Alfred Nash Beadleston, Jr.

Alfred Nash Beadleston Jr. (February 20, 1912 – January 18, 2000) was an American Republican Party politician who served as Speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly and President of the New Jersey Senate.

Biography

Alfred N. Beadleston (far right) checks election results with other successful Monmouth County Republican candidates in Freehold. Red Bank Register November 1961

Beadleston was born in Rumson, New Jersey, in 1912 to Alfred Nash Beadleston, Sr. (1848–1915), partner in the Beadleston & Woerz brewery, and his wife Helen F. Hazard (1888–1937), daughter of Edward Clarke Hazard of the grocery firm E. C. Hazard and Company. His parents made headlines when they married in 1909, when the elder Beadleston was 60 years old and his bride was only 21. This was his father's second marriage.

Beadleston attended Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and Yale College. After graduating in 1934, Beadleston converted the family brewing company's facilities into commercial property and embarked on a career in public service. In 1938 he was elected to the Shrewsbury Borough Council, and two years later he was elected as Mayor of Shrewsbury, New Jersey. He served as Shrewsbury mayor from 1941 to 1952.

Beadleston declined to run for another Senate term in 1977, retiring to his Rumson home. He died on January 18, 2000, at Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank at the age of 88.

Family Beadleston's first marriage, to Sylvia Lawrence White on February 16, 1935. They had William Beadleston, their son, in 1936. Their marriage ended in divorce. He married Isabel Palmer Morrell Waud on February 7, 1948. She was the widow of Dr. Sydney P. Waud of Chicago, a colonel in the Army Medical Corps.