grew up in Morgan if<\/a>\u201d Facebook group for the prompt to put this article back on the Morgan-NJ.org web site.<\/p>\n

One of the iconic images coming out of the destruction wrought by the explosions in November 1918 at the Morgan based T. A. Gillespie Loading Company is of the ruins of the mansion known by some as Bayview Manor.\u00a0 Randall Gabrielan used an image of this burned out mansion as the cover of his excellent book, \u201cExplosion at Morgan – The World War I Middlesex Munitions Disaster<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a long time after having first seen an image of the mansion, many of us were interested in finding out more about it.\u00a0 There are no remains of it and it easily could have been lost to history. A mansion in post-World War II Morgan was an interesting notion though there are some houses which are or are close to qualifying for that designation now.\u00a0 This mansion however was a mansion during the time when there weren\u2019t that many of them anywhere in the US.<\/p>\n

\"Bayview<\/a>

Bayview Manor Front. Image Courtesy of the National Archives.<\/p><\/div>\n

Once upon a time, there was a three story double walled brick mansion located at the highest point the area now known as Morgan, NJ.\u00a0 Records indicate this mansion was built sometime around 1860 and referred to as either \u201cBayview Manor\u201d, \u201cManor Crest\u201d, or the \u201cConover Homestead\u201d. \u00a0There is another moniker, \u201cSandcombe\u201d, which some historians have associated with the Morgan family estate, which actually refers either to this structure or the estate which contained this structure.<\/p>\n

I initially came upon information about this mansion while doing online research about the T. A. Gillespie Loading Company then unexpectedly stumbled upon a gold mine of information about this mansion at the National Archives in Maryland. There, with Frank Ludlow – a school friend who I hadn\u2019t actually seen since we graduated from Sayreville War Memorial High School (just a few years before), we encountered blueprints and drawings of the mansion! At the time of the mansion\u2019s destruction in 1918, it was in the final stages of a major round of repairs for its relatively new owners Charles Louis Steuerwald and his wife, the owner of record, Ethel Jeane nee Booream Steuerwald.\u00a0 Many thanks go to Frank for his help on that day and previously when he went to the archives to do the initial research on Gillespie. Frank grew up a few hundred feet away from what is considered to be Ground Zero for the Gillespie plant destruction \u2013 but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

\"1919<\/a>

1919 Map Showing Location of Doane Memorial Cemetery (Present Day Christ Church Cemetery) and Bay View Manor Estate. Image Courtesy of Princeton Library.<\/p><\/div>\n

According to testimony from the 1919 & 1920 Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations of the US House of Representatives, there were two significant items of information regarding this mansion located in Morgan:<\/p>\n