NJ Day, China Tragedy, Ship Fires & a Gala

Today in New Jersey history:

June 30, 1888: “New Jersey Day,” was held at Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. Governor Robert S. Green led an official delegation which, in conjunction with veterans, formally dedicated most of the monuments erected on the field by the state to honor the New Jersey soldiers who fought and died there on July 1, 2 and 3, 1863.

June 30,1900: The New York Times reported that Presbyterian medical missionary and Princeton graduate Dr. Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Hodge and his wife Elsie, of Burlington, were, along with two other missionaries, killed at Pau Ting Fu, China by Boxer rebels. 

June 30,1900: Three German steamships, the Saale, the Bremen and the Main, burned at their docks in Hoboken. A reported 175 persons were burned to death or drowned in the disaster. 

June 30,1925: At a gala Asbury Park event attended by some 500 influential colleagues from around New Jersey, businessman Arthur C. Steinbach presented his architectural masterpiece, the spectacular eight-story Berkeley Carteret, designed by New York architect Warren Whitney, a luxury hotel that epitomized elegant vacationing in Asbury Park.