Manitou Park

Manitou Park Manitou Park

Click here to view the 1930 Federal Census for the Manitou Park section of 1930. 1930 was the one year where that section of the town was clearly delineated, complete with street names for the families.

So far I've only come across a handful of stories in the papers about this place, and, while I don't want to say the local papers were racist or anything, it seems that the only time news from this predominantly black town appeared in the New Jersey Courier was when there was some sort of crime. For example....

this story appeared in the New Jersey Courier for 19 July 1929:
KILLED PAL FOR DOLLAR, WILL BE TRIED FOR MURDER
Thomas Cooper, Negro, Indicted For his Crime

Among the twenty indictments..of last week, July 11, by the April term grand jyr, was one charging with murder Thomas Cooper, negro, of Manitou Park, Berkeley Township. Cooper has not yet been brought in to plead to this indictment.

The shooting occurred on Saturday night, May 24, at the home of Charles Haines. Cooper and Frank Dean, another negro, were playing cards for money. Cooper claimed there was a dollar due him, and Dean wouldn't pay it, so he shot. The .32 bullet went through Dean's abdomen penetrating the intestines. He died the following Wednesday at Kimball hospital.

Cooper, after the shooting, his gun outside the house, and then holed away in the attic. He was taken by officers Spencer, Costa, Brice and J. Evernham. He admitted the shooting.

It was on their way to this crime that two troopers, MacCormack and Leikare, were smashed up in collision with Lakehurst marines. Leikare and one of the marines, Oliver Murray, will be permanently lamed.

Haines, in whose house the shooting took place, is now held for adultery.

Charles Haine's census entry can be seen on the 1930 link above. There are a few different Dean families on that census as well, so it's not clear which, if any, was related to Frank Dean. There are no Coopers living in Manitou Park in 1930, according to the census.

In 1937, another "Manitou Park Negro", Charles Walker, was "convicted in Shotgun slaying" of someone named Braxton Anderson. You can read the story from June 25th, 1937, here and here and here. (Braxton Anderson does appear on the 1930 census for Manitou Park; he was a boarder in the home of Frankes Cookes along with several other black men, all of whom were born in Georgia and employed as 'laborers' at that time).

The New Jersey Courier of 5 Jun 1958 makes mention of another crime in Manitou Park:
"Henry Bell, Manitou Park, was allowed to change a plea of no defense to innocent Thursday by Judge John Ewart. Bell pleaded no defense April 8 to a charge of conspiracy to defraud.
A jury found William F. Geist, Dickinson Street, Toms River, innocent of the same charge on April 10. It had been alleged that Bell and Geist had conspired to collect insurance on a car that had been hidden in the wood and then reported stolen.
In a motion to allow Bell to ch ange his plea, Leonard L. Gomell, his attorney, argued that his client shouldn't be sentenced for an alleged act of which his partner had been found innocent.

And then there was the murder of John Moore by his wife in 1960:
I dont' have much information regarding this right now, other than this announcement in the New Jersey Courier from 26 May 1930:
"MANITOU PARK--Mrs. Rebecca More has been charged with murdering her estranged husband, John, 59, after an argument Saturday night. State Police at the Toms River barracks said that the couple returned from visiting taverns, and Mrs. Moore used an ax to kill her husband. She is being held without bail in Ocean County Jail for a hearing in Muncipal Court tomorrow night. Until she was charged with murder, she had been free in $3,000 bail on a charge of possessing a deadly weapon and assault with intent to kill. The assault charge was brought before Magistrate William E. O'Connor in Municipal Court on Friday by Sterling Smith, Second Street."

Note the two different spellings of the last name, "More" and "Moore"--that's how it appears in the article. Not surprisingly, neither the Sterlings or More/Moore families appear on the 1930 census.