4 October 2007 The Rest is History
Last week we saw how the Norris family’s Fairhill Estate was built. The builder of the estate had been Isaac Norris, Sr. (1671-1735), a wealthy Quaker merchant. After Norris’ death in 1735, the estate was taken over by his son, also named Isaac Norris (1701-1766).
Isaac Norris, Sr.’s son Isaac is often called “the Speaker,” not only to differentiate him from his father, but also because he was the Speaker of the General Assembly for the Pennsylvania Colony.
Isaac Norris, the Speaker, died in 1766 and his only surviving daughter Mary Norris inherited her father’s estate. Besides the large 800 plus acres of land that the estate included (all of the current land from Germantown Avenue on the west to Aramingo Avenue on the east, from Norris Street on the south, to slightly above Lehigh Avenue on the north) there was also the Fairhill Mansion house at what would today be 7th & York Streets, as well as Norris’ very famous library, first established by her grandfather, then built upon by her father.
Mary Norris married John Dickinson (1732-1808) in 1770 and the couple lived at Fairhill. Through his marriage to Mary, Dickinson came into possession of the Norris library. During the American Revolution the Fairhill Mansion was sacked and burned by the British, but not before Dickinson was able to get the library out safely.
Dickinson is well known as the author of the famous work Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, a treatise regarding the non-importation and non-exportation agreements against Great Britain. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and with Thomas Jefferson in 1775 wrote Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Ironically, Dickinson, who attended both Continental Congresses, did not sign the Declaration of Independence, as he did not want to break with England and because of this his name is not as well known in history as Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers.
While the British may have destroyed Fairhill Mansion, Dickinson did salvage the library and thus one of American’s great colonial libraries was saved. Upon the chartering of Dickinson College, his namesake institution, he donated the Norris library to the college. Today the library, known as the Norris Collection, still exists. It is an amazing collection of 16th, 17th, and 18th Century books, numbering near two thousand volumes. It was considered one of the finest libraries in colonial America in its day and represents one of about only ten intact colonial libraries still in existence.
After Mary Norris’ death the estate went to Isaac Norris, 3rd, the eldest son of Charles Norris, the uncle of Mary Norris and after him to Charles Norris’ second son, Joseph Parker Norris. This agreement to give the property to her cousins was a condition that had previously been placed upon Mary by her father.
When Joseph Parker Norris died in 1841, he gave the larger piece of the estate (the Fairhill Estate west of Frankford Avenue), about 498 acres, to his five sons and the other part (the Sepviva Plantation, east of Frankford Avenue), about 155 acres plus the marshland around Gunner’s Run, to his six daughters.
After probating the will of Joseph Parker Norris there was some legal entanglements that kept the estate in the courts for awhile and thus held up development for a time, but by 1848 the trustees of the Fairhill Estate allowed the Fairhill Estate to be incorporated into the then self-governing District of Kensington. The Fairhill Estate nearly doubled the size of Kensington as now the northern border that use to sit on Norris Street between Frankford and 6th Street was now moved north to about Lehigh Avenue and the northwest corner went to Germantown and Lehigh Avenues.
The Commissioners of Kensington began to lie out and grade the streets, while the Norris family’s interests began selling off lots to potential developers. This large space of open land so near to the core of the city is the reason that Kensington became the base for many large manufacturers as large lots of open land close to the city were not available elsewhere.
Before allowing Kensington to take over Fairhill, the Norris family insisted on the laying aside of land for public parks and hence today we still have Norris and Fairhill Squares. The Sepviva Plantation developed a little later, but by the time of the Civil War this area too was being carved up with streets and lots were being sold and thus the old Norris family estate of Fairhill was no more.
11 October 2007 The Rest is History
The Yellow Fever has a storied history in Philadelphia. There were 11 outbreaks of the epidemic between 1780 and 1820, with none worse then the outbreak of 1793. The Yellow Fever was a virus with a 3-4 day incubation period. At first you got a fever, then muscle pain, particularly in the back, at which time headaches, shivers, and a loss of appetite would set in. Nausea and vomiting began and the fever got higher. After 3 or 4 days some improved and go better, however a large percentage did not and they entered a toxic phase, lasting about a day. The fever reappeared affecting various systems in the body and the person became jaundiced, hence the name Yellow Fever. Abdominal pain and vomiting would start, bleeding might occur from the mouth, nose, eyes, and stomach. Once this happened blood appeared in the vomit and feces and your kidney functions deteriorate, you died within 14 days.
In each successive wave of the disease, city health officials came to understand it better and made a list of recommendations to rid the city of various hazards that helped the disease spread, such as making alterations in cleansing the streets and alleys and forcing owners to pave allies that led to public streets. Since many of the outbreaks were introduced to the city by ships coming into port, no wharf was to be “built unless the dock on either side be so deep as to be covered by water at low tide.” Wharves were also to be paved and cleansed as the streets were. On recommendation was that no tavern should be granted a license or renewed, in any part of the city, unless the lot had sufficient space outside of the house for a privy. There was also a recommendation that no new tavern licenses be granted for any houses east of Front Street to the Delaware River, reason being that “our summer pestilence has generally commenced and raged with the greatest violence within those limits, where, from the confined and filthy character of the localities, the exciting causes of fever arising from intemperate drinking would multiply victims to this disease.”
In outbreak of the 1793, the Yellow Fever was said to have caused 4,044 deaths in Philadelphia. The Census of 1790 gave the population of Philadelphia at that time to be 28,522. If you include the population of Northern Liberties Township and of Southwark, the total population for the metropolitan area would have been about 44,000, which means about ten percent of the city was wiped out. Comparing that to the population of Philadelphia today, reported to be about 1.4 million people, it would be same as if Philadelphia had over 100,000 people dying in four months.
The 1793 Yellow Fever started slowly in August with the death of 325 people. It then increased dramatically in September, killing 1,442 people, then got worse in October when 1,976 individuals died, before finally subsiding when the cold weather started to set in. In November there were only 118 deaths.
In the Federal Census of 1790, Northern Liberties Township was the listed as the 6th largest population center in all of America, behind New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Charleston, and Baltimore. At that time the Northern Liberties Township included everything north of Vine Street between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, with the northern boundary being roughly Frankford & Wingohocking Creeks, and Township Line.
In 1793, Northern Liberties Township reportedly had 543 deaths from the fever. Most if not all of these deaths were in today’s Northern Liberties, Kensington, and Fishtown neighborhoods, as the rest of the Northern Liberties Township was mostly unsettled.
From August to November of 1793 there were at least 169 burials at Kensington’s Palmer Cemetery, all attributed to the Yellow Fever. In a four-day period in September there were 31 burials. In 1793 there were no churches in Kensington and since many other cemeteries were attached to churches, many other Kensingtonians that died from the fever would have been buried at their church’s burial ground.
One Kensington shipwright buried 16 members of his own family in 1793. A blacksmith lost 10 out of his 17 journeymen; another lost all 13 employees.
The outbreak in Kensington was attributed to Elizabeth Hill, the wife of Jacob Hill, one of the original fishermen of Fishtown. Elizabeth Hill is said to have contracted the disease when she was sailing near the infected wharves in Philadelphia. In all likelihood, she was probably transporting fish to sell at the fish market at Front & Market Streets, something many of fishmonger wives of Fishtown’s fishermen families so often did.
18 October 2007 The Rest is History
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has been working on the reconstruction of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia since 1991. The project has now reached the southern most portion, the Girard Avenue Interchange. This interchange runs from about Allegheny Avenue down to Race Street in Old City, which means Fishtown, Northern Liberties, and Port Richmond will all be affected, but none more so then Fishtown and parts of lower Port Richmond. The Girard Avenue Interchange is an important interface between heavily traveled I-95 and three of the neighborhood’s primary arterials: Girard, Aramingo, and Delaware Avenues.
The Girard Avenue Interchange Project calls for the reconstruction of the interchange, eliminating lane drops on mainline I-95 by widening from 3 to 4 lands through the interchange in each direction, widening and reconstruction of 3 miles of pavement and 13 bridge structures along I-95, improving access between I-95 and the local street system, and improving highway signing.
For more complete details of the new configurations see the following PennDOT website: http://www.95revive.com/GIR/flashmap/GIR_option7.html
The engineering company that got the contract for the I-95 reconstruction project is URS Corporation, one of the largest engineering design firms in the world. The company has been around in one form or another since 1904 and employs 30,000 people worldwide. The company has offices in 20 countries and revenues in 2006 of over four billion dollars.
URS has their own archeology department and as part of PennDOT’s Girard Interchange Ramps (GIR) project, they have begun what they call “initial routine archaeological field work” in the interchange area. Crews have been excavating several small test “pits” in the infield area between the Girard southbound off-ramp and Aramingo Avenue. The “pits” provide a “random sampling of the subsurface to ensure that nothing of historical or archaeological significance is disturbed during construction at that location.” The archaeological work is being done in advance of the construction scheduled to begin at this location next year.
On a couple of recent visits to these sites (now buried back up) I was able to meet and talk with the archeologists. Douglas B. Mooney, a senior archeologist for URS, and Port Richmond native Tony McNichols, also an archeologist with URS, were conducting the dig. In one of the two pits the crew opened up, they discovered what they believe to be the old Aramingo Canal. The Aramingo Canal was a project of the Gunner’s Run Improvement Company, a company founded in 1847 by a group of local Kensington businessmen. The company’s goal was to build a canal from the old Gunner’s Run Creek that ran roughly along today’s Aramingo Avenue. Actually, today’s Aramingo Avenue more closely resembles where the canal was previously located, as the old creek was much more serpentine in its course.
The canal was built from the Delaware River at about where Dyott Street is today, north to about where the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Crossing was located, roughly about Lehigh Avenue or slightly north of it. The canal was found to be worthless and by 1896 was considered a nuisance and obliterated by building a street (Aramingo Avenue) over it.
The portion of the canal that was unearthed by URS’s archaeologists was about 7 feet underground and showed a wooden wall, which was unusual for canals in Pennsylvania. There was also a large stone foundation found, which may be one of the footings for an old iron bridge that went over the canal at Norris Street. Running across the canal from side to side were wooden pilings, three pilings wide. It is possible that these pilings might have been part of a dam that was used to block the water in the canal during the time when they were filing in the canal and getting ready to blacktop it, but this has not been confirmed. The city supposedly culverted at least part of the canal.
The archaeologists may get to do more extensive excavations on the canal elsewhere in Fishtown, just where and when has not been determined. However, in the meantime if you find Philadelphia archaeology interesting, both Mooney and McNichols will be presenting talks on other projects they worked on at a program sponsored by the Philadelphia Archaeological Form and Independence National Historical Park titled, “Explore Philadelphia’s Hidden Past: New Archaeological Discoveries in our Town.” The program is being held this Saturday, October 20th, and runs all day starting at 10 A.M. It is being held at the Independence Living History Center Archaeology Laboratory in Independence National Historic Park, Third Street between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. It features illustrated talks, exhibits, films, and interactive programs for children. For information visit: http://www.phillyarchaeology.org/events/archmonth.htm or phone, 215-861-4956.
25 October 2007 The Rest is History
This week I take a little side step from local history and take a look at a piece of history I found surprising, that is the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe in the post-war period of 1945-1949. Having German ancestry, I found it incredible, that the good guys, the Americans and the British, stood by while over two million Germans died after the war had officially ended. This is not a piece of history that is widely known.
At the end of World War II the United States with her allies (Great Britain & Russia) became involved in a situation, which would create killings not seen since the Nazis’ genocide against the Jewish people. In their zeal to quickly resolve ethnic strife in Eastern Europe, as well as to appease the Russians, America and Britain agreed at the Potsdam Conference (1945) to expel all people of German ethnicity from Eastern Europe. Although this transfer of population was to be "carried out in a humane manner," the expelling countries ignored the agreed upon transfer schedule of these people.
Until adequate facilities for transportation, feeding, housing and medicinal needs could be met; the Germans were not to be transferred. The result of the Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian governments failure to control these expulsions resulted in the deaths of approximately 2.1 million people. Most of these ethnic Germans died of disease and starvation. A number of these individuals, mostly old men, women and children, died brutally at the hands of the Russian Army. Still others, who were younger and stronger, were taken to Siberia to work in slave labor camps for years, some were never heard from again. These expelling countries were also responsible for senseless killing and raping and the looting of property.
The Germans were a defeated people, and there certainly was no love for the Nazis, but most, if not all, of these deaths were of citizens, not soldiers, not foot stomping Nazis. Many of those that died had been living in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years, they were probably more Russian, Polish, or Check, then they were German. However the hatred against the Nazi was so great (which it should have been), that the populous and the governments called “open season” on Germans.
The significance of this event is that it is an example of the loss of a traditional moral principle of western culture. We stood by and watched. What this story of the German killings shows is a chipping away of our "Judeo-Christian tradition" of how we treat those we do not like. The moral issue involved in this tragedy is a foundation basic to Western Civilization; "We are judged by how well we treat our enemy."
The English language literature of this event is scarce and the telling of it is even more so. The sad story of this German pogrom is not widely known. What little literature exists was published by religious groups or left leaning publishers and organizations such as: Pilgrims of the Night (1950) by Msgr. Edward E. Swanstrom, spokesman for Catholic War Relief Services; The Problem of 12 Million German Refugees (1949), by the American Friends Service Committee’s Betty Barton; and Victor Gollancz’s Our Threatened Values (1946) and In Darkest Germany (1947).
By far the most interesting group who protested the displacing of the Eastern European Germans was the left leaning Committee Against Mass Expulsion. This group was formed in New York City, in part by three of the founding members of the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the educator John Dewey and the journalist Dorothy Thompson. Besides occasional articles in the New York Times the Committee published in a pamphlet titled The Land of the Dead; Study of the Deportations from Eastern German (1947). By far this pamphlet was the harshest contemporary critique of the Allied governments inaction on the German problem and it would not be until Alfred de Zayas book Nemesis at Potsdam (1977) that there was any real critical analysis of the passive role of the British and American Governments involvement in the German catastrophe.
This is a very difficult period of history to speak on. The Nazis had just brutally murdered millions and many millions more were lost in the war. To find someone to speak for the German citizenry, the old men, the women, the children, the noncombatants, was a difficult task, and it is no wonder that these events were not well publicized, or written about, as I rather think that all those who were responsible for these 2.1 million deaths would wish they had never happened.
1 November 2007 The Rest is History
Recently I was attending Mass in the upper church of St. Anne’s, a Catholic church at Memphis & Lehigh. It’s a beautiful church. The altar of the upper church is made from imported Italian marble. The mosaic behind the altar was considered “one of the largest in the country, outside the Congressional Library at Washington,” when it was first installed. It was handcrafted in Florence, Italy, and was said to have “over 100,000 tiny pieces of stone put together so skillfully that the naked eye does not see where they are joined. The colors blend so beautifully that they seem to have been painted rather than formed by the natural hues of minerals taken from other earth.”
Those of us from St. Anne’s Parish are lucky. Founded in 1845 the church and school are still open. Others in the city are not as fortunate. According to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s website (http://archdiocese-phl.org/), forty-five churches have closed in Philadelphia since 1970. Looking at the closings by the decade we see that there were nine churches closed in the 1970’s, six in the 1980’s, thirteen in the 1990’s, and a whopping seventeen since the year 2000.
Locally, Fishtown, Kensington, and Port Richmond have fared fairly well. Only Kensington had church closings: Sacred Heart Church (Mascher & Master) in 1977, Edward the Confessor (8th & York Streets) in 1993, and St. Boniface (Hancock & Diamond Streets) closed last year.
The Catholic Church has had a great role in the development of working class communities in America, with neighborhood borders in the inner city often defined by parish borders. St. Anne’s southern border use to be Susquehanna Avenue, but when Holy Name was founded in 1905, St. Anne’s border was driven north to York Street, a boundary which is closely adhered to my many longtime neighborhood residents when it comes to the borders of Fishtown and Port Richmond, or Fishtown and Kensington, depending upon who you are talking to.
Since the Catholic Church has played such a role in the community, strong and stable neighborhoods usually mean a strong and stable church, hence Port Richmond and Fishtown did not lose any of their churches. When a Catholic Church closes, it is a pretty clear indication that the neighborhood is on the decline, or in some other state of flux, like gentrification, where artists start to move in, folks not exactly known for being churchgoers.
With these thoughts in mind I attended Mass this past Sunday and witnessed an appeal by my pastor as he tried to reach out and get the parishioners to give more, particularly to “up” their weekly donations on a regular basis.
I remember as a kid thinking that the church was always asking for money. I was young, naïve, and not very astute when it came to financial matters. Now, as an adult with a family to support and being self-employed, I’m much more aware what it takes to manage a budget for my household and for my business. If I need a new roof, it’s several thousand dollars, but when St. Anne’s needs a new roof it can run to over $50,000 and to paint the upper church of St. Anne’s might be another $50,000 or more. While the Archdiocese might support the local church at times, the church is and should be responsible for taking care of itself.
Philadelphia’s population peaked about the year 1950 with slightly over 2 million residents. Since that time the population has decreased dramatically to the point that by the year 2006, it is estimated that there were only 1.4 million folks living in Philadelphia. Is it any wonder then that there were so many church closings since the 1970’s?
The closing of 45 churches in the last 37 years represents about 28 % of the Catholic Churches in the city being closed, Philadelphia saw a loss of about 30% of its population since 1950, thus the percentage of churches closing is proportional to the city’s population loss.
Since strong working class communities and neighborhoods in 20th Century Philadelphia have been so closely related to their Catholic Churches, one has to think that in order to continue to have a strong community, one has to support your church. So when the pastor asks to up the ante in the collection basket, what choice do you have? Do you want to try to keep your church and neighborhood strong? Or, are you willing to move when the neighborhood descends into chaos because the social fabric that helps tie the community together, the church, no longer exists?
8 November 2007 The Rest is History
When Palmer Cemetery was first established in the middle of the 18th Century, Kensington already had a large German population. The open grassy area of the Cemetery that sits on the Palmer Street side of the cemetery, where the veteran’s monument stands, was originally an area that had been set aside to build a school for the English & German Languages, as dictated by the Palmer family.
Those early German immigrants of Kensington were the fishermen of the area, the families that put the fish in “Fishtown.”
There were no churches at this point in Kensington history. The Germans of the area had to go into town, to St. Michael’s (5th Street & Appletree Alley), or Zion (4th & Cherry Streets), both Lutheran, for worship.
The famed Lutheran minister, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711-1787) is shown to have often visited Kensington to marry folks, minister to the sick, baptize a child, or even to simply visit friends.
Muhlenberg was born in Einbeck, Hanover, and was ordained by the Leipzig Consistory in 1739. He immigrated to American and arrived in Philadelphia in 1742. He served a number of churches in Pennsylvania, including those in Philadelphia.
The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was published by the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States and the Muhlenberg Press, back in 1942. Muhlenberg’s journals first record him visiting Kensington on October 9th, 1762, when he was “summoned to Kensington to baptize Kriechenmeyer’s sick little daughter.”
Elizabeth Chevalier (1767- d. bef 1794), the great granddaughter of Kensington founder Anthony Palmer, married John Schaffer, whose sister was the wife of the Rev. Henry Muhlenberg’s son, Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg (1750-1801) the very first Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
When the 19th Century arrived there were still no churches in Kensington. The area only contained but two grocery stores and six taverns, or “country inns.” There were no streets paved, nor were there sidewalks. When the winter frost would leave, there were would often be 3 to 4 feet ditches along Richmond Street between Palmer to Columbia and out to the river, the ditches acting as conduits to convey the melting snow to the river. There was not a row of houses in Kensington. In a few places there may have been two or three buildings that were joined together, but mostly there was irregular gaps between single homes. Many of the homes were two and a half stories with gardens in front of them. Most folks owned their homes.
Many folks were still going into Philadelphia for worship services. Some groups would meet at homes in the area, or, as was the case of local Baptists, the foot of Bishop (later Vienna, now Berks) Street at the Delaware River (which had a natural sandy beach) became a popular place to be baptized.
While the Baptists were being baptized in the river and the Lutherans were going in town to St. Michael’s & Zion, Kensington’s Methodists were going into town to St. George’s Church, at 4th & New (just below Vine) Streets. In bad weather they may have stopped at Zoar Church, at Brown above 4th Street and worshipped with the African-Americans there.
In 1801, the Kensington Methodists, began meeting as the “Class at Kensington,” with John Hewson, the Revolutionary War Hero as leader. Among this class were Hewson’s wife Zebiah, his daughter-in-law Ann Hewson, and several members of the Jones family, Edward, John, & Anthony. The group first started to meet on what was called “Sheep Hill,” which was said to be at the northwest corner of Queen (Richmond) and Crown (Crease) Streets. “Sheep Hill” was supposed to have been from this intersection to about where 221 Richmond Street was located, or about half way down the block to Shackamaxon Street. “Sheep Hill” had a double two-story brick house, painted yellow, standing twenty feet back from the street and was reached by climbing a flight of steps resting against the bank on Richmond Street.
It was not uncommon at this point in history for the Methodists to have rocks thrown through the windows by local rowdies.
By 1804 the Methodists of Kensington in good weather were preaching under “the shade of the Penn Treaty Tree.” Logs of the local shipyard served as benches. A lot was purchased by the Methodists at Richmond & Marlborough and a church building erected In 1809 the Kensington Society of Methodists founded the Kensington Methodist Episcopal “Old Brick” Church, the first church established in Fishtown or Kensington and finally Kensingtonians had a place to worship.
15 November 2007 The Rest is History
Probably one of the more famous individuals who ever came out of Kensington was William Cramp. In Cramp’s lifetime he was known throughout the world as one of the great shipbuilders of his time, if not in all history. He was born on 22 September 1807, on Otis Street, now Susquehanna, in what was then called Kensington, but now Fishtown. The family name was originally Krampf up to the American Revolution, when according to the fashion at that time it was anglicized to Cramp. The Krampfs came from Baden and were some of the first settlers in Kensington in the 18th Century.
Cramp’s family was one of a number of 18th century German families who settled in Kensington and made their living through fishing. According to local historian Rich Remer, the families of Reiss, later Rice, Baker (Backer), Beideman (Beidemann), Collar (Kohler), Gosser, Hill (Huhl), Hoffman, Mood (Mude), Pote (Poth), and Shibe, were all German immigrants who started out as fishermen. Starting a fishing business was inexpensive and an easy step up for the German immigrants. These German families would eventually prosper well beyond anyone's belief and went on to control all the fishing rights on both sides of the Delaware River from Trenton to Cape May. These families put the"Fish" in "Fishtown."
Fishtown was that area of Kensington north of Palmer Street to the old Gunner’s Run (Dyott Street) and sandwiched between Girard Avenue and the Delaware River. For most of Cramp’s life he lived in Fishtown, on Vienna (Berks) above Queen (Richmond), Queen (Richmond) below Wood (Susquehanna), the rear of Palmer above Queen (Richmond), then at 65 Palmer, and finally at 1033 and 1120 Palmer Street. When he was in his last years of his life he finally moved out of the neighborhood and lived in the 19th Century “new money” neighborhood, on 15th Street, near Master, a neighborhood where many Kensingtonians who made their money in the 19th Century moved to live in fine townhouses or brownstone mansions.
After attending the public schools in Kensington, he went to work in 1823 under Samuel Grice, a local Kensington shipbuilder. From Grice, Cramp learnt his trade.
It was through marriage that William Cramp entered the shipbuilding occupation. He had married into a well-known family of shipbuilders. His wife was Sophia Miller, the daughter of Henry Miller, an early Kensington shipwright, who at 21 years old "invested his small fortune in an interest in the cargo of a vessel in one of the earliest voyages after the Revolution from the port of Philadelphia to the East, taking in China, the Indies, and the Philippines." Cramp's mother-in-law, was Elizabeth Byerly, the sister of Kensington shipbuilder John Byerly and one of Sophia's aunts was married to William Sutton, another noted shipbuilder of the day. Another of Cramp's wife's aunts was married to the shipbuilder John Bennett, who went to Bordentown while engaged with his sons at Hoboken as shipwright and shipbuilder for the well known Stevens family.
In 1830, after seven years with Grice, William Cramp opened his own shipyard at the foot of Palmer Street and the Delaware River and from this small beginning his shipyard grew into the William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, one of the most famous and largest shipyards the world has ever seen and the most important in the United States. He constructed wood, ironclad, iron, and eventually, steel ships.
William Cramp and his wife had eleven children. In 1857 he took in two of his sons as partners (Charles H. & William M.), and then in 1863 he took in his three other sons (Samuel H., Jacob C., and Theodore). Cramp remained president of the firm for almost fifty years, from its founding in 1830 until his death in Atlantic City on 6 July 1879. He had been in declining health since about 1877. He is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery.
Cramp was a long time member of the First Presbyterian Church of Kensington where he was a trustee for over 20 years and is honored by that church with one of the stain glass windows. He initially started to study for the ministry under First Presbyterian Church of Kensington’s, the Rev. George Chandler, but due to poor health it was recommended that he take up an outdoor occupation. This was when he decided to go into the shipbuilding trade. In his lifetime he is said to have built 225 ships.
One can only imagine what type of preacher Cramp would have been, since his "second love," that of shipbuilding, only became one of the most famous shipyards in the history of the world.
22 November 2007 The Rest is History
In a letter written in 1683, William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania mentioned that glass was being made in Pennsylvania. While he did not state where it was being made, a later record states that there was a glass works at Shackamaxon, an old Swedish village that eventually evolved into Kensington.
While we do not have the exact location, this Shackamaxon glassworks was said to be, “conveniently posted for water carriage,” thus it must have been on the banks of the Delaware River, or Gunner’s Run. In all probability, it was probably located on the north bank of Gunner’s Run, the old creek that runs under Aramingo Avenue, and near to the Delaware River, just east of where Dyott Street meets Beach Street.
It was on the north bank of Gunner’s Run that several later 18th Century glassworks were built, so we can assume that this late 17th Century glassworks would have probably have been in the same area, particularly since we know that it wasn’t north of this point, as it became fairly swampy between Gunner’s Run and the Delaware. Also, it is fairly certain that it would have not be located south of Gunner’s Run as the property of that area is well documented.
This area on the north bank of Gunner’s Run later took the name of “Balltown,” and there was some industry early established there in colonial times. The property belonged to William Ball, who had purchased the Hope Farm Estate from Kensington founder Anthony Palmer about the year 1729. The Ball family rented out property to Robert Towars and Joseph Leacock, who built a glasshouse about 1771. Leacock was a cousin to Deborah Franklin, the wife of Benjamin Franklin. It is probable that it was this connection to Balltown that Franklin looked to when he was asked to help set up John Hewson in America. Hewson wound up setting up his calico printing works bordering Balltown in the early 1770’s. His printed fabrics were of a quality that rivaled the British and French.
Eventually by the third decade of the 19th Century, the name changed from Balltown to Dyottville, as it was here that the well-known glassworks of Dr. Thomas W. Dyott was established. The rows of two and a half story houses on Hewson and Berks Streets east of Girard Avenue are relics of the homes built by Dyott for his glassworkers in the 1820’s.
A large majority of the glassblowers employed by Dr. Dyott were Germans. He is said to have had 100 glass blowers and 200 apprentices. Dyott went bankrupt in the “Panic of 1837.”
German glassblowers in the employ of Caspar Wistar established Eighteenth Century Glassmaking in the Delaware Valley. Wistar, a German himself who lived in Philadelphia, had a fairly successful glassworks at Alloway, New Jersey, that he started about 1739. He made mostly window glass and bottles. That glasshouse finally closed about 1780, a victim of the Revolutionary War.
Wistar helped to establish the German glassmaking tradition in the colonies. Another German, Henry William Stiegel was next in line to follow Wistar. Stiegel is probably the most famous glassmaker of his age, being the founder of the Stiegel glassworks at Manheim, Pennsylvania.
What little evidence that exists for glass making in 18th Century Kensington comes in the form of advertisements that were run in 18th Century Philadelphia newspapers. George Bakeoven, whose family was one of the early fishermen families of Fishtown, advertised in August of 1777 that “at a considerable expence, [they] brought to perfection the blowing of glass, and have now for Sale, at their warehouse in Kensington…Quart and Pint Decanters, Quart and Pint Tumblers, Wine Glasses, and Phials.”
Bakeoven’s partner was an Irish immigrant named Felix Farrell, who is found in an earlier advertisement put out by Henry William Stiegle, the Manheim Glassmaker, to have been an indentured servant who ran away from Stiegle in November of 1771, only to turn up in Kensington in 1777. Farrell was described as “23 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, fair complexion, brown hair, and has a remarkable scar on his face; had on a brown cloth coat, a striped jacket (part silk) and is very talkative.”
Besides being 18th Century Kensington glassmakers, Bakeoven & Farrell also might possibly be the earliest advertised recyclers in Kensington as well. In one of their advertisements dated 27 August 1777, they state that, “They likewise give the best Price for old broken Glass such as Flint and Window Glass.”
29 November 2007 The Rest is History
Scribe Video Center has been making short films in the neighborhood now for several years and tonight they are back, but this time they are here to show the neighborhood the work they accomplished.
Scribe is a 25 year-old organization that acts as a place where emerging and experienced media artists can gain access to the tools and knowledge of video making. They offer workshops for everyone from the beginner to the established, as well as other programs and opportunities.
Tonight’s feature film will be on the Settlement House Movement in Philadelphia and will feature our very own local settlement house, Lutheran Settlement House.
LSH is one of many Settlement Houses that opened up in the late 19th and early 20th Century. In the case of LSH, they opened in 1902 as the Lutheran Social Mission Society of Philadelphia and moved into 1340 Frankford Avenue about 1911.
The Settlement House movement came out of the East End of London. I once had the opportunity to visit the very first settlement house, Toynbee Hall, at Whitechapel, founded in 1884. The artist/writer William Morris (1834-1896) and the art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) associated themselves with Toynbee Hall.
When the American middleclass debutants and their male counterparts did their “Grand Tour,” after finishing college in America, they would often make England one of their stops and since the Settlement House Movement was the rage in the late 19th Century, they would drop in at Toynbee Hall.
The Americans were use to seeing crowded ghettos, but the American ghetto was filled with non-English speaking immigrants, Jews from Eastern Europe, Catholics from Italy and Ireland, or African-Americans only several decades out of slavery. There was bit of disconnect for the Americans, a feeling that the ghettos were filled with the “other half,” not them.
However, in the East End, particularly at Whitechapel, you had pretty much the worst neighborhood in all of England, and it was filled with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. There were Jews and Irish in the East End, but seeing folks that looked like themselves, WASPS, the middle class Americans were deeply affected. They were a Christian lot and left leaning, so perhaps the guilt got to them. They came back to America and helped to establish Settlement Houses in America.
The most famous of America’s Settlement Houses was Hull-House, in Chicago. This place had the likes of John Dewey (1859-1952) the educator and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) associated with it. Jane Addams (1860-1935) was the founder of Hull-House and hands down the most famous of all settlement house workers having been the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Two years after visiting Toynbee Hall she founded Hull-House.
We can thank the Settlement Houses for playgrounds, school lunches and school nurses, as they were issues that they lobbied for and won.
Kensington was exactly the kind of neighborhood that Settlement Houses would set up at. A factory laced neighborhood filled with working class immigrants. Those early years and to some extant even today, Settlement Houses have helped immigrants adjust to America. They have helped folks to learn English, become citizens, to adjust to different hygiene practices, and helped with getting work or training for work. Today Settlement Houses run a myriad of programs.
Tonight at LSH, Scribe is putting on a night of short films featuring Fishtown and Kensington. It is billed as “family friendly screening,” which means my kids will be in the front row, since yours truly is suppose to be the host. The feature film is The Movement: the Story of Philadelphia’s Settlement House (2007, 30 minutes, featuring LSH), researched, written and edited by 9 youth filmmakers as part of Scribe’s Documentary Project for Youth.
Also showing tonight will be 3 short videos from Scribe’s Precious Places Community History Project that were filmed over the last several years: Villa African Colobo by Grupo Motivos, a look at an African Garden at Norris Square in South Kensington; From the Del to the El: a Neighborhood Evolving, by New Kensington CDC, which looks at Fishtown and Kensington through four churches in the community; and Palmer Cemetery: The Heart and History of Fishtown (Of course I would have called it the Heart and History of Kensington, but that’s another column), which tells the history of Palmer Cemetery, with a guest appearance by yours truly. There are also two additional shorts not dealing with the neighborhood.
The films will be shown at the Lutheran Settlement House, 1340 Frankford Avenue, tonight, Thursday, November 29, 2007, at 6:30 pm. The event is free.
6 December 2007 The Rest is History
Edward Raymond Stanky nicknamed “The Brat from Kensington, ” was born on 3 September 1917, in Philadelphia. Eddie was born to German-Russian parents in Kensington. His father was said to be a “frustrated semi-pro ballplayer,” who worked as a leather glazer.
Between the years 1943 to 1953, Eddie Stanky played professional baseball for the Chicago Cubs (1943-44), Brooklyn Dodgers (1944-47), Boston Braves (1948-49), New York Giants (1950-51), and the St. Louis Cardinals (1952-53). Eddie Stanky played on pennant winning teams with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the Boston Braves in 1948, and the New York Giants in 1951.
It was Stanky who sparked the Giants amazing pennant drive in 1951, with the Giants going 37-9 when Stanky returned to the lineup. Bobby Thompson’s famous “Shot Heard Round the World,” won the pennant for the Giants.
In 1951 Stanky began coaching and managing baseball. He finished his playing career as a player-manager for the St. Louis Cardinals. He compiled a 467-435 record while coaching in the majors for the St. Louis Cardinals (1952-55), Chicago White Sox (1966-68), and the Texas Rangers (1977).
As a player, Stanky batted right handed and played second base. While not the greatest hitter (a career .268), he was able to execute all the little things that made him and the teams he played for winners. He was most famous for his ability to see the ball, as he led the National League three times in walks and had six seasons where he walked over 100 times each year (his 148 walks in 1945 was the NL record until broken by Barry Bonds in 1996). He was a three time National League All-Star and led the league twice in on base percentage. In 1945 he led the league in plate appearance with 726 and runs scored with 128. Stanky led the NL in sacrifice hits (20) in 1946 and in 1950 he led the NL in times on base (314). In 1946, Stanky edged out Stan Musial for the league leader in on base percentage, even though Musial led the league in 10 plus batting categories.
Stanky was an innovator in the game, he advocated for the Designated Hitter twenty years before the American League introduced it. He also had a tactic where if he was on third base and a fly ball was hit to the outfield, he would talk several steps backwards from third base into left field, then start to run and time when he would touch third base and the outfielder would catch the ball, thus giving Stanky full speed when running to home base. The league eventually outlawed this Stanky maneuver.
It’s hard to stomach a Kensingtonian playing for New York, but Stanky’s best season was his first year in New York, where he played 151 games, hit .300 for the season on 158 hits, scored 115 runs, walked 144 times, and had an on base percentage of .460. It was also in 1950 that he tied a major league record by walking in seven straight plate appearances.
In all Stanky played in 1259 games, batted .268 on 1154 hits, scored 811 runs, and walked an amazing 996 times. His career on base percentage was .410. He struck out only 374 times in 11 seasons.
After his professional baseball career was over, Stanky went on to a second career as the baseball coach for the University of South Alabama from 1969 to 1983. Stanky took over USA’s unsuccessful baseball program in 1969 and compiled a 488-193 record in 14 years. The University of South Alabama Jaguars won five NCAA tournaments, two Sun Belt Conference titles, and two No.1 rankings during Stanky’s years at the helm.
In 1977, he retired briefly from coaching college baseball to coach the Texas Rangers, however after one game (a win) he promptly quit because he was home sick for his family. He went back to USA and got his old job back coaching the Jaguars. On 6 June 1999, Stanky died of a heart attack at Fairhope, AL. He was 83 years old.
Stanky’s father-in-law was Milt Stock (1893-1977), an infielder who also played professional baseball (1913-1926) for the New York Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Brooklyn Robbins.
Baseball legend Phil Rizzuto once said that Stanky, “plays a snarling, dog-eat-dog kind of baseball.” In his obituary Stanky was called a “fiery second baseman,” who helped three separate teams to win National League pennants. The famed Giants manager, Leo Durocher, once stated about his friend that, “He can’t hit, can’t run, can’t field…all the little SOB can do is win.” Eddie Stanky, just another kid from Kensington.
13 December 2007 The Rest is History
John Hewson was born in 1744 in England, the son of a London woolen draper. He descended from Col. John Hewson, a supporter of Oliver Cromwell and implicated in the execution of King Charles I. Like his famous ancestor, and to the dismay of his parents, young John Hewson held extreme political views. Republican tendencies did not fare well under King George III and Hewson’s parents with the help of that most famous of Philadelphians, Benjamin Franklin, was able to get young John to emigrate to America in 1774.
Hewson was trained as a printer of calico fabrics and had worked for Talwin & Foster, a leading English textile printworks, at Bromley Hall near London. He very likely brought his equipment to Philadelphia, and perhaps half a dozen workmen as well. He opened a calico-printing factory in 1774, near the Delaware River at the foot of Gunner’s Run, now Aramingo Avenue. At that time Richmond Street was called Point-no-Point Road, and Hewson’s address was listed on the Point Road. As closely as we can currently estimate, Hewson’s place was located where (surprise! surprise!) Hewson Street, named for him, begins today.
Not only was Hewson the first calico fabric printer in the colonies, his work was also of the highest quality. According to scholars of textile history, Hewson’s textiles were unmatched in America at that time, and rivaled those of Europe. His chintz fabrics made him famous and were printed with wood blocks; a different one was used for each of the seven colors in his palette; pink, red, blue, yellow, black and brown. Green colors were added by “pencilling” in blue and yellow dyes.
Hewson’s textiles were expensive and highly sought after for dresses, furnishing fabrics and handkerchiefs. He is most known for his realistic and finely detailed classical urns of flowers, which were printed as medallion panels for bedcovers, it is believed. Women sewed these square panels into the center of a quilt, surrounding it with many frames of floral garlands, or borders of pieced stars or triangles and squares. Bedcoverings could be made this way; 100” X 100” or larger, was a common size for quilts then.
To make the coveted chintz panels go further, women would cut out the birds, butterflies, flowers and other motifs. Using an appliqué stitch, the pieces were reapplied, spread apart onto a large plain background. Blank spaces were filled with less expensive chintz or calicos and intricate quilt patterns. Hewson is still considered one of the finest craftsmen in textile printing history.
In 1775, Martha Washington paid a visit to John Hewson at Kensington. Mrs. Washington’s relative, William Ball, who owned the property on which Hewson’s factory stood, lived near Hewson. Mrs. Washington had heard of Hewson’s fabrics and paid him a visit to commission an image on a handkerchief of her husband on horseback. Mrs. Washington eventually became a regular patron and visitor of Hewson’s calico printing factory.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution, John Hewson, already a vocal supporter of the Patriot cause, enrolled in the 1st Republican Grenadiers in 1775. After this group disbanded, he was commissioned an officer, formed a company of men out of his factory workers and had himself attached to the county militia.
Hewson had to flee Philadelphia for New Jersey when the British landed and occupied the city in 1777. British soldiers sacked Hewson’s office and factory, and he narrowly escaped with some of his tools, machinery, and animals by taking a boat off the Kensington shore, leaving Kensington just before the British arrived. Hewson was eventually captured in New Jersey and after spending some time in the Walnut Street Prison, was transferred to New York. After a brief imprisonment there, he managed to escape almost drowning in the process.
When the war was over, Hewson set about restoring his business. Because of his patriotism and his daring escapes, he was seen as a local war hero. During the Grand Federal Procession on July 4, 1788, Hewson was honored in the parade, traveling at the center of the manufacturers’ float.
In 1790 the Manufacturing Society awarded Hewson a gold medal for the best example of calico printing in the state. He retired from his business in 1810 and helped to found Kensington M.E. “Old Brick” Church. John Hewson died in 1821 and is buried on the north side of the Palmer Cemetery, near the Montgomery Street gate, a true Kensington patriot.
Folk Art, the magazine of the American Folk Art Museum in New York, recently published a great article about John Hewson’s textiles, which illustrates in color a number of his fabrics (Folk Art, Volume 32, Number 3, Fall 2007).
20 December 2007 The Rest is History
As shown from the biography last week of Capt. John Hewson, Kensington had a role in the American Revolution. Besides Hewson’s diary that exists and recounts his Revolutionary War experiences, there is also other evidence that exists, contemporary diaries and maps that illustrates Kensington role during the American Revolution.
There are letters that exist of Elizabeth Farmer, writing to a relict at the time when the British Army occupied Philadelphia in 1777. Farmer lived at the old Bower Mansion, previously located at Frankford & Norris. Her letters describe “picquets” of the British and American soldiers skirmishing outside her house and stealing her fence for firewood..
In Robert Morton’s diary of 22 November 1777, Morton tells us that the British “set fire to Fair Hill Mansion…and many others…. The reason they assign for this destruction of property is on account of the Americans firing from these houses and harassing their Picquets.”
The Fairhill Mansion was the Norris estate, then held by John Dickinson and located at today’s 7th & York Streets. Americans were using it for cover while taking pot shots at the British scouts. Besides Fairhill, many other buildings in the countryside of Kensington were burnt and destroyed by the British, as well as businesses along the riverfront, like Peter Browne’ smith shop and the Eyre brothers’ shipyard. .
Morton’s diary also mentions the British defense works that they built across the northern border of the city, running roughly along where Poplar Street is today, from the Schuylkill to the Delaware River. There were “ten redoubts, connected by strong palisades.” The eastern most point of this line was a small British fort, located on the riverbank of the Delaware, between Frankford Avenue and Shackamaxon Street.
The British General John G. Simcoe, who commanded the British troops in the Kensington area, posted some men near the famous Treaty Tree, so that no one would chop it down for firewood. From October of 1777, Simocoe’s journal reports on the events:
“The village of Kensington was several times attacked by the rebel patrolling parties; they could come by means of the woods very near to it undiscovered; there was a road over a small creek to Point-no-Point; to defend this a house was made musket proof, and the bridge taken up; cavalry only approached to this post, for it lying, as has been mentioned, in an angle between the Delaware and the Frankfort road, infantry were liable to be cut off; on the left there was a knoll that overlooked the country; this was the post of the piquet in the daytime, but corn fields high enough to conceal the approach of an enemy reached to its basis; sentinels from hence inclined to the left and joined those of Colonel Twistleton’s light infantry of the guards, so that this hill projected forward, and on that account was ordered by Sir William Erskine not to be defended if attacked in force, and it was withdrawn at night….At night the corps was drawn back to the houses nearer Philadelphia, and guards were placed behind breastworks, made by heaping up the fences in such points as commanded the avenues to the village; (which was laid out and enclosed in right angles) these were themselves overlooked by others that constituted the alarm post of the different companies. Fires also were made in particular places before the piquet, to discover whatsoever should approach. Before day the whole corps was under arms, and remained so till the piquets returned to their day post, which they resumed, taking every precaution against ambuscades; the light infantry of the guards advanced their piquets at the same time, and Colonel Twistleton was an admirable pattern for attention and spirit, to all who served with him.”
Simcoe’s description of his northern defensive positions in Kensington is well illustrated in a contemporary map by drawn by Pierre Nicole in about November of 1777. Nicole’s map clearly shows the British defense lines across the northern part of Philadelphia, as well as their defensive positions on the northern side of the Cohocksink Creek, Kensington’s historic southern border. In particular the “British Fort #1” is found on Nicole’s map and is located at what looks to be the exact site of where the Sugarhouse Casino is scheduled to be built. For a look at the map, you can find it at the following Library of Congress website: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3824p.ar302200
What with the Casino coming under attack by half the neighborhood, perhaps instead of the Sugarhouse Casino, it should be called, “Fort Casino.”
27 December 2007 The Rest is History
Last week I reported on the old Revolutionary War Era British Fort that sat on the site where Sugarhouse Casino plans to build their casino. Since that time there has been much talk about the Fort and now it looks as though the Historical Commission and the Army Corp of Engineers will get an ear full when they hold their next meeting about the site. Kudos should go to Hal Schirmer of Bucks County who turned up Nicola’s 1777 map, as this ancient historic sight might have been forgotten if he hadn’t come forward.
In order to get a better visual idea of just where that Fort might have sat, I drove down to the Sugarhouse site and after examining it; I turned to see the Edward Corner building across the street from the casino site.
On northwest corner of Shackmaxona & Delaware, there stands a building by itself, one of the last vestiges of the great shipbuilding industry of Kensington (Fishtown), Edward L. Corner’s Marine Merchandizing Warehouse. Corner, besides being a local businessman, was also known widely for his great philanthropy and before this structure is either destroyed or turned into condos, I thought to tell a little about it.
In the 1890 Philadelphia City Directory the firm of Corner & Keighley (Edward Corner & William J. Keighley), were listed in the rag business at 1080 Beach Street. The proprietors were Edward Corner of 214 Allen Street and William J. Keighley of 159 Laurel Street. Edward L. Corner would have been only 19 years old in 1890, so presumably this Edward Corner was the father of the later Edward L. Corner, whose business long closed, but still has building standing at Shackamaxon Street & Delaware Avenue. An interesting stone in the building spells Shackamaxon as “Shakamaxon,” without the “c’.
By1900, Edward Corner, Sr. was listed as a junk dealer. He was born in England in 1840 and immigrated to America in 1859. Elizabeth Corner, Edward’s wife, was born in Germany in about 1850. She came to America in 1853. The couple married about the year 1870, the same year that Corner, Sr. appears to have started his business.
Elizabeth was the mother of twelve children, of which six had died by the year 1900. In 1900 the Corners were living in a rented home at 214 Allen Street, with four of their children, three daughters, and their son Edward L. Corner.
Edward L. Corner, the son of the above mentioned Edward, was born in December of 1872. In 1900 he was listed as a manager, presumably for the junk and rag business that his father started. Oddly enough his parents home on the 200 block of Allen Street was just a couple of doors from the original home of the Kensington Soup Society when it had first started out in 1844, before eventually moving to the Crease Street address.
Edward L. Corner would eventually become the longest running president of the Kensington Soup Society (1919-1955) leading the Soup Society through the worst economic depression in America’s history as well as World War Two. Corner originally joined the Board of Manages of the Soup Society in 1906, serving the Society for a full 49 years in many capacities, including the Chairman of the 100th Anniversary Committee in 1944.
Edward Corner, Sr. died sometime between 1900 and 1910. His wife Elizabeth took over the business. She moved to the 1300 block of Marlborough Street with three of her daughters, while her son Edward L. married in 1903 and moved out of his mother's home to start his own family.
Edward, Jr. married a woman named Bessie and moved to a home on the 400 block of E. Thompson Street and by at least 1930, he moved to 1210 Columbia Avenue, a home that he purchased. At this point he had taken over his father’s business and moved into other areas.
By the early 20th Century, Edward L. Corner was running a marine merchandise warehouse at 1100-1102 N. Delaware Avenue, selling new & used rope, canvas, anchors & chains, canvas covers, boat supplies, blocks and falls, blasting mats, etc.
The building that still stands was probably erected in 1921, as witnessed by the corner stone. Another marking has 1870, which is probably the date that his father first started the business. That earlier business of his father’s was at 1080 Beach Street, but appears to have been obliterated when Delaware Avenue came through.
Edward L. Corner died on 9 October 1955. His family is supposed to have continued to own the property on Delaware Avenue until about 1960. Corner will be best known for his extreme generosity. There are still old-timers around that remember him.