The Coddingtons’ political machine self-destructed in the fall of 1909 when rumors began circulating that Horace and Joel were using Warren’s treasury as their own private piggy bank. The brothers were overextended. To cover his brother’s debts, Joel came up with the novel idea of writing checks on the township treasury for municipal expenses Horace had not yet incurred. When the bank notified the township committee that its accounts were overdrawn, the case was referred to the County Prosecutor. The Coddingtons’ influence at the county level was still strong, however, and a Grand Jury failed to indict.
 

Into the fray stepped William H. Jeffery of New Providence, an attorney and owner of a real estate company in Plainfield. Legal counsel and director of Plainfield’s First National Bank and president of the Queen City’s Board of Trade, precursor of the Chamber of Commerce, Jeffery was known locally as “the Bungalow man,” a tribute to his success in the real estate business. In his hometown of New Providence (which then included Berkeley Heights), Jeffery was well regarded as a good government man of the Progressive, Teddy Roosevelt stripe. Elected president of the New Providence Board of Education, he fought to reform the township’s antiquated system of one-room schoolhouses, complaining at one point in 1911 that it “contained a herd of children, some almost in rags, some dull by nature, others stupid through starvation, and wholly presided over by an anemic drudge,” the last a reference to the school superintendent.
 

Jeffery (who was 40 in 1909) was nothing if not energetic. In 1909 he founded an organization in New Providence he called the Circles on the Square. Other Circles were established in Summit, North Plainfield township and borough and Plainfield. Warren’s political scandal drew him across the border, where he founded yet another branch of the Circles and became its president. The election of 1909 turned into a referendum on the Coddingtons. The Circles led by Jeffery and William Henry Rodgers, who took over as president in the fall, plunged into the election with great gusto, determined to defeat Joel Coddington, who was running for re-election, and to place at least one reformer on the township committee. The Circles’ candidate for county freeholder was Robert Zergiebel, a Democrat and former freeholder. Alfred Binz, another Democrat and owner of the hotel in Mount Bethel, was the Circles’ candidate for township committee.
 

A rally at Binz’s hotel attended by over 200 cheering supporters on October 5^th set the tone for the campaign. Republican Assemblyman W. W. Smalley of Bound Brook was the first to speak, his subject “Good Government.” When he finished Mrs. Peck of Warrenville presented him with the Circles’ banner, “a square of white silk on which are eight red circles and one circle in the centre.” The square, it was explained, represented the hope that all members would be on the square with each other; the circles circumscribed and kept within bounds the personal interests of the members, who pledged to put the public interest paramount.

Jeffery took the stage next, opening with a song he had composed to the tune of John Brown’s Body. “It made a great hit,” reported the Plainfield Courier News, “and the audience joined in singing the refrain….” Echoing a theme heard frequently when politics turns corrupt, Jeffery said “there is not a legislator in the State who knows all about any ten laws passed at the last session of the Legislature. [I]f there would be no sessions of this body for three years, we would be better off, for …we were being too much governed and were too little interested in local government.”
 

The election results were all the Circles could have hoped for. Zergiebel beat Coddington by 43 votes and Binz gained a seat on the township committee. “Joel Coddington, for more than 15 years the recognized boss of Warren Township politics, met his Waterloo yesterday,” reported the Courier-News, “when he encountered the Circles on the Square at the ballot box.” In New Providence the entire Circles ticket was elected.
 

The other shoe dropped for Joel and Horace Coddington later that month when the county prosecutor, John F. Reger, acting after Supreme Court Justice Charles W. Parker ordered an inquiry, presented the findings of a special investigator, Hugh Gaston, to another Grand Jury. This one indicted both brothers on charges of misappropriation of township funds.
 

Confronted with the evidence, brother Joel pleaded non vult and was sentenced to a year at hard labor in State Prison. Horace, ever the attorney, danced around the charges until March 1910 when a jury convicted him of five counts of misappropriation. He was the only witness for the defense, blaming his brother for keeping poor records and claiming it was common for Warren officials to be reimbursed for expenses they had not yet incurred. “The sentiment in Warren township as well as other parts of the county is very strong against the Coddingtons,” reported the Plainfield Daily Press, and all the pressure possible was brought to secure a conviction. A great many witnesses from the township were summoned at the trial.” Coddington was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
 

“The Circles on the Square triumphed yesterday against odds of wealth and political influence…,” reported the Press. “Coddington’s conviction, which came after a bitter fight, was achieved only by the unusual activities of an odd organization of mountaineers, known as the Circles on the Square…. Members of the Circles on the Square, wearing big red badges, appeared on the streets of Somerville after the conviction and showed their elation at the Coddington’s downfall.”
 

Horace Coddington appealed his sentence and while free on bail took petty revenge on his accusers. Alfred Binz lost his hotel license for a time and Zergiebel had to defend accusations of impropriety. Coddington also turned his wrath on the Board of Education, challenging the election returns. Finally, nearly a year after his conviction Coddington went to prison. Frank Borman, custodian of school funds, was also indicted, convicted and was jailed as well. Joel Coddington, pardoned by Gov. Franklin Fort on Dec. 29, 1910, was out of jail two months before his brother and Borman were incarcerated.
 

Neither the Coddingtons nor local Democrats ever regained their political power. Joel went back to farming. Horace, who was disbarred, lived until 1953.

[Ref: Jessie Havens, “The two crooked brothers from Warren,” 10/9/2003; Unionist-Gazette, Courier-News, Daily Press, 1909-1911, passim]

William Hoyt Jeffery (b. 1869) and his wife, Annie, had homes in New Providence and Plainfield. Jeffery appears for the last time in the local public records in March 1920 when his wife, then living in Newark, and Jeffery, living in Wayne County, Michigan, sold a lot in New Providence.