Order Inquiry: Cook Pottery Company

Every so often a box of ephemera will turn up a card which leads to, and becomes a part of, an interesting story. This is the “story” of one such card.

This postal card, postmarked May 11, 1909, was mailed from the purchasing department of the Brooklyn, N.Y., plant of the H.W. Johns-Manville Company to inquire as to the status of their order to the Cook Pottery Company, and is stamped “Ans. / May 13, 1909 / W. E. Green” to note that a reply had been made to that inquiry.

Order Inquiry from H.W. Johns-Manville Company to Cook Pottery Company.
Author’s collection.

Shipping Receipt: John A. Roebling’s Sons Company

Mention the name “Roebling” and just about everyone is reminded of the many suspension bridges constructed across the nation by this family of accomplished civil engineers.

John A. Roebling (1806-1869), founder of the firm bearing his name, died from lockjaw (tetanus) contracted in an accident while surveying for the Brooklyn Bridge. His son Charles G. Roebling (1849-1918), a recent graduate of Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, soon became president and made the company an economic powerhouse.

One of its customers was the Dent Hardware Company, incorporated in 1894 by Henry H. Dent (1861-1940) as its president, and George H. Brightbill, Charles C. Kaiser, Henry P. Newhard, and C.W. Wackernagel. Based in Newark, N.J., the company shortly thereafter relocated to Fullerton, Pa., a suburb of Allentown, where they employed 30 workers in the manufacture of specialty hardware primarily used in refrigerators and cold storage units.

Star of Bethlehem, or Ornithogalum umbellatum

There is a showing of Star of Bethlehem at their peak in a naturalized setting near the Lalor Street gate in Section M and the beauty of these delicately small flowers deserve mention as does their history.

Naturalized Ornithogalum umbellatum in Section M

First described by Carl Linnaeus in Species Plantarum, the pioneering work published in 1753, the plant was one of but 12 species known at the time. Over the years other botanists including Michel Adanson, John Gilbert Baker, George Bentham, Adolf Engler, and Joseph Dalton Hooker came to identify and describe some 300 species within what is today the genus Ornithogalum.

Influenza and Brothers-in-Law Leonard Ford and Herman Ley

The influenza pandemic overwhelmed the world’s population in 1918, 1919, and into 1920, during which as many as 500 million were infected and an estimated 50 to 100 million lost their lives. Unlike seasonsal flu that disproportionately kills infants, children, and middle-aged and elderly adults, owing to their weaker immune systems, this variant of the virus triggered an overzealous immune response in young adults that ravaged their bodies and caused rapid progressive respiratory failure.

Two brothers-in-law, unbeknownst to each other, succumbed to influenza on the same day, Tuesday, October 1, 1918. After a double funeral that was officiated by Reverends Charles H. Elder, William D. Thatcher, and J. Wesley Wainwright, they were borne to their graves by the same pallbearers and interred on the same day, Saturday, October 5.

Twenty-four-year-old Leonard Leroy Ford (1893-1918) was employed as a chauffeur by the F.S. Katzenbach and Company, hardware merchants.

The Great War and the Longmore Brothers

One can only imagine the heartbreak of Richard Longmore and his wife Cecelia on the loss of their two sons to the Great War in the span of just four months.

James Brook Longmore (1888-1918) of Co. 37, 153rd Depot Brigade, died from influenza at Camp Dix on October 8, and his younger brother Harry Francis Longmore (1891-1919) of Co. M, 348th Infantry, died on February 4, and is listed as having “died of disease” in the three-volume Soldiers of the Great War (Soldiers Record Publishing Co., Washington, D.C., 1920) and of influenza on his casualty card.

James Brook Longmore (left)
and his brother Harry Francis Longmore
New Jersey State Archives

James Longmore is interred behind the family monument in Section L, Lot 10, here at Riverview Cemetery, but the ledger marking his grave is also inscribed with a cenotaph noting that Harry Longmore is “Buried in Carbon-Blanc Cemetery France.”

February 28, 2018: 160th Anniversary of the Incorporation of Riverview Cemetery

Today marks the 160th Anniversary of the Incorporation of Riverview Cemetery Corporation.

Jacob M. Taylor, “late [a] farmer” and director of several companies, conceived the idea of establishing a cemetery in Trenton on the highlands above the Delaware River at the southern edge of the city sometime in 1857. He presented his plan to William M. Force, a merchant; John K. Smith, a retired iron manufacturer; Isaac Stephens, a merchant; David Witherup, a carpenter by trade and an incorporator and superintendent of Mercer Cemetery; and William S. Yard, a blacksmith and railing maker; and they together founded Riverview Cemetery on January 16, 1858.

A portion of the “Sixth Ward of the City of Trenton” map published by
Everts and Stewart, Philadelphia, in 1875.
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

The Riverview Cemetery Corporation, a stock company, was incorporated by an act of the state legislature on February 28, 1858, and the newly formed Cemetery immediately set about constructing avenues and pathways on the grounds, then but a few acres that encompassed the Friends’ Burying Ground, along with the planting of trees.

From these modest beginnings, Riverview Cemetery is today comprised of some 40 acres that are beautifully landscaped with trees, shrubs, and flowers, all of which complement a fine collection of 19th and 20th-century funerary art and architecture.

Restoration of the Tattersall Monument

Among the monuments cited in Riverview Cemetery’s nominating documents for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places was a narrative description and image of the Celtic Cross on the Tattersall plot:

Tattersall: James C. Tattersall (1872-1932), president of The Tattersall Coal Company, is interred in Section R, Lot 75-76 ... The monument (Trenton Evening Times, April 19, 1921, p. 12) on the plot is a replica of the St. Martin’s Cross located at Iona, Scotland, and was carved from blue-white granite quarried in Westerly, Rhode Island, by Alexander McDonald Co., Trenton, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm also carved the individual lawn level markers of a complementary style.

Tattersall Monument, 2015

Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana

Often described as one of the most beautiful of all the pines, the Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana from the earlier P. excelsa, is native to the high mountain valleys of not only the Himalayas, but the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges which extend across parts of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Although the tree grows to a height of up to 150 feet in the wild, in cultivation it usually attains a height of up to 90 feet with a spread of 35 feet. It has gray-green needles that are eight inches long and produces slender cones that are six to ten inches long.

Seeds were introduced to England in 1827 by Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist for whom its present botanical name is derived, and the tree became available to the European nursery trade in 1836, and thence to North America.

Himalayan Pine at Main Gate

“Among the numerous members of the pine family, it would be difficult to find one more beautiful and useful than the Himalayan [Pine],” noted nurseryman Joseph Meehan in the trade journal Park and Cemetery (1896). “There are but few others possessing the many good points of this one, and it is no wonder that it is such a universal favorite.” As the tree ages “there is rather more of a drooping tendency in the branches, and it is this, with its beautiful needles, which gives it such a charm. On large grounds, it is much in place in certain positions, and for cemetery planting it is unequaled.”

Riverview Cemetery’s single specimen, a stately tree that’s weathered many a winter, stands just inside the main gate to the west and was likely planted at the turn of the last century.

Alexander McDonald Company

For much of the first half of the last century, the monumental works of Alexander McDonald Company were located just outside the gate of Riverview Cemetery, next door to the old superintendent’s house and office, and it was here that its many artisans and carvers turned out all manner of memorialization in stone from simple headstones to elaborate monuments for the city’s burgeoning population.

The office and display of Alexander McDonald Company
on Centre Street and stone-yard on Second Street as they appeared in 1921

Alexander McDonald was born April 28, 1829, in Aberdeen, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1852. Arriving in New York City, he made his way to Albany, N.Y., and finally to Cambridge, Mass., where in 1856 he established a monumental firm bearing his name opposite the entrance to Mount Auburn Cemetery. After retiring in 1887, his son Frank R. McDonald took over the day-to-day operations and the firm continued as Alexander McDonald and Son.

The Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba

Among the 500 trees comprising 71 species at Riverview Cemetery is a majestic specimen of Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba, which can be found along Myrtle Avenue in Section E near the southern boundary of the grounds.

Known for its brilliant red fall color, the tree is native to the eastern and central United States; its range extends into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota to the west. It can reach 60 to 75 feet in height with a crown spread of 45 feet at maturity when open grown, and the oblong-shaped leaves are five to eight inches long with seven to 11 bristle-tipped lobes.

Our tree has a 60-inch caliper as recorded by B.W. Bosenberg and Company, landscape architects based in Far Hills, N.J., which translates to a circumference of nearly 16 feet. The Sunday Times-Advertiser of December 12, 1915, notes that “due to his extensive knowledge in the care of trees, [Isaac] Stephens was given entire charge of the planting of all the trees in Riverview Cemetery, of which he was one of the founders,” likely making it among the earliest planted on the grounds after the Cemetery’s incorporation on February 28, 1858, a feat all the more remarkable as I am told it survived a lightning strike a number of decades ago.

The Sojourn of Catharine Maloney

A “receiving vault” is a structure designed primarily to hold the bodies of the deceased during the winter months when the ground is too frozen to dig graves. They were also used to store a body that is to be transported elsewhere or a family mausoleum is to be constructed, and a notable instance of the latter is the sorrowful story of Catharine Maloney, daughter of Philadelphia capitalist Martin Maloney, whom found temporary rest in Riverview Cemetery’s receiving vault at the turn of the last century.

Born on November 11, 1848, Martin Maloney emigrated with his parents and siblings from Ballingarry, Ireland, when he was a young boy. He worked in the coal mines around Scranton, Pennsylvania, with his father, afterward apprenticing himself as a tinsmith, coppersmith, plumber and gas-fitter. He organized the Hyde Park Gas Company, the nucleus of a system that eventually provided gas to Scranton and surrounding areas, and subsequently organized the Maloney Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company.

Maloney married Margaret A. Hewitson on December 31, 1868, and together they had seven children. All but three daughters—Margaret, Catharine (Kitty) and Helen—passed away in their younger years.

Sassafras, or Sassafras albidum

Riverview Cemetery has but one Sassafras tree in its plant collection, that being a weather-beaten specimen in Section K that is likely more than a hundred years old. A deciduous tree, Sassafras albidum is native to Eastern North America where it generally grows from 40 to 50 feet in height in its northern range. Larger specimens are found in its southern range.

Sassafras in Section K at Riverview Cemetery in summer and fall colors

Sassafras is unusual in having three distinct leaf patterns — unlobed oval, bilobed, and trilobed — on the same plant. The leaves are bright green in the summer and turn a brilliant yellow-orange and red-orange in the fall.

Richard E. Weaver Jr., in the January 1976 issue of Arnoldia, the quarterly bulletin of the Arnold Arboretum, writes “the color and the effect of the fall foliage is about as spectacular as that of any tree, the leaves typically turning orange with tints of yellow, red, and salmon, and for this reason alone the tree deserves more recognition as an ornamental.”

“The Last Voyage”

Among my cemetery research interests is the study of the Monumental Bronze Company and the “white bronze” monuments they produced. The Last Voyage, one of my favorite motifs, was among many that were used to embellish monuments. Modeled by sculptor Archibald McKellar and finished at the company’s art foundry in February 1881, it was first offered in their 1882 catalog.

The Last Voyage, modeled by Archibald McKellar and
offered in the 1882 catalog of the Monumental Bronze Company.
archive.org/Smithsonian Institution

This motif was taken from A Gentle Wafting to Immortal Life, a bas-relief marble sculpture by Felix M. Miller and a later engraving by William Roffe. As described in The Art Journal (1879), Miller portrayed the elder of two deceased brothers, Herbert Mellor, on the angelic mission of guiding his younger brother, Theodore, on his last voyage over the “sea of bliss.” They were the deceased children of J.J. Mellor, Esq., of the Woodlands, Whitfield, Manchester.

“Killed While Coupling Cars”

There’s no doubt that railroads played a pivotal role in the industrialization of the nation, allowing for unprecedented growth and prosperity. With it, however, came countless train accidents and the eventual call for safety on the rails and the protection of passengers and workers.

“An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Compelling Common Carriers Engaged in Interstate Commerce to Equip Their Cars with Automatic Couplers and Continuous Brakes and Their Locomotives with Driving-wheel Brakes, and for Other Purposes,” which came to be termed the “Railroad Safety Appliance Act,” was enacted by Congress on March 2, 1893. Key provisions of the act making air brakes and automatic couplers mandatory on all trains were slated to take effect on January 1, 1898, after a five-year grace period.

The link-and-pin coupler then in use required a worker to stand between the cars and guide a link into a coupler pocket as the cars came together. A pin was then inserted to hold the link in place. The process of coupling cars was fraught with danger. Many brakemen lost fingers and entire hands, and still more were crushed to death when the cars came together too quickly.

Jenkintown Station, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1892
Library of Congress

On May 15, 1893, while working on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad at a suburban Philadelphia station, Benjamin D. Simmins (1868-1893), just one month shy of his 25th birthday, was “Killed while coupling cars at Jenkintown, Pa.” as the inscription on his black granite gravemarker records.

The American Elm, or Ulmus americana

“Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.” That’s what John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery, said of trees in 1749.

American Elm along Valley Avenue at Riverview Cemetery

Whenever I have the occasion to walk the grounds of historic cemeteries, the mature trees dotting their landscapes bespeak the work of the nation’s earliest horticulturists. The idea of a “rural” cemetery for Trenton was conceived by Jacob M. Taylor in 1857. He introduced his plan to a group of the city’s leading citizens—William M. Force, John K. Smith, Isaac Stephens, David Witherup and William S. Yard—who together founded Riverview Cemetery on January 16, 1858. It was incorporated by an act of the state legislature of New Jersey on February 28, 1858.

The grounds of the then two-and-one-half-acre Cemetery were laid out according to a plan drawn by Smith, but the planting of the trees was tasked to Stephens. Indeed, the Sunday-Times Advertiser of December 12, 1915, described his residence, then owned by Charles S. Van Syckel, and its many specimen trees, noting: “Due to his extensive knowledge in the care of trees, Stephens was given entire charge of the planting of all the trees in Riverview Cemetery, of which he was one of the founders.”

Edward Ansley Stokes and the William Trent House

Stokes Monument

Edward A. Stokes (1869-1939), son of Trenton photographer Edward H. Stokes, was a lawyer, author and poet. He was also the last private owner of the William Trent House which he donated to the city in 1929. After extensive restoration it was opened as a museum in 1939.

The Trent House is the oldest of Trenton’s landmarks. An excellent example of Early Georgian Colonial architecture, it was built in 1719 on an 800-acre tract of land as the country estate of William Trent, a prominent Philadelphia trader and merchant, who laid out a settlement around his house in 1720 which came to be known as Trent’s Town, later Trent-Town, and finally Trenton.

Over the years the house has been known by several names. At one time it was named “Kingsbury Hall,” then “Bloomsbury Court,” and finally “Woodlawn.” It was occupied by Hessian troops in December of 1776, and has been the home of three New Jersey governors, Lewis Morris from 1742 to 1746, Philemon Dickerson from 1835 to 1838, and Rodman McCamley Price from 1854 to 1857.

Trenton’s First Lunch Wagon

Peter G. Curtin and his pioneering lunch wagon

Born on October 17, 1859, in Brooklyn, N.Y., Peter G. Curtin was the son of a New York City harbor boatman. He obtained his early education in New York and later in Elizabeth, N.J., where he gained employment at the Singer Sewing Machine Company and learned the machinist trade. It was there that he kept a watchful eye on the city’s lunch wagon business and took advantage of an opportunity to take over a lunch wagon while its owner was on vacation, he decided to enter the business himself.

Moving to Trenton he was employed as a tool maker at Warren Kimball and Company, but afterward returned to Singer. Coming again to Trenton he established a restaurant, and noting there was not a lunch wagon to be seen anywhere in the city, he hired the carriage maker Fitzgibbon & Crisp to construct a wagon with which he realized his dream.

The Fatal Leap of Charles Richmond

Gathering at community parks to watch balloon ascensions was once a favorite national pastime. At Cochran Park on Morris Island in the Delaware River, as they had days before, a crowd gathered on June 5, 1893, to watch aeronaut Charles Richmond (abt.1860–1893) make a parachute jump from a hot air balloon. The leap proved fatal, however, as his parachute failed to open and he plunged several thousand feet into Sturgeon Pond and drowned.

Henry W. Antheil Jr., American Diplomat

Henry W. Antheil Jr.

Henry W. Antheil Jr. was born in Trenton on September 23, 1912. Educated at Trenton Central High School, he enrolled at Rutgers University (now Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey), but cut his higher education short when through the efforts of his older brother George Antheil, a composer and pianist then-living in Paris, he obtained an interview with William C. Bullitt, a family friend who had just been appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union, and subsequently accepted a position at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Bullitt presented his credentials to the Soviet government on December 13, 1933; Antheil and other newly-minted foreign service employees arrived at the embassy several months later.

After serving five years, during which Antheil was responsible for maintaining cryptographic communications devices and their codes and ciphers in the Soviet Union and Northern Europe, he obtained a transfer to the U.S. Legation in Helsinki, Finland, a country for which he developed a particular appreciation during his travels.

When the Soviet Union concluded mutual assistance treaties with the Baltic States in 1939, and moved toward their occupation in 1940, Antheil was dispatched to close the U.S. Legation in Tallinn, Estonia, and retrieve sensitive documents. On June 14, 1940, he boarded the Finnish airplane Kaleva for the return flight to Helsinki, with several diplomatic pouches in hand, but the plane crashed over the Gulf of Finland ten minutes after takeoff from the Tallinn airport.

John Taylor and the “Taylor Pork Roll”

John Taylor

Born on October 6, 1836, in Hamilton Square, N.J., John Taylor was the son of James F. Taylor, a brick manufacturer, and Rebecca Borden Taylor. Working at his father’s brick yard at an early age, he was but fourteen years old when his father died, at which time he took a job as a clerk in the grocery store owned by Anthony R. Rainear, and two years later he gained an interest in the business.

In 1856, he became associated with James Ronan under the firm of Ronan and Taylor, and, after Ronan’s retirement in 1860, he associated himself with Daniel P. Forst under the firm of Forst and Taylor, both of whom were wholesale grocers. When the latter firm was dissolved in 1870, he organized Taylor and Company (it was incorporated as Taylor Provision Company in 1889 and reincorporated as Taylor Provisions Company in 1939) and engaged in pork packing and livestock dealing.

The Combination Atlas Map of Mercer County, New Jersey (Everts and Stewart 1875) includes an illustration of Taylor’s meat packing house and livestock yard, and the map of the city’s “First and Fifth Wards” shows the location of the plant—simply labeled “pork packing est[ablishment]”—at the end of Perrine Avenue on the bank of the Assunpink Creek.