Everingham Family History Public Record Reprint

SOME NOTES ON THE EVERINGHAM FAMILY
By George LeRoy Everingham. Jr.


I was born August 29, 1933 @ Paul Kimble hospital in Lake Wood, New Jersey. My father was George Leroy Everingham, Sr.. My mother was Mary Everingham- Gant.

My grandfather was LeRoy Everingham and my Grandmother was Lydia Platt- Everingham. I had an Aunt Margaret (Marty), an uncle Earl (Ganny) and an Aunt Donna. My grand parents also had a child that was still born or died in infancy (I believe that it was a son). I believe that LeRoy (Roy) and Lydia (Liddy) lived in Toms River and Red Bank before settling on the Phipps Estate where my grandfather along with my father George and my uncle Earl were maintenance workers. One time when a bad storm cut an inlet through the middle of the Estate, they cut many loads of those terrible briars weighted them down and closed the inlet. Roy became the head of maintenance and care taker or the Phipps Estate. I spent many hours with him at the old gate house. When I was small I lived with my grand parents in an old unpainted three story clapboard house with a windowed enclosed cupola ( on the Phipps Estate). From it you could see out to sea and over the bay. There was an old long brass spyglass that I used to try and use to see out to sea through, but I guess that one of the lens was missing because I could never get it focused and see any thing.

In 1939 my grandfather bought several lots that bordered the north line of the Estate from the bay east. He also bought several hundred feet of riparian rights into the bay. Roy used to make flat bottomed wood cedar row boats for his row boat rental business and he also sold them. He would buy rough local cedar planks and plane them down, then cut them into boat planking. He would fashion a strait or curved oak stem and a stern board. He would then cut the finished planks to fit them. He screwed the planks to the stem and stern boards with brass screws. He secured the fitted planks with copper nails cut off just past copper washers and used a flat iron and a ball peen hammer to peen them over as a rivet. He then caulked the flat bottom boards (as needed) with oakum. They then were painted with red lead on the bottom and white lead on the top. I am now a licensed lead inspector and I shudder when I remember how we mixed linseed oil and white or red lead to paint the boats every spring. Our arms and upper bodies were covered with paint for about two weeks. My grandfather also sold clams, crabs and eels. When my uncle Ganny came back from the Army Air Force after WW ll he and his wife Norma Flitcroft- Everingham lived in a little shack and seafood sale room on the property. I lived with my step mother in a beached boat house on the property. My grand parents had built a two bedroom home with a stairs up to a rather large attic. When I lived with my grand parents I slept in a feather bead under the cedar shingle roof.

My uncle Ganny and I used to go to Barnegat Inlet to clam and crab. It was nine miles in a big old flat bottomed boat and a 10 horse outboard. We would rake clams all day in chest deep water and sell them to my Grandfather for a penny a piece. We also hauled a 100 foot nylon seine which we raised off shore. I remember once that a large hard crab had me by each thumb and he was staring at me with those beady eyes. Any time I moved a mussel he would tighten up. It seamed like an eternity before he decided to try and swim off. My grand father made his own eel pots and knitted the funnels. We caught Horse Shoe Crabs and chopped them up for bait. In the evening we would set up to fifty eel pots across the cove and retrieve them in the mornings. Hard crabs and eels were kept in large slatted "cars" in the water until sale.

My father George L. Everingham, Sr. entered the Coast Guard when he was of age. Before the war he served at Island Beach Life Boat Station on Island Beach ( also known as the Phipps Estate). He took a Brownie picture of the Hindenburg when it crossed over and a few hours later he was guarding the crash in Lakehurst. He later gave me the picture of it and pieces of the wreck. I took them to school and they disappeared. I guess the teachers got them. I remember that my Principal at seaside grade school was a Mr. Gerhardt. My stepfather Gant was in Paul Kimble Hospital with one of the German officers of the airship. He gave him an iron shot glass that the Officer had turned out of a steel bar. It was given to me and I still have it, but there are no markings on it to authenticate it.

My father served in WW ll taking troops ashore in a 39 man LST at Tulagi and Guadalcanal. He also served at New Zealand. After the war, he was the Chief Boson's Mate in charge of Monmouth Beach Life Boat Station. He also served on the two light ships off New York Harbor. After retiring from the Guard he took a job as janitor at Monmouth Junior College for something to do. It was in Long Branch High School at night then. When it moved to its present site as a University, he became Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. He worked there until he took his second retirement . He died in 1973.

I am his only child. In my younger years I lived in Toms River, Beachwood, Forked River, South Seaside Park and Seaside Heights. In Toms River I lived on Giverson's Row in South Toms River by the old feed mill and the river. I played on the Farragut Academy ships when no one was around. My father married his third wife and I moved to Navesink, between Atlantic Highlands, Highlands and Rumson. I graduated in 1952 from Middletown Township High School in Leonardo. I then attended Monmouth Junior College/ AA Degree and served two years in the Army. I worked for a consulting engineering firm before and after the Army. In 1957 I transferred to Illinois to work on the Illinois Toll Road, now known as the Tri-State Toll Road. In 1959 I married Shirley Marie Bilyeu from Blue Island, Illinois. She had just graduated from Northwestern Methodist School of Nursing. Work finished on the Toll Road and I transferred back to Jersey and we lived in Red Bank and Perth Amboy. In 1960 we moved to Carbondale, Southern Illinois where Shirley and I attended Southern Illinois University and received degrees. We still live at 200 South Dixon Ave., Carbondale, Illinois 62901. Phone 618-549-3838. Our daughter Laura Jean Everingham - Crites was born June 24, 1963 and our son Alan Drew Everingham was born November 25, 1965.

Laura married F. David Crites and they have two daughters, Christine and Michelle Crites. Laura just earned a Masters of Divinity from Garret at North Western University in Evanston, Illinois. Our son Alan is a System Analysis Administrator (computer stuff) for Transunion Corp. in Charlotte, N.C.. He married Tracey King and they have a son named Gavin Drew Everingham.



(c)2005 Everingham Family History Archives