As printed on the site
Two names, two categories each
Three categories organized the 2014-2015 directory: Bed and Breakfasts, Guest Houses, and Hotels. Counting every name on all three pages gives 40 listings, matching the "All Accommodations" roster in total, but two of the 40 properties were counted twice, because two names appear on two category pages each rather than one.
Peter Shields Inn sits under both Hotels and Bed and Breakfasts. John Wesley Inn sits under both Bed and Breakfasts and Guest Houses. Neither page acknowledges the other listing.
The first overlap: Peter Shields Inn
The Hotels page names Peter Shields Inn as one of only four hotel-category properties in the entire directory. The Bed and Breakfasts page, a separate list of 28 names, also includes Peter Shields Inn, with the same posting date of March 21, 2014 shown in both places. Neither page flags the other listing in any way. A visitor who browsed one category and not the other would have had no indication the property appeared twice in the directory's structure at all, since the two category pages sat on entirely separate menu paths.
This is not a typo or a near-duplicate name standing in for two different buildings that happen to share a label by coincidence. The posting date matches exactly across both pages, down to the day, which is the clearest evidence available in this archive that it is genuinely the same property, filed under two category labels at once by whoever maintained the site at the time, rather than two separate entries created independently of one another on two different days.
The second overlap: John Wesley Inn
The Bed and Breakfasts page lists John Wesley Inn. The Guest Houses page, a shorter list of 8 names, lists it again, with no indication on either page that the listing belongs on both. As with Peter Shields Inn, the posting date is identical on both pages, which rules out two separately entered listings that merely happen to share a name between two different, unrelated physical properties in town.
A property named "Inn" sitting inside a "Guest Houses" category, alongside its separate appearance as a "Bed and Breakfast," suggests the 2014-2015 site's category boundaries were not drawn as strict, mutually exclusive types the way a reader might reasonably assume from the menu labels alone. The word printed in a property's own name did not determine which single category it belonged to on this particular site, which is worth knowing before trusting any one category label too literally.
| Property | Categories | Posting date match |
|---|---|---|
| Peter Shields Inn | Hotels, Bed and Breakfasts | March 21, 2014 on both pages |
| John Wesley Inn | Bed and Breakfasts, Guest Houses | April 2, 2014 on both pages |
What this means for the category counts
Bed and Breakfasts at 28, plus Guest Houses at 8, plus Hotels at 4, adds to 40 category-slots, which happens to match the 40 names on "All Accommodations." That match is close to coincidental rather than a confirmation that the categories are clean: it holds only because the two doubled properties are offset elsewhere, by three names a separate check found missing from every category page entirely, covered in detail in the next article in this pair. The round total of 40 hides both problems at once, in opposite directions that happen to cancel out almost perfectly, which is itself worth noting as a coincidence rather than a confirmation of anything.
Counting category-slots and counting unique properties are not the same exercise on this particular site, and the difference between the two only shows up once every name on every page is checked against every other page by hand, which is exactly the method this wave applied throughout its research into the directory's structure, page by page, name by name, without exception.
A reasonable explanation, stated as a guess
A small inn offering both a bed-and-breakfast-style stay and guest-house-style rooms under one roof, or a historic property marketed with hotel-style services alongside an inn's smaller scale, could plausibly sit in two categories without any data-entry error being involved at all. The archive does not confirm this explanation in either direction; it only confirms that the two listings exist, with matching dates, and that neither page cross-references the other to explain why a visitor would find the same name twice.
A second, equally plausible guess is simpler: whoever maintained the WordPress site in 2014 assigned categories loosely, by eye, rather than through a strict single-category rule enforced by the software itself, and two properties happened to get tagged twice as an honest oversight rather than a deliberate marketing choice. Either explanation is consistent with everything else this archive shows about how casually the category pages were maintained, including the three missing names covered in the article that follows this one in the wave right after it.
Why this detail matters for a comparison shopper
A directory that double-counts two of its forty listings is still, functionally, a roster of roughly 38 to 40 distinct historic properties, not a meaningfully smaller or larger number than the round figure suggests. The overlap does not change the overall scale of Cape May's historic lodging stock in any way that would matter to a visitor deciding between a historic inn and a standard shore hotel elsewhere on the coast. It does matter to anyone, like this project, trying to state the directory's internal structure precisely rather than repeating a round number without ever checking it against the names themselves.
For a visitor, the practical lesson is small but real: a category label on an old lodging directory is a starting point for a search, not a guarantee that a property belongs exclusively to the type named on the menu. Checking a second category, or the full roster, costs little and occasionally surfaces a listing a narrower search would have missed entirely, as it would have here, for both of the two properties named above.
Questions
Is this a data error or an intentional double listing?
The archive does not say. The matching posting dates rule out a coincidence of two different properties sharing a name, but not which explanation for the double filing is the correct one.
Are there other properties listed more than twice?
Not among the three category pages checked for this article. Only Peter Shields Inn and John Wesley Inn appear on two category pages each.
Does this affect the 40-member count?
No. The 40-name count comes from the "All Accommodations" roster, which lists each property only once regardless of category.