1
10
2
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b371944a6a69dc0e6345a7e81c94c62e.jpg
9ca6b9724bb3a108ca1e7b5c6f1db82c
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.
Illustrations
Photograph by Jacob Lechner
Significance
325 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places. The west end of a row of three houses built in the early 1850s, it supports the district’s significance as a collection of residences representing the nineteenth-century history of Camden. Its past residents include Camden’s second female physician, Lettie Ward. Since 2016, offices in this building have included the <a href="https://march.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities</a> (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden.
Architectural style
Greek Revival
Date of construction
c. 1852-1854
History
<p>As Cooper family heirs sold their land for development in the 1850s, they used two adjoining lots at 325 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/81" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">327</a> Cooper Street to set an aesthetic for the future. The deeds for both properties, executed in 1852, specified that “three story brick buildings only shall be erected upon Cooper Street.” This ruled out wood-frame structures and assured houses of a size and scale that would only be affordable to similarly substantial owners. The lot later numbered 325 became the west end of a row of three similar residences at the northwest corner of Fourth and Cooper Streets. The house, built between 1852 and 1854, was rented out by its first owners, who lived in Burlington County.</p>
<p><strong>From Countryside to City</strong></p>
<p>The first known tenants of 325 Cooper Street were members of the large and prominent Browning family, whose ancestors immigrated to the region from Holland in the early eighteenth century. Maurice Browning, who rented 325 Cooper Street beginning in 1854, grew up among a dozen siblings on his father Abraham’s farm in Stockton Township, about three and a half miles from Camden. The elder Browning, in addition to farming, also played a role in the city’s growth by establishing the Market Street Ferry, which passed to his heirs (including his son Maurice) when he died in 1836.</p>
<p>Maurice Browning, born in 1811, left the farm and pursued a career in pharmacy, working first in a drug store in Mount Holly, then studying pharmacy in Philadelphia, and then opening a drug store on Market Street in Camden. By the time he rented the house on Cooper Street, he had expanded his business activities to manufacturing and banking. With other family members, in 1840 he established the Aroma Mills, which extracted and sold dyes from woods. In 1855, around the time he moved to Cooper Street, Browning became a director of the newly formed Farmers’ and Mechanics Bank (later the First National Bank of Camden).</p>
<p>The Browning family at 325 Cooper Street in 1860 was headed by Maurice, then in his 40s, and his wife Anna, in her 30s, the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant who also owned a farm near Haddonfield. Married since 1840, their years on Cooper Street began in sadness in 1854 with the death of their oldest daughter, Ellen, who was 14 years old. The cause of her death was not publicly reported, but in the custom of the time her funeral was held at home prior to burial in Colestown Cemetery. The Brownings had earlier lost another child, a son named Maurice after his father, who died in 1850 when less than 2 years of age. These losses left the Brownings a family of five. When documented by the 1860 Census, the children were a son, Abraham, 15 years old, and two daughters, Josephine, 6, and Alice, 3. Another son, Lehman, was born the next year, in 1861. The Brownings employed two domestic servants, both Irish immigrants: Rebecca Caffrey, 36 years old, and Catherine McMullen, 17.</p>
<p>During the family’s years on Cooper Street, Maurice Browning joined in the enthusiasm for the new Republican Party, founded in 1854. At a mass meeting in Camden in 1856, Browning was among the local party supporters who turned out to voice support for the Republican platform and its national candidates, John C. Fremont for president and William L. Dayton for vice president. In 1862, Browning was among the original members of the Union League of Philadelphia, founded to support the Union cause during the Civil War.</p>
<p><strong>Camden, Philadelphia, and the World</strong></p>
<p>The Browning family left 325 Cooper Street by 1863, the year before the property’s original owners sold the home to Charles A. Sparks, a partner in a Philadelphia wholesale grocery and imports business. With his wife, Amelia, and their four children, Sparks lived at 325 Cooper Street during a decade, from 1864 to 1874, that proved pivotal in his career. Like other merchants with Camden and Philadelphia ties, his interests widened to investments that aided Camden’s growth and the region’s reach outward in the nation and the world.</p>
<p>Charles Sparks had family roots in <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/locations/salem-county-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Salem County</a>, New Jersey, but his father (a mariner), mother, and a brother had moved to Camden by 1850. Sparks began his adult working life across the river in Philadelphia as a clerk in the wholesale grocery, importing, and exporting business of Edward C. Knight, a Camden County native, and soon became a partner in the E.C. Knight Co. While remaining with the firm, Sparks chose to live in Camden after his 1852 marriage to Amelia Ross, who was born in England, the daughter of a merchant who became an extensive landholder in Stockton and Pennsauken Townships. They moved to Cooper Street from their earlier home near Third and Market Streets. By the time of the 1870 Census their household at 325 Cooper Street included four children, a son and three daughters ranging in age from 5 to 13; Charles by this time was 43 years old, and Amelia was 40. They employed at least one domestic servant, Sarah McHale, likely an Irish immigrant.</p>
<p>Charles Sparks' association with the E.C. Knight Co. placed him in an extensive network of trade between Philadelphia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Around the time that Sparks went to work for Knight, the firm expanded its trade from importing coffee from the West Indies to seagoing trade with California. As he became a partner in the company, Knight initiated imports of molasses and sugar from Cuba. At first acting as an agent for other refineries in Philadelphia, by 1870 the E.C. Knight Co. established its own refinery complex in the Southwark section of the city, with Charles Sparks in charge. Edward Knight also invested in railroads and steamship lines; in 1874, Sparks joined him as an incorporator of the <a href="http://cnhillsborough.blogspot.com/2021/03/delaware-and-bound-brook-railroad.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Delaware River & Bound Brook Railroad Company</a>, a 27-mile line reaching northward from Trenton that posed a challenge to the Camden & Amboy Railroad’s dominance of rail connections with New York.</p>
<p>Sparks' success in business returned benefits in Camden. At home at 325 Cooper Street, he initiated interior and exterior renovations. The <em>West Jersey Press </em>observed in 1869 that Sparks “has made a decided and tasteful alteration, both internally and externally, in his dwelling. He has replaced the ordinary window glass with French plate, in walnut sash, giving the front a pleasing effect.” The house in 2022 retains an impressive nineteenth-century hallstand, marble fireplace, and ornately framed parlor mirror that may attest to these improvements. Sparks also invested time and funds in Camden institutions, for example serving on the board of the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank (later the First National Bank of Camden) with the previous occupant of 325 Cooper Street, Maurice Browning. He served on the building committee for the First Presbyterian Church, supported the Republican Party, and became known for a fine pair of horses that he drove in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park and while on vacation in Atlantic City.</p>
<p>The role of Amelia Sparks in these activities, or others independent of her husband, did not leave traces in the public record. She did, however, nurture a lasting connection with Camden. The Sparks family moved to Philadelphia in 1874 but kept 325 Cooper Street as a rental property. Many years later, after the death of Charles Sparks in 1904, Amelia Sparks returned to the house on Cooper Street. Then in her 70s, she spent another decade in her earlier home with one of her daughters, a niece, and servants to take care of the housework.</p>
<p><strong>Rental Property</strong></p>
<p>The Sparks family’s removal to Philadelphia in 1874 opened a period of three decades of varied tenancy at 325 Cooper Street. For most of the 1880s, the tenants were members of the Browning family who had lived at the same address two decades before—in this later era, George G. Browning, the brother of Maurice Browning and his partner in the dye industry. His household included Mary White, his mother-in-law but also mother of Dr. J. Orlando White, who lived two doors away at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/80" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">329 Cooper Street</a>.</p>
<p>After this return of the Brownings, the house was offered for rent or sale periodically through the economic downturn of the 1890s until it became a boarding house in 1897. For a short period until 1901, the boarding house was run by Catherine Fisler, who lived in the home with her husband, Leonard, a Philadelphia produce dealer and Civil War veteran who fought for the Union with the Pennsylvania Third Cavalry. Their household included a grown son, his wife, and a grandchild, in addition to as many as eight boarders. When recorded in the Census of 1900, the boarders reflected the coalescing population of the growing industrial city—all were born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, but their parents had birthplaces that included Delaware, Virginia, England, and Germany. The boarders held jobs ranging from unskilled laborer to railroad conductor to white-collar professions.</p>
<p>The last renter before Amelia Sparks returned to Cooper Street was Alfred G. McCausland, a railroad superintendent who rented the house for two years before purchasing another at 521 Cooper Street. Formerly a longtime resident of Wilmington, Delaware, McCausland and his family arrived in Camden by 1903 when the Reading Railroad transferred him from the Wilmington and Northern Railroad to the Atlantic City line. In his late 40s at the time of the move, McCausland’s household on Cooper Street included his second wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie), and two grown children from his first marriage. His son Frank also worked in railroading as a brakeman.</p>
<p><strong>Business and Professional Women</strong></p>
<p>The house at 325 Cooper Street remained in the ownership of the Sparks family until 1924, passing from Amelia Sparks to her daughter Emma and then to a niece, also named in Amelia Sparks. They remained in the home after the death of the elder Amelia in 1915 but also rented to other tenants—in 1920, a widowed designer of ladies’ gowns, Blanche Morse, and her family of four children, three of whom were adults working and adding to the household income. A daughter worked as a clerk in a department store, a son was a bank clerk, and another son a secretary for a leather company.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, Cooper Street was experiencing a transition to commercial uses caused indirectly by the construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which opened in 1926. Expecting an economic boom in Camden, boosters and real estate interests sought to remake Cooper Street into a commercial corridor. With many former residences converting into apartments and offices, it was therefore newsworthy when 325 Cooper Street sold in 1924 to an undisclosed buyer, “to remain as a residence,” the Camden <em>Morning Post</em> reported.</p>
<p>In fact, the residence became both a home and an office for its notable new owner, Dr. Lettie Ward. She was a longtime physician by the time she purchased 325 Cooper Street, but when she became a doctor in the 1890s she was only the second woman to practice medicine in the city. A Camden native, born in 1859, Ward initially followed a more common career path for unmarried, college-educated women and became a schoolteacher and principal. She was inspired, though, by Camden’s first female physician, <a href="https://njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/sophia-presley/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sophia Presley</a>, who also had begun her career in teaching. In 1894, Ward resigned her position as principal of the Jesse Starr School and enrolled in the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/womans-medical-college-of-pennsylvania/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania</a>. Graduating in 1898, she returned to Camden to practice.</p>
<p>Ward purchased 325 Cooper Street in 1924 after being displaced from her previous longtime home and office three blocks away, on Cooper Street near Sixth, because it stood in the path for extending a street to connect with the new Delaware River Bridge. In her new home, she had her office on the first floor, and in addition to providing health care she hosted executive board meetings of the Camden County Business and Professional Woman’s Club. For her fourteen years at this address, Ward lived upstairs from her office in a household with other unmarried women of her generation. When recorded by the 1930 Census, Ward was 70 years old and shared the living quarters with three other women, one of them her cousin Alice Hibbs, 60 years old. The other two, described in the Census as lodgers, were lifelong companions and recently retired principals of Camden schools: Laura J. Harrop, 64, and Lillie T. Osler, 63. After Ward retired and moved in 1938, Harrop and Osler also left to live with other family members and remained together for the rest of their long lives, each of them reaching 101 years of age. They were buried side-by-side in the Haddonfield Baptist Cemetery.</p>
<p><strong>Rooms and Apartments</strong></p>
<p>After Lettie Ward’s period of ownership, 325 Cooper Street followed a trajectory more typical of older rowhouses in North Camden, increasingly deteriorating yet becoming more densely populated with roomers and apartment dwellers. By 1940, a family of six rented the house and in turn let rooms to six additional lodgers. An ad offering an apartment in 1943 promised “refined surroundings,” but by 1949 a landlord was ordered by the city to install a shower and a toilet to bring the building up to code. In the 1950s, the house was marketed as a potential office location at a “reduced price” and later marketed for sale as a rooming and apartment house.</p>
<p>Tenants at 325 Cooper Street beginning in the 1940s reflected the changing demographics of Camden, especially the growing presence of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Puerto Rican residents</a>. The Campbell Soup Company had recruited Puerto Rican workers to Camden during the Second World War, at first housing them near the soup factory on the waterfront. As workers stayed, created lives and families, and started businesses and institutions, they became increasingly dominant in the population of North Camden. Tenants with Spanish surnames were common at 325 Cooper Street; three born in Puerto Rico were documented in the 1950 Census: Vincent Porrata, 37, a kitchen helper in a hotel; and Arthur Cruz, 29, and Ralph Maldonado, 24, both laborers for a metal specialty company.</p>
<p>Sometime prior to 1980, 325 Cooper Street became the property of Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist by profession but also a historic preservation activist. Teitelman purchased and maintained several of Cooper Street’s most notable houses remaining from the nineteenth century, including two others in the same block, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305</a>. He lived in 305 Cooper Street, the distinctive Queen Anne Revival residence designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre. By the late 1980s, however, 325 Cooper Street was appearing in legal notices for overdue back taxes.</p>
<p>Rutgers University acquired 325 Cooper Street from trustees for Edward and Mildred Teitelman in 2001, and renovations created offices for the New Jersey Small Business Development Center of Rutgers-Camden. The building later served as home to the Rutgers-Camden Institute for Effective Education, offices for civic engagement activities, and beginning in 2016 as co-working space for the <a href="https://march.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities</a> (MARCH). Among other activities, MARCH initiated the “Learning from Cooper Street” project to recover and raise awareness of the Cooper Street Historic District and adjoining blocks occupied by Rutgers-Camden.</p>
Associated Individuals
<p>For a list of all known occupants of 325 Cooper Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 325.</p>
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank).<br /> Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com).<br /> Camden County Property Records.<br /> New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com).<br /> Prowell, George R. <em>The History of Camden County, New Jersey.</em> Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources:</strong> A structure survey prepared by the Camden Division of Planning in 1980 identified 325 Cooper Street as the "George Bockius House." Further research in property deeds has established that George Bockius lived instead in the similar house at 329 Cooper Street.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
325 Cooper Street
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
300 Block
325 Cooper Street
Apartments
Boarding House
Burlington County
Civil War
Doctors
Dyes
Greek Revival
Grocers
Merchants
Philadelphia
Puerto Ricans
Railroad Executives
Republican Party
Rooming House
Rutgers-Camden
Salem County
Sugar
Teachers
-
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