The Women of Morris County Golf Club (2023)

The fifth annual Hall of Merit honors the first women to form a club not just in the Met Area but in the United States.

Golf’s earliest years in America were dominated by men, but there was a group of women who left their mark at the infancy of golf in the United States.

In 1894, the year the United States Golf Association was founded, fewer than 50 golf clubs dotted the country. It’s safe to say that all the members were men except for at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island. Women were a part of the membership from the start, playing on their own nine-hole course.

Encouraged by that, a group of women from Morristown, N.J., took matters one huge step farther – they formed a golf club of their own.

Morris County Golf Club traces its roots to a meeting on April 10, 1894, when a group of “ladies of impeccable precedents” met at the behest of Cornelia (Nina) Howland to start a golf club, according to a book about Morristown in the late 19th century, The Quiet Millionaires, by historian Marjorie Kaschewski.

With warm weather arriving, the women wasted no time. Within a couple of weeks, they incorporated, identified the board of managers, leased 20 acres, started construction on a clubhouse, and hired a designer, noted landscape architect John Brinley, to lay out a seven-hole course.

Membership grew quickly to 400 (200 women and as many men, mostly related to the women) in the first year. As reported by the Jerseyman magazine, “The club is the only one in the country organized and managed by women.”

The board was made up of 32 women who ran the club’s affairs, supported by an advisory committee made up of male members. Besides providing business experience and connections, following the societal conventions of the day, the men paid most of the club’s bills.

The club’s formal opening day festivities were on June 16th with golf followed by a dance that night in the newly completed clubhouse. MCGC held two tournaments that year, believed to be the first women-only events in the United States.

Presiding over all this activity was Nina Howland, the catalyst in the formation of the club and its first president. A Mayflower descendant and heiress with a passion for sports, the 52-year-old Howland carried out her visioin with a no-nonsense, let’s-get-on-with-it efficiency, much like she managed her family’s nearby, 70-acre farm.

Another notable founding member includes Emma Leavitt-Morgan, the wife of William Fellowes Morgan Sr., an American banker, businessman, and politican, who also served as secretary and treasurer of the USGA. Leavitt-Morgan was not only a terrific golfer who competed in several U.S. Women’s Amateur championships, but a talented tennis player who won the women’s doubles at the third U.S. National Championships (now the U.S. Open). She also served as the first president of the Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association.

The WMGA’s first vice president, Mrs. William Shippen – the only person to have played in the first six U.S. Women’s Amateurs – was also a founding member, as was Maude Wetmore, the runner-up in the 1898 U.S. Women’s Amateur.

The era’s The Golfer magazine called attention to MCGC’s leadership and noted that “its present success has been due entirely to their efforts.”

But the men of MCGC quickly recognized the value of their wives’ and daughters’ new enterprise. Many criticized its highly social foundation, felt that the club should own its property, and operate as a business. Howland and the board disagreed, resisting most of the changes to their vision and operations.

In early 1895, the men acted. Strumming their purse strings, MCGC’s advisory board appointed Paul Revere (great-grandson of the Boston patriot) as the new club president, along with a new, all-male board of directors.

Revere’s first responsibility was to inform Howland that her club’s leadership would change hands. As reported by historian Kaschewski, “Mr. Revere never repeated exactly what was said. But he returned home pale, shaken and mopping his brow. ‘Never do I hope to put in such an afternoon again in my life.’”

Howland refused Revere’s offer of honorary past president and never again played at the club that she more than anyone else created.

To be clear, however, Howland and her fellow members helped to spawn a movement. Twenty-five years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, they organized and managed a successful private golf club for and by women. This act, while short-lived, inspired a charge that altered the early trajectory of women’s golf in America.

In 1896, the club hosted the second U.S. Women’s Amateur – the first USGA event held in New Jersey and first women’s championship under the auspices of the USGA. Four MCGC members played in that event; a few played in subsequent national championships. The Women’s Am made a return to the club shortly thereafter, in 1905.

The club remained a force in women’s golf. The MCGC ladies interclub squad was described as one “any club would be rash to challenge.” MCGC became a charter member of the WMGA, dominated the organization’s early leadership, and hosted its first championship in 1900.

In other words, the dream that Nina Howland and her colleagues started didn’t end with Paul Revere’s afternoon visit. MCGC and its members continued to nurture women’s golf. Case in point: 130 years later, the historic club hosted sectional qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

Howland’s vision lives on.