Next, a treasured American tradition from unexpected origins.

Discover how 19th century religious gatherings became the genesis of your summer vacation.

Join me as I visit one of the the few places still sitting at the intersection of this spiritual and secular history, and find out why so many famous women flock to this summertime hot spot.

- Here in this time and place there was a really positive force for women.

Drive By History starts now.

[Music] Made possible by the Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund, administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust, State of New Jersey.

Every day, thousands of motorists pass by countless history markers and say to themselves, One of these days Im going to stop and read that.

One of these days I'm going to find out what happened and why it mattered.

Well, this is that day.

- I'm headed to a history marker that commemorates an annual event in Victorian times.

- And I think it's fair to say this event is nothing short of a religious experience.

- I'm Ken Magos, and this is Drive By History.

Today's investigation begins in North Merrick on the south shore of Long Island.

Located about 30 miles east of New York City, North Merrick is a close- knit community where family and loved ones gather together all year round.

In the late 19th century, friends and neighbors came together here as well, but then it was more of a seasonal thing.

- It was a summertime event.

- Here's the history marker.

It says, Camp Meeting Grounds.

Annual Methodist Camp Meetings were held north of this marker from 1869 to the early 1920s.

- I'm pretty sure there were once camp meeting sites like this all throughout the region, across the country, in fact, and they just haven't received that much attention from historians.

- I'm off to find out more.

In the 19th century, camp meetings played an important role in American life, both the spiritual and the secular.

So to find out more, I'm off to the Guggenheim Library, housed in the former summer estate of Murry and Leonie Guggenheim on the campus of Monmouth University, where Drive By Historys Anthony Bernard has found his calling researching this incredible and, as I'm about to find out, somewhat seasonal history.

[Music] - Hey, Anthony, how are you doing?

- Ken, what's going on?

- Good to see you.

- How are you?

Come on in.

- Listen, I just came from a history marker that talks about an annual Methodist camp meeting.

- Now, I know that these kinds of gatherings took place all over the U.S., and I'm always looking for local histories that fit into the national narrative.

- Do you think that's what I have here?

- Absolutely.

- Camp meetings happened all over the nation.

- Now, as the name suggests, a camp meeting is a religious gathering that happens outdoors.

- There's a whole big religious history here, an area of scholarship called the Second Awakening.

- Okay.

Where do we start?

- On the frontier, where people are living far apart...too far apart to justify building physical churches, in fact.

- And too far away to gather every Sunday.

- Exactly.

- But those settlers had spiritual needs, and there were clergy who recognized this.

- History generally cites James McGready as the minister who inaugurated the practice of camp meetings here in our country.

- That happened in Kentucky around 1800, give or take a year or two.

- Essentially, McGready and others like him hop on their horses and create outdoor churches.

- Temporary church.

- Less than a week.

- Now, on the American frontier people don't see one another all that often.

- So, these camp meetings attract a lot of people.

- I can see that... a social event and if the weather is good, it was probably enjoyable.

- Right.

- And that last point is particularly important.

- It was enjoyable, and that's where I want to focus us today.

- There's a whole secular history here that I think youll find fascinating.

- Camp meetings started to be held annually and in highly desirable places, places where you might want to, dare I say, vacation.

- Fast forward to the post-Civil War period, and these sites evolved into formal travel destinations.

- They're described as natural playgrounds.

- Take the one on Long Island where you saw the history marker.

- I found a first hand account where the writer talks about, quote, ...a place where children could climb trees, and play hide and seek, and baseball.

- Almost sounds like summer camp.

- It's the genesis of summer camp.

- But the phenomenon doesn't end there.

- In the late 19th century, a number of meetings pop up on the seashore.

- I remember from the Long Branch episode people swarmed the seashore in the 19th century.

- Trains made that possible.

- That's right.

- Now, at seashore camp meetings, there were religious activities, but there were also plenty of opportunities to relax.

- The long and short of it is a week at one of these kind of camp meetings was a week at the beach, and it wasn't even that costly.

- Sounds like the history of the summer beach vacation.

- I think Im going to like this history.

- I thought so.

Today, however, most of the camp meeting sites are gone, lost to progress.

- Oh well, that took a turn.

- As is so often the case, the land became more valuable for other purposes, development really.

- Largely, the Methodist summer camp meeting is a phenomenon whose time has come and gone.

- Well, that's disappointing, and here I am, ready for a day on the ocean.

- I said largely... - Yeah?

- ...not entirely.

- That's where the next leg of this investigation.

[Music] To find out more, Anthony sends me to Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

Located about 60 miles south of New York City and 75 miles east of Philadelphia, Ocean Grove is known for its Victorian architecture, particularly gingerbread trim.

Visitors who come to Ocean Grove seek to experience something of a Victorian seaside holiday.

But there's something else about the town that harkens back to the 1800s, something that hasn't changed in well over 100 years.

Ocean Grove was founded as a Methodist camp meeting site, and remains one to this day.

I'm greeted by Professor Lyndell O'Hara, retired Nyack College History Chair and Ocean Grove scholar, who picks up the story.

- So I'm looking at all these tents here and I have to believe this is pretty much what it looked like back in the 19th century.

- It is!

- Yeah?

- It started as a camp meeting town, and in camp meetings, people would stay in tents around the auditorium.

Today, the tents are a signature of Ocean Grove.

Visitors often come here just to see these structures.

They've achieved a kind of renown all on their own.

And it's no surprise guests have spent summers in what's affectionately called Tent City for over a century and a half.

- What kind of tents were these?

- Were they like what we think of camping tents?

- They were camping tents, and some of them were leftovers from the Civil War.

- And they used that canvas from those tents in order to supply the tents that were needed here.

In the summer of 1869, a handful of the faithful raised their tents right here for the first time.

Nearby Long Branch had already made a name for itself.

This famous Winslow Homer painting of Long Branch was likely painted the very same year.

Though the two locations were relatively close in proximity, Ocean Grove remained largely undiscovered.

Writings from the period describe it as rustic, with high sand dunes sloping gently into the tangled groves of oak, holly and pine.

It was exactly what the founders were looking for.

- In 1869, a group of ministers were looking for a place that they could have not only a camp meeting, but that it would be a place that would be healthy.

- Because in the 19th century, the seashore, the mountains, were places that people went.

- And so they wanted a place that they could have to meet together for religious purposes, but also to have it be a healthy resort type of place.

[Music] It might surprise you to learn, competition in the Methodist camp universe was intense.

Between the 1860s and the 1890s, the faithful established over 150 camp meeting communities in the United States.

Among them: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, and the village of Sea Cliff on Long Island.

People looking to spend summer at a Methodist seashore camptown had lots of choices.

For Ocean Grove to succeed, it needed to have a special something to set it apart.

As it turned out, Ocean Grove had it in spades.

- By 1894, Ocean Grove was known as the jewel of the camp meeting system, and people came here from all over.

- Well, I have to admit, it is beautiful.

- It is beautiful.

As a destination, Ocean Grove caught on quickly.

In 1869, the general area was assessed at $23,000.

Just a decade later, it was worth over 2 million.

The explosive growth brought tremendous prosperity as well as tremendous crowds.

- They would have over 100,000 people pouring into Ocean Grove.

- And so the number of people that were here was spectacular.

The sheer volume of people speaks to the need for what can only be described as the centerpiece of Ocean Grove, the Great Auditorium standing outside this massive Victorian marvel, gazing at the little changed landscape, its easy to imagine what Ocean Grove must have looked like in the 1890s.

And as I imagined myself here at the time, I start to wonder what would a typical day have been like?

- Many people chose to spend the morning early morning bicycling.

- And you could bicycle down on the boardwalk, through the streets of the town.

At the end of the 19th century, the public was smitten with cycling, both as a form of recreation and as a utilitarian form of travel.

[Bicycle horn sound] [Music] Women were riding bicycles, a sign of the times as women achieved greater mobility in American life, both literally and figuratively.

That factors into this history, but more on that in a moment.

- Croquet was also very, very big here, and most people had croquet set up around in their very small yard.

A popular pastime during Victorian days, croquet was not only trendy, it could also be controversial.

At a time when many activities were segregated by gender, croquet was not.

Men and women played together.

[Music] As a result, young people often asked one another for a game, with young men secretly hoping the swing of the mallet might expose a young woman's ankle or something equally indecent.

But beyond its salacious appeal, croquet required skill over strength.

Women could not only compete with men, women could win.

That also held a particular appeal in Ocean Grove.

But we'll get to that.

First, Dell, what else?

- You could have your photograph taken by Pach, which was a big firm in New York City, and they came down here during the summer to take photographs of people.

Pach brothers was historic in their own right, a photography outfit headquartered in New York City, in business for over a century.

Their photographers followed fashionable New Yorkers, capturing their likenesses both singularly as portraits and collectively as landscapes.

At the time, the images were keepsakes, a souvenir from a summer trip intended to preserve special memories.

Some of those photos, a few of which you're seeing now, survive to this day, capturing with absolute authenticity the 19th century seaside experience enjoyed by so many.

[Music] - You could also go down to the piers at each end.

- Ross Pavilion was at the north and Lillagaard at the south of the beach.

- And there you could rent bathing suits and go swimming.

In the 1890s, however, good manners were very important, particularly when seaside.

Otherwise, an afternoon of people watching could become an afternoon of seeing a little too much.

- They also had rules about bathing costumes and how they had to be very modest.

And if they weren't, they would literally pull people out of the water and say, Im sorry, but you're not dressed appropriately.

Thats not to say Ocean Grove was excessively prudish.

It was not.

- You could also relax in the hot baths.

- That sounds pretty decadent... - Right?

- for a spiritual community.

- Right, right.

- No, they had...they had all of that.

It's these kinds of experiences which lead some historians to view camp meetings as the genesis of today's summer family vacation.

And I don't want to discount the religious angle of the history.

Many people came to Ocean Grove for spiritual reasons.

However, they came for the secular, too, and that takes us to our next stop.

- Look at the detail work on this place.

- Its absolutely amazing.

- Beautiful.

- So, Dell, Im curious.

Not everyone stayed in tents.

- Some people must have stayed in hotels.

- They did, they did.

- They stayed in hotels all around town.

Just like today, some people wanted their creature comforts, especially on vacation.

As a result, hotels quickly sprang up all over Ocean Grove.

- So, Dell, we're here at the Aurora, which is now privately owned, but was a hotel at one time.

- Now we got special permission to be up here.

- Why did you choose this as one of our locations?

- Well, when it was a hotel, it was built in 1884.

- And it is a perfect example of some of the more beautiful hotels that are in Ocean Grove, with the architecture that reflects the Victorian era.

- All the cut out gingerbread, it's just beautiful.

- Beautiful, isn't it?

- Mhmm.

In fact, Ocean Grove's architecture is cited as one of the reasons it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

According to the documents, because so much has survived, Ocean Grove can be viewed as an architectural museum piece.

Although the Aurora is a private residence today, there are other Victorian era hotels in Ocean Grove that are in fact still hotels.

That's where Dell takes me next, to a Queen Anne structure that's truly a remarkable lady.

[Music] - I'm highly impressed by the architecture that we see around us, this Victorian style with all of this detail work.

- Its beautiful.

And they had special carpenters in town who would do all of this special work on these buildings, and they all reflected the pride the people had in them, and the way that they were able to express beauty through their different hotels throughout the town.

As pleasing as the esthetic is, The hotels of Ocean Grove have a much greater historic significance than just their appearance.

- And Ocean Grove is also on the New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail.

- Yes, there were women in Ocean Grove that were absolutely remarkable.

- They owned hotels, they ran businesses.

- But this particular hotel was owned by a woman.

- The Majestic was owned by a woman.

- It was owned by a woman.

Women often ran hotels all over Ocean Grove.

- Was there more opportunity for women business owners here?

- There was.

There was.

That was surprising to me, given religion played such an important role in the founding of Ocean Grove.

Typically, Western religion is patriarchal.

- Often we don't see religion as a really positive force.

- But yet here, in this time and place, there was a really positive force for women, and it...women were doing... half of the doctors here in 1890 were female.

- And so it's, it's an amazing place for women to be able to practice and find opportunity.

Again, Im intrigued because the period is closely associated with the so-called culture of domesticity , an ideology in which women devoted themselves to their husbands or other men in their lives.

- But I'm curious, why was Ocean Grove so embracing of women's rights?

- I think there were a number of reasons, one of them being the attitude that Ellwood Stokes, who was the first president of the Camp Meeting Association, who had a Quaker background before he became a methodist minister.

- We should mention the Quakers believed that women should be educated, that they should have a voice, they should be included.

- Yes, definitely.

- Very different than a lot of other religious sects.

- Very different, very different As a result, the population of Ocean Grove skewed female.

- 63% of the population in the late 19th century was female, and they contributed tremendously towards the success of the town.

- But in general society, 63% would not have guaranteed that they were the predominant - Good point.

- ...business people.

- Good point.

- But here that wasn't the case.

- Here that wasn't the case.

In 19th century Ocean Grove, There was another cultural force at play, arguably, a counterculture force, and based in religion.

Historians call it the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, which is essentially a system of religious beliefs led by English cleric John Wesley.

It involved a new way of thinking about religion.

For our purposes, we focus on an aspect of that new way of thinking, something that today we call inclusiveness .

- Well, with the Methodists, and especially with the Holiness Movement, there was an element that you had to talk about what your experience and what had happened.

- And in that, it emboldened women to speak freely, to speak publicly, and to have a real self-confidence of themselves through religion.

Some of the most important movements in American history trace their origins to the Protestant Church.

Suffrage had strong ties to religion.

Prohibition did too.

- And so women who lived here were constantly seeing temperance workers, suffrage workers, evangelists, all of whom were women, standing up in public and pronouncing things that were very, very important to them.

As a result, well-known activists, women activists, sought out Ocean Grove.

- There were numerous Suffrage leaders that were here, Frances Willard being one of the main ones that was here.

- Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Shaw spoke at the auditorium numerous times.

Leading figures in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or WCTU, made Ocean Grove their second home.

- The first president of the WCTU, Annie Wittenmyer, bought a lot here and lived here.

Carrie Nation also made a point of visiting Ocean Grove.

A fervent advocate of prohibition, Carrie Nation was often photographed carrying a hatchet, which she used to smash liquor bottles or wooden kegs of beer.

She was certainly one of the famous faces of her time.

But according to Dell, during her Ocean Grove visit, all she did was show her face.

- Carrie Nation came through town just for one day and she brought her hatchet with her.

- But finding no bars, - She moved on, huh?

she instead sold hammers for $0.25 each as a remembrance of people meeting her, and got back on the train and went back to Philadelphia.

- Women's history in Ocean Grove is both fascinating and somewhat unexpected.

[Music] Many other well-known people of the era also made their way to Ocean Grove.

That's due in no small part to the Great Auditorium, a wooden architectural wonder that remains mostly unchanged since its doors first opened in the 1890s.

As we head inside, were met by Maestro Jason Tramm, Music Director in Residence here at the auditorium, as well as Seton Hall music professor and a personal friend of mine.

Jason explains that over the decades, the Great Auditorium has welcomed people from the spiritual world, such as Booker T. Washington and Billy Graham, and also from the secular world, too.

- Seven American Presidents spoke here, for example.

From its very beginning, the Great Auditorium was designed to also serve as a performance space, a theater of sorts.

And, as a result, it welcomed some of the biggest stars of the day.

- There are some great ghosts in the space artistically speaking.

- One of the ghosts who inspire me is Enrico Caruso.

- Wow!

What would have brought him here?

- I think it was that he re-released his first album, his first recording, which became mega platinum, and was huge in the time.

And this was part of the tour for that first spring release.

- Wow, that's amazing.

Enrico Caruso was an Italian tenor who sang to great acclaim at opera houses across Europe and the United States.

Few reached Caruso's level of stardom.

- And I'm sure he sold it out.

- I wasn't here, but I heard it was one of quite spectacular.

[Laughter] Other famous figures who have graced the stage here include Leonard Bernstein, as well as Tony Bennett, Kenny Rogers and Ray Charles.

And in the 19th century, the Great Auditorium hosted the musician who is arguably the most patriotic conductor of them all, a man whose rousing marches remain popular to this day.

[Music] - John Philip Sousa, the March King who wrote Stars and Stripes Forever , was one.

He played here regularly, I believe.

However, of all the performers who stepped onto this stage, one stands apart as an icon of music history.

- We've had Marian Anderson.

- She's a woman, and she's also a woman of color.

Marian Anderson was not only a great talent, she was also a civil rights pioneer, blazing new trails for black women.

In 1939, when a Washington, D.C. venue refused to allow her to perform, she instead sang at the Lincoln Memorial, drawing a crowd of 75,000, and the support of Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1955, she became the first woman of color to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

She was greeted with a standing ovation before she uttered even a single note.

But before all of that, she sang in Ocean Grove.

- Well, the first time she came was in 1921, and she came as part of a group.

- And Marian Anderson came with them to sing here for the first time.

The Great Auditorium was among the first concert halls where Marian Anderson performed.

And at this point in her early career, it had to be one of the largest, too.

[Music] This connection to Marian Anderson and Enrico Caruso, as well as the forward view of women and this spectacular architecture leave me with a deep appreciation of this history.

And, as the day draws to a close, I find my own religion in the events uncovered today.

I'm intrigued to discover that the faithful established over 150 camp meeting communities with some of the most popular located along the seashore.

And, that their legacy includes the summer family vacation, a cherished part of American culture.

Many of us still vacation with our families at the beach.

Some of us spend summers at Ocean Grove today, a Victorian era jewel that continues to sparkle at the intersection of spiritual and secular life.

See you next time.