1 10 17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text While living in a rowhouse apartment at 229 Cooper Street, Michael Giocondo joined others in the Catholic Left in an act of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War. The "Camden 28," as they came to be known, were caught in the act of breaking into the draft board office in the federal building at Fourth and Market Streets to destroy and steal draft records. Their action and subsequent trial made national news and inspired a documentary film. Giocondo, a Franciscan friar who had been teaching English in Costa Rica, came to Camden in the early 1970s to work with a parish in the city's Puerto Rican community. He left the Franciscan order, but stayed in Camden and founded El Centro, a social service agency, and trained to be a substance abuse counselor. The 1971 break-in at the draft office in Camden was one among many similar actions across the United States that aimed to disrupt the draft and question the justice and morality of the Vietnam War. Giocondo played a fateful role in the local break-in when he invited a friend, Robert Hardy, to join the planning group. In addition to aiding the planning, Hardy became an informant for the FBI, leading to the arrests and charges against 28 people allegedly involved. Seventeen of the defendants, including Giocondo, went to trial at the Camden federal building in 1973. Testimony called the Vietnam War into question, and the defendants argued that the federal government had over-reached with its informant's active role in staging the break-in. The judge instructed the jury that acquittals could be granted on the basis of governmental over-reach, and the jury concurred by finding all of the defendants not guilty. The New York Times described the verdict as "the first total legal victory for the antiwar movement in five years of such draft-record incidents." Following the trial, charges were dropped against the remaining members of the Camden 28. Giocondo left Camden after the trial and later worked as a journalist covering the labor movement in New York and Chicago. He returned to the city for a reunion with the Camden 28 filmed for the documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808190/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Camden 28</a> (2007). He retired to Florida, where <a href="https://peoplesworld.org/article/mike-giocondo-85-fighter-for-justice-at-home-and-abroad/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he died in 2014</a>. The rowhouse where he lived in the 1970s stood at the northwest corner of Third and Cooper, now a parking lot for Rutgers-Camden dormitories. Time period on Cooper Street Early 1970s Location(s) - Cooper Street 229 Cooper Street (northwest corner, Third and Cooper) Location(s) - Other Federal Building, Fourth and Market Streets Birth Date c. 1929 Birthplace Syracuse, New York Death Date 2014, in Jacksonville, Florida Sources The Camden 28, dir. Anthony Giacchino. (Available to view on YouTube: <a href="https://youtu.be/EcdWk74LQdw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">click here</a>.) Camden 28 Documents: <a href="http://www.camden28.org/master.html?http://www.camden28.org/thestory.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">click here</a>. "<a href="https://peoplesworld.org/article/mike-giocondo-85-fighter-for-justice-at-home-and-abroad/">Mike Giocondo, 85: Fighter for Justice at Home and Abroad</a>." People's World, April 23, 2014. News coverage of the Camden 28 in Camden and Philadelphia and the New York Times. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Giocondo, Michael Description An account of the resource During the Vietnam War era, Michael Giocondo participated in the "Camden 28" raid on draft board headquarters. 1970s 200 Block 229 Cooper Street Activism Adult Catholics Male Social Justice Vietnam https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/0bbd79ebafd8edf59bc80dc8af39f8c4.jpg e13f19db68465ae2b4f99c509addff59 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Time period on Cooper Street 1867-88 Location(s) - Cooper Street 228 Cooper Street Location(s) - Other 105 Cove Road, Pennsauken Township/Merchantville Birth Date c. 1840 Birthplace Burlington County Death Date April 1, 1912 Biographical Text Among the many women who headed households on Cooper Street, Sallie Ackley had a distinction: In 1867, while still in her 20s, she independently contracted for construction of a new home. The three-story Italianate townhouse at 228 Cooper Street survived into the twenty-first century. It represents a young woman's story of survival in the wake of tragedy and offers a connection to the early nineteenth-century settlement of Camden. Sallie Ackley was born into the Wilkins family, early settlers of Burlington County. Her grandfather, Isaac Wilkins, moved to Camden to go into the lumber business on the Delaware River waterfront, and in 1814 he purchased lots at Third and Cooper Streets as well as Third and Market. These properties passed by inheritance through the Wilkins family, including the land for 228 Cooper Street. Sallie Wilkins became Sallie Ackley in 1864, when she married a local doctor, Henry Ackley, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Her new husband had recently returned from service as U.S. Navy surgeon, but with his health irreversibly damaged by a bout with yellow fever aboard the USS San Jacinto in the Gulf of Mexico. He and Sallie had little more than a year together before he died of tuberculosis in December 1865. Six weeks later, Sallie gave birth to their son, Henry Wilkins Ackley, whom she had baptized at St. Paul's in July. Another tragedy followed, however, when the child died just short of his first birthday. It was the latest in a long line of family losses, in that Sallie's parents also had died during the war years. Although tragic, the circumstances conferred both independence and resources on Sallie Ackley, enabling her to contract for the house at 228 Cooper Street. The land was then owned by her brother, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/People/CamdenPeople-RichardCWilkins.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard C. Wilkins</a>; it stood adjacent to her grandfather's former property on the corner of Third and Cooper, which had passed by inheritance to her aunt Eliza Davis. Sallie paid $7,500 to Harden and Brothers Contractors to build the house, and she specified the Trenton stone facade unlike anything else on the block. By 1870, at age 28, she headed a household consisting of her brother Richard, a 23-year-old veteran of the Civil War; her aunt Eliza (then age 73, she sold the corner house next door); and two domestic servants. Her activities included serving as a manager for the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-Home-Friendless-Children.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>, and in 1874 she bought the land under her house from her brother for $1,000. Sallie Ackley's life took a new turn by 1877, when she married a Camden bank teller, Nathan F. Cowan. They continued to live at 228 Cooper Street while rearing three healthy sons, two of them twins. Around 1888, they followed the trend of many of Cooper Street's professional-class families and moved to a suburban home on the Pennsauken Township border with Merchantville. Associated Individuals Isaac Wilkins (grandfather) Richard M. Wilkins (father, died 1861) Elizabeth Ann Coate Wilkins (mother, died 1861) Richard C. Wilkins (brother) Henry Ackley (first husband, died 1865, buried Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia). Henry Wilkins Ackley (son, died 1867, buried Woodlands Cemetery Philadelphia) Nathan F. Cowan (husband) William Cowan (son) Herbert Cowan (son) Edgar Cowan (son) Sources Building Contracts, Camden County Historical Society. Camden/Gloucester County Deeds (Familysearch.org). Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). New Jersey State Census; New Jersey Church Records, Birth Records, and Death Records (Ancestry.com). U.S. Census, 1860, 1870, 1880. Photographs of the Wilkins family, including Sallie and Richard, are posted on the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/People/CamdenPeople-RichardCWilkins.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website dvbs.com</a>. Research by Charlene Mires, Robbie DeSimone, and Lucy Davis. Photograph above, 228 Cooper Street in 2019, by Jacob Lechner. Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ackley, Sallie (Wilkins) Description An account of the resource In the wake of the Civil War, a young widow contracted for a new house to be built at 228 Cooper Street. 1860s 1870s 1880s 200 Block 228 Cooper Street Adult Childhood Civil War Death Extended Family Female Investment Italianate Widows Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, two Chinese laundries operated in the 200 block of Cooper Street. Like their counterparts throughout the United States in this era, the men who hand-laundered clothing for Camden's white residents endured harassment and sometimes violence. They also earned respect from Cooper Street neighbors who came to their defense as they persisted in the hot, damp, monotonous work of earning a living in one of the few occupations open to them at the time. Camden gained its first Chinese laundry by 1877, around the same time that a <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/chinatown/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">community of Chinese immigrants</a> began to form in Philadelphia. Judging by business listings in Camden city directories, Hong Sing's laundry at 62 and then 108 N. Second Street was the only commercial hand-laundry in the city from 1877 until 1881. By 1884, the number of Chinese laundries grew to six, enough to attract the attention of the Camden County Courier. In a story headlined "The Heathen Chinese," the Courier's writer observed: "If in the next few years our Chinese population and their laundries increase in the proportion that they have recently we shall soon have a veritable Chinatown in our midst, and if any one has a dirty shirt or soiled linen it will be his own fault." Camden's Chinese laundries had three to four men each, living at the laundries, and the city's residents were becoming accustomed to seeing the "Celestials" who wore traditional clothing and braided their hair in queues. The Chinese, for their part, operated at risk of vandalism and attacks by young men described by the newspaper as "hoodlums." The numbers of Chinese and non-Chinese laundries in Camden grew with the city's population, and Chinese immigrants dominated the business with 30 of 41 laundries in 1890; 40 of 63 in 1900; 37 of 49 in 1910; and 29 of 35 in 1920. Some Chinese entrepreneurs ran two or three laundries, and some started laundries other South Jersey communities like Merchantville and Haddonfield. They did not, as the Camden newspaper expected, coalesce into a local Chinatown but dispersed their laundries around the city. On days when business did not require their presence, the laundry men maintained cultural connections by participating in the social life of Philadelphia's Chinatown. The Chinese laundries on Cooper Street were located at 214 and 220, in a row of four small brick row houses that then stood on the site occupied in 2020 by the Cooper Street Historic Building Apartments and its adjacent parking lot. The row houses, two and one-quarter stories each, may have been built as early as 1820, when Cooper Street was still a country road leading to the Delaware River ferries. The aging row thus would have offered a relatively cheap yet prominent location on a street otherwise regarded as a fashionable address. The first of the Chinese laundries on Cooper Street is documented as operating for just one year, during 1885 at 220 Cooper. This house had adjacent wood-frame outbuildings and stables, previously occupied by a milk distribution depot and a manufacturing facility for Fleishmann's yeast. During the location's year as a laundry, the Camden city directory named the owner as Junkee Kwong. The New Jersey State Census recorded three Chinese men at this address, rendering their names as Hong Sing, Charlie Lee, and Louie Lee. Like so many other Chinese men during the era of the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chinese Exclusion Act</a> (1882), they were single; immigration restriction prohibited bringing additional Chinese women or families to the United States. A Chinese laundry of greater duration operated at 214 Cooper Street from 1889 to 1901. In 1889, Ghe Lee advertised his business as the Camden Courier-Post as "the first good laundry in Camden." City directories subsequently listed the laundry operators at this address as Charlie Tom (1890-93) and Ying Lee (1894-1901). In 1895, Ying Lee and the laundry shared the address with the family of a German cigar-maker. The laundry at 214 Cooper opened while new, grander houses were built next door at 204, 206, and 210 Cooper in 1890. The neighbors who moved into these homes included a retired wealthy couple, the head of a manufacturing firm, and an attorney. An incident in 1897 provides greatest access to the experience of Ying Lee, the 214 Cooper Street laundry, and the attitudes of Cooper Street neighbors toward the Chinese in their midst. Ying Lee, born in China in 1860, had lived in the United States since childhood. He would have lived first in the western United States, where racism and discrimination prompted migration to other regions. By 1880, at age 20, he was in Philadelphia. By 1894, he was in the laundry business at 214 Cooper Street. Over the door, he displayed a small American flag. Harassment and vandalism of Chinese laundries was common in Camden, and the rowdiness alarmed and frightened Cooper Street's residents. Their appeals to police seemed to receive little attention. For Ying Lee, a particularly harrowing incident occurred in 1897 when three young men, two white and one African American, threatened him with knives and held him at gunpoint while they searched for money. Thieves had learned that Chinese laundrymen kept cash in their businesses, and in this case they escaped with $15--not a large sum, but a significant amount for the income of a hand laundry. The escalation of violence prompted Ying Lee's neighbors to take further steps to try to restore peace to the neighborhood. The problem was not the Chinaman, they told the local press, but the local rowdyism against him. Dissatisfied with the response of local officials, a civil engineer who lived across the street from the laundry, Richard Pancoast, looked across the river to Philadelphia's Chinatown for assistance. He alerted the missionary in charge of the YMCA in Chinatown, Frederick Poole, who visited the mayor of Camden to urge action against laundry violence. To the consternation of local officials, Poole described Camden as a particular problem area in a letter to the Chinese Minister in the United States in Washington. The missionary also called the matter to the attention of the governor of New Jersey, who summoned Camden's mayor to a meeting. The publicity does not seem to have prompted any particular action on the part of authorities. The next year, however, the Camden Board of Health focused on 214 Cooper Street as an example of unsanitary properties needing attention for the benefit of public health. They cast this as an action against the owner of the property, a local oyster dealer, but their perception would have aligned with then-common associations between Chinese immigrants and disease. The 214 Cooper Street house, according to the Board of Health, "has been a constant menace to health in that community for a number of years." The board ordered under-drainage to reduce risk of typhoid fever and other diseases. In the wake of the 1897 holdup, Ying Lee's neighbors encouraged him to get a gun to defend himself, but he declined. He remained in business at 214 Cooper Street until 1901, and he expanded to one and sometimes two other laundries in Camden. He was displaced from Cooper Street when the house he rented became part of the property being assembled for construction of a new mansion for a wealthy shipmaster, John B. Adams. Ying Lee may have returned to Philadelphia, where that city's directory in 1904 listed a person by the same name in the business of Chinese goods at 912 Race Street, in the heart of Philadelphia's Chinatown. Time period on Cooper Street 1885, 1889-1901 Location(s) - Cooper Street 214 and 220 Cooper Street Occupation Laundry Operators Associated Individuals (As recorded by Census or Camden City Directories) Junkee Kwong (220 Cooper Street, 1885) Hong Sing (220 Cooper Street, 1885) Charlie Lee (220 Cooper Street, 1885) Louie Lee (220 Cooper Street, 1885) Ghe Lee (214 Cooper Street, 1889) Charlie Tom (214 Cooper Street, 1890-93) Ying Lee (214 Cooper Street, 1894-1901) Richard Pancoast (neighbor, 205 Cooper Street) Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Sources Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com). Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Jung, John. Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain. Yin and Yang Press, 2010. U.S. Census. Posted by Charlene Mires Direct corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chinese Laundry Men Description An account of the resource Two Chinese laundries operated on Cooper Street during the late nineteenth century. 1880s 1890s 200 Block 214 Cooper Street 220 Cooper Street Business China Crime Immigrants Laundries Philadelphia Police Public Health Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Time period on Cooper Street C. 1845-1883 (property owner, possible resident c. 1847-50 and 1855-60) Location(s) - Cooper Street 413-415-417 Cooper Street. Location(s) - Other Philadelphia; 416-418-420-422 Lawrence Street, Camden. Biographical Text In a city atlas of Camden published in 1877, a name appears diagonally across the lots numbered <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a> Cooper Street: Hannah Atwood. Yet Hannah does not otherwise appear in records of Camden residents, such as city directories or the Census. Who was she, and why did she own property where she seldom lived? A clue lies in the nomination of Cooper Street for the National Register for Historic Places, which documents a sale of land from Richard Cooper to Hannah Atwood in 1845, more than thirty years prior to the atlas. The transaction, which the nomination associates with 413 Cooper Street, would have been among the first sales of Cooper family land on the north side of Cooper Street. The nomination provides a further clue, an undated later transfer of the land to Hannah's granddaughter, Clara V. Fisher, and a sale of 413 Cooper Street by Charles P. Fisher (Clara's husband) in 1883. The rest of the story, as it emerges from records of the lives of Hannah Atwood and her family, reveals more about the development of Camden in the nineteenth century and the economic strategies of a married woman whose husband, an artist, was frequently absent and dependent on patrons for income. Jesse Atwood, born in New Hampshire, was an itinerant portrait painter who became best known for a journey to Mexico to paint General Zachary Taylor during the Mexican-American War (while living in Camden in 1847, he created a bust based on the portrait and offered it for sale). He also painted portraits of presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, and promoted this work to entice other patrons as he traveled. According to Who's Who in American History, Hannah and Jesse Atwood came to Philadelphia from Rhode Island around 1830, which may have been shortly after their marriage. They had at least two children while Jesse pursued his art in a city known for institutions such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he displayed his work in 1841. He also traveled to Deerfield, Massachusetts (1832), and Richmond, Virginia (1841), among other places. His trip to Mexico to paint Zachary Taylor was covered in the press, as was his opportunity to paint Abraham Lincoln in Illinois shortly after Lincoln's election. Hannah, who had been born Rhode Island, was about 45 years old when she purchased the Camden property in 1845 (and a second adjoining lot in 1846). It was not unusual for Philadelphians to purchase investment property in Camden during the nineteenth century, and that seems to have been Hannah's purpose. When she later bequeathed her property to her granddaughter, she described the process of collecting rents and maintaining the property in good order. During the 1840s and 1850s the Atwoods added to the value of the property, which spanned fifty feet on Cooper Street, by building seven houses. Three faced Cooper Street, and four smaller houses faced Lawrence Street in the rear. Two of the houses, built in 1853 at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a> Cooper Street, attracted notice in the Philadelphia Public Ledger: "Mr. Atwood has nearly finished two exquisitely, ornamentally and conveniently arranged dwelling houses on Cooper Street. They are fine additions to the improvements of that part of the city." Hannah's presence can be traced only through her marriage to Jesse, who was listed in Camden and Philadelphia city directories. The Atwoods lived in Camden during the late 1840s and again between 1855 and 1860, but otherwise they lived in Philadelphia. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, other tenants occupied row houses on Hannah's Cooper Street land--among them, a widow and her daughter who generated their own income by taking in boarders. Jesse Atwood died in Philadelphia in 1870, at the age of 79, and Hannah lived until 1883. Both are buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Hannah's will specified the houses at 415 and 417 Cooper Street as bequests to her granddaughter, without mentioning the adjoining property at 413. Although her will envisioned the houses as an ongoing source of independent income, Clara Fisher sold both to a new owner by 1888. Separately, Clara's husband sold 413 Cooper Street in 1883. Hannah Atwood's long record of ownership on Cooper Street faded from memory. Occupation Property owner Birth Date c. 1800 Birthplace Rhode Island Death Date 1883 in Philadelphia, buried Laurel Hill Cemetery Associated Individuals Jesse Atwood (husband) George Atwood (son) Sarah Miller Atwood (daughter-in-law, wife of George) Mary Atwood (daughter) Clara Virginia Atwood Fisher (granddaughter, daughter of George and Sarah) Charles Perry Fisher (son-in-law, husband of Clara) Edith Gay Fisher (great-granddaughter, daughter of Clara and Charles) Richard Fisher (great-grandson, son of Clara and Charles) Ellen M. Gay (sister, living in New York City) Gamelia Gay (brother-in-law, husband of Ellen) George Grace (boarder in Philadelphia home, 1880) Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories (Ancestry.com). Holzer, Harold. Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-61 (New York, Simon and Shuster, 2008), 88. Hopkins, G.M. City Atlas of Camden, New Jersey (1877), Camden County Historical Society. New Jersey Wills and Probate Records (Ancestry.com). U.S. Census, 1860, 1870, and 1880. Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers (Library Company of Philadelphia). Sandweiss, Martha A. Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (Yale University Press, 2002), 27. Who's Who in American History (Marquis Biographies Online). Research by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Posted by Charlene Mires Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Atwood, Hannah Description An account of the resource Investing in Camden real estate provided steady income to an artist's wife for nearly 40 years. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 400 Block 413 Cooper Street 415 Cooper Street 417 Cooper Street Adult Artists Female Investment Philadelphia Rhode Island Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text By all outward appearances, Henry Coy led a relatively unremarkable but prosperous middle-class life for roughly 15 years when he lived in the block of Cooper Street that later became Johnson Park. Only after his death in 1881 did rumors arise that created a macabre legend about Coy and his family. But were the rumors true? Coy, a Canadian, arrived in the Philadelphia-South Jersey region by 1858 and by 1860 lived at 101 Cooper Street, a three-story brick house that had been standing at the northeast corner of Front and Cooper since the late eighteenth century. His journey to the region may have included time in Massachusetts, where his wife, Sarah, was born. In 1860, at age 35, he headed an extended family household that consisted of Sarah, then age 25; their eight-month-old daughter, Mary Hannah; two women and a child who may have been Sarah's relations; and two servants. By 1870, the Coy family expanded to five children. Sarah Coy's mother, Mary, also lived with the family for a time and died at 101 Cooper Street in 1866, at age 74. To support the family, Coy commuted by ferry across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, where he worked as an agent for Wheeler & Wilson sewing machines. The company, based in Bridgeport, Conn., had emerged quickly during the late 1850s as the leading manufacturer of sewing machines, largely for industrial use. Coy had the only Wheeler & Wilson shop in Philadelphia, in second-floor space at 628 Chestnut Street; he offered machines and operators for hire as well as stitching done in the office. In addition to supporting his family, the income allowed for some minor luxuries, including two carriages and a gold watch. Around 1870, Coy left the sewing machine business to become a manager for the S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company, the Philadelphia-based leading maker of high-quality dental instruments. He not only led the instrument-making shop, he also designed and made instruments himself. Forceps, mallets, punch instruments, and other dental tools bearing his maker mark, HC, remain in the <a href="https://temple.pastperfectonline.com/byperson?keyword=Coy%2C+Henry&page=2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Historical Dental Museum</a> at Temple University and other collections. The Coy family left Cooper Street in 1874 and moved about three miles eastward to Stockton Township, Camden County, and from there to Palmyra in Burlington County. Henry Coy continued in the dental instruments business until his death in 1881. The next year, on May 1, 1882, a bizarre story appeared in the Camden Morning Post: AFTER TWENTY YEARS. A FATHER'S ECCENTRICITY Three Dead Bodies which a Camden Man Refused to Have Buried The report claimed that three bodies recently buried in Palmyra were long-dead children of Henry Coy. And, most shockingly, that during his years on Cooper Street Coy had kept the remains in coffins in his home. "He was a very eccentric man," said the Post, "and it is said he was unwilling to make the acquaintance of any one near him, and that he has found great pleasure during these long years, in sitting for hours at time in the room with the caskets containing his departed children." The tale, reprinted in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reappeared in a much longer, more obviously fictional version eleven years later. Published first in the Philadelphia Times in a section devoted to "Life's Thrilling Side," and then picked up again in Camden by the Morning Post on June 19, 1893, the new version retained the story about the deceased children. But it also spun a highly elaborate description of Coy (this time named Philip, "a long-bearded, impenetrable Canadian") and his haunted mansion replete with secret closets, concealed panels, vaults, and a coffin-shaped cupola. Attributing new details to two caretakers of the property after the Coys moved out, the 1893 version of the story portrayed a haunted house that echoed with sounds of infants wailing and feet shuffling in the cellar. For readers of the late nineteenth-century, the story may have offered a racist clue to its fictional nature by attributing the ghost stories to "Cyrus Green, an old colored man" and his wife, Sarah. Camden readers would have spotted an obvious confusion of references to the "Cooper mansion," which was not the house the Coys occupied, and other errors of local details. Philip was the name of Henry Coy's adult son who died in 1892, prior to publication of the second story. The Coy story also appeared in a pamphlet about Camden historic houses in 1920, characterized as a "rumor." Could there be any truth to the legends of the Coy family? The records of the family across the U.S. Census of 1860, 1870, and 1880 show no disappearing names of children, and hence suggest no deaths. However, New Jersey birth records document an earlier child, and perhaps twins, born in Camden to Henry Coy on March 7, 1858 (the records do not name the mother, and it is unclear whether two very similar records for the same date are duplications or documentation for twins). No Coy children of this age appear in the 1860 Census, so the 1858 infant or infants are unaccounted for. Some elements of the later stories may suggest a plausible explanation: in the 1893 version, Coy is reported to have buried deceased twins in a Haddonfield cemetery without a proper funeral. It is conceivable--but speculation--that after his death in 1881, children buried elsewhere might have been exhumed to be buried with him in Palmyra. This would account for the story about burials that appeared in 1882, and at least one other Cooper Street family is known to have moved an earlier-buried child to rest with a later-deceased parent. Indeed, the Coys have a large, <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46885440/henry-coy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">enclosed family plot in the Epworth Methodist Church Cemetery</a> with just one headstone that is perhaps revealing in its silences: "Henry - Sarah S Coy / And Family." Time period on Cooper Street c. 1858/60-1874 Location(s) - Cooper Street 101 Cooper Street (northeast corner of Front and Cooper, later Johnson Park) Location(s) - Other Philadelphia Stockton Township, Camden County Palmyra, Burlington County Occupation Sewing machine dealer (prior to 1870) Dental instrument designer/manufacturer (after 1870) Birth Date c. 1825 Birthplace Kingston, Ontario (Canada West) Death Date September 2, 1881 in Palmyra, Burlington County, N.J. Associated Individuals Sarah Coy (wife) Mary Hannah Coy (daughter) Elizabeth Coy (daughter) Philip H. Coy (son) Susan Coy (daughter) Hellen Coy (daughter) Susan, Haddie, and Addie Brown (possible relatives of wife Sarah) Mary Seger (mother-in-law) Ada Robbins Coy (daughter-in-law, married son Philip) Lydia Everson (servant) Jane Wilson (servant) Emma Everman (servant) Samuel Stockton White (employer at S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Co., Philadelphia) Sources "After Twenty Years." Camden Morning Post, May 1, 1882. Boyer, Charles S. "The Old Houses in Camden, New Jersey." Annals of Camden, Vol. 1 (privately published, 1920). "Camden's Pet Ghosts." Camden Morning Post, June 19, 1893. Camden City Directories, Camden County Historical Society (Ancestry.com). Edmunson, James M. American Surgical INstruments: The History of Their Manufacture and a Directory of Instrument Makers to 1900 (Novato, Calif: Norman Publishing, 1997), 61. New Jersey Births and Christenings Index (Ancestry.com). "S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Co." in Matos, William, comp. Philadelphia: Its Founding and Development, 1683-1908 (Philadelphia, 1908), 324. U.S. Census, 1860, 1870, 1880. "Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Co." in Hounshell, Davis, From the American SYstem to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkinson University Press, 1985), 68-75. Research by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Posted by Charlene Mires Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coy, Henry Subject The topic of the resource Description An account of the resource Did the Coy family harbor a secret in their home at 101 Cooper Street? 100 Block 101 Cooper Street 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s Adult Canada Childhood Death Dental Implements Ghost Stories Johnson Park Male Massachusetts Newspapers Palmyra Philadelphia Sewing Machines Stockton Township Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text During the 1920s, a leader in public health who helped Camden respond to epidemics and keep its children healthy, lived for five years at 417 Cooper Street. These were the culminating years of Dr. Henry Hill Davis's long service as medical inspector for Camden's public schools. A native of Crosswicks, Burlington County, Davis came to Camden in the 1870s after graduating from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. While many physicians during the late nineteenth century gravitated toward Cooper Street and the vicinity of the recently opened Cooper Hospital, Davis opened both a pharmacy and medical practice in Kaighn Point. In 1899, he was appointed medical inspector for Camden's public schools--the first post of its kind in New Jersey and only the second in the nation, after New York City. Davis instituted annual physical examinations for Camden pupils and required vaccinations before any child could be admitted to school. While continuing in this work for the schools, Davis was among the leaders in founding a new Camden Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases, which opened in 1916, and he served for twenty years as president of the Camden Board of Health. Over his long career, he led Camden's responses to smallpox outbreaks and the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. Davis and his wife, Harriett, rented the row house at 417 Cooper Street beginning in 1920; Davis was by this time 70 years old and his wife nine years younger. Their previous address had been 522 Linden Street, which was soon to be enveloped by construction activity for the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). While at 417 Cooper, Davis continued in his post as medical inspector until retiring in 1925. The city honored him not only with a pension but also by giving his name to a new public school--still operating in 2020 as the <a href="http://camdencitydavis.ss12.sharpschool.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Henry H. Davis Family School</a> in East Camden. A street near the former site of the Municipal Hospital <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-streets/CamdenNJ-Streets-DavisStreet.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">also bears his name</a>. In retirement, the Davises moved to Toms River, New Jersey, where they owned a home. There, Henry Davis's life came to a tragic end at the age of 78 in April 1929 when he was hit and killed by an automobile. The Camden Courier-Post took the opportunity when reporting his death to deliver a public health message: already during the first four months of the year, 55 people in South Jersey had been killed in crashes involving automobiles. Time period on Cooper Street 1920-25 Location(s) - Cooper Street 417 Cooper Street Occupation Physician, Medical Inspector for Camden Schools Birth Date c. 1851 Birthplace Crosswicks, N.J. Death Date April 10, 1929 Associated Individuals Harriet Davis, wife Sources Camden City Directories and U.S. Census (Ancestry.com). Camden Courier-Post (Newspapers.com). Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Location(s) - Other 522 Linden Street (previous address) 563 Benson Street (previous address) Third Street and Kaighn Avenue (pharmacy and practice, beginning 1870s) Crosswicks, New Jersey Toms River, New Jersey Philadelphia Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Davis, Dr. Henry H. Description An account of the resource A leader in public health, Dr. Henry Hill Davis lived at 417 Cooper Street for five years prior to his retirement in 1925. 1920s 400 Block 417 Cooper Street Activism Adult Aging Automobiles Burlington County Doctors Health and Medicine Male Philadelphia Schools Toms River Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Time period on Cooper Street c. 1876-88 (boarding) c. 1892, 1903 (buildings) Location(s) - Cooper Street 415 Cooper Street 514 Cooper Street (designed by Baily & Truscott for William T. Read, 1903) 538-42 Cooper Street (designed by Baily & Truscott for John W. Cheney, c. 1892) 726 Cooper Street (designed by Arthur Truscott for Lynn Truscott, 1888) Location(s) - Other 19 Springfield Avenue, Merchantville (Truscott family home, c. 1892-1930s) New Jersey Trust and Safe Deposit Building, Third and Market Streets, Camden (designed by Arthur Truscott, 1888) Baily & Truscott office, 138 S. Fourth Street, Philadelphia Drexel University, Philadelphia Blackwood, New Jersey Columbia, Tennessee Occupation Architect Birth Date December 4, 1858 Birthplace Cornwall, England Death Date September 12, 1938, in Blackwood, New Jersey. Buried in Harleigh Cemetery. Biographical Text For at least twelve years, between 1876 and 1888, English immigrant Arthur Truscott boarded at 415 Cooper Street while establishing a career in architecture in Philadelphia. His work included notable buildings for Camden, including houses on Cooper Street and the New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company building at Third and Market Streets. Truscott arrived in the United States in 1875, at the age of 18, and by 1876 he appeared in Camden city directories as a boarder in the 415 Cooper Street home of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/44" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jerusha Browning</a>, a member by marriage of the prominent Browning family of South Jersey. In addition to Arthur, the boarders at 415 Cooper included his two brothers, J. Lynn Truscott (four years older) and Millwood Truscott (two years younger). Arthur's brothers both established long-term, prosperous careers in the insurance industry, following in the footsteps of an uncle already in Camden: John W. Cheney. The Truscott brothers became active in the nearby St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, and Lynn Truscott eventually married into the extended Browning family. While living at 415 Cooper Street, Arthur Truscott gained architectural training in a series of leading Philadelphia firms, including <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21576" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Bros. & Co</a>. and <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/23024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cope & Stewardson</a>. By 1888, when he left Cooper Street, he had published house plans in <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/godeys-ladys-book/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Godey's Lady's Book</a>, and he demonstrated his range in commercial as well as residential architecture with at least two buildings in Camden. For his brother Lynn, Truscott designed a double-lot gray stone home at 627 Cooper Street (later demolished for construction of the Walt Whitman Hotel). He also designed a four-story office building at Third and Market Streets for the New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company. By 1990, when buildings associated with the banking, insurance, and legal professions in Camden were added to the National Register of Historic Places, Truscott's Victorian Eclectic building for New Jersey Trust was the oldest surviving structure designed for specific use as a bank. Truscott left New Jersey for about two years, 1888-90, to serve as architect for a federal arsenal in Columbia, Tennessee (also later listed on the National Register). When he returned, he formed a partnership with Philadelphia architect William Lloyd Baily, and among many other commissions for residences and churches, Truscott & Baily added four houses to the 500 block of Cooper Street: three of them the trio of Chateauesque stone townhouses for Truscott's uncle, John W. Cheney, at 538-42 Cooper Street (built c. 1892). The facades were preserved as part of the buildings for the LEAP Academy Charter School. About a decade after the Cheney project, in 1903, Baily & Truscott produced the very different red-brick Colonial Revival home at 514 Cooper Street for William T. Read. Truscott, meanwhile, married and designed a home for his family in Merchantville, then a suburban enclave attracting Philadelphia and South Jersey professionals, including a number of prominent architects. His household there, from the 1890s through the 1930s, included his wife, Alice, four children, his mother-in-law, and domestic servants. After the dissolution of the Baily partnership in 1904, Truscott became head of the architecture program at the Drexel Institute (later Drexel University); he was a supervising architect for Camden High School, built on Park Boulevard 1916-18, and late in his life, he worked as a draftsman for a Philadelphia firm specializing in church architecture, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/18688" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charles Bolton & Son</a>. At the time of his death in 1938, he was living in Blackwood, New Jersey; he is buried in Camden, in Harleigh Cemetery. Find illustrations of Arthur Truscott's work and further biographical details in "Arthur Truscott" online at <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-ArthurTruscott.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dvrbs.com</a>. Associated Individuals J. Lynn Truscott (brother); married Mary Cooper Paul Browning Millwood Truscott (brother); married Carrie Weatherby Jerusha Browning (head of household at 415 Cooper Street) Margaret Browning (daughter of Jerusha Browning) George Cole (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1885) Anna Browning (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1885) Kate Browning (also resident of 415 Cooper Street, 1885) Edward P. Browning (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1888-89) Alice Parry, wife (married 1889) Arthur S. Truscott (son), served as aviator in British Royal Air Force during World War I; died from accidental gas inhalation at Truscott family home in 1935. Alice Truscott (daughter) W. Parry Truscott (son) Catharine F. Truscott (daughter) Anna G. Parry (mother-in-law) Lolie Dangrigred (?), servant in 1900, African American born in Virginia Dorinda Barrett, servant in 1910, African American born in Pennsylvania William Lloyd Baily, business partner, 1890-1904 John W. Cheney, uncle (related through Cheney's wife Emily Cook; Truscott's mother was Susan Frances Matilda Cook); client, 538-42 Cooper Street William T. Read, client, 514 Cooper Street Sources Banks, Insurance and Legal Buildings in Camden, New Jersey, 1873-1938, Nomination, National Register for Historic Places, U.S. Department of the Interior. Berenson, Carol A., Merchantville, New Jersey: The Development, Architecture, and Preservation of a Victorian Commuter Suburb (Thesis, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania), 1984. Camden City Directories, New Jersey State Census, U.S. Census (Ancestry.com). Camden Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, National Register of Historic Places, U.S. Department of the Interior. "<a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21581" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Truscott, Arthur (1858-1938)</a>, Philadelphia Buildings and Architects, Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Truscott, Arthur Description An account of the resource While boarding at 415 Cooper Street, architect Arthur Truscott launched his career in Philadelphia. 415 Cooper Street 514 Cooper Street 538 Cooper Street 540 Cooper Street 542 Cooper Street 627 Cooper Street Adult Architects Banking Blackwood England Immigrants Insurance LEAP Academy Male Merchantville Philadelphia Tennessee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text Joshua B. (for Benjamin) Franklin, who purchased 415 Cooper Street as well as the adjacent 417 Cooper Street in 1903, was a livery stable operator whose lifetime spanned to the age of the automobile. Franklin, born in 1861, moved from his family's farm in Burlington County to Camden during the city's fast-growing 1880s, when he was 21. He went to work for his uncle Joseph Franklin at the livery stable on Second Street between Cooper and Market and continued the business after his uncle's death. The Franklins became well known in Camden as they rented horses and carriages to the city's social and political elite. The business had a good location close to the Delaware River ferry crossings to Philadelphia and apparently yielded a good living, as Joshua Franklin purchased two other homes, at 224 Linden Street and 116 Cooper Street, before acquiring 415 and 417 Cooper. He joined fraternal organizations, including Lodge 15 of the Free and Accepted Masons. Franklin and his family lived in 415 Cooper while renting out the house next door. He improved the properties by adding wood front porches, in keeping with similar additions elsewhere on the block. He may have added the bay windows to the second and third floors, which are evident in an aerial photograph of Camden taken c. 1926 but not in a photograph of the block earlier in the twentieth century. When Franklin moved into 415 Cooper Street, his family consisted of his wife of 15 years, Mollie, and their 4-year-old daughter Edith. He was a notable enough in the community to cause his daughter's fifth birthday party to be reported in the Camden Courier Post. His personal fortunes soon took a tragic turn, however. Little Edith contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1907 at the age of 8, news that "came as a painful shock to various sections of the city where the family is well known," the Courier-Post lamented. By the end of the same year, Mollie Franklin also died, from the effects of a longstanding heart ailment. She was 38 years old. In the wake of these personal tragedies Joshua Franklin remained at 415 Cooper Street, and his community connections may explain the prominent tenants he attracted to his investment property next door: the dentist Elmer Bower, for example, and the medical inspector for Camden schools, Henry Davis. In 1909, Joshua Franklin was married for a second time, to Chellie Smith, a widow who had been working as a saleswoman for several years since her husband's death. Joshua and Chellie continued to live at 415 Cooper Street for the next 25 years, at times renting rooms to others. At the livery stable, Joshua Franklin suffered two serious injuries: in 1913, a severely broken arm that was treated by Dr. E.A.Y. Schellenger at Fifth and Cooper Streets, and in 1914 a near-electrocution that occurred during a Nor'easter when a live wire fell onto a telephone before Franklin picked up the receiver. The burns required treatment at Cooper Hospital. The appearance of automobiles in Camden during the first two decades of the twentieth century brought change and eventually the end of Franklin's livery stable. As his customers preferred their new automobiles to carriages pulled by horses, Franklin's business dealt more often with commercial clients, such as the city newspapers who still used horses to pull their delivery trucks. Franklin himself entered the automobile business with partners between 1921 and 1923, but by then in his 60s he retired and closed the stables as well. He continued to live at 415 Cooper Street with his wife, Chellie, until he died at home in 1938. In reporting his death, the Camden Morning Post recounted how his 78 years of life had spanned the age of liverymen to the age of the automobile. Time period on Cooper Street 1900-38 Location(s) - Cooper Street 116 Cooper Street (1900-3) 415 Cooper Street (residence, 1903-38) 417 Cooper Street (rental property, 1903-38) Location(s) - Other Second Street between Cooper and Market (livery stable) 224 Linden Street (home prior to 1900) 39 N. Fourth Street and 47 N. Third Street (automobile businesses) Burlington County (boyhood home) Occupation Livery stable operator Automobile dealer Birth Date October 1861 Birthplace Burlington County, New Jersey Death Date February 21, 1938, at home, 415 Cooper Street; burial in Harleigh Cemetery. Associated Individuals Mollie Campbell Franklin (first wife) Edith Campbell (daughter) Chellie Jones Smith Franklin (second wife) Etta Smith Eppler (daughter of second wife) George Franklin (brother) S.R. Franklin (brother) Joseph Franklin (uncle) Mrs. Joseph Johnson (sister) Conly D. Brooks (partner in automobile business, 1921) Residents of 417 Cooper Street, 1903-38, see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a>. Sources Camden City Directories, New Jersey and U.S. Census Records, 1900-1940 (Ancestry.com) Camden County Property Records Camden Newspapers, 1900-1952 (Newspapers.com) Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Franklin, Joshua B. Description An account of the resource Originally a livery stable operator, Joshua Franklin's life on Cooper Street spanned to the age of the automobile. 116 Cooper Street 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 400 Block 415 Cooper Street 417 Cooper Street Adult Automobiles Burlington County Death Horses Injuries Investment Livery Stable Male Widowers Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text While a widow heading a household at 415 Cooper Street, Jerusha Browning was far from alone. By marriage, she was a member of the prominent Browning family of South Jersey, whose ranks included the former New Jersey Attorney General Abraham Browning (1808-89). Her husband, Lawrence, had 17 siblings born from his father's two marriages. While living on Cooper Street for more than two decades after the death of her husband, Jerusha had a vast nearby network of relations by marriage or by lineage, including the Doughtons and Hollinsheads next door (413 Cooper), the Hinchmans (417), and other Browning households across the street (414) and in the 500 and 600 blocks. Jerusha apparently rented the three-story brick row house from its original owners, who relocated to Philadelphia but retained title until the 1880s. We cannot know why she made this choice, given that she and her son, Abraham, had inherited considerable property after her husband's death in 1858. If the $12,000 in inherited real estate lay in the South Jersey countryside, where the Brownings were extensive land holders, she may have opted for the proximity to neighbors or the potential to support the household by taking in boarders. In 1860, the residents at 415 Cooper Street included Jerusha, then age 60, Abraham, 26, another son, George, 22, daughter Margaret H., 30, and a servant, Margaret Welsh, 20. During the 1860s and 1870s, various other Browning relatives lived with Jerusha's family for short periods of time. They also continued to employ servants, including Lydia Pernell, who was African American, in 1874. Over time, however, Jerusha and her daughter Margaret began to accept boarders in their home. This began in a genteel manner by 1876, when Jerusha was 76 and her daughter 46, and their boarders included the English-born architect <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/47" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arthur Truscott</a> and his two brothers in the insurance business, James and Millwood. They would have been low-risk boarders, given that they were nephews of an insurance man already established in Camden. Of the three Truscott brothers, the architect remained with the Brownings the longest, for at least twelve years between 1876 and 1888. During this period, he established his architecture practice in Philadelphia and designed the New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company building at Third and Market Streets in Camden (1887). Later he served as a supervising architect during construction of the Camden High School built on Park Boulevard 1916-18. His firm Baily and Truscott also contributed new buildings to Cooper Street with the Chateauesque trio of houses at 538-42 Cooper Street (c. 1892)--later retained as facades for the LEAP Academy Charter School--and the Colonial Revival house at 514 Cooper (1903). After Jerusha Browning died in 1884, Margaret continued to operate the boarding house and to advertise it actively in Camden newspapers. She offered rooms for boarders on the second and third floor, in some cases connecting rooms that could be rented together. She remained in the home and in the boarding house business into her 70s. The Browning family association with 415 Cooper Street ended with the turn of the twentieth century, with Margaret H. Browning's death in 1901. Sources Browning Family Trees, Camden and Philadelphia City Directories, New Jersey State Census 1885-1895, and U.S. Census 1860-1910 (Ancestry.com). Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com) <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21581" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Truscott, Arthur (1858-1938)</a>, Philadelphia Buildings and Architects, Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Sheri Ezekiel Posted by Charlene Mires Time period on Cooper Street 1860 or earlier to 1884; daughter until 1901. Location(s) - Cooper Street 415 Cooper Street Occupation Boarding house operator Birth Date September 22, 1800 Birthplace New Jersey Death Date November 19, 1884 Associated Individuals Lawrence Browning, husband Margaret Browning, daughter Abraham Browning, son George Browning, son Margaret Welsh, servant Abraham Browning, NJ Attorney General, husband's nephew Lydia Pernell, servant (African American) Thomas Stiles, clerk, boarder Arthur Truscott, architect, boarder James Truscott, insurance, boarder Millwood Truscott, insurance, boarder Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Browning, Jerusha Description An account of the resource A member of the prominent Browning family, after the death of her husband Jerusha Browning took in boarders at 415 Cooper Street. 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 400 Block 415 Cooper Street Adult Architects Boarding House Boarding House Operator Extended Family Female Insurance Widows Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text The life of Mary Paulson, a resident of Cooper Street in the first three decades of the twentieth century, illustrates strategies employed by widows to support their families. Mary lived at 421 Cooper Street for about ten years beginning in 1897 and then after the death of her husband generated income by renting out the house while living at 419 Cooper Street next door. Her extended family included sons who joined the military during World War I, a daughter who became a school teacher, and a sister-in-law who had been in a mental institution. Mary A. Maxwell was 27 years old when she married Joseph R. Paulson, a widower 30 years her senior. Joseph, listed in public records variously as an optician, cutlery maker, and jewelry merchant in Philadelphia. They spent the first decade of their marriage in Philadelphia, but by 1897 moved to 421 Cooper Street, which Joseph may have inherited from his mother, Mildred Keen Paulson, after her death in 1875. By the 1900 Census, the household consisted of Joseph, age 64; Mary, age 34; their sons Joseph Jr., age 6, and Charles, age 5, and a housekeeper, 55-year-old Clara Brewer. By 1905, Brewer's place had been taken by 21-year-old Rachel Ball, an African American who like many others in the early twentieth century had migrated north from Virginia. The family also added a daughter, Ruth, born in 1902. The Paulsons lived at 421 Cooper Street for at least a decade and then, by 1910, made another move to the more fashionable suburb of Haddonfield. Still, they retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street. In 1911, when Joseph died, the family's former home became a source of financial security for Mary and her children. Mary rented out 421 Cooper Street to other families while living next door in 419 with her children Joseph Jr., by then then age 19; Charles, then 17; and daughter Ruth, 9. For almost a decade, her tenants in 421 were members of another extended family headed by a widow, Clara Starn, until that family moved in 1920 to Merchantville. The Paulsons' extended family at 419 Cooper included Emily L. Paulson, the sister of Mary's late husband, who had inherited the home as well as the smaller house behind it at 424 Lawrence Street. Born c. 1841, Emily lived much of her adult life with her mother, Mildred, and then her brother. But for at least ten years, while in her 60s c. 1900-1910, Emily had lived as a patient at the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. The nature of her mental illness is not known from public records, but at this West Philadelphia institution she would have experienced the "moral treatment" philosophy advocated by the founder of the hospital, Quaker physician <a href="https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride</a>. Kirkbride advocated humane treatment in beautiful surroundings, and the institution in Philadelphia inspired many other "Kirkbride Plan" hospitals around the country. In this era, causes for admission to the institution could range from grief and anxiety to severe forms of insanity. At the time of Emily's residence, the hospital's roster of patients included wives and daughters of merchants, lawyers, and other people of prominence. At age 70, Emily returned to Camden as a member of Mary Paulson's household, and the Paulsons remained at this address for the next two decades. The two teen-aged sons, both musically inclined, opened a music studio in the home to teach other young men how to play the mandolin or violin. Soon they faced more life-altering choices as the Great War began in Europe and especially when the United States entered the conflict in 1917. By then, the oldest son, Joseph Jr., still claimed 419 Cooper Street as his home address but had landed a job as an orchestra leader for a theater in Juneau, Alaska. He served as a musician in the U.S. Navy, 1918-19. His younger brother Charles served closer to home, in the quartermaster's office of the U.S. Army in Sea Girt, New Jersey, 1917-18. Both returned home to 419 Cooper Street: Charles by 1920, when the household consisted of his mother, age 54, aunt Emily, 77, and 17-year-old sister Ruth, who later became a teacher at Hatch Junior High School. Joseph returned home during the 1920s after a brief wartime marriage and later divorce. Mary Paulson retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street as a rental property until 1925, a time when changes such as construction of the Delaware River Bridge spurred investor interest in Cooper Street properties for possible conversion to business uses. The sale of 421 Cooper Street that year warranted a story in the Camden Courier-Post to note that the property had been in the hands of only two families--the Paulsons and the Coopers--since Camden's earliest history. The Paulson family's association with 419 Cooper Street lasted until the 1930s. Transfer of the property from Emily to Mary Paulson for $1 in 1931 suggests that Emily had died, and by 1937 the house was up for sale. In the midst of the Great Depression, the original price of $10,000 plummeted by more than half over three years until the house finally ended up listed for sheriff's sale to satisfy back taxes. Charles Paulson made his living as a salesman and shopkeeper, married, and began his own family in Camden and later Haddonfield; by 1940, Joseph Paulson worked as a musician at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mary Paulson, meanwhile, went to live with her by-then-married daughter Ruth Soistmann in Merchantville, ending the era of 419 Cooper Street as a single-family home. Time period on Cooper Street 1897-1930s Location(s) - Cooper Street 419 Cooper Street 421 Cooper Street Location(s) - Other Philadelphia 124 Walnut Street, Haddonfield Merchantville Occupation Head of household Birth Date September 1865 Birthplace Pennsylvania Death Date Unknown, after 1940 Associated Individuals Joseph R. Paulson (1826-1911), husband Joseph R. Paulson Jr., son Charles Paulson, son Ruth Paulson Soistmann, daughter Emily L. Paulson, sister-in-law Clara Starn, tenant Clara Brewer, housekeeper Rachel Ball, housekeeper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Paulson, Mary A. Description An account of the resource Mary A. Paulson, a widow, generated income to support her family by renting out one Cooper Street house while living in another house next door. 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 419 Cooper Street 421 Cooper Street 424 Lawrence Street Extended Family Haddonfield Merchantville Philadelphia Widows World War I