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ORIGINS
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HISTORY
[1]
Who are the HARTLEYs? When did they originate?
[2]
Where did the surname HARTLEY come from? Why that surname?
[3] Who were some of the earliest HARTLEYs?
[4] HARTLEY in history. The first records
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HALL OF FAME
A-F
G-L
M-R
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The
HARTLEY Family of Chorlton in Lancashire
Actress, Vivien Leigh
Film and Movie Actors,
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Sports Stars
George
Washington's relationship to a HARTLEY
FIRST
HARTLEY SETTLERS
First
Americans [Part One]
[Part Two]
[Part Three]
First
African 1820 Settlers
First
Australians
NEWS
The
1826 Lancashire
Weavers' Riots
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HARTLEY
War Graves
hartleyfamilyorguk pays tribute
to HARTLEY men and women who died in the two World Wars and in other major
conflicts over the past few centuries. The aim is that each of the dead
should be commemorated, by name and photo, a permanent e-headstone or
e-memorial; uniform, with no distinction of military or civil rank, race
or creed. Included are instances where remains are missing.
Please email names of your loved ones to the Editor
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The HARTLEY Surname
Hall of Fame
Marcellus HARTLEY - HARTLEY Farms
Historic HARTLEY FARMS
To contemporary passers-by the house sits unobtrusively at the peak of
a gently rolling hill, serenely sequestered behind towering evergreens
and fronted by an imposing nine foot high, two foot thick wall of stone
that runs for a quarter of a mile along Spring Valley Road in picturesque
Harding Township, NJ. Its visitors have counted among them United States
Presidents, wealthy financiers and generals, and a general who became
president. In fact, two hundred years ago, around the time of its construction,
General Washington very likely passed by on the way to his headquarters
at the nearby Ford Mansion in Morristown. Throughout its first one hundred
years the property now known as Hartley Farms remained as unassuming as
those that surrounded it.
But life in this rural part of New Jersey was beginning to change. Around
the turn of the century many of the nation’s wealthiest families were
converging upon Morristown, Madison and surrounding areas to create “Morris
County’s Great White Way”. As early as 1879 a few of the old New York
families had made Morristown their headquarters during the summer months,
and over time the city began to be compared with Newport as a mecca for
the very wealthy.
The years 1890 to 1929 came to be known as The Gilded Age. Names like
Rockefeller, Twombly, Vanderbilt, Ballentine, Colgate, Jenkins, Mellon,
Frelinghuysen, Harkness, Kountze and Kahn were among those who sought
the seclusion and relative obscurity of Morristown, many building the
grandiose estates that lined the four mile stretch of Madison Avenue that
connected Morristown to Madison. By 1896 more than 50 millionaires with
a total wealth of $289,000,000 lived in the area encompassing Morris Township,
Madison and Harding. Despite the influx of wealth and the accompanying
glitze and glitter of the new era, the farm on Spring Valley Road maintained
its obscurity — couple of miles, yet seemingly a world away from the maddening
onslaught of change. In 1904 it was purchased by Helen Hartley Jenkins
and her nephew, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, who converted it into a summer
camp for disadvantaged children. “Hartley House Farm” was affiliated with
the Hartley House Settlement House, which still to this day operates on
West 46th Street in Manhattan and is one of the nation’s oldest. It was
founded in 1897 by Marcellus Hartley, father of Mrs. Jenkins and grandfather
of “Marcy” Dodge, and was named in honor of Marcellus Hartley’s father,
Robert M. Hartley, the famous philanthropist and founder of what is today
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. This is the same Hartley Family
that includes David HARTLEY, Philosopher and David HARTLEY, Member of
Parliament who signed the Treaty of Paris in 1763 for Great Britain. His
signature joined that of John Jay and Benjamin Franklin, ending the Seven
Years War. Marcellus Hartley Dodge, worth an estimated $60,000,000, married
Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller, niece of Standard Oil found r John D. Rockefeller,
in 1907. Mrs. Dodge brought into her marriage an estimated $101,000,000.
The two became the wealthiest couple in the nation. Mr. Dodge, known to
family and friends as “Marcy,” was the son of Emma HARTLEY and Norman
DODGE, a member of a prominent family with a link to the Phelps-Dodge
fortune. More importantly, he was heir to the Hartley fortune. The two
became for a time the wealthiest couple in the nation. They lived together
briefly at Hartley Farms, in a house called Two Shoes, which stood behind
the existing stone wall along Spring Valley Road until it was destroyed
by fire in the 1940’s. They soon had a son, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr.,
who they called “Hartley”, and began spending millions of dollars acquiring
land around and about the farm. But Mrs. Dodge did not share her husband’s
love of Hartley House Farm, preferring not to live in a town that was
home to a “fresh air camp.” She soon established her own estate in nearby
Madison, which she called Giralda Farms, while her husband continued to
reside at the newly renamed Hartley Farms. As unusual an arrangement as
this was, Mr. and Mrs. Dodge had different circles of friends, and he
and she entertained separately. It was an arrangement that would last
for the rest of their lives.
Marcellus HARTLEY
The history of Hartley
Farms is in reality the story of the Hartleys themselves, one of the five
wealthiest families in America around the turn of the century. Marcellus
HARTLEY was a founder of the firm of Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, suppliers
of military and sporting goods. Summoned by Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton during the early days of the Civil War, he had been commissioned
a Brigadier General by President Lincoln, in charge of arms ammunition
procurement. Hartley set sail for Europe, and succeeded in contracting
with weapons manufacturers in England, France and Germany. Outbidding
his Southern adversaries, he made millions of dollars worth of purchases
on behalf of the Union, surreptitiously thwarting the Southern drive.
Hartley took advantage of many personal contacts made during the war when
he later founded the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, which produced
the prototype of the modern shell cartridge, incorporated by E. Remington
and Sons into its line of breechloader rifles. In 1888, as president and
sole owner of Union Metallic Cartridge, Hartley acquired E. Remington
and Sons, which became The Remington Arms Company. Hartley saved the Equitable
Life Assurance Society from bankruptcy in 1900, when the company was robbed
of millions of dollars by one of its executives, who escaped to France.
He used his own funds to cover the losses, and was given a silver tea
set signed by the entire board of directors as a tribute. When the millionaire
financier and philanthropist died suddenly in January 1902, a New York
Times obituary noted that his pallbearers included, among other notables,
J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.
Marcellus HARTLEY DODGE
Marcellus HARTLEY DODGE inherited several of the responsible financial
positions held by his grandfather.” He had just been graduated from Columbia
University, voted the “luckiest” member of the class. At the age of 22,
the young Mr. Dodge assumed the presidency of The Remington Arms Company.
The year of his graduation from Columbia University, he and his aunt,
Helen Hartley Jenkins, donated $300,000 to the university to build Hartley
Hall, an undergraduate dormitory. As trustee of Columbia University, he
continued throughout his life to make substantial contributions to the
university. He would later finance a new student center, and the largest
and most costly building on campus - the Marcellus Hartley Dodge Physical
Education Center - was donated posthumously. As president of Remington
Arms, Marcellus Hartley Dodge took control as an active participant in
the growth of the company, achieving and in some ways exceeding the degree
of success attained by his grandfather. Just as his grandfather had saved
Equitable, Dodge was responsible for saving the New York Times. Times
publisher Adolph S. Ochs had borrowed $100,000 from Marcellus Hartley
in 1896 to reorganize the paper, and needed to borrow additional funds
in 1905. Ochs put up 51 percent of the Times stock as collateral, borrowing
an additional $300,000 from Dodge, who quietly kept the notes in his personal
safety deposit box for the next eleven years until the loan was repaid.
Dodge was also a director of both the Equitable Life Assurance Society
and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. His inheritance from
his grandfather made him vice-president of Union Metallic Cartridge Company,
and president of the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company and the M. Hartley
Company. The combined income generated by these various positions allowed
him to buy out all other shareholders of Remington Arms, and he soon became
sole owner and one of the nation’s most powerful industrialists.
HARTLEY Farms 1900
Marcy Dodge preferred Hartley Farms and its more rustic character over
his wife’s Giralda. He called the house itself his “cottage,” while the
public referred to it as the Dodge Mansion. He moved the house from its
original site close to Spring Valley Road to its present location around1910,
and added two bays to the side, creating a 5-bay center-hall Federal Revival-style
house. This was where he spent his time when “Gerrie” was away, on the
two nights a week she spent in her New York house at 5th Avenue and 68th
Street. He changed windows, mantels and floors, and added porches, an
elevator, and a small indoor swimming pool. But the character of the home,
and that of the other modest structures found throughout the estate, remained
comfortable and decidedly informal. While others of lesser means were
building palatial mansions with finely manicured lawns and gardens to
use as summer country estates, Marcellus Hartley Dodge made Hartley Farms
his year-round residence. The estate included a late 19th century frame
house, some barns, sheds and various other small structures. He added
a stone building, called “The Bungalow,” where his son Hartley could entertain
friends. Dodge’s horses were imported, and many of his thoroughbred hunters
were so fine that in the 1920’s some would be shipped to England to be
hunted with The Queen. He built a U-shaped stable that housed one of his
favorites, Red Embers, used by Edward, Prince of Wales, during the Queen’s
Hunt. His polo ponies were housed in a separate stable located behind
the large stone wall. The estate was distinguished by its open vistas
of fields connected by narrow country roads. Carriage roads ran past pear
and apple orchards, and pheasants were raised beyond the field. In fact,
wildlife found refuge throughout the estate, which at its peak encompassed
more than a thousand acres. There were none of the greenhouses or sculpture
gardens that would lead anyone to suspect that one of the world’s wealthiest
business tycoons lived there. The lack of pretense that was the estate’s
hallmark matched the character of Dodge himself, who cared more for the
inherent beauty of the land than for the flagrant display of wealth that
transformed many a natural setting into a gaudy monument to self-aggrandizement.
A yachtsman and an equestrian, he was more at home on the bridle path
than at the many formal affairs a man of his stature was expected to attend.
At Hartley Farms, he made a polo field for his son, and created trails
and bridle paths that ran through his treasured 22-acre Remington Forest
into the surrounding countryside, also owned by Mr. Dodge. Founder of
the “Spring Valley Hounds,” Dodge’s Polo Fields soon became the site of
the Annual Hartley Farms Meet.
But as much as he loved the outdoors, Marcellus Hartley Dodge enjoyed
entertaining indoors as well. Hartley House had a distinctive Early American
charm, its walls lined with oil paintings of historic American figures,
and floors covered with museum quality hooked rugs. Dodge was considered
the quintessential American aristocrat, dapper and immaculately dressed.
As much as he enjoyed managing his estate, he could occasionally be incredibly
indecisive, once taking two and a half years to decide the exact location
of a small cottage, which he moved seven times. Behind the desk it was
a different matter. In 1915, with his father-in-law and others, he obtained
a government contract to manufacture the LeeEnfield rifle. He quickly
organized the Midvale Steel and Ordinance Company, giving the prime movers
large blocks of stock in the company. Within a few days the stock was
selling on the Curb Exchange at $80 a share. Dodge sold out his holdings,
which had cost him almost nothing, for an estimated total of $24 million.
But for all of his millions, he was regarded as a quiet and unassuming
man, “as if he was a $20 a week clerk.” He worked out of his grandfather’s
office, using the same desk. He once stated, “If I can, I will make my
name the synonym of the highest honor and business integrity.” In so doing,
he was to become a significant behind-the scenes force in 20th century
America.
World War I
In the days preceding the Russian Revolution, Remington Arms had been
supplying thousands of rifles to Czar Nicholas, and had for some time
produced arms for European buyers. But it was World War I that dramatically
enhanced Remington’s, and Dodge’s, position in the international arena.
On May 7, 1915, two years before America’s entrance into the war, a German
submarine torpedoed the American ocean liner Lusitania, killing 128 civilian
passengers, effectively ending America’s isolationist policy. The Germans
claimed the liner was carrying arms, a charge refuted by the American
government. But it is now known that the U.S. was, in fact, transporting
arms - massive amounts of ammunition produced by Remington Arms. It was
not uncommon for top secret talks to be held at Hartley Farms. In fact,
to ensure complete security, participants in these meetings met in a carriage
at the center of the polo fields. Since America’s preparedness to enter
the war was dependent in large measure upon Remington Arms, the company
hired more than 13,000 new employees at its Ilion works between 1914 and
1917. Just as President Lincoln had turned to Marcellus Hartley for assistance
during the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson conferred with Dodge just three days
before the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.
Before his murder, Czar Nicholas had placed orders for a million rifles
with Remington Arms. After his death, the Russians defaulted on their
payment, sending Remington Arms into a temporary decline. But it was these
same Russian rifles that were later sold to the U.S. Army for use in World
War in which is why the U.S. could enter the war so quickly. The guns
were already made and sitting in warehouses! American, British and French
forces were equipped by Remington Arms, and the company was responsible
for providing Belgium with all of its ammunition. In all, Remington Arms
produced 69% of all rifles used by American troops, and in excess of 50%
of small-arms ammunition required by the U.S. and the Allies.
Peacetime
The years of relative calm following the war were perhaps more tumultuous
for Dodge, Hartley Farms and Remington Arms. Remington had invested heavily
in trained workers, machinery and buildings, and hoped diversification
would improve its postwar fortunes. Just as his grandfather had tried
producing typewriters, Dodge had Remington Arms producing cash registers.
This attempt similarly failed. In spite of increased interest in sport
shooting among returning soldiers, production at Remington Arms was well
off. The onset of the Depression certainly didn’t help, and Dodge entered
into serious merger talks with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & ComDanv of
Wilmington, Delaware. The subsequent merger in 1933 of these two giants
brought stability to Remington, with Dodge remaining safely atop as chairman
of the board of Remington Arms. But as with the fortunes of the country,
which did not dramatically improve despite Roosevelt’s sweeping New Deal
policies, it took World War II to really turn things around.
The Morris & Essex Dog Show
As difficult as it may have been for Dodge to accept his company’s post-war
slump, an equally disturbing encroachment upon his peace of mind emerged
in 1927, when his wife decided to hold the first Morris & Essex Dog
Show at Hartley Farms! Mrs. Dodge had become world renowned as a dog breeder,
and in 1924 began officiating at shows throughout the United States, England,
Ireland, Germany and Canada. “The First Lady of Dogdom” felt she needed
a new vehicle to help promote better breeding techniques, and to bring
together the world’s top breeders and finest dogs. Even so, as much as
she felt there was the need for a new dog show, she could not bear to
allow others to infringe upon her domestic tranquillity at Giralda Farms.
For the next thirty years, Hartley Farms was the site of the Morris &
Essex Dog Show, the largest single day event in the world, attracting
the finest judges, top breeders, and crowds that swelled to as many as
50,000 spectators Though the dog show inevitably left the grounds at Hartley
Farms a shambles, it provided an important boon to the area, for it allowed
visitors a chance to experience a way of life far removed from the reality
of the Depression. It offered a taste of an earlier era, and provided
hope for a better future. But in the late summer of 1930, with the show
barely four years old, son Hartley was killed in an auto accident while
vacationing in France. He had just graduated from Princeton, and was awaiting
entrance into the Ph.D. program in physics at Columbia University. Like
his father he was an environmentalist, outdoorsman, and active in the
conservation movement. He had always downplayed his name, a fact that
helped make him one of the most well liked and respected students on campus.
As a memorial to their son, Mr. and Mrs. Dodge donated $800,000 toward
the construction of Madison’s Borough Hall, and financed numerous municipal
improvements within the community throughout the remaining years of their
lives.
World War II
With the untimely death of his son, Dodge sought ever more the solitude
of Hartley Farms. But world events would again |pull him into the limelight.
Ever reluctant to leave Hartley House, distinguished visitors came to
see him. Guests included Herbert Hoover, General “Wild Bill”Donovan, and
David, Lawrence, John and Nelson Rockefeller. The most illustrious, and
frequent, visitor to Hartley Farms was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who like
Hoover became close personal friends with Dodge. As a long-time Columbia
University trustee, Dodge lobbied hard for Eisenhower’s appointment as
president of the university, and some believe it was Dodge who had a role
in persuading Ike to run for president following the war. But beyond the
personal acquaintances, the onset of World War II dramatically added to
the coffers of Remington Arms. As in World War I, top secret meetings
with the War Department were once again held on the polo field and in
Dodge’s home. Before war’s end, the company had produced over a million
rifles and 16 billion cartridges, employing a work force of 82,500 people.
The Later Years
In all of his years as head of Remington Arms, Marcellus Hartley Dodge
rarely left Hartley Farms, plotting strategies that impacted upon his
own fortunes and those of so many others around the world. But the legacy
he left as a philanthropist and an environmentalist reached well beyond
the bounds of Hartley Farms. Dodge continued to support his grandfather’s
children’s home throughout the years. He was a trustee of the North American
Wildlife Foundation, and helped purchase the land that became Key Deer
National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. Dodge also donated 51 acres in Chatham
and Harding Townships to the Morris County Park Commission, to be held
to perpetuity as a natural forest, dubbed the Helen Hartley Jenkins Woods.
But the biggest battle he fought during his later years was the struggle
to save the Great Swamp from the hands of the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey, who wished to build a third major Metropolitan area jetport.
The jetport would have impacted upon 10,000 acres of one of the Eastern
seaboard’s most significant wildlife and migratory bird sanctuaries. Regarding
Dodge’s efforts behind the scenes to defeat the jetport proposal, Cam
Cavanaugh, author of "Saving the Great Swamp," wrote, "Marcellus Hartley
Dodge was a remarkable man, one of those great doers who do not need,
nor want, public acclaim. In 1960, he was eighty years old, a courtly,
reserved gentleman, but with a mind as alert and forward-thinking as tomorrow...
His friends remember how agitated he was when he heard that a jetport
might be the fate for his beloved New Vernon. No longer able to ride,
he drove his pony-drawn doctor’s buggy around to his neighbors, sometimes
bringing along a map. What was to be done? Who would do it? The best move
seemed to be to acquire land in strategic places in the middle of the
proposed jetport, then give that land to an agency willing to maintain
it for conservation purposes." The movement to save the Great Swamp became
one of the largest community-action conservation battles ever waged, and
counted among its participants amateurs and professionals, all dedicated
conservationists who forged strong alliances and solicited contributions
for purchasing land. Most of the money came from Dodge himself, who purchased
a thousand acres he would later donate to the Federal Government. In 1960
the National Wildlife Foundation and fourteen cooperating organizations
announced that they had acquired enough acreage to convince the Department
of the Interior that a wildlife refuge was feasible. But Marcellus Hartley
Dodge wouldn’t live to see the day of dedication of the new refuge four
years later. He died on Christmas Day, 1963 at Hartley House. On May 29,
1964, more than a thousand people converged at the site of the former
polo grounds, the home of the Morris & Essex Dog Show, for the dedication
ceremony that was the culmination of so many years of hard work.
With Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall in attendance, the Great
Swamp Committee of the North American Wildlife Foundation presented to
the Department of the Interior a gift of 2,600 acres of land, worth over
$1 million. The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was finally a reality.
History has moved on, but the farm remains. Today, Nicolas W. Platt, great
great grandson of Marcellus Hartley, his wife Katie and their two children
make Hartley House their home. Recently, with the help of Robert Guter
and Janet Foster of Acroterion in Morristown, Hartley Farms gained entrance
into the National Register of Historic Places, distinguishing it as the
third largest historical district in private hands in New Jersey.
Prologue: The Future
After the death of Mr. Dodge the property, consisting of 174 acres, was
purchased by Dr. Adrian T. Platt and his wife Helen Hartley Platt, who
to this day continue to maintain it as an estate and working farm. In
1987, the family took extraordinary steps to ensure that the future of
Hartley Farms was not left up to chance. They turned to Andropogon Associates,
Ltd. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the country’s most talented
environmental land planners, to work out a plan that would help them to
preserve the unique character of this historic property. According to
Nicolas Platt, “The Remington Forest and Polo Fields have been placed
into a conservation trust that will be held by the family, which protects
it from development in perpetuity. The plan has won conservation, land
planning and environmental awards for setting new standards of environmentally
responsible land development, and is a lecturetopic at the University
of Pennsylvania School of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning.”
Though it may have taken five years to work out the specifics with the
county and the Township of Harding, it has become the pride of all who
labored so hard to make it happen. “My only regret,” commented Mary Louise
Blanchard, Chairman of the Harding Township Environmental Commission,
“is that Hartley Farms was the last remaining large parcel of undeveloped
land left in Harding Township; the Platt family’s plan should have been
the model for the development of all of Harding Township.” The Hartley
Farms Plan has become nationally recognized for providing a unique solution
to preserving properties with a historical heritage. Architectural codes
and an overall constitution will ensure the plan never veers from its
strict goals. While it may not be easy imagining the events of the past
that occasionally transformed this peaceful setting, it isn’t too hard
to see why Marcellus Hartley Dodge found it so difficult to leave Hartley
Farms. The bridle paths remain, running throughout the property and Dodge’s
pristine Remington Forest, along with the Polo Fields, the stables, the
horse shed, Hartley’s Bungalow, and the Trapp-Shooting House, where the
judges gathered for the Morris & Essex Dog Show. The interior and
exterior of Hartley House itself has undergone few if any changes, and
even the pink tile in the upstairs “Eisenhower Bathroom” remains, a tribute
to the president whose wife Mamie’s favorite colors were pink and green.
Today Hartley Farms is the only one of the great estates that remains
intact. It no longer occupies thousands of acres in several townships,
and small trees and brush now crowd the path that once led to Giralda
Farms. But driving along Spring Valley Road, past the huge fieldstone
wall that is in itself an impressive landmark, the site of Hartley House
still evokes pleasant images of an earlier era. The estate remains a monument
to all who have lived there, and to future generations who are assured
of its continuing legacy. Bernardsville, Harding & Mendham by Larry
Bataille
Hall of Fame HARTLEY, The HARTLEY Family of Chorlton in Lancashire incl. Dr.David HARTLEY, David HARTLEY MP, Robert Milham HARTLEY, Marcellus HARTLEY, Marcellus HARTLEY DODGE
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