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By Lee Morgan of Ocean  Grove:

This is a piece of ephemera that I found in an antique store in Allenhurst a couple of years ago.  Ephemera are collectible items: cards, tickets, postcards, etc. that are made to last for a short time. The fellow from whom I got it told me he found it in an album of old cabinet cards that he had purchased from another dealer. This card was randomly inserted in the pages of the album.

On the reverse of the card is a beautifully penned name of a gentleman and next to his name was written « and wife ». The text on the card speaks for itself.

Imagine what it was like in 1874 at the time this item passed hands here in Ocean Grove.

Editor’s note:  E.H. Stokes had been president of the Camp Meeting Association for only 4 years when this card was printed.  He stayed in office from 1870-1897 when he died.

He was a poet and a composer of hymns, so his Camp Meetings must have been inspirational.  His services on the beach attracted “thousands.”  He was not only a great leader, but he was gracious and modest.  He loved Ocean Grove.

In his biography Footprints in My Own Life, published posthumously in 1898, he said, “Upon this sea-bleached sands I wrote my name, but one swell of the rising waters wiped it out forever; so will the fast flowing billows of time soon erase my name from the records of earth, and the world will pass on as though a generation of us had never existed.”

Well, this article attests that he is still remembered.  It’s good that Lee Morgan rescued that piece of ephemera.

At Stokes’  funeral service, they played hymns that he wrote, but also “Rock of Ages.”

The Bluegrass Gospel Group: