Walter Evans Edge was the very definition of a self-made man, turning a borrowed $500 into a thriving business which, in turn, made him quite wealthy. Edge was also lucky in politics, being twice elected governor of New Jersey in two nonconsecutive terms. Edge was also elected to the United States Senate and was appointed America’s ambassador to France during the administration of President Herbert Hoover.
Born to a railroad worker and his wife, Walter Edge was only two years old when his mother died. Edge’s father remarried, and young Walter only got as far as the eighth grade in a formal education. There was nothing slothful about Walter Edge, and he began his first business with another lad when he was only 10 years old, publishing the Pleasantville Bladder. While the newspaper had a very limited circulation, it focused on the social news of the area. As a youngster, Edge also became interested in politics and found himself at several Republican rallies, which stirred both his interest and his determination to participate and succeed.
Walter Edge worked all through his teens, at one time working for the Atlantic Review, a newspaper in Atlantic City. When he was 16 years old, Edge was employed by John Dorland, who owned an advertising business. Young Edge sold advertising to local businesses and came to know the business inside and out due to the failing health of Dorland. When Dorland died, his widow sold the business to then 17-year-old Walter Edge for $500. Edge had managed to convince the owner of an Atlantic City hostelry to sign a note in order to get the money to buy the Dorland business. That same advertising agency became one of the most successful in the world, making its owner a millionaire several times over.
Nor was Walter Edge content to rest upon the laurels of his burgeoning advertising company. Seeing a market to appeal to the tens of thousands who came to Atlantic City to vacation, Edge started a publication called the Atlantic City Guest, which he published during the busy summer months when the area was teeming with people. Like his advertising business, Edge’s publishing enterprises continued growing, and he derived an excellent income for the time just from his newspapers. Years later, Edge would be given much of the credit for making Atlantic City a destination for many vacationers.
As he had with business, Edge worked his way up the political ladder, taking jobs like that of the journal clerk for the New Jersey State Senate because of the opportunities it afforded him in meeting people and making contacts. Walter Edge had always thought that once he had made himself financially comfortable, he would then try his hand at politics. Edge’s first campaign was for the New Jersey State Senate to represent Atlantic City, and he challenged an entrenched incumbent in the primary. The party machinery backed the incumbent, and Edge lost. Through his newspapers, Walter Edge supported the Republican Party. Eventually, Edge won a seat in the New Jersey General Assembly (House of Representatives), and from there he won election to the state Senate. By 1915, Edge was the presiding officer of the state Senate.
Edge became a candidate for governor of New Jersey in 1916 and faced a serious opponent in the GOP primary. Edge’s campaign manager was Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, who was immortalized in the HBO television series “Boardwalk Empire.” Johnson was an actual figure and was the boss of the county GOP machine. Edge won the Republican gubernatorial nomination and faced Otto Wittpenn, mayor of Jersey City, in the general election. Historians quibble about whether or not Frank Hague, the boss of the Hudson County Democratic machine, which could produce majorities so large it tipped elections to Democratic candidates statewide, double-crossed Wittpenn in November, but there is reason to believe Hague did indeed toss Wittpenn over, allowing Walter Edge to win.
Governor Edge was successful in his administration of New Jersey and much of his time was spent with regard to America’s entry into the First World War in 1917 and the country’s mobilization effort. Edge had campaigned on the slogan “A businessman with a business plan,” and he was true to his word, offering the people of New Jersey a business-like administration. Governor Edge convinced the New Jersey legislature to approve the first workers’ compensation and employers’ liability laws. Edge consolidated New Jersey’s penal and charitable institutions because he thought he could get better results and it would be more economical for the taxpayers, as well as more efficient in its operations. Governor Edge prodded the state legislature to abolish dedicating highway funds, unified the state budget and was the moving force behind New Jersey’s modern highway system. Governor Edge also managed to bring north and south New Jersey legislators together to approve a bill that began the construction of the Holland Tunnel and the Delaware River Bridge.
In 1918, Edge ran for the United States Senate, winning the GOP nomination and defeating the Democratic candidate in the general election. At the time, U.S. senators took the oath of office on March 4 prior to the adoption of the “Lame Duck” amendment to the Constitution. Edge put off resigning the governor’s office until May 16, 1919, and was sworn in as New Jersey’s junior United States senator on May 19, 1919.
Senator Edge sought reelection to another six-year term in 1924 and carried all of New Jersey’s 21 counties, save for Frank Hague’s Hudson County, winning by more than 276,000 votes.
In 1929, President Herbert Hoover nominated Walter E. Edge to serve as ambassador to France. The Senate quickly confirmed Edge, and he resigned his seat in the United States Senate to board the ocean liner Ilse de France with his family to go to Paris. Edge remained as America’s ambassador to France during the entire four years of Hoover’s presidency, resigning when Franklin Roosevelt nominated a successor in 1933. Henry Luce’s TIME magazine noted, “How helpful to an Ambassador a pretty woman may be was learned for a certainty in Paris last week by Walter Evans Edge.” A portrait of the ambassador’s wife, Camilla Loyall Ashe Sewall Edge, by portraitist Edward Everett Orr, was on display at the Spring Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts and the Society of French Artists, “a prime event of the French art year,” according to the most widely read news magazine in the world. The painting depicted Mrs. Edge, “a pretty, shapely woman in a bright red gown against a peacock-blue background.”
Walter Edge and his family returned home to New Jersey, where he resumed his business interests and remained active in Republican politics after Hoover’s defeat in 1933 by Franklin Roosevelt. The former governor and United States senator announced his return to elective politics by declaring his candidacy for the governorship on April 30, 1943. Walter Edge’s return to the campaign trail had been the brainchild of Lloyd B. Marsh, a county clerk in Paterson, New Jersey, who visited Edge at his home. Marsh wrangled a promise from Edge to become a candidate for governor once again if the GOP leadership would support him. From that moment, Marsh, like an evangelist, ceaselessly pushed the idea of Edge being nominated as the Republican candidate for governor in the 1943 election. The GOP leadership in the Garden State welcomed the idea of Walter Edge running, noting he had always been a powerful vote-getter throughout his career and was wealthy enough to help finance his own campaign.
“As I have already enjoyed this honor, I am sure no one could justifiably assume that I would seek re-election from any standpoint other than the hope that I might be of service to the State in these confused times,” Edge announced.
“After I concluded my service in the United States Senate and later, after returning from France where I served as United States Ambassador, I continued my interest in public affairs,” Edge told newsmen. “My party has regularly selected me as delegate-at-large to the Republican National conventions, and it has been my pleasure to have taken an active part in every fall campaign.”
Mr. H. Alexander Smith, chairman of the Republican State Executive Committee in New Jersey, concluded after a meeting of the GOP leadership that Walter Edge was the “consensus” gubernatorial candidate preferred by Garden State Republicans. Since returning from France, Edge had been elevated to the status of an elder statesman of his political party, had run his business interests, and had enjoyed traveling. Like many Americans, Walter Edge was motivated to continue his public service when America was attacked by the Empire of Japan and entered the Second World War.
Edge was nominated, and Frank Hague, boss of the Democratic machine in populous Hudson County, sought out the best vote-getter inside his own political party, A. Harry Moore, who had won three non-consecutive terms as governor and had been elected to the United States Senate. Moore was quite likely the only Democrat who stood a chance of beating Walter Edge and he refused to run, much to Hague’s fury.
Walter Edge ran a strong campaign, and the Democrats settled on Vincent Murphy, the mayor of Newark, as their own standard-bearer. Edge was swept back into office, winning by just under 128,000 votes and carrying all but three of New Jersey’s 21 counties. It was a triumphant return to the governor’s office 27 years after he had first been elected as New Jersey’s chief executive. Coincidentally, both of Walter Edge’s terms as governor coincided with the First and Second World Wars. Edge turned 70 years old that same November before taking the oath of office as governor for the second time.
Frank Hague had given better than 72% of the vote to Vincent Murphy in the recent gubernatorial contest, and Governor Edge and the boss of Hudson County fought several pitched battles during Edge’s second term in office. Edge did win the fight to force Hudson County to use voting machines to lessen the suspected rampant voter fraud in the county routinely practiced by the Hague organization.
Governor Walter Edge also bought Morven, a mansion which had belonged to Richard Stockton, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Still in the hands of another Richard Stockton, Walter Edge bought the mansion from the family in 1944. The sale was made upon the condition that Morven would be given to the State of New Jersey within two years of Walter Edge’s death. Edge did not wait that long, deeding Morven to the people of New Jersey in 1954. Prior to 1944, New Jersey had no official governor’s mansion. From 1944 through 1981, Morven served as the governor’s residence. Later, the house would be restored and opened as a museum in 2004.
Governor Edge also continued his war with the Hudson County political machine as he appointed Walter Van Riper as New Jersey’s attorney general. Van Riper took after the Hague machine with a ruthless zeal and determination to stamp out the illegal activities in Hudson County that had enjoyed the protection of the machine. The Edge administration sounded the death knell of Hague’s machine and the boss finally retired just after Walter Edge left office.
In 1952, Ohio U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft seemed to be marching toward clinching the GOP presidential nomination. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Armies during the Second World War, was touted by some Republicans, most of whom feared Taft could not win. Former Governor Walter E. Edge was one of General Eisenhower’s most enthusiastic supporters and was among the first prominent figures to urge Ike to run for the presidency.
The 82-year-old former governor remained active, attending the 1956 Republican National Convention in San Francisco as a delegate. That fall, Edge began to suffer from kidney failure and underwent two surgeries. Weakened, Walter E. Edge slipped away at 9:20 a.m. on October 29, 1956, with his family by his bedside. © 2026 Ray Hill
