Millionaires with mansions weren’t the only people who created postcards featuring their homes. Frank and Myra Boppe of Basking Ridge had this colorful one made sometime around 1913. The house was probably built around 1900 and is still standing at 36 North Maple Avenue.
The Boppes bought the house and farm which they called “Glenside” in 1910 from James H. McCollum and used it initially as a summer residence. The 12+ acre plot was on the west side of North Maple opposite the Oscar Conkling Creamery and extended north to Craig Street.[1]
The postcard shows North Maple looking south up the hill to the Presbyterian Church. The hill was called Rankin’s Hill probably after the Rev. John C. Rankin (1816-1900). The 1913 newspaper clipping (above) shows the Boppes raised white Orpington poultry, and the postcard accurately depicts white chickens in the field next to the house.
Frank L. Boppe was a claims supervisor for the Prudential Insurance Company in Newark. After his retirement around 1918, he moved permanently to Basking Ridge. He died in a hospital in Morristown in 1926. His widow Myra Gardner Boppe sold the property to her niece Kathryn F. Gardner in 1933[2] and died in the house in 1949.[3] Kathryn F. Gardner died around 1959.[4]
The back of the postcard shows that it was published by W. E. Tunis who ran confectionery store in Basking Ridge. Tunis published other local postcards, which were apparently a serious side-hustle for him (see: https://somersethills.catalogaccess.com/people/122 ).
[1] Somerset Co. DB I-12, p. 461
[2] Somerset Co. DB X-22, p. 483
[3] Myra L. Boppe obituary, Bernardsville News, Nov. 3, 1949, p. 4
[4] Notice of Public Sale of Estate of Kathryn F. Gardner by Elwood Heller, auctioneer, at 36 North Maple, Bernardsville News, Apr. 30, 1959, Sec. 2, p. 4.
