Andrew McClain Moreland was the Secretary of the Carnaige Steel Company. When Moreland was just 33 in 1901, his boss, Andrew Carnegie, cashed out, selling the company to a syndicate led by JP Morgan for $480 million. The resulting company became US Steel.
Andrew M. Moreland near the turn of the century (public domain)
The sale made Carnegie the richest man in the world, and he dedicated the rest of his life to giving away the $232 million he received tax-free in the sale. Many of the officers at Carnegie's also became fabulously wealthy with the buyout, and Moreland retired. He maintained board positions but spent most of his time socializing and spending his vast fortune. He married and buried three wives, and lavished on his four children.
In addition to his Pittsburgh home base, Moreland maintained homes in New York, Newport, Lakewood, and Spring Lake at 2406 Prospect Avenue.
The most socially active of his children was his daughter Ester. In 1913, she married the nephew of Tessie Fair Oelrichs, the heiress to the Comstock Lode Silver mine and owner of one of the fanciest Gilded Age cottages in Newport, RI Rosecliff. Andrew built a house in 1914 in Pittsburgh that copied many of Rosecliff's features for Ester and Henry Oelrichs, and his other children. The marriage did not last. They divorced in 1920.
The original Rosecliff
The smaller Moreland copy
Frederic Duggan was the President of the Trenton pottery, Imperial Porcelain. His most popular product line was electrical insulators. As a salesman in the early 1890s, he led the movement from glass to ceramic insulators. As the country electrified and the use of the telephone spread, insulators of glazed clay were attached to every utility pole.
From 1895 until 1907, when a fire destroyed the factory, Duggan’s plant was operating at full capacity. Within days of the fire, he purchased another pottery in Trenton to continue the business.
Duggan Insulator
He took his fortune and invested in Spring Lake, floating $125,000 in bonds for the rebuilding of the Monmouth Hotel after the fire destroyed the original building in 1900.
He bought a house at 108 Washington Ave. In 1910, he purchased the hotel shares of fellow investors Martin Maloney and Mayor OH Brown. He took over the management of the hotel. He was generous to the community. In 1910, he donated 12 Eurasian mute swans to beautify the lake, and the swans in the area are likely the descendants of these swans. Indigenous swans are smaller trumpeter swans, identified by their black beak. The orange-beaked eurasians are territorial and drive away other species.
The offspring of Duggan’s swans 1930s postcard
Duggan purchased a Studebaker ambulance in 1928 for the new Spring Lake First Aid Squad.
In 1929, Moreland and Duggan suddenly met at the corner of 4th and Washington. Duggan’s chauffeur was driving him east along Washington when he was t-boned by the northbound car of Moreland, driving fast on Fourth. Duggan’s chauffeur swerved, and when the car was struck, it rolled over 360 degrees. Duggan was thrown from the vehicle. His driver was not seriously injured. Moreland’s car went through a yard, but he and his driver were unhurt.
Spring Lake First Aid building on Madison was only a block away. The Fredrick A. Duggan Ambulance came to pick up its benefactor. The Ann May Hospital at First and Vroom was only a few blocks away, but Mr. Duggan had passed away in his ambulance from his head injuries. His son, Frederic L. Duggan, took over the management of the Hotel, and it operated until the mid-1970s. The First Aid building was renamed for Frederic A. Duggan,
Andrew Moreland lived until 1940. Ester died a year later by leaving the gas on with her unlit oven open in her New York apartment. It was not ruled a suicide.
The Duggan Building and the first ambulances