It’s hard to imagine now, with Google Earth at our fingertips, but Victorians wondered where the Nile began. Explorers from several countries journeyed to Africa to seek the source of the Nile, but British-born, American-bred Lord Henry Morton Stanley settled the question in 1872, at least to his satisfaction, when he voyaged near Lake Albert and its southern feeder, Lake Edward.
Stanley made headlines for many reasons, though, and his tributes were many. One of his less remarked upon accolades is being the namesake for South Orange's Stanley Road.
Around the same, closer to home, Thomas S. Kingman was taking chances of another sort. He formed a syndicate for the improvement of land east of Center Street. The area, known as Montrose Park, was about 150 acres. New streets were drawn at right angles to Center Street and lots of 100 by 200 feet were parceled and sold. All public buildings, except for churches, were banned, and private homes had to meet certain minimum size requirements. No wonder that, in keeping with the times, Victorian houses proliferated.
The syndicate presented the lot at the corner of Sterling Avenue and Center Street to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. It now belongs to Seton Hall University. According to "The Municipalities of Essex County, Volume II," Kingman “erected a number of handsome dwellings, all of which he disposed of at a good profit.”
The successful Kingman also had the opportunity to name three streets. He chose Hartford, Kingman, and, in tribute to the hero of the era, Stanley. So Stanley Road in South Orange is a silent and unremarked memorial to the explorer Lord Henry Morton Stanley and his voyages of adventure and discovery.
Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands in 1841 in Denbigh, Wales. He was illegitimate and was brought up in a workhouse. In 1859, he traveled to New Orleans, where he found a foster parent and mentor in merchant Henry Stanley, whose name he took. Stanley served in both armies in the American Civil War and then worked as a sailor and journalist.
In 1867, Stanley became special correspondent for the New York Herald. Two years later he was commissioned by the paper to go to Africa in search of missing Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone. In his diary, "How I Found Livingstone," published in 1872, Stanley describes traveling 700 miles in 236 days before finding Livingstone on the island of Ujiji. He described his famous encounter this way:
"I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob—would have embraced him, but that I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what moral cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing—walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said:
'DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME?'
'Yes,' said he, with a kind, cordial smile, lifting his cap slightly."
Stanley continued to explore Africa; indeed, his greatest adventures were ahead of him. He became even better known to Americans when, in 1886, he toured the country giving lectures. In 1890, he also published a book about his adventures, making him a true household name and a hero of the Victorian Era.
Kingman and Stanley roads don’t intersect in geography, only in history. Kingman’s ventures, while quite unlike those of Stanley, were very successful. And as I drive through Montrose Park, it seems to me that his achievement is both enduring and beautiful, worthy of a street name and more.
