Woodbury Country Club was incorporated in August, 1897. Cornelius C. Voorhees was the club’s first president. Other officers included Vice Presidents, George G. Green and Benjamin W. Andrews , and Secretary, Henry Longcope. The club bought the Bayard House on Cooper Street, together with an adjoining field. Once called "palatial", the Georgian-style mansion had been the home of Brigadier General George Bayard, a 27-year-old West Point graduate who was killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862.
The adjoining field was all of ten acres so it isn’t surprising that the original course, laid out by the club’s best player. Henry C. Dark, was only 1,600 yards long and had only five greens. Golfers played across Cooper Street, then back. A couple of years later, some additional land was acquired Golf Chairman George Green commissioned Alexander H. Findlay to redesign the course and to serve as greenkeeper and golf professional.
Findlay was brought up in Scotland, where he learned the game on the famous links at Montrose. He then emigrated to the United States in the 1880s to manage a ranch in Nebraska, where he laid out a rudimentary course. After leaving Nebraska, Findlay was put in charge of designing, constructing, and operating courses for the Florida East Coast Railway (Palm Beach Golf Club, St. Augustine Country Club, The Breakers Golf Club, Miami Golf Links).
Findlay was associated in course development with Wright & Ditson, makers of clubs and balls, and also with the John Wanamaker department stores, sellers of clubs and balls. He also continued to plan courses on his own, designing more than a hundred in his career, including Medford Lakes, Llanerch, Reading, Langhorne, and Philadelphia’s municipal course at Walnut Lane.
A big, genial man who was one of the true pioneers of the game, Findlay once played a series of exhibition matches in this country with Harry Vardon in an effort to spread the gospel of golf far and wide. His most ambitious missionary effort ended disappointingly. In 1926 he visited the Vatican and offered to lay out a six-hole course there for Pope Pius XI. The Vatican Gardens would have made an ideal site, but his proposal was rejected. "It was," he would say with a smile, "the only thing I ever failed in."
Findlay lengthened Woodbury to 2,600 yards and nine holes, though there appear to have been only eight greens: one green, containing a single cup, served both the 4th and 8th holes. Par was 35 1/2, with three holes (they measured 245, 205, and 235 yards, respectively) falling into the par 3 1/2 category.
By 1900 the membership had climbed from 30 at the time of the club’s formation to 300. A casino annex was built, giving Woodbury what may have been the finest clubhouse facility in South Jersey. It included a ballroom with stage, as well as card rooms, parlors, and a billiards room. A notice published to the members in October, 1900, dealt with the expense of furnishing the casino: ". . . As the new house has been completed at a time very near to the [3rd] birthday of the Club, a birthday offering from each member will be exceedingly appropriate .... In the bag which has been provided, the member may enclose a penny for each of his or her years and deposit the same in the receptacle on the occasion of the coming event. This offering for a specified object will be wholly voluntary and is not imposed as a tax . . . ."