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9a862b859dc3bd9f2df80c7a7eabad28
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/6f07ab935c8a5b60fd7cf544b176ba14.pdf
f7f6a2ed645516b31b9f56b19edc1612
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Research Reports
Description
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Research by student and faculty investigators.
Publisher
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Rutgers University-Camden
Contributor
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Tia Antonelli, Lucy Davis, William Krakower, Charlene Mires, Timothy Potero
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North Baptist Church (Research Report)
Description
An account of the resource
The North Baptist Church, an important community institution, stood on the site of the Rutgers-Camden Fine Arts Building.
Creator
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Tia Antonelli
Date
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November 6, 2023
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Copyright 2023, Tia Antonelli. Do not reproduce or cite without permission of the author.
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
300 Block
Athletics
Baptists
Churches
Club
Community Institutions
Demolition
Fourth Street
Libraries
Linden Street
Music
North Baptist Church
Pastors
Religion
Rutgers University
Rutgers-Camden
Urban Renewal
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/ece34aef8698963b458aaa8b7b3298b1.jpg
0dd4a90701b0114e3f98463ce2df8901
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Title
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Streets and Blocks
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
When nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Cooper Street Historic Street included buildings in the 400 block of Lawrence Street to provide “a comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.<br />
<ul>
<li><strong><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/browse?tags=Lawrence+Street" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to house histories</a>.</strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/neatline/show/from-countryside-to-city#records/57" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Clickable map of Lawrence and Cooper Street house histories</a>.</strong></li>
</ul>
Date of construction
Houses, late 1840s-early 1850s. Garages, c. 1926-1950.
History
<p><strong>The 400 block of Lawrence Street</strong> is a remnant of working-class life in Camden as the city industrialized and its population grew rapidly. The surviving two-story rowhouses in this block date to the late 1840s and early 1850s, when Cooper family landholders began to divide their property north of Cooper Street into building lots. Because the lots extended from Cooper Street, a dominant thoroughfare, to narrow Lawrence Street, buyers had the opportunity to build houses facing both streets. This produced the dual character of the 400 block, with its substantial three-story homes facing Cooper Street as well as the smaller two-story rowhouses facing Lawrence Street. When the Cooper Street Historic Street was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Lawrence Street buildings were included to provide “a comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.” The first owners in this block lived in their Cooper Street-facing houses or leased them to prosperous tenants; the smaller Lawrence Street rowhouses, in contrast, became working-class rental properties.<br /><br /><strong>Owner-Developers</strong><br /><strong></strong></p>
<p>The Lawrence Street houses developed in four segments. In 1845 and 1846, one of the buyers of Cooper family land, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54">Hannah Atwood</a>, bought two adjoining lots and over time erected seven structures: three on Cooper Street (<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>) and four on Lawrence Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">416</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</a>). When rented to tenants, the houses provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, Jesse Atwood, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. In 1846, a Camden County public official and ferry company officer, Isaac Porter, also purchased a parcel in the 400 block for his residence at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper Street</a> and added two adjoining smaller houses on Lawrence Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>). The lots between the Atwood and Porter properties sold in 1847: A Philadelphia merchant, Joseph R. Paulson, put up two houses facing Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>) and two on Lawrence Street with a small alley between them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a>). Bank teller Jesse Townsend erected one house on Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423</a>) and two on Lawrence Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>). These transactions and investments filled in much of Cooper and Lawrence Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. Of the ten houses built on Lawrence Street, six survived into the twenty-first century. A wood-framed house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence was demolished in the 1880s; three others (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) were replaced or adapted as automobile garages in the twentieth century.</p>
<p>Tenants on Lawrence Street often changed from year to year, but their brief residence on this block made it a place of striving and struggle, births and deaths, and participation in the social and economic life of Camden. By 1854, the 400 block of Lawrence Street had at least six residents, who were documented in the Philadelphia city directory as living on “Lawrence below Fifth” in Camden. The early existence of Lawrence Street houses is also documented by an 1855 building contract that cited two of them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) as models for a row to be built elsewhere in Camden. The earliest known residents of the block included a ferryman, a cordwainer (shoemaker), a blacksmith, and a carpenter—the types of skilled trades and occupations that typified tenants on Lawrence Street during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<br /><br /><strong>Skilled Trades, Large Families</strong></p>
<p>Occupations on the block reflected nearby opportunities to earn a living. Men often worked in construction trades, which would have been in demand as North Camden filled with houses, or in jobs related to livery stables (drivers, blacksmiths, hostlers, and coachmen). Some worked on the waterfront on ferries that plied the river between Camden and Philadelphia or, later, in shipyards. Women worked in needle trades (dress making, tailoring, lace making), took in laundry, or tended to boarders in addition to housekeeping for family members. As Camden industrialized, residents of Lawrence Street also went to work in factories, including the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a> and <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> on Cooper Street.</p>
<p>Lawrence Street filled with families. The U.S. Census in 1860 recorded large families that would have strained the capacity of the houses, which typically consisted of four or five rooms. For example, Christian Bott, a sawyer, and his wife, Christiana, both German immigrants, headed a family with six children under the age of 10. Their neighbors included Nicholas Snider (or Snyder), a watchman who was born in France, and his wife, Margaret (who was born in New Jersey), who had seven children ranging in age from 5 to 19. Such large families remained common, although not universal, among Lawrence Street’s tenants throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With so many people in such close quarters, the street and backyards would have been active with children’s voices and energy.</p>
<p><strong>Women and Children</strong><br /><br />Lawrence Street’s tenants included households headed by women. They were widowed, divorced, or otherwise separated from husbands, and often they were supporting young children. At least two women on Lawrence Street tended young families while their husbands served in the Civil War (one of the children in this circumstance, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-DrLettieAllenWard.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lettie Ward</a> of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>, grew up to become Camden’s second female physician). Other women struggled to keep families together. For example, Mary Benbow, a widow who rented 418 Lawrence Street beginning in 1878, for a time surrendered three of her five children to the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/camden-home-for-friendless-children" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>. On Lawrence Street, Benbow took in washing to earn a living; two of her sons returned from the children’s home when they were old enough to work and contribute to the family economy. Other struggles of child-rearing surfaced periodically in Camden and Philadelphia newspapers in the form of advertisements, for example an 1859 notice in the Philadelphia <em>Public Ledger </em>that sought an adoptive parent for “a healthy male Child nine months old” and directed inquiries to “Lawrence Street, first house above Fourth, between Cooper and Penn, Camden.” In 1916, an ad placed in the Camden <em>Morning Post </em>read: “Home wanted for 6-year-old boy; lady works all the time; will pay small board. Call evenings. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>.”<br /><br /><strong>The Diversity of Camden</strong></p>
<p>In contrast to the mostly white, native-born homeowners on Cooper Street, Lawrence Street’s population represented many of the waves of migration and immigration that created the city’s diverse population. In addition to residents born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, immigrants or second-generation Americans who rented in this block had ancestries rooted predominantly in western European countries (Germany, England, Ireland, or France). At various times the street also had at least one Japanese-American resident and several Scandinavians and Canadians. Lawrence Street’s population also reflected the migration of African Americans from southern states to northern cities. During the late 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century, Black tenants lived in three of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>). They worked primarily in food service occupations. (One of the Black children who lived on Lawrence Street in 1902, Edward A. Reid, in later life became the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mtcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=%22Edward+A.+Reid%22+Camden+judge&source=bl&ots=E52K5r-7qb&sig=ACfU3U1nmX-QVMAcyB6D_wED5tHMaGDJnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjYvJyHjKGCAxV9v4kEHVPKBaU4ChDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Edward%20A.%20Reid%22%20Camden%20judge&f=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first Black judge to be appointed in Camden County</a>.) During the second half of the twentieth century, Lawrence Street also reflected the increasing presence of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Puerto Rican-born migrants</a> to Camden.<br /><br /><strong>From Countryside to City</strong></p>
<p>While urban in character, the houses on Lawrence Street originally looked out on a mostly rural landscape extending three-quarters of a mile northward to the bend in the Delaware River. The view changed dramatically from the 1860s through the 1880s as the Cooper family heirs sold more of their property to builders, who filled in the blocks of North Camden with houses built two or three at a time or in continuous rows. Nevertheless, the Lawrence Street houses had a bit of a buffer from dense development because they faced the site of a mansion built by a member of the Cooper family at 406 Penn Street, the next street north, around 1869. (The structure survives as the <a href="https://admissions.rutgers.edu/contact-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Admissions Office</a> for Rutgers-Camden.) Most Lawrence Street residents lost their direct view of the mansion’s expansive lawn and adjoining undeveloped lots by the 1880s, after a large stable serving the mansion was added to the north side of Lawrence Street. This addition meant that more than half the Lawrence Street houses had the sights, smells, and traffic of the stable twenty feet from their front doors.<br /><br /><strong>Automobiles Arrive</strong></p>
<p>By the 1920s and 1930s, Lawrence Street tended to house fewer people, with tenants consisting primarily of married couples or families with two or three children. More of the residents worked in factories, and fewer in trades. The advent of automobiles also changed this block as some property owners opted to build garages in place of their rental properties. The long-vacant site of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence Street, where a wood-framed house had been demolished in the 1880s, gained an automobile garage. Another garage replaced two of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>-<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>) to serve the needs of the funeral home then operating at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. Finally, in the 1940s, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434 Lawrence Street</a> was adapted into a garage as part of a renovation of the adjoining larger house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a>), which left its twin at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a> standing alone between two garages. The longstanding stable on the north side of the street also became an automobile garage.</p>
<p>Six houses remained on a block that had acquired the character of a service alley between Cooper and Penn Streets. They were included in the “hazardous” (or red-lined) zone designated in 1937 by the federal <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Home Owners’ Loan Corporation</a>. Applying a broad brush, the HOLC deemed all of North Camden north of Cooper Street and west of Tenth Street—deteriorating and stable blocks alike—as high-risk investments because of aging structures and residents perceived as “undesirable” on the basis of income, race, or ethnicity.<br /><br /><strong>Survivors of Urban Renewal</strong></p>
<p>Red-lining set the stage for later urban renewal, which also impacted the surviving houses on Lawrence Street. During the 1940s, residents on Lawrence Street gained a new neighbor when the College of South Jersey and South Jersey School of Law—the predecessor institutions of Rutgers-Camden—purchased the mansion at 406 Penn Street. While that house became an administration and classroom building, at the back of the property (across from the Lawrence Street houses) the college converted former stables and garages for classrooms and added a building for the law school in 1949. After the college affiliated with Rutgers University in 1950, the growing institution turned to urban renewal strategies to demolish six mostly-residential blocks and create an expanded campus—yet the Lawrence Street houses survived. They stood just outside the south boundary of the urban renewal zone, spared because they occupied the same block as Cooper Street-facing houses perceived as having commercial value. They remained standing as the Rutgers-Camden campus took shape, including a new law school building (constructed beginning in 1969) that backed onto Lawrence Street with a tall brick exterior wall that loomed over the houses on the opposite side.</p>
<p>During the second half of the twentieth century, some of the Lawrence Street houses remained investment properties but others were owner-occupied. Recognizing the block as an increasingly rare survivor from Camden’s history, some individuals invested in preservation as well as property. Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist whose preservation interests in Camden included the Henry Genet Taylor house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>), purchased <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a> Lawrence Street in 1969 and held them through the 1980s. The City of Camden also recognized the historic value of the block when drawing boundaries for the <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Historic District</a>, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. At the time, the Lawrence Street houses were thought to have been back-of-property dwellings for servants working on Cooper Street. Although recent research has disproved this theory, the history of the street nevertheless supports the significance stated in the National Register nomination: that Lawrence Street together with Cooper Street represents “a comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history.”</p>
<p>Rutgers University acquired the surviving Lawrence Street houses between 2005 and 2007 as it envisioned future expansion of the Camden campus. Most of the houses stood vacant by the early 2020s, awaiting future uses, but one served as the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Bank.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of the 400 block of Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Building Contract, Benjamin Browning, 1855, Camden County Historical Society.<br />Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br />Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br />Camden County Deeds.<br />Cooper Street Historic District, <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register of Historic Places Registration Form</a>, 1989.<br /><em>Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America</em> (<a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden, New Jersey</a>).<br />Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br />U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee.
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
Lawrence Street (400 Block)
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century, working-class rowhouses and twentieth-century garages.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
400 Block
Blacksmiths
Boarder/Lodger
Bricklayers
Cabinet Makers
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Coachmen
Demolition
Dressmakers
Drivers
Extended Family
Garages
Historic Preservation
Hostlers
Investment
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Redlining
Renovations
Rutgers University
Rutgers-Camden
Tailors
Urban Renewal
Widows
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b3fd7fbac5d8ea05fe050e351fdaacb2.jpg
91e3393d199bcee889b2bc7fe08c4b09
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
This one-story automobile garage demonstrates the changing character of Lawrence Street with the advent of the automobile. The structure was originally a two-story rowhouse, part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The owner of adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> purchased and adapted the property as part of a renovation of his Fifth Street-facing home and office.
Date of construction
c. 1946-55; garage conversion c. 1946.
History
<p>In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, 425 Cooper Street, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century.</p>
<p><strong>434 Lawrence Street<br /></strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden. An early tenant at 434 Lawrence Street may have been Daniel Bodine, a steamboat captain, who lived on “Lawrence below Fifth” between 1854 and 1860. His occupation may indicate an acquaintance with the property owner Isaac Porter, who served as an officer of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-WestJerseyFerry.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>. Census records of 1860 identify Daniel Bodine as a white man 33 years old, living with his wife Elizabeth, a white woman aged 32.</p>
<p>Tenants at 434 Lawrence Street during the last decades of the nineteenth century included a cabinet maker, a police officer, a packer, a machinist, a brick layer, and a paper box maker. In 1870, the tenants were cabinet maker Alexander Haines, who had lived at this address since 1863. A white man who was born in New Jersey, Haines was 52 years old in 1870 and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth, a white woman 46 years old, also born in New Jersey, and their two daughters. Daughters Anna, 15, and Ella, 11, both attended school. Work for a cabinet maker would have been plentiful in this neighborhood during these years as blocks north of Cooper Street filled with new houses, including the surviving mansion at 406 Penn Street built c. 1869. Behind that mansion and across the street from the Lawrence Street rowhouses, builder William Severns had a carpentry shop at 425 Lawrence that could have afforded employment to Haines and others. Severns, whose rising prominence in Camden led him to later service on the Board of Freeholders, developed a reputation as one of the city’s pioneer builders during the late nineteenth century.</p>
<p>Unusually, 434 Lawrence Street had one tenant who stayed for more than twenty years, from the early 1880s until 1913. Rebecca S. Lawrence, a white woman who was around 30 years old when she moved Lawrence Street, had grown up in South Camden with at least four siblings in a family headed by a laborer. Born in 1853, her childhood included her father’s service in the Civil War. By age 18, she went to work in a paper box factory and continued in that occupation throughout her years on Lawrence Street. Having married during the 1870s, she first appeared on Lawrence Street as Rebecca S. Currie (and may have first lived in adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>). By 1884, however, she had reverted to her birth name; by 1900 Census records identified her as divorced. It would have been unusual for woman to occupy a home by herself, but if Rebecca Armstrong had lodgers or relatives with her at 434 Lawrence Street, they do not appear in public records. The only exception came in 1905, when New Jersey Census takers recorded the presence of one other occupant, a widow named Mary Lake. By the time Armstrong left Lawrence Street, she was in her late 50s. She spent her later years living in Philadelphia with one of her sisters, a widow who worked as a saleslady at the John Wanamaker department store. When she and her sister returned to New Jersey in the 1930s, they lived in Burlington County.</p>
<p>At 434 Lawrence Street, Armstrong was followed in 1914 by another household headed by women, a mother and daughter who were both widowed (Martha Delaney and Margaret Wheaton), and the daughter’s 13-year-old son. They moved on when Margaret Wheaton remarried in 1915, creating a vacancy filled by the family of August Sonntag, a woodworker at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, for the decade between 1916 and 1926. Sonntag and his wife Jane (also known as Jennie), both white and born in Pennsylvania, represented converging ethnic identities—his parents had been born in Germany, and hers in Ireland. Prior to Lawrence Street, they lived at 301 Point Street, closer to the Victor manufacturing complex. While there, they suffered the death of their oldest daughter, Theresa, who succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 13. On Lawrence Street, they raised their surviving two daughters and one son to young adulthood.</p>
<p>Tenants continued to live at 434 Lawrence Street through the 1930s and most of the 1940s, but the character of the street was changing. Lawrence Street began to function as a service alley for automobiles, and garages replaced several of the rowhouses (see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">416</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a> Lawrence Street). This was the fate of 434 Lawrence Street, which was purchased in 1946 by the owner of an adjacent house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth</a>). That owner, Dr. Charles Kutner, renovated the Fifth Street house into a home and office and eliminated its deteriorated third floor in the process. Similarly, 434 Lawrence Street was reduced to one story and converted into an automobile garage, with a new concrete-block structure faced in brick joining the two structures in the back. The enlarged 211 N. Fifth Street, incorporating the former 434 Lawrence Street rowhouse, conveyed to Rutgers University as part of a multiple-property transaction with a real estate investor in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 434 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Gina Torres (Charles Kutner research).
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
434 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century former rowhouse converted to automobile garage c. 1946.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
211 N. Fifth Street
425 Cooper Street
432 Lawrence Street
434 Lawrence Street
Box Makers
Bricklayers
Cabinet Makers
Childhood
Children
Death
Demolition
Ferries
Garages
Germany
Ireland
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Packers
Philadelphia
Pneumonia
Police
Renovations
Victor Talking Machine Company
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/4b755f99bb623c328baa3835b2295ce5.jpg
3aea6df10a1d0a48be69f881fedbb000
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
<p>432 Lawrence Street originated as part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.” 432 Lawrence is notable as an early childhood home of Lettie Allen Ward, who in later life was the second female physician to practice in Camden. Its tenants also included a veteran of the Civil War and veterans of World War I.</p>
Date of construction
c. 1846-55
History
<p>In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper Street</a>, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at 432 and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/travel/ferries/west-jersey-ferry-aka-market-street-ferry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century. </p>
<p><strong>432 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden.</p>
<p>The earliest known tenants at 432 Lawrence Street connect this house with experiences of the Civil War and the rapid growth of Camden during the late nineteenth century. <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/camdenpeople-aaronward.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Aaron Ward</a>, who worked as a carpenter, rented the house between 1861 and 1863. It was, therefore, the home where Ward’s wife, Anna, lived with their toddler daughter and infant son while he went to war with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0024RI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">24<sup>th</sup> Infantry New Jersey Regiment</a> in September 1862. This regiment of men from Camden, Gloucester, and Cumberland counties deployed to Virginia. During the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battles-detail.htm?battleCode=va028" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Fredericksburg</a> in December, Ward charged with his comrades across open ground into Confederate fire and became one of the many wounded in that engagement. He took a bullet through his left lung, an injury that affected his health for the rest of his life. He returned to Camden with the sword and scabbard that he carried that day and displayed it in his home for many years thereafter.</p>
<p>Ward, a white man, was about 27 years old when he moved his young family to Lawrence Street in 1861. Born in Newton Township, Camden County, he attended the <a href="https://www.westtown.edu/about/history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Westtown School</a>—a Quaker boarding school in Chester County, Pennsylvania. At that time, the school admitted only Quaker students, so Ward would have set aside pacifist principles when he went to war. Prior to 1859, Ward married Anna, a white woman born in New Jersey, and their first child Letty (Lettie) was born that year. A son, Franklin, followed in 1861. Ward’s work as a carpenter while on Lawrence Street signaled the start of a long career in construction contracting for the growing city of Camden. He oversaw construction of sewer systems, bridges, and the concrete pier at Cooper Street wharf, among other projects. The Wards’ oldest child, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-DrLettieAllenWard.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lettie Allen Ward</a>, achieved prominence in later life as a public school teacher and principal who changed careers by enrolling at the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/womans-medical-college-of-pennsylvania/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania</a>. She became the second female physician to practice in Camden. (In her later years, she owned nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/82" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">325 Cooper Street</a>.)</p>
<p>Tenants who worked in the building trades continued to be among the occupants of 432 Lawrence Street. William M. Rutter, a ship joiner, helped to build boats and buildings for ferry services on the Delaware River, perhaps suggesting an acquaintance with his landlords in the Porter family. He and his family lived at 432 Lawrence Street for at least two years, in 1869-70, and possibly longer. Rutter, a white man born in New Jersey, was recorded as 48 years old in the 1870 Census; his household also included his wife, Sarah, also 48 years old and born in New Jersey, and their 14-year-old daughter, also named Sarah, who was born in Pennsylvania. The Census taker classified Mrs. Rutter as “insane,” but following enumeration instructions did not further specify a condition or disability. Her circumstances may explain the presence of another adult female in the house, 43-year-old Elizabeth Hewitt, who was described as the housekeeper. Also living with the family was an adult male laborer, Lorenzo F. Jones, 21 years old, who could have been another family member or a boarder.</p>
<p>Other occupations at this address during the late nineteenth century included factory workers, a janitor, a coachman, and a hostler. For most of the 1890s, 432 Lawrence Street became home to German immigrants and their American-born daughters. Jacob and Marie Schuldtheis (spelled variously in different records), in their 60s, had immigrated from Germany in 1866 and lived in Philadelphia except for their residence on Lawrence Street between 1892 and 1900. Jacob worked as a baker and as a watchman in Philadelphia, even after moving to Camden. Their adult daughters did factory work, one as a box maker and the other as a millhand. They all moved back to Philadelphia by 1900, after one of the daughters married and established a new extended family household there.</p>
<p>During the first decade of the twentieth century, tenants at 432 Lawrence Street included a dressmaker, a blacksmith, a chandelier maker, a leather worker, and laborers. The dressmaker, Rose Jolly, was living apart from her husband and raising three children under the age of 7. The chandelier maker, Theodore Dreher, and his wife, Julie, immigrated from Germany during the 1880s. Tenants during this period seldom stayed longer than one year, and some advertised their need for employment. In 1903 “a young man, in delicate health” sought work he could do at home. In 1904 a man sought work as a team driver, and a16-year-old boy sought “work of any kind, can fire small boiler; knows all about Camden and Philadelphia.” In 1905, a German woman—possibly Julie Dreher, the chandelier maker’s wife—sought washing and ironing to do at home.</p>
<p>The house at 432 Lawrence Street gained a longer-term occupant beginning in 1908, when a dressmaker named Amanda Allen began a tenancy that lasted into the 1920s. These were eventful years in which Amanda held a viewing for her deceased mother at the Lawrence Street house (1908), divorced her longtime first husband (1910), cohabited with and then married a retired Camden police officer (1917), saw her adult son enlist to fight in France during the First World War (1918-19), and held another funeral, for her second husband (1920). Allen, a white woman who was 56 years old when documented on Lawrence Street by the 1910 Census, had been born in Philadelphia, where her father worked as a blacksmith. By the time she moved to Camden around 1905, she had been married for more than thirty years to a house painter, William Allen, and their three children had reached adulthood. By 1908, however, she lived apart from her husband and moved into 432 Lawrence Street with one of her two sons, also named William, who was 21 years and working as a machinist at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> (where Amanda Allen’s widowed sister, Mary Gibson, also worked--see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424 Lawrence Street</a>). Adding to the household income, the Allens took in a boarder, initially Albert Barton, who worked in a cloth factory.</p>
<p>Legal notices in Camden newspapers confirm Amanda Allen’s divorce from her first husband in 1910 without disclosing details. Her second husband, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-GeorgeHorner.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">George W. Horner</a>, began to appear in city directories at the 432 Lawrence Street address in 1913, which could indicate he initially entered the household as a boarder. Horner, who was 10 to 12 years older than Amanda, was retired from the Camden police force and had been a member of the city’s first paid fire department in the 1870s. He continued to work as a private watchman, contributing to a feeling of security for the neighborhood on and around Cooper Street. By 1917, Horner and Allen obtained a marriage license and were wed on December 11, at the nearby <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-1stPresbyterian.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">First Presbyterian Church</a> at Fifth and Penn Streets.</p>
<p>The Horner-Allen wedding took place just as the United States broke its neutrality and entered the Great War on the side of the Allies. The following May (1918), Amanda’s son William enlisted as a private with Company I, <a href="https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/monument_details.php?SiteID=1523&MemID=2024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">316<sup>th</sup> Infantry, of the 79<sup>th</sup> Division</a> of the U.S. Army. Listing his mother at 432 Lawrence Street as his next of kin, William embarked from Hoboken on a steamship carrying American Expeditionary Forces to France. His unit participated in one of the attacks that ended the war, the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/meuse-argonne">Meuse-Argonne Offensive</a> September 26-November 11, 1918. The massive operation by more than one million troops resulted in thousands of soldiers killed and wounded, but William survived. He was honorably discharged from the Army on June 9, 1919. Returning home, he would have found his mother still working at dressmaking and living at 432 Lawrence Street, where she remained until 1923, several years beyond the death of her second husband in 1920. His funeral took place in the Lawrence Street home.</p>
<p>Another veteran of the Great War, William Walton, rented 432 Lawrence Street for the next six years, 1924-1931, and lived there with his wife, Ida. A white man in his 40s, born in Philadelphia, Walton worked for part of that period as a construction foreman. His projects included the <a href="https://rivertonhistory.com/images/camden-nj-images/stanley-theater-broadway-and-market-street-camden-nj-1936-800x506/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stanley Theater</a> at Broad and Market Streets. He earlier served in the Camden Fire Department and worked at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>; his later employment included being a foreman for the Highway Department and an engineer with a newspaper company. Ida Watson, a white woman also in her 40s when they lived at this address, was born in New Jersey and did not work outside the home.</p>
<p>During the 1930s and 1940s, the environment around 432 Lawrence Street changed in ways that left it a single home standing between two automobile garages. Sometime in 1939 or during the 1940s, two houses to the west (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>) were replaced by a garage to serve a funeral home facing Cooper Street. During the 1940s, the adjacent rowhouse at 434 Lawrence Street was purchased by the homeowner of nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> and adapted into a garage. Nevertheless, the house sandwiched between two garages remained a rental property, by this time owned as an investment by a man in the elevator construction business who lived in Barrington, New Jersey. His tenants during the early 1940s included a family of five headed by Paul Pagano, who worked as a timekeeper for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. Pagano, a white man born in Pennsylvania, was 30 years old in 1940, and shared the home with his wife Esther (25 years old, a white woman born in New Jersey) and their two sons and one daughter ages 3, 5, and 8 months. They were followed at 432 Lawrence Street by a household that apparently moved to this address from another house in the row, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420 Lawrence Street</a>. The next tenants included Earl Nelson, an immigrant from Norway who worked as a railroad machinist, and lodgers Paul and Catherine Rube and their three children. Paul Rube, who immigrated from Sweden, by 1943 worked as an icer for fruit growers; his wife Catherine, a white woman born in Pennsylvania, did not work outside the home. The Nelson/Rube household remained until at least 1947.</p>
<p>The tenants of 432 Lawrence Street are unknown for the 1950s through the 1970s, but for at least some of that period the house may have had a resident homeowner for the first time in its history. Ruth E. Darling, a nurse, sold the house in 1973 but also appeared at this address in voter registration records the following year. A series of subsequent owners included investors not living in Camden as well as sellers who listed 432 Lawrence Street as their home addresses. In 2007, owner Quan Pham of Cherry Hill sold the property to Rutgers University.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 432 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
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
432 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century, working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
325 Cooper Street
420 Lawrence Street
424 Lawrence Street
425 Cooper Street
432 Lawrence Street
Bakers
Blacksmiths
Boarder/Lodger
Box Makers
Carpenters
Chandelier Makers
Civil War
Coachmen
Construction Workers
Death
Doctors
Dressmakers
Extended Family
Factory Workers
Ferries
Firefighters
Germany
Hostlers
Investment
Janitor
Laborers
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Leather
Mental Illness
Norway
Nurses
Police
Quakers
Sweden
Victor Talking Machine Company
Watchmen
Works Progress Administration
World War I
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/1093d3fa70bf6ac5b1684d70ea33d82b.jpg
ac73eb57f91e5511da2c99eacbbc9893
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
The concrete block garage, built c. 1939-50, originally served the funeral home operating at that time at 423 Cooper Street. The garage replaced two nineteenth-century, working-class rental rowhouses.
Date of construction
c. 1939-50
History
<p>A cement-block garage, built for a Cooper Street undertaker c. 1939-50, stands on the site of two earlier rowhouses similar to others that remain standing on Lawrence Street. The earlier houses date to the period c. 1847-54, when they were built on land purchased by Jesse Townsend, a bank clerk. In 1847, Townsend acquired property extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street, and like several of his neighbors he added houses facing both streets. At <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75">423 Cooper Street</a>, Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, raised a family that grew to include five children as Jesse Townsend rose to the position of cashier at one of Camden’s key institutions, the State Bank of Camden. The smaller rowhouses on Lawrence Street were rented to tenants. During the 1860s, the Townsends sold their house and the pair of rental properties separately to new owners. They moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank, in 1862; five years later, they sold the pair of Lawrence Street houses to investors from Cumberland County.<br /><br /><strong>430 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>City directories document people living in the 400 block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854, although absence of house numbering prior to the 1860s prevents identifying tenants by address in the earliest years. The earliest known tenants of 430 Lawrence Street, in 1860-61, were a family of three headed by a coach painter, Richard S. Humphreys. A former hotel operator in Mount Holly, Burlington County, Humphreys moved to Camden sometime during the 1850s. He was a white man, 53 years old in 1860, and lived at 430 Lawrence Street with his wife Evaline, a white woman 39 years old, and their 5-year-old son, Harry. Later in life, Harry Humphreys became a prominent lumber merchant in Camden, served briefly on the city council, and helped to establish parts of the city’s park system while a member of the Camden Parks Commission.</p>
<p>Another family of three, headed by a hatter named John Gamble, lived at 430 Lawrence Street between 1865 and 1867, when the property owner Jesse Townsend put this house and adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96">428 Lawrence Street</a> up for sale. Townsend had previously sold his Cooper Street-facing house (423 Cooper) and moved closer to the State Bank of Camden, where he worked. When he advertised the Lawrence Street houses for sale in the <em>West Jersey Press</em>, Townsend described their potential as investment properties: "Two Small Houses / For Sale Cheap / The subscriber offers for sale two small Brick Houses, No. 428 and 430 Lawrence Street, Camden, N.J. These houses contain five rooms each, are well built, have range in kitchen and hydrant water in yard, and will be sold so as to net from 10 to 12 per cent per annum clear of taxes. A portion of the purchase money may remain on mortgage.” The two houses quickly sold to a couple living in Cumberland County and remained rental properties.</p>
<p>Larger families resided at 430 Lawrence Street during the 1870s and 1880s. In 1870, perhaps for just one year, a 32-year-old tugboat captain named David Hallinger headed a household of seven. A white man born in Bucks County, Hallinger had come to Camden in 1864. By 1870 his household included his wife Mary (a white woman 31 years old, the daughter of a Cape May County shipbuilder), and four children ranging in age from 7 months to 11 years old. Living with them, perhaps to assist with the infant, was a domestic servant, Telitha Stiles, a 54-year-old white woman. Hallinger and his oldest son, Hiram, in later life became active in Camden real estate development. Hiram Hallinger’s projects included houses still standing in the 700 block of Washington Street, built in the 1890s as part of the new neighborhood that emerged around Camden’s City Hall at that time. By the time Hiram Hallinger died in 1935, he was regarded as one of the city’s “pioneer builders.”</p>
<p>Tenants of 430 Lawrence Street during the late nineteenth century included widows who worked to support themselves and their families. Althea Ogden, a white woman who rented the house for at least two years (1877-78), had been married to a Pennsylvania clothing manufacturer with substantial wealth, and they had two children by the time he died in 1863. By 1870, she had moved to Haddonfield, New Jersey, where she worked as a librarian; she was then 36 years old with a 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. The circumstances that brought her to Lawrence Street are not known, but by that time her daughter had married, and her son could contribute income from his work as a paper hanger. By 1880, she and her son moved to another house on South Fourth Street. The next tenant at 430 Lawrence Street, also a widow, headed a household of six people and took in washing to earn her living. Sarah Dorsey, a white woman 43 years old, may have lived at this address for only one year. Because her presence coincided with the 1880 Census, a record of her family economy survived: Her three oldest sons (ages 20, 18, and 14) worked in labor, coach painting, and farming. The next youngest child, a 10-year-old daughter, attended school, and the youngest child, a 4-year-old son, had not yet reached school age.</p>
<p>An air of the supernatural hovered in 430 Lawrence Street for several years later in the 1880s when another widow, Anita Smith, may have supported herself by fortune-telling or had a female boarder who did. Throughout 1886-88, when Smith appeared in city directories at this address, ads in local newspapers advertised the availability of a “reliable medium” at the same location. The services and clientele were best described in this classified advertisement in 1888: “Circles Sunday and Wednesday Evenings. Reliable consultations daily. Ladies only. 430 Lawrence St., bet 4<sup>th</sup> and 5<sup>th</sup> Cooper and Penn St.”<br /><br />An incident in 1892 provides a rare glimpse into the contrasting circumstances between narrow Lawrence Street with its small rental rowhouses and the adjacent blocks of more prosperous Cooper Street and Penn Street. As reported in the Camden <em>Morning Courier,</em> a “Mrs. O’Conner” living at 430 Lawrence Street fell into dire straits because her husband—“a man of ability and education” who “held a good position in Philadelphia”—had been sentenced to jail. The privileged residents of Penn Street took notice when the woman and her two children, one of them an infant, became ill. Mrs. O’Conner “was too proud to throw herself on the charity of her neighbors,” the newspaper reported, “but a few charitable families on Penn Street learning of her sad case visited her and found her and her children suffering for the necessities of life.” The neighbors assisted and paid her doctor’s bills for a month, but the newspaper noted that the woman and her children faced a future of dependence on the Overseer of the Poor.</p>
<p>Occupations among the frequently-changing tenants during the early 1890s included driver, polisher, shoe cutter, and clerk. By 1894, 430 Lawrence Street became home to a news dealer, Charles W. Dreher, a son of German immigrants. Dreher and his wife, Hattie, had gained some notoriety in Camden when they married in 1891. At that time, Charles was 16 years old and swore to a minister that he was 21 in order to marry a woman nearly 10 years older. The couple rented 430 Lawrence Street between 1894 and 1898 and left Camden several years later. The groom’s mother was reported to be bitterly opposed to the marriage; in the 1900 Census, she claimed to have only one child, a 17-year-old daughter still living at home.</p>
<p>Like several of the other houses on Lawrence Street, during the first decade of the twentieth century 430 Lawrence became home to Black tenants. Isaac Brown, a Black man who rented the house between 1900 and 1907, worked as a railroad porter and messenger, and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth. Discrepancies in census records and the existence of multiple individuals with the same names obscure the details of their lives, but one or both of the Browns had family connections with Black migrants from southern states. Living with them on Lawrence Street during 1900 and 1901, a Black woman named Lizzie Harris (possibly a relative or boarder) worked as an ironer. In the 1900 Census, Lizzie Harris was recorded at a different Camden address as 20 years old, born in Virginia, and unable to read or write. She was newly married to John Harris, a 24-year-old day laborer who had also been born in Virginia.</p>
<p>Tenants at 430 Lawrence Street reflected the fluidity of Camden’s population during the early twentieth century, as industries grew and the city attracted new residents from across the nation and abroad. While some tenants were born in New Jersey, others showed how a more mobile population led to marriages and families that would have been unlikely in earlier eras. John S. Sheidell, a bartender who rented 430 Lawrence Street between 1911 and 1920, was a white man born in Pennsylvania; his father was also born in Pennsylvania, but his mother was born in New York. Sheidell’s wife, Gertrude, was born in Colorado to a mother born in Pennsylvania and a father born in Nevada.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, the Cooper Street-facing house behind 428 and 430 Lawrence Street had become a funeral home and residence for the operator, Charles Hiskey. The Lawrence Street houses remained rental properties for a succession of tenants during the 1920s and 1930s, with tenants at 430 Lawrence Street who included a chauffeur for the nearby F.W. Ayer/Wilfred Fry family on Penn Street and a widow who had immigrated from Ireland in 1910. However, in 1939 Hiskey bought both of the adjoining rowhouses and built a concrete-block automobile garage in their place. The garage changed hands in concert with 423 Cooper Street through a series of owners in the later twentieth century, including a doctor who had his office in the Cooper Street building during the 1960s and 1970s. Rutgers University first gained title to the properties in 1984 and in the early 1990s, after demolishing 423 Cooper Street, entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm. The project included renovations of 321 and 411 Cooper Street and the potential for new construction in place of 423 Cooper. However, by 1998 that project faltered. With the garage still standing on the site of the Lawrence Street rowhouses, Rutgers regained title to the property again in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 430 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. At 430 Lawrence Street, the tenants included one individual, Thomas Whiteside, who is known to have worked as a chauffeur for the F.W. Ayer/Wilfred Fry family on nearby Penn Street. This raises the possibility that other individuals with the occupation "driver" may have worked for that household as well. This research updates and corrects the record, finding no known servants associated with Cooper Street households.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
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
430 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Garage, built c. 1939-50 on former site of two nineteenth-century rowhouses.
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
430 Lawrence Street
African Americans
Banking
Bartenders
Black Migration
Boatmen
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Coach Painters
Colorado
Demolition
Drivers
Farmers
Funeral Homes
Garages
Germany
Haddonfield
Hatters
Investment
Ironers
Laborers
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Librarians
Lumber
Mediums
Messengers
Mount Holly
Nevada
New York
Parks
Pennsylvania
Polishers
Porters
Public Officials
Rutgers University
Servants
Shoemakers
Weddings
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b4c797de75db0d2a78cff5f85a2a9713.jpg
ac73eb57f91e5511da2c99eacbbc9893
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
The concrete block garage, built c. 1939-50, originally served the funeral home operating at that time at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. The garage replaced two nineteenth-century, working-class rental rowhouses. The house at 428 Lawrence Street was the early childhood home and possibly the birthplace of Edward A. Reid, who later in life was the first Black judge to be appointed for the Camden County courts.
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>A cement-block garage, built for a Cooper Street undertaker c. 1939-50, stands on the site of two earlier rowhouses similar to others that remain standing on Lawrence Street. The earlier houses date to the period c. 1847-54, when they were built on land purchased by Jesse Townsend, a bank clerk. In 1847, Townsend acquired property extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street, and like several of his neighbors he added houses facing both streets. At <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, raised a family that grew to include five children as Jesse Townsend rose to the position of cashier at one of Camden’s key institutions, the State Bank of Camden. The smaller rowhouses on Lawrence Street were rented to tenants. During the 1860s, the Townsends sold their house and the pair of rental properties separately to new owners. They moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank, in 1862; five years later, they sold the pair of Lawrence Street houses to investors from Cumberland County. </p>
<p><strong>428 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The absence of house numbering prior to 1861 prevents identifying tenants by address in earlier years, but city directories document people living in the 400 block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. The earliest who can be identified with certainty at 428 Lawrence Street were members of the extended family of a blacksmith, John A. Brown, who lived at this address between 1861 and 1867. When documented in 1860 at their previous address, they were a household of nine people. Brown, a white man 47 years old, born in New Jersey, headed the household with his wife, Debra, a white woman 44 years old, and they had five offspring ranging in age from 9 to 22. Their oldest daughter worked as a dressmaker, and their oldest son as a journeyman hatter. Also in the household were plasterer Van T. Shivers and a 2-year-old child, Lorenzo Shivers, who may have been a son-in-law and grandchild of the Browns. By 1863 the Browns left the Lawrence Street address, but Shivers stayed until 1867.<br /><br />In 1867, the owner of the adjacent 428 and 430 Lawrence Street rowhouses, Jesse Townsend, put them up for sale. Townsend had already sold the associated Cooper Street-facing house (423 Cooper) and moved to another Cooper Street house closer to the State Bank of Camden, where he worked. When Townsend advertised the Lawrence Street houses for sale in the <em>West Jersey Press</em>, he described their potential as investment properties: "Two Small Houses / For Sale Cheap / The subscriber offers for sale two small Brick Houses, No. 428 and 430 Lawrence Street, Camden, N.J. These houses contain five rooms each, are well built, have range in kitchen and hydrant water in yard, and will be sold so as to net from 10 to 12 per cent per annum clear of taxes. A portion of the purchase money may remain on mortgage.” The two houses quickly sold to a couple living in Cumberland County and remained rental properties.</p>
<p>Tenants moved in and out of the 428 Lawrence Street rowhouse frequently for the rest of the nineteenth century. Their occupations reflected the range of skilled trades then in demand in Camden, including building trades (mason, carpenter, bricklayer); crafts (tinsmith, caner, weaver); and clothing-related occupations for women (tailoress, dressmaker). Tenants at 428 Lawrence Street also included a railroad brakeman and people working in office jobs (clerk, stenographer). Most tenants during this period, to the extent that they can be identified, were white and born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, although some had parents who were immigrants. In large families, adult children worked outside the home, but younger sons and daughters attended school.</p>
<p>By 1900, 428 Lawrence Street and several others nearby became homes to Black families with members who migrated from the South in the decades following the Civil War. James T. Reid, a Black man born in North Carolina, migrated to Philadelphia by 1890 and then, after marrying and starting a family, moved to Camden by 1899. The Reid family rented 428 Lawrence Street between 1899 and 1903. Reid worked as a butler and waiter while at this address and later as a gardener and odd-jobs laborer. In 1900 on Lawrence Street, the Reids were a household of six people: James Reid, 34 years old; his wife, Mary, a Black woman 34 years old, who was born in New Jersey; and four daughters ranging from 1 to 8 years old. While at this address, the Reids added two sons to their family.</p>
<p>One of the sons born to the Reid family while they lived at this address became prominent in later years as the first Black judge appointed for the Camden County courts. Edward A. Reid, born on May 29, 1902, later graduated from Camden High School, Howard University, and the Howard University law school. He returned to Camden to practice and served as a borough solicitor and municipal judge for the predominantly Black community of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/lawnside-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawnside</a>, as an assistant Camden County prosecutor, and ultimately as Camden County Juvenile and Domestic Relations judge. For a time he had his law office at Sixth and Cooper Streets, not far from his first home in Camden; by the time he died in 1967 he lived in the nearby Northgate Apartments, then a recently built luxury high-rise. Active in community affairs including the NAACP and United Fund of Camden County, in 1965 Reid received a community service award from the AFL-CIO.</p>
<p>Racial and ethnic diversity continued to be present at 428 Lawrence Street in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1905-06, the tenants were Joseph Mallay, a chef who had been born in Japan in 1860, and his wife, Elizabeth, a Black woman whose parents had been born in Virginia. Several tenants later, in 1910, three occupants of 428 Lawrence Street had ancestral connections with western Europe: Andrew Wiliams, 38 years old and working as a cook in a canning factory, was a son of a German immigrant; his wife, Margaret, also 38 years old, immigrated from Ireland. They shared the home with a widowed woman of the same age, Clara A. Stewart, a daughter of German immigrants who worked as a trimmer in a lace factory. By 1915, a couple both born in England occupied the home: Thomas H. Hewley, 33 years old, a steamfitter, his wife, Florence, age 37, and their 4-year-old son Thomas. By 1920, a young couple who were both Irish immigrants lived at 428 Lawrence Street with their infant daughter.</p>
<p>Tenants of the early twentieth century sought employment by placing ads in local newspapers. Women sought to do washing at home, and at times they offered rooms for rent even though the house totaled only four or five rooms. A baker advertised his skills at making bread; another sought work “of any kind.” In 1912, an advertisement described an occupant of 428 Lawrence Street as well as his skills: “Middle-aged, fairly educated, temperate man, wants position of any responsible nature; thoroughly understands reading of blueprints and handling of men.”</p>
<p>After years of frequent turnover of tenants, 428 Lawrence Street gained relatively long-term renters during the 1920s when it became home to the family of a shipyard worker, Frank J. Read, and his wife, Eva. They had been married about ten years when they moved from another rental a few blocks away on Mickle Street. Both of the Reads were children of immigrants, in his case from Ireland and in her case from Austria. When they moved to Lawrence Street, Frank Read was 31 years old and Eva was 27; while at this address, their family grew from three children to six, and the household may have included one other adult lodger or relative, an Irish immigrant widow, Sara Colley.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, the Cooper Street-facing house behind 428 and 430 Lawrence Street had become a funeral home and residence for the operator, Charles Hiskey. The Lawrence Street houses remained a rental property for a succession of tenants during the 1930s, but in 1939 Hiskey bought them and then built a concrete-block automobile garage in their place. The garage changed hands in concert with 423 Cooper Street through a series of owners in the later twentieth century, including a doctor who had his office in the Cooper Street building during the 1960s and 1970s. Rutgers University first gained title to the properties in 1984 and in the early 1990s, after demolishing <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm. The project included renovations of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/69" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">411 Cooper Street</a> and the potential for new construction in place of 423 Cooper. However, by 1998 that project faltered. With the garage still standing on the site of the Lawrence Street rowhouses, Rutgers regained title to the property again in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 428 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. At 428 Lawrence Street, one individual worked as a butler and waiter and several others as domestics, but none are known to have been employed on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee.
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
428 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Garage, built c. 1939-50 on former site of two nineteenth-century rowhouses.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
423 Cooper Street
428 Lawrence Street
African Americans
Attorneys
Austria
Automobiles
Bakers
Banking
Black Migration
Blacksmiths
Bricklayers
Butlers
Caners
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Demolition
Dressmakers
England
Extended Family
Factory Workers
Funeral Homes
Garage
Gardeners
Germany
Hatters
Howard University
Investment
Ireland
Japan
Judges
Laundries
Lawnside
Lawrence Street
Masons
North Carolina
Plasterers
Rooming House
Rutgers-Camden
Shipyard Workers
Tinsmiths
Virginia
Waiters
Weavers
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/0d9b5e8aa2d0a322030100729f9a6991.jpg
41ec076e0f91f685c84b7410d9ca645c
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
426 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>At the back of two Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>), two smaller houses with a small alley between them were added facing Lawrence Street sometime after 1847. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased that year by Joseph R. Paulson, a Philadelphia merchant active in that city’s volunteer fire companies. Although just 35 years old when he bought the lots, Paulson apparently anticipated a need to assure future financial security for his family by 1848, when he placed the land and its ‘premises” in trust with his mother-in-law so that rents could be collected to support his wife and two young children. Paulson died in 1849 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage while living in one of the Cooper Street-facing houses, and true to his wishes the four structures on his land generated income and at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades.</p>
<p><strong>426 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents beginning in 1854, according to city directories. The earliest tenants who can be identified at 426 Lawrence Street included a man who later rose to prominence in Camden, Charles E. Derby, who rented the house between 1859 and 1861. Derby, a journeyman machinist born in Massachusetts, was a white man in his early 30s when he lived at 426 Lawrence with his wife, Susan (also white and in her early 30s), and their infant daughter Orilla. Shortly after they left Lawrence Street, in 1863, Derby co-founded the firm Derby & Weatherby (also known as the Camden Machine Works). Over the next four decades, the company grew at Delaware and Cooper Streets, where it produced machines for many of Camden’s waterfront industries. The firm specialized in building marine engines, including the engines that powered ferryboats operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. By the time Derby died in 1901, he was described as “well known to machinists throughout the country.”</p>
<p>By 1865, the house at 426 Lawrence Street became home to a family that stayed for three decades, longer than any other residents of the block during the nineteenth century. The location would have been ideal for a house carpenter, the occupation of the head of household, William C. Bates. At that time and into the 1870s, builders were buying lots of land north of Cooper Street and rapidly putting up houses in pairs, groups of three, and entire rows. The distinctive Linden Terrace block (Linden Street between Fourth and Fifth Street) developed in 1871, for example. From Lawrence Street, Bates would have had a direct view, and potentially an opportunity for work, as builder Joseph Cooper constructed his unusually large, grand mansion at 406 Penn Street in 1869. Another of the city’s prominent builders, William Severns, had a carpentry shop across the street from Bates while that project was underway.</p>
<p>The Census of 1870 documented the Bates family as William, 54 years old, a white man; his wife Sarah, a white woman 55 years old; and their son Samuel, who was 30 years old and employed as a box maker. All were born in New Jersey. Unusual among their neighbors on working-class Lawrence Street, the Bates family employed or had a boarder who was a domestic servant, 19-year-old Maggie Johnson, for at least that one year. The family stayed on Lawrence Street until William Bates’s death in 1895, when he was 80 years old. His funeral took place from the house they had occupied for the last three decades.</p>
<p>Another relatively long-term tenant family occupied 426 Lawrence Street between 1896 and 1904. Like others on Lawrence Street during these years, William J. Roche and his wife, Rose, were immigrants—both had immigrated separately from Ireland during the 1870s and later married in the United States. They lived in Pennsylvania prior to moving to Camden sometime after 1888, following the birth of two children. William Roche appeared in Camden city directories as a clerk, but during the 1900 Census he identified his occupation as musician. That year while living on Lawrence Street, he was 49 years old; his wife, Rose, was 40 years old, and their two children, 13-year-old Regina and 12-year-old Gerald, were attending school. The family left Lawrence Street by 1905 and by 1910 had moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where William Roche worked as a piano polisher.</p>
<p>Tenants moved in and out frequently for the next two decades. Their occupations included steam fitter, printer, and molder, driver, machinist, bank watchman, and woodworker. At least one tenant family offered boarding for one or two working men. For a time during 1905, an unlicensed <a href="https://sciencehistory.org/collections/blog/stomping-the-margarine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oleo margarine</a> manufactory was set up at 426 Lawrence Street by an operator who sought to evade taxes by producing an unlabeled product for local stores. Inspectors hauled away 1,000 pounds of margarine as well as the machinery that produced it. The incident was an exceptional manufacturing use of the property, which otherwise remained rented to residential tenants.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) prompted changes on Cooper Street as local real estate interests pushed to transform the residential street into a commercial thoroughfare. During this period, the longtime owners of 426 Lawrence Street, the Paulson family, put the house up for sale along with its companion Cooper Street-facing house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper Street</a>). At the time, a daughter-in-law of the original Paulson property owner, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, lived in 421 Cooper Street and derived income from renting out the other inherited houses. The sale of 421 Cooper and 426 Lawrence Street from Mary Paulson to the Bell-Oliver Corporation of Camden made news for the property’s lineage in Camden history. The Camden <em>Daily Courier</em> noted that only two families—the Paulsons and, before them, the Coopers—had owned the parcel since the time of the city’s founding.<br /><br />While Cooper Street transitioned to business uses, Lawrence Street remained a row of residential rental properties. For most of the 1920s, spanning the period of the sale of the property and renovation of the Cooper Street-facing house, 426 Lawrence Street was the home of a shipyard worker, Frank Kenny, and his wife Jeannette (who had previously lived down the street at 418 Lawrence). By 1930, a machine hand at the RCA Victor radio factory, Maybel Gray, rented the house. A white female, 33 years old, Gray headed a household of two children, ages 12 and 14, who were attending school.<br /><br /> The continued pairing of 426 Lawrence and 421 Cooper Street as one parcel was evident through the presence and transactions of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helen C. Waters</a>, a widow, who rented space in the remodeled 421 Cooper Street beginning in 1934. At that address, she operated her business, Helen’s Beauty Shoppe, and made a home for herself and two daughters. By 1943, after her daughters were grown, she moved to the smaller Lawrence Street house and subsequently bought the entire property, including 421 Cooper Street, in 1945. The property changed ownership again in 1947, transferring to an optometrist who ran his business in the Cooper Street-facing house but continued to rent 426 Lawrence Street to residential tenants. In 1950, Census takers recorded the occupant as Marguarite A. Graves, a 46-year-old white female working as a professional singer.</p>
<p>Frequently put up for rent or sale during the 1950s and 1960s, 426 Lawrence Street apparently also benefitted from a facelift to meet modern expectations. In 1953, a rental ad for the property described the house for potential tenants: “Teacher, business couple or widow looking for a modern central city home, here is a lovely tile bath, modern kitchen with dinette, one large bedroom, gas heated, living room and storage room.” The house, which had been standing for a century by the 1950s, also began to attract interest as a remnant of Camden history. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 426 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424 Lawrence</a>, in 1969. Teitelman, a psychologist by profession, saved other properties on Cooper Street and nearby during this period, including the distinctive <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a> designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre (later the Rutgers-Camden Writers House). He owned the pair of Lawrence Street houses until 1989; by 2004 they were in the hands of a real estate broker who sold them to Rutgers University in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 426 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. At this address, research located one individual identified as a domestic servant, but she lived within the household of a tenant family.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee.
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
426 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
426 Lawrence Street
Beauticians
Boarder/Lodger
Box Makers
Bridge Impact
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Crime
Death
Derby & Weatherby
Drivers
Hemmorhage
Historic Preservation
Investment
Ireland
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Massachusetts
Merchants
Molders
Musicians
Oleo
Philadelphia
Printers
RCA
Renovations
Rutgers University
Servants
Shipyard Workers
Steam Fitters
Watchmen
Woodworkers
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/71e6707f8bcef09179ba518f552651c3.jpg
7271153aa049bf97d08cbbba199e6528
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
424 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>At the back of two Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>), two smaller houses with a small alley between them were added facing Lawrence Street sometime between 1847 and 1854. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased in 1847 by Joseph R. Paulson, a Philadelphia merchant active in that city’s volunteer fire companies. Although just 35 years old when he bought the lots, Paulson apparently anticipated a need to assure future financial security for his family by 1848, when he placed the land and its "premises” in trust with his mother-in-law so that rents could be collected to support his wife and two young children. Paulson died in 1849 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage while living in one of the Cooper Street-facing houses, and true to his wishes the four structures on his land generated income and the Cooper Street-facing houses at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades.</p>
<p><strong>424 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents beginning in 1854, according to city directories. The earliest tenants who can be identified at 424 Lawrence Street were a family of five headed by a journeyman tailor, Charles Lewis, who lived in this house from 1858 until 1869. Lewis, a white man who was 38 years old in 1860, headed a family that included his wife, Sarah, age 32, and three children ranging in age from 2 years old to 11 (the older two attending school). The parents and their oldest child were all born in Pennsylvania; the two younger children were both born in New Jersey, indicating a move across the river in the early 1850s. While living at 424 Lawrence Street, by 1868 Charles Lewis changed his occupation or added a second position as collector of water rents for the Camden Water Works. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to a different home on Eighth Street.</p>
<p>During the last decades of the nineteenth century, tenants at 424 Lawrence included a barber, machinists, a boot and shoe maker, a sawyer, and a laborer. One of the longest-residing tenants during this period was a widow, Mary Davis, who earned her living as a dress trimmer while living at this address between 1881 and 1888. Davis, a white woman in her 30s, had previously boarded in another family’s home with her two children, so the move to a rented house on Lawrence Street may have been a step forward for the family. For most of the 1890s and into the first year of the new century, the tenants at 424 Lawrence were an extended family including Irish immigrants and their second- and third-generation children and grandchildren. Most consistently through this period, a laborer named William Thompson and his wife, Mary—a daughter of Irish immigrants—headed the household. By 1897, they shared the home with Mary Thompson’s Irish parents, John and Mary Reilly (or Riley), who moved in around the time Mary gave birth to the couple’s third child. The need for additional adults in the home may have been related to Mary’s health; she died in 1900 at the age of 33 from causes not publicly disclosed, leaving behind three children then aged 2 to 15. As the family circumstances changed, William Thompson’s occupation advanced from laborer to policeman, with the family economy also supported by John Reilly’s work as a carpenter and Mary Reilly’s work as a tailor. They left 424 Lawrence Street in 1901.</p>
<p>Additional nationalities were represented among tenants at this address in the early decades of the twentieth century, reflecting the diversity of Camden’s immigrant population. During 1904 and 1905, the residents were a Dutch family headed by John Vendengenten, a coachman who was 48 years old in 1905. He and his wife, Elizabeth, age 42, and their older son Johann, 19, had immigrated from Holland nine years before; a younger son, 7-year-old Rudolph, was born after they arrived in New York. While at 424 Lawrence Street, Elizabeth Vendengenten placed a newspaper advertisement offering her labor to do washing or cleaning. By 1910, the residents at this address included a woman born in French-speaking Canada, Corrine Barkley, whose Pennsylvania-born husband William worked in a livery stable and later as a driver. Both of their children had been born in New Jersey. From 1915 to 1923, a second-generation couple whose parents had been German immigrants, Gilbert and Emma Hicks, occupied the home. Gilbert worked as a carpet-layer and department store clerk, and his wife apparently did not work outside the home. And in 1930, another second-generation couple whose parents had been born in Ireland lived at this address.</p>
<p>The house at 424 Lawrence Street also had a connection with Camden’s emergence as an industrial center through the life experience of Mary Gibson, a tenant during the 1920s who worked at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>. In her 70s by the time she lived on Lawrence Street, Gibson had been a widow since 1895, when her husband, Joshua, died from pulmonary consumption at the age of 37; their only son, Howard Sands Gibson, died in 1905 at the age of 19 from tuberculosis. Dependent on her own labor for support, Gibson went to work at the Victor Talking Machine Company by 1905, within a few years of the company’s founding. She remained in the Victor workforce as an inspector, assembler, and record maker for more than two decades as the company grew to one of Camden’s major industries. She was still making records at Victor when she moved to 424 Lawrence Street. Previously she had lived as a boarder or roomer with other families; at Lawrence Street she shared the house with her brother William Sands, an artist, until 1928. She died one year later, at age 74, then living in Audubon, New Jersey.</p>
<p>The long history of 424 Lawrence Street as an income generator for the original owners, the Paulson family, came to an end during the late 1930s. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, a daughter-in-law of the first Paulson owner, had lived in one of the property’s Cooper Street-facing houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419 Cooper</a>) since 1912 while renting out the other houses. By 1938, however, she had gone to live with a daughter in Merchantville and put 419 Cooper Street and 424 Lawrence Street up for sale (the adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426 Lawrence</a> houses were sold earlier, during the 1920s). Coinciding with the Great Depression, the offer of the two houses, by then close to 90 years old, failed to find a buyer despite steady reductions in the asking price. After several appearances in legal notices for taxes and sheriff’s sales, Paulson turned the property over to the First Camden National Bank and Trust Company in 1940.</p>
<p>Under new owners in the 1940s and 1950s, 424 Lawrence Street remained a rental property with tenants who included employees of RCA (which acquired the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929). By 1969, the house and others in the 400 block became subjects of interest for their historical value. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 424 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, 426 Lawrence, in 1969. Teitelman, a psychologist by profession, saved other properties on Cooper Street and nearby during this period, including the distinctive <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a> designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre (later the Rutgers-Camden Writers House). Teitelman’s tenants on Lawrence Street included students from Rutgers-Camden, who were believed to be responsible for marijuana plants found growing behind 424 Lawrence Street in 1972. The students also became targets for crime, including a 1973 incident of armed robbery at 424 Lawrence Street that netted stereo equipment and more than $3,000 in cash. After two more transfers of ownership during the 1990s and early 2000s, Rutgers University purchased 424 Lawrence Street in 2005. The building later housed the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Pantry.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 424 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Kevin Johnson (research about Mary Gibson).
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
424 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
424 Lawrence Street
Barbers
Cabinet Makers
Canada
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Coachmen
Crime
Death
Dressmakers
Drivers
Extended Family
Germany
Hemmorhage
Historic Preservation
Holland
Investment
Ireland
Laborers
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Merchants
Philadelphia
Rutgers-Camden
Sawyers
Shoemakers
Tailors
Victor Talking Machine Company
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/7dc1b16dc1b0c4bce1ef2e640276b543.jpg
e37d1e248475778690ee7e30374e3adf
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
422 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history" and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden." 422 Lawrence Street is notable for its connections with many of the waves of migration and immigration that formed Camden's diverse population.
Date of construction
c. early 1850s
History
At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States.<br /><br /><strong>422 Lawrence Street</strong><strong> <br /></strong>
<p>The two-story, four-room brick house at 422 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering limits the identification of tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories documented people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. The earliest tenant of 422 Lawrence Street who can be identified from public records was Charles Storm, a hat finisher, who rented the house in 1860-61. Storm, 42 years old in 1860, was a white man born in New York who headed a household of six people at this address: his wife, Ann, a white woman also 42 years old, who was born in Philadelphia, and four children ranging in age from 2 to 22. The oldest daughter, Catharine, worked as a dressmaker.</p>
<p>By 1862, a veteran of the Civil War headed the family who rented 422 Lawrence Street. Montraville Williams served as a drum major with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0003RI01" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Third New Jersey Volunteer Infantry</a>. Born in Massachusetts in 1832, Williams was educated at the private, nonsectarian Leicester Academy and worked as a bootmaker before relocating to Camden in the mid-1850s. While working as a cordwainer (shoemaker), in 1855 he married Pennsylvania-born Fanny Riley in Camden’s Third Street Methodist Episcopal Church. By the time of the 1860 Census, they lived in Camden and their family had grown to include three daughters, the oldest 11 years old (apparently born to one of the parents prior to their marriage) and two younger girls ages 1 and 3.</p>
<p>By the time he went off to war, Montraville Williams identified his occupation as musician, and his military role as a principal musician meant that he trained drummers who beat cadences for troops in the field. During his enlistment from May 1861 until October 1862, his unit participated in the defense of Washington, D.C., and advanced into Virginia and Maryland with the Army of the Potomac. Williams mustered out of service following the Battle of Antietam with an unspecified disability. At home, meanwhile, Fanny fought battles of her own. She dealt with the death of their 2-year-old daughter Ella, who contracted smallpox and died in November 1861. Sometime within the next year, she and her surviving girls moved into the 422 Lawrence Street house, and she gave birth to another daughter there in October 1862, around the same time her husband returned from the war.</p>
<p>Disruptions and losses continued for the Williams family during the next six to seven years at the Lawrence Street address. In 1863 another of their daughters, six-year-old Ida, died of scarlet fever while on a visit to her father’s hometown in Massachusetts. By 1869, Montraville apparently left the family and Camden. Fanny appeared alone at 422 Lawrence Street in the Camden city directory in 1869, an indication of the absence of a male head of household. Thereafter, she moved to other addresses in Camden as she sought to support herself and her daughters as a tailoress and music teacher. She struggled in later life, including the public embarrassment of an eviction for nonpayment of rent that was reported in two Camden newspapers in 1888. Montraville, meanwhile, moved west. He may have lived in Chicago for a time, and he was later rumored to be in California. He died in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1905. That year, his long-estranged wife filed for a widow’s pension based upon her husband’s service during the Civil War.</p>
<p><strong>Migrants to Camden: From Europe, the South, the Midwest, and Puerto Rico</strong></p>
<p>Industrialization and immigration to Camden are evident in the next series of tenants at 422 Lawrence Street. By 1870 a miller named Joseph Webster headed a household of six people, including two grown daughters who worked in a shoe factory. By 1880, an immigrant from Germany, Charles Kemmick, worked as a gardener and headed a family of four including his wife Caroline, whose parents were German immigrants, a 4-year-old son, and infant daughter. Occupations represented among the often-changing tenants of 422 Lawrence Street during this period included laborers, shoe cutters, drivers, bookkeepers, and a clerk.</p>
<p>Toward the end of the nineteenth century, 422 Lawrence Street had Black tenants for the first time – among the few Black residents at this or any other house in the Lawrence Street row. Records may not account for the full extent of these African American households, but they document the presence in 1896 of Martha Woolford, a Black widow who had recently been employed as a domestic at nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/77" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">407 Cooper Street</a>. After a short tenancy by a white family, the next two renters between 1899 and 1903 were Black food service workers. John and Addie Davis, a married couple in their late twenties, had both been born in Virginia and migrated by 1894 to Philadelphia. By 1899 they were in Camden and renting the house at 422 Lawrence Street. John Davis worked as a baker. The next tenant, a caterer, had been a lodger with another Black family in Camden prior to moving to Lawrence Street with one young son. At their previous address in 1900, Lena Duvall had been recorded as 40 years old, born in Delaware, and her son Leo was then three years old. The Census takers did not find Lena’s husband of eight years at home, although he apparently lived at least intermittently with his family in both locations. In 1901, he was accused of bigamy in Philadelphia after marrying another woman, and Lena crossed the river to present documentation of her marriage in court. She remained on Lawrence Street until 1903.</p>
<p>The fluidity of Camden’s population as industry expanded on the city’s waterfront is reflected by the tenants at 422 Lawrence Street by 1910, when a packer working at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> headed the family at this address. Charles L. Rhodes, a white man 54 years old, had been born in New York. His wife of seventeen years, 51-year-old Marietta, had been born in Georgia. They had one son, Arthur, who was sixteen years old in 1910 and attending school. The expansion of shipbuilding on the Delaware River also brought tenants to 422 Lawrence Street: throughout the 1920s, it became home to a family headed by a riveter, Albert Adams, a white man who was born in Ohio to parents who had immigrated from France and Germany. Forty years old in 1920, his household included his wife, Mabel, who was five years younger, also born in Ohio but to parents who had both been born in Virginia. Mabel’s mother and brother lived with the couple; her brother also worked in a shipyard on the Delaware. While Mabel’s brother moved on at some time during the 1920s, the rest of the family stayed on Lawrence Street through at least 1930.</p>
<p>The house at 422 Lawrence Street remained a rental property through the Great Depression, although the identities of tenants are scarce because Camden did not publish city directories between 1931 and 1940. In 1940, the tenants included Charles Smith, a white man who worked as a church janitor, and his wife, a presser in a factory. Thereafter, however, the occupants of the house reflected the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rising presence of Puerto Ricans</a> in Camden. From 1943 until at least 1950, Puerto-Rican born Santos and Lucy Martinez headed a family of six at this address; at some point, they also purchased the home. The 1950 Census recorded Santos as 47 years old, white, and working as an electrician in a shipyard; Lucy, ten years younger than her husband, also white, operated a sewing machine in a dress factory. Their children, all of whom had been born in Puerto Rico, included four at home ranging in age from 15 to 21, in addition to an oldest son attending William Penn College in Iowa. Margarita, the oldest of their offspring at home, worked as a mender in a hosiery mill, and a nineteen-year-old son was a pin boy in a bowling alley. Another son, Nestor, turned eighteen in 1950, enlisted in the Army, and departed that year for basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina.</p>
<p>The history of 422 Lawrence Street next appears in the public record in the 1970s, when periodic missed tax payments put the property at risk of sheriff’s sale. In 1978, Santos and Lucy Martinez, who by then lived in suburban Woodlynne, sold the house Eric and Ellen Eifert, who then lived at 418 Lawrence Street. The Eiferts, who later purchased <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420</a> Lawrence Street as well, sold all three properties to Rutgers University in 2007.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 422 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. One woman employed as a domestic servant on Cooper Street lived at 422 Lawrence Street; for other tenants, this research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
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
422 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
422 Lawrence Street
African Americans
Artists
Bakers
Bigamy
Black Migration
Bookkeepers
Caterers
Childhood
Children
Civil War
Clerks
Death
Disability
Drivers
Electricians
Factory Workers
France
Gardeners
Georgia
Germany
Immigrants
Immigration
Investment
Janitor
Laborers
Lawrence Street
Massachusetts
Millers
Musicians
Ohio
Philadelphia
Puerto Ricans
Rutgers-Camden
Scarlet Fever
Servants
Shipyard Workers
Shoemakers
Smallpox
Veterans
Victor Talking Machine Company
Virginia
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9279210ee7027c9b10f6f92ba48f9376.jpg
1c483d5b832d770366c2aacb798371c5
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
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
420 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history" and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. early 1850s
History
At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States.<br /><br /><strong>420 Lawrence Street<br /></strong><br />The two-story, four-room brick house at 420 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering prevents identifying tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories documented people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. Directories during the 1860s identify skilled tradespeople among the occupants of 420 Lawrence Street, including a butcher and a glazier (glass fitter).
<p>Between 1865 and 1870, a butcher’s family lived at 420 Lawrence Street. The butcher, Peter C. Cliver, was a white man born in New Jersey, 53 years old in 1870. His household that year included at least six other people: his wife, Hannah, a white woman, 49 years old; four children ranging in age from 13 to 22 years of age; and an unrelated 25-year-old man who may have been a boarder. The Clivers’ oldest son worked as a box maker, and a 16-year-old son worked as a store clerk. For two years, 1869-70, city directories also list 420 Lawrence Street as the residence of Elizabeth A. Mood, a widow and dressmaker. If that listing is correct, she may have been the next tenant after the Clivers or co-inhabited the house with one or more of them. (The Census of 1870 found her at a different location, on Market Street.) Mood headed an extended family of five people. A white woman 46 years old, born in New Jersey, Mood lived with her three children, two of whom were old enough to contribute to the family economy: William, 18 years old, was an apprentice carpenter, and Lewis, 15, worked as a clerk in a grocery store. The household also included Mood’s 11-year-old daughter, Annie, and 63-year-old Ann Penn, likely Mood’s mother.</p>
<p>Longer-term tenants moved into 420 Lawrence Street by 1877. A laborer, John Stow, a white man in his late 30s, arrived that year with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary; they occupied the home until 1890. The 1880 Census recorded that the parents could not write (but apparently could read). Their daughter was attending school and had a “wounded hip,” the Census recorded. The next year, 1881, 11-year-old Mary’s life began to diverge from her parents when she was baptized at <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Episcopal Church</a> on Market Street under the sponsorship of another adult. By 1885, Mary lived with another family in Stockton Township, possibly as a domestic servant. Her parents remained at 420 Lawrence Street until John Stow’s death in 1890, at the age of 51, from causes not publicly reported. A succession of other tenants followed during the 1890s, including laborers, a gardener, a bricklayer, a packer, a coachman, and a washerwoman. In 1896, hostler Herbert Batey and his wife, Emma, suffered the death of their infant son Horace while living at 420 Lawrence Street.</p>
<p>At the turn of the twentieth century, a large family headed by German immigrants moved into the small house. William Heider, a 37-year-old baker, had immigrated to the United States in in 1878; his wife, 36-year-old Lena, came later, in 1883. When recorded in the Census of 1900, they had been married fourteen years and had seven children ranging in age from 3 months to 13 years, two of them twin daughters. Two other children had not survived. The Heiders lived at 420 Lawrence Street from 1900 until 1903, when the house was put up for sale together with the adjoining <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>. The agent advertised that the houses “will show a good investment, either for the man who is seeking a home or investment, and are real bargains.” The house remained a rental property, occupied by 1905 by a household headed by a 48-year-old Irish immigrant, a widow named Nora Healey (or Haley). Her two daughters, ages 17 and 22, worked in lace making and later in domestic service, and a 15-year-old son worked in farming.</p>
<p>In the early decades of the twentieth century, tenants at 420 Lawrence Street included a succession of married couples in their 20s and 30s, with occupations including salesman, shoemaker, chef, timekeeper, and laborer. Another large family moved into the home in 1920, headed by shipyard worker Thomas A. Montgomery, a white man 45 years old. He and his wife, Sadie, were both born in Pennsylvania but had lived in New Jersey for most of their married life. By 1920, their two oldest sons, ages 20 and 17, worked as truck drivers for a laundry; an 8-year-old daughter was attending school. Two younger children, ages 1 and 4, completed the family of seven. They remained at 420 Lawrence Street for seven years, followed by another household headed by a shipyard worker, a rigger named Lawrence Lauinger and his wife, Helen.</p>
<p>Records of tenants during the Great Depression are sparse because city directories were not published in Camden between 1931 and 1940. The decade opened with a 45-year-old white woman, Margaret Peterson, who was divorced, renting the home for herself and her 18-year old son, who operated machines at a laundry. By 1940, Earl Nelson, a 36-year-old immigrant from Norway who worked as a railroad machinist, shared the home with a family of lodgers. His lodgers were a family of five headed by Paul E. Rube, an immigrant from Sweden, 54 years old, who worked as a car cleaner; with his wife, Catherine (who was born in Pennsylvania), he had three children ranging in age from 1 to 8. The lodgers also included a 12-year-old boy, Joseph Armstrong, whose age suggests he may have been Catherine Rube’s son from a previous marriage.</p>
<p>By 1942, the house was vacant and put up for sale along with adjacent 418 and 422 Lawrence Streets. Under new ownership, during World War II the sequence of next tenants included a wounded Army private and a welder. Another large family moved into the home in 1950, headed by a 45-year-old white woman, Mary Brennan, who told Census takers she was separated from her husband. She shared the house with four sons ranging in age from 16 to 20, her 20-year-old daughter, and a 4-year-old granddaughter.</p>
<p>Several tenants later, by 1957 the house at 420 Lawrence Street had been conveyed to an investment company, and a woman who rented the house next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence</a> took the opportunity to buy both properties. Alice Pharo, a white woman, had rented 418 Lawrence since 1950 and chose to stay despite a 1952 incident of a man breaking through the window of her kitchen. Divorced and living independently, Pharo served as secretary of the Burlington-Camden-Gloucester Society for Crippled Children and Adults. She rented out 420 Lawrence Street to tenants while living at 418 Lawrence until her death in 1977.</p>
<p>The next owners, Eric and Ellen Eifert, acquired both <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a> and 420 Lawrence Street from Alice Pharo’s estate in 1984. In 2007, the Eiferts sold 418, 420, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422 Lawrence Street</a> to Rutgers University.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 420 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
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
420 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1850s
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420 Lawrence Street
Artists
Butchers
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Dressmakers
Extended Family
Farmers
Germany
Glaziers
Immigrants
Immigration
Infant Mortality
Injuries
Investment
Ireland
Laborers
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Lodgers
Norway
Rutgers-Camden
Salesmen
Secretaries
Shipyard Workers
Shoemakers
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Sweden
Veterans
Widows
World War II