1
10
4
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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
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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
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
People
Description
An account of the resource
Residents of Cooper Street
Person
An individual.
Biographical Text
The life of Mary Paulson, a resident of Cooper Street in the first three decades of the twentieth century, illustrates strategies employed by widows to support their families. Mary lived at 421 Cooper Street for about ten years beginning in 1897 and then after the death of her husband generated income by renting out the house while living at 419 Cooper Street next door. Her extended family included sons who joined the military during World War I, a daughter who became a school teacher, and a sister-in-law who had been in a mental institution.<br /><br />Mary A. Maxwell was 27 years old when she married Joseph R. Paulson, a widower 30 years her senior. Joseph, listed in public records variously as an optician, cutlery maker, and jewelry merchant in Philadelphia. They spent the first decade of their marriage in Philadelphia, but by 1897 moved to 421 Cooper Street, which Joseph may have inherited from his mother, Mildred Keen Paulson, after her death in 1875. By the 1900 Census, the household consisted of Joseph, age 64; Mary, age 34; their sons Joseph Jr., age 6, and Charles, age 5, and a housekeeper, 55-year-old Clara Brewer. By 1905, Brewer's place had been taken by 21-year-old Rachel Ball, an African American who like many others in the early twentieth century had migrated north from Virginia. The family also added a daughter, Ruth, born in 1902. <br /><br />The Paulsons lived at 421 Cooper Street for at least a decade and then, by 1910, made another move to the more fashionable suburb of Haddonfield. Still, they retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street. In 1911, when Joseph died, the family's former home became a source of financial security for Mary and her children. Mary rented out 421 Cooper Street to other families while living next door in 419 with her children Joseph Jr., by then then age 19; Charles, then 17; and daughter Ruth, 9. For almost a decade, her tenants in 421 were members of another extended family headed by a widow, Clara Starn, until that family moved in 1920 to Merchantville.<br /><br />The Paulsons' extended family at 419 Cooper included Emily L. Paulson, the sister of Mary's late husband, who had inherited the home as well as the smaller house behind it at 424 Lawrence Street. Born c. 1841, Emily lived much of her adult life with her mother, Mildred, and then her brother. But for at least ten years, while in her 60s c. 1900-1910, Emily had lived as a patient at the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. The nature of her mental illness is not known from public records, but at this West Philadelphia institution she would have experienced the "moral treatment" philosophy advocated by the founder of the hospital, Quaker physician <a href="https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride</a>. Kirkbride advocated humane treatment in beautiful surroundings, and the institution in Philadelphia inspired many other "Kirkbride Plan" hospitals around the country. In this era, causes for admission to the institution could range from grief and anxiety to severe forms of insanity. At the time of Emily's residence, the hospital's roster of patients included wives and daughters of merchants, lawyers, and other people of prominence.<br /><br />At age 70, Emily returned to Camden as a member of Mary Paulson's household, and the Paulsons remained at this address for the next two decades. The two teen-aged sons, both musically inclined, opened a music studio in the home to teach other young men how to play the mandolin or violin. Soon they faced more life-altering choices as the Great War began in Europe and especially when the United States entered the conflict in 1917. By then, the oldest son, Joseph Jr., still claimed 419 Cooper Street as his home address but had landed a job as an orchestra leader for a theater in Juneau, Alaska. He served as a musician in the U.S. Navy, 1918-19. His younger brother Charles served closer to home, in the quartermaster's office of the U.S. Army in Sea Girt, New Jersey, 1917-18. Both returned home to 419 Cooper Street: Charles by 1920, when the household consisted of his mother, age 54, aunt Emily, 77, and 17-year-old sister Ruth, who later became a teacher at Hatch Junior High School. Joseph returned home during the 1920s after a brief wartime marriage and later divorce.<br /><br />Mary Paulson retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street as a rental property until 1925, a time when changes such as construction of the Delaware River Bridge spurred investor interest in Cooper Street properties for possible conversion to business uses. The sale of 421 Cooper Street that year warranted a story in the Camden Courier-Post to note that the property had been in the hands of only two families--the Paulsons and the Coopers--since Camden's earliest history.<br /><br /> The Paulson family's association with 419 Cooper Street lasted until the 1930s. Transfer of the property from Emily to Mary Paulson for $1 in 1931 suggests that Emily had died, and by 1937 the house was up for sale. In the midst of the Great Depression, the original price of $10,000 plummeted by more than half over three years until the house finally ended up listed for sheriff's sale to satisfy back taxes. Charles Paulson made his living as a salesman and shopkeeper, married, and began his own family in Camden and later Haddonfield; by 1940, Joseph Paulson worked as a musician at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mary Paulson, meanwhile, went to live with her by-then-married daughter Ruth Soistmann in Merchantville, ending the era of 419 Cooper Street as a single-family home.
Time period on Cooper Street
1897-1930s
Location(s) - Cooper Street
419 Cooper Street
421 Cooper Street
Location(s) - Other
Philadelphia
124 Walnut Street, Haddonfield
Merchantville
Occupation
Head of household
Birth Date
September 1865
Birthplace
Pennsylvania
Death Date
Unknown, after 1940
Associated Individuals
Joseph R. Paulson (1826-1911), husband
Joseph R. Paulson Jr., son
Charles Paulson, son
Ruth Paulson Soistmann, daughter
Emily L. Paulson, sister-in-law
Clara Starn, tenant
Clara Brewer, housekeeper
Rachel Ball, housekeeper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Paulson, Mary A.
Description
An account of the resource
Mary A. Paulson, a widow, generated income to support her family by renting out one Cooper Street house while living in another house next door.
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
419 Cooper Street
421 Cooper Street
424 Lawrence Street
Extended Family
Haddonfield
Merchantville
Philadelphia
Widows
World War I
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e6d095749280003cc512cb78a109e073.jpg
788b6862485144125bd6fb1fc623ed4a
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/bfc6a7b032eccf390cca76cc9a9c3947.jpg
fec7335650ea1fdd808c433f8678f688
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
419 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including the importance of ferry connections between Camden and Philadelphia: "By its geographic location, Cooper Street literally became South Jersey's thoroughfare to downtown Philadelphia. The fortune of Cooper Street, and of Camden as a whole, rose when people and goods moved through them to board ferries to the larger city across the Delaware River." This is amply illustrated by the history of 419 Cooper Street, which through the nineteenth century housed a series of families with livelihoods tied to business in Philadelphia. As an investment property generating income, 419 Cooper Street also represents financial strategies of widows during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The building's twentieth century history reflects the historic district's stated significance as a place of "change from residential and professional to commercial." Rutgers connections to this property extend to the 1960s, when Rutgers students were among apartment tenants in the building. Rutgers purchased the property in 2007.
Architectural style
Originally a Greek Revival rowhouse; new brick facing added after 1985, when the original facade is visible in a photograph taken that year for structures surveys by the New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services.
Date of construction
c. 1848
Illustrations
1. 419 Cooper Street, photograph taken September 2010.
2. 419 Cooper Street, early twentieth century prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society)
History
The adjoining rowhouses at 419 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a> Cooper Street were among the first to be built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family descendants began to divide and sell their inherited property during the 1840s and 1850s. A broker and volunteer firefighter living in Philadelphia, Joseph R. Paulson, and his wife Mildred K. Paulson bought these lots in 1847. At least one house existed on the property by the end of 1848, when Joseph Paulson, at the age of 36, drew up an agreement that revealed expectations of an early death: he placed the properties in trust with his mother-in-law, Hester Keen, with instructions that she collect rents to support his wife and children, a son also named Joseph (then 13 years old) and daughter Emily (then age 5).
<p>A death notice for Joseph R. Paulson appeared in the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em> on November 29, 1849. The family invited relatives, friends, and members of the Humane Engine Company in Philadelphia to his funeral “from his late residence, Cooper Street, near Fifth, Camden, N.J.” They proceeded from there back to Philadelphia on the Arch Street ferry for his burial at Monument Cemetery. His cause of death was not made public. The property on Cooper Street, as he intended, remained a source of rental income and periodically a home for his descendants for the next 75 years.</p>
<strong>Philadelphia Commuters</strong><br /><br /> Some of the nineteenth-century tenants of 419 Cooper Street demonstrate the historic importance of Camden, and Cooper Street in particular, as a transportation corridor between South Jersey and Philadelphia. Homes on Cooper Street allowed for a short walk to the Delaware River ferries for commuting to Philadelphia. By 1862, during the Civil War, 419 Cooper Street had become home to Joseph Fearon, a wholesale grocer who had his business at 19 S. Water Street in Philadelphia. In addition to Joseph's wife, Catharine, the Fearon household included five children aged 12 and younger and two Irish-born domestic servants. Another Philadelphia-based food merchant, fruit importer Silas Warner, and his family lived at 419 Cooper for several years during the 1870s (c. 1871-73).<br />
<p><strong>Family Legacy</strong></p>
As the original owner, Joseph Paulson, intended, the Cooper Street property supported his wife during her lifetime and upon her death conveyed to their two children. The siblings, adults by the time of their mother’s death in 1875, then divided ownership of the houses on their inherited land. Joseph Paulson's daughter, Emily, became the owner of 419 Cooper Street and a smaller house at the back of the property facing Lawrence Street. The homes continued to be rented to tenants.<br /> <br /><strong>Camden, Philadelphia, and the World</strong><br /><br />In 1880, Census takers encountered an unusually international family who rented 419 Cooper Street for at least two years (c. 1880-82): The head of household, widowed Matilda Evans, age 54, reported her birthplace as Germany. Her three adult sons and one daughter, all in their twenties, reported having been born in South America and that their father was from New York. The household also included a servant, Jane Laverty, who had been born in Ireland. Some Camden city directories identified the adult children as boarders, suggesting that 419 Cooper may have operated as boarding house during this period.<br /><br /> From c. 1883 to 1897, a Philadelphia manufacturer of silk and wool hats, Robert S. Nickerson, resided at 419 Cooper Street with his wife Elizabeth and adult daughter Jennie Gay while commuting to his business across the river at 63 N. Second Street. The move marked a significant change for Nickerson, whose business had been operating in Philadelphia since 1836. But during the 1880s, Camden was growing rapidly and houses near the Delaware River waterfront offered attractive prices and easy access to the ferries. The sometimes-frantic nature of ferry commuting is suggested by a report in the Camden Morning Post on May 26, 1888, which described Nickerson attempting to leap onto a ferry departing from Philadelphia while clutching an umbrella and bottle of pickles. He ended up in the river, still clutching his possessions when rescued.<br /><br /> The Nickersons, who previously lived in Philadelphia, occupied 419 Cooper longer than most other nineteenth-century occupants, almost 15 years. They typically employed one live-in domestic servant, for at least five years Annie Redgate, a daughter of Irish immigrants living elsewhere in Camden. In 1897, Jennie Gay Nickerson's wedding took place in the home. In a Society of Friends ceremony, she married Richard Albert Wills, a widowed insurance agent. Robert and Elizabeth Nickerson, then in their late 50s, moved with their daughter into Wills' home farther east in Camden, at 752 Wright Avenue, where they formed an extended family with a granddaughter born in 1899 and Wills' two older sons.<br /><br /><strong>Dentistry on Cooper Street</strong><br /><br />When Cooper Hospital opened during the 1880s, medical professionals increasingly lived and practiced in homes on nearby Cooper Street. Among them, for more than thirty years Dr. Elmer E. Bower had his dental practice in the 400 block. Bower, a native of Berks County, established his practice in fast-growing Camden immediately after finishing dental school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. He and his wife Katherine raised a family in a series of three homes that also served as Elmer's dental office--419 Cooper Street, where they lived and worked between 1899-1908, was the second of the three (after <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405</a> Cooper, 1889-1898, and before moving next door to <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>, 1908-c.1920).<br /><br />By the time the Bowers moved into 419 Cooper, their family had grown to three children: a son Chester, age 16, and daughters Helen, 12, and Sarah, 8. In the decade they spent at this address, the Bowers experienced both tragedy and joy. Much of the family's attention turned to the poor health of daughter Helen, whose particular illness is not known from public records. For the benefit of her health they relocated between 1904 and 1906 to more rural Hammonton, then well-known as the location of the Hammonton Sanitarium operated by Dr. James Peebles, a specialist in chronic illnesses. The move was to no avail, however. Helen Adaline Bower died in Hammonton on September 15, 1906, at the age of 20.<br /><br />The next family milestone occurred two years later, when the Bowers' son Chester Bertalette (his mother's maiden name) married and established his home next door to his parents, at 417 Cooper Street. The elder Bowers and their daughter Sarah soon moved there as well, creating an extended two-generation family. Elmer Bower continued his dental practice at the 417 Cooper address until he retired around 1920.<br /><br /><strong>A Widow's Family Home<br /><br /></strong>While 419 Cooper Street housed a series of renters during the nineteenth century, it passed by inheritance to the descendants of Joseph R. Paulson. Thus it offered an available refuge when <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary A. Paulson</a>--the widow of Joseph R. Paulson's son (also named Joseph R.)--established a new home for herself and three children following the death of her husband in 1911. The family had most recently lived in Haddonfield, but before that, from 1897 to 1907, they had resided in another Paulson family property, 421 Cooper Street. When the widowed Mary Paulson returned to Camden in 1912, she generated income for her family by renting out the 421 property while living next door in 419 with her children Joseph Jr., then age 19; Charles, then 17; and daughter Ruth, 9.<br /><br />The Paulsons' extended family at 419 Cooper also included Emily L. Paulson, the sister of Mary's late husband, who had inherited the home as well as the smaller house behind it at 424 Lawrence Street. Born c. 1841, Emily lived much of her adult life with her mother, Mildred, and then her brother. But for at least ten years, while in her 60s c. 1900-1910, Emily had lived as a patient at the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. The nature of her mental illness is not known from public records, but at this West Philadelphia institution she would have experienced the "moral treatment" philosophy advocated by the founder of the hospital, Quaker physician <a href="https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride</a>. Kirkbride's philosophy advocated humane treatment in beautiful surroundings, and the institution in Philadelphia inspired many other "Kirkbride Plan" hospitals around the country. In this era, causes for admission to the institution could range from grief and anxiety to severe forms of insanity. At the time of Emily's residence, the hospital's roster of patients included wives and daughters of merchants, lawyers, and other people of prominence.<br /><br />At age 70, Emily returned to Camden as a member of Mary Paulson's household, and the Paulsons remained at this address for the next two decades. The two teen-aged sons, both musically inclined, opened a music studio in the home to teach other young men how to play the mandolin or violin. Soon they faced more life-altering choices as the Great War began in Europe and especially when the United States entered the conflict in 1917. By then, the oldest son, Joseph Jr., still claimed 419 Cooper Street as his home address but had landed a job as an orchestra leader for a theater in Juneau, Alaska. He served as a musician in the U.S. Navy, 1918-19. His younger brother Charles served closer to home, in the quartermaster's office of the U.S. Army in Sea Girt, New Jersey, 1917-18. Both returned home to 419 Cooper Street: Charles by 1920, when the household consisted of his mother, age 54, aunt Emily, 77, and 17-year-old sister Ruth, who later became a teacher at Hatch Junior High School. Joseph returned home during the 1920s after a brief wartime marriage and later divorce.<br /><br /> The Paulson family's association with 419 Cooper Street lasted until the 1930s. Transfer of the property from Emily to Mary Paulson for $1 in 1931 suggests that Emily had died, and by 1937 the house was up for sale. In the midst of the Great Depression, the original price of $10,000 plummeted by more than half over three years until the house finally ended up listed for sheriff's sale to satisfy back taxes. Charles Paulson made his living as a salesman and shopkeeper, married, and began his own family in Camden and later Haddonfield; by 1940, Joseph Paulson worked as a musician at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mary Paulson, meanwhile, went to live with her by-then-married daughter Ruth Soistmann in Merchantville, ending the era of 419 Cooper Street as a single-family home.<br /><br /><strong>Apartments and Offices</strong><br /><br />In 1940, with new owners Richard Gebbie, who owned a radio shop, and his wife Alice, a nurse, 419 Cooper Street began its transition to multi-family housing and commercial uses. While living in the home, the Gebbies rented apartments to at least two other families. By the 1950s they moved to Moorestown but retained ownership of the building until 1960 and rented to a series of office tenants, including a doctor, an attorney, and real estate agents. Brokers Mortgage Service, a mortgage company located in the nearby Wilson Building, next held title to 419 Cooper Street while renting out apartments and offices. Among the renters in the early 1960s, Rutgers student Joan Jarema made news as a finalist for sweetheart of the Kappa Sigma Upsilon fraternity. She later married another Rutgers South Jersey student, Anthony Santerlas.<br /><br />Real estate and legal offices continued to occupy 419 Cooper Street from the 1960s to the 1980s as the building passed from ownership of attorneys William Keown and Philip Daniels, who had their office in the building from 1965 to 1982, to a series of absentee investors. In the mid-1980s, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/james-florio/F000215?r=11&q=%7B%22house-committee%22%3A%22Energy+and+Commerce%22%2C%22subject%22%3A%22Finance+and+Financial+Sector%22%7D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congressman James J. Florio</a> had an office on the first floor. AKJ Investment, based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, sold the building to Rutgers University in 2007 for $510,000.
Associated Individuals
For all known occupants of 419 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a>.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Communicate corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Sources
Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com).
Camden County Property Records.
Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com).
National Register for Historic Places, Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior.
New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services Structures Surveys (1985) and Office of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office, Property Reports (2007).
U.S. Census, 1850-1930; New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915; and U.S. Military Records (Ancestry.com).
Questions / needs for additional research
- Role of real estate agents in property turnover in Camden and flight to suburbs.
- Date for new brick facing on building (see change in property value during last investment owner prior to Rutgers).
- Seek interviews with Rutgers alumni who lived at this address.
- Add Rutgers uses after purchase.
- Occupation 1840s-1860s.
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
419 Cooper Street
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
400 Block
419 Cooper Street
424 Lawrence Street
Aging
Apartments
Attorneys
Congressional Office
Death
Dentists
Extended Family
Germany
Greek Revival
Grocers
Haddonfield
Hammonton
Health and Medicine
Ireland
Manufacturers
Mental Illness
Merchantville
Moorestown
Musicians
New York City
Philadelphia
Real Estate
Renovations
Rutgers-Camden
Servants
Society of Friends
South America
Teachers
Weddings
Widows
World War I