Loveladies

Loveladies is named for Thomas Lovelady, who owned a 10-acre island in the bay beside the U.S. life-saving station established here in 1871, according to the Loveladies Property Owners Association. He was a Waretown man, the association says, who hunted waterfowl there from a shack and shooting blinds. Edwin Salter's 1878 Historical Reminiscences of Ocean County names a Thomas Lovelady, by tradition, among the first white settlers around Barnegat and says Lovelady's island takes its name from him. The U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association lists the 1872 station house as surviving and privately owned.

The property owners association was incorporated in 1951 and says the storm of 1962 destroyed most of the homes here. A 1980 New Jersey appellate opinion records that Loveladies Harbor, Inc. and a second company had developed 200 acres by dredging and filling, with about 375 homes, most of them on some 15 bayside lagoons. Boris Blai founded the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences in 1948, and it sits on a 22-acre campus on Long Beach Boulevard. The High Point Volunteer Fire Company of Harvey Cedars and the Barnegat Light First Aid Squad both list Loveladies in their coverage areas.