cousins and other family

I wrote the other day about Solomon Windmuller, an uncle of my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller. Solomon arrived in New York in 1819, the first member of the family to leave Germany for a new home in New York. Over the next quarter century he was followed by other relatives. The first was a son of his father's sister, Elise. She had married a man named Solomon Lefman and among their children was a son, Henry, who came to the city in 1831.[1] A city directory of 1839 lists Henry Lefman as a commission merchant doing business at 25 Old-slip and residing at 60 Grove.[2] This cousin, Henry Lefman, would later become Louis Windmuller's mentor, business partner, and, eventually, father-in-law.

The next to arrive was a man whose relationship to my great-grandfather is uncertain. He had attended the same prestigious high school — the Gymnasium Carolinum — but graduated years before my great-grandfather began study there. They both would achieve recognition for their achievements during the second half of the nineteenth century, but their concerns were different and their names infrequently appeared together in news articles. The one, Bernard Roelker, was a highly-eduated intellectual who would earn an excellent reputation as legal counselor.[3] The other, Louis Windmuller, was forced to abandon his schooling before graduating from the gymnasium; he made his way in life as a merchant and his contributions to society were charitible, political, and cultural rather than professional. All the same, there were close connection between the families of Bernard Roelker and of my great-grandfather. In 1865 a member of the Roelker family, Alfred, would become Louis Windmuller's business partner and the two of them would make a great success as commissioning merchants over the next half century.[4] Biographic directories call Alfred Roelker an "old friend" rather than a family relation, but my father said he had been told they were related. In any event, a few years later the two families would become more closely aligned when my Louis Windmuller's sister-in-law Minnie married Alfred's brother Hugo.[5]

The next family members to immigrate to New York were Abraham and Jacob Windmuller. About Abraham I know almost nothing and am not even sure of his given name.[6] He shows up in city directories as "A. Windmuller," as in "Windmuller A. & Brothers, importers" which appears in Doggett's New York City directory of 1842. Jacob was a son of my great-grandfather's paternal uncle Isaac Windmuller.[7] Next to its entry for Windmuller A. & Brothers, Doggett's of 1842 lists "Windmuller Jacob, mer." (meaning merchant). His business address, 85 Pearl, is the same as that of A. Windmuller & Brothers.

I don't know why more than two brothers are indicated in the name of the Windmuller firm. There may have been another of whom I have no knowledge or the firm name may use the word "brother" loosely so as to include Henry Lefman, who was Abraham and Jacob's cousin. Henry Lefman's name also shows up in the 1842 Doggett's as doing business at 85 Pearl: "Lefman Henry, com. mer., 85 Pearl."[8] The directory lists Jacob and Henry as having the same home address: 60 Grove, a residence that Henry had occupied since at least 1839.

Here are scans of the entries from the 1842 Doggett's.

{The New York City directory, John Doggett (J. Doggett, Jr., 1842) }

By 1845, when the next Doggett's appeared, both Henry Lefman and Jacob Windmuller had moved away. That edition shows Jacob Windmuller's address as 67 Bank. This is presumably both business and home address. His occupation is shown as "teacher." Subsequent directories through 1860 list him as "professor of music" and "measurer" at the same address.[9] The 1845 Doggett's shows Henry Lefman's business address as 232 Washington and his home as 579 Broome.[10]

Over the next few decades the directories would continue to list the addresses of Henry Lefman and Jacob Windmuller. However, the last city directory to list A. Windmuller & Brothers is Doggett's of 1848, and I suspect that by then Abraham Windmuller had died or moved out of the city.

That same year three more relatives moved to town. Their name was Frankenheimer — Samuel, Philip, and Moses — and they were cousins of Louis Windmuller's mother, Rachel Sutro Windmuller.[11] In the early 1840s Samuel Frankenheimer had established a business in Alabama. In 1848 he moved to New York City and began manufacturing clothing. It's apparent that his brothers Philip and Moses joined him there.[12]

This image shows the card prepared at time of naturalization for Samuel Frankenheimer. His cousin Philip Pfeiffer attested to the accuracy of the information it gives.[13]


This image shows a passport application that Philip Frankenheimer submitted in 1859.


And this one shows a passport application that Moses Frankenheimer submitted at the same time.


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This shows Coenties Slip just around the corner from 85 Pearl Street.

{Coenties Slip Near Pearl; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This postcard shows a portion of Grove Street after Jacob Windmuller and Henry Lefman had moved away.

{Stokes' Grove Street Studio, etched by Bernhardt Wall (Ferenz-Martini); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Although this photo was taken in 1940, it appears to show buildings that were present a full century earlier.

{Manhattan: Bedford Street - Grove Street by Alexander Alland, 1940; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

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This detail from a fire insurance map shows the location of 85 Pearl Street. The color and single dot indicate that it was a "first class" brick or stone building used as a business having no dwelling units.[14]


Here is the full sheet in which this detail appears.


This detail shows 25 Old-Slip, the same sort of building as 85 Pearl.


This is the full sheet.


This detail shows 60 Grove Street. It was a smallish wood frame structure used as a dwelling with no storefront at street leve.


This is the full sheet.


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I've marked this bird's eye view map to show 25 Old-Slip, 85 Pearl, 60 Grove, and 67 Bank. The map sheet is quite large. You can download the full-size image here.

{Bird's-eye view of New York City with Battery Park in the foreground, painted by Heine, engraved by Himely (Paris, Printed by Goupil & Co., 1851)}

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Here are links to genealogical records for individuals named in this post:

• Solomon Levi Windmüller
• Louis Windmuller
• Henry Lefman
• Bernard Roelker
• Alfred Roelker
• Rachel Sutro
• Jacob Windmüller
• Philip Frankenheimer
• Moses Frankenheimer
• Samuel Frankenheimer

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Some sources:

Things as They Are: Or, Notes of a Traveller Through Some of the Middle and Northern States, 1834

History of New York City (1855–1897) on wikipedia

New York in the Late 1820s and Early 1830s from NYPL

A short history of the port of New York,1815-1860 from Fordham University

The memorial history of the City of New-York from its first settlement to the year 1892, Volume 3, by James Grant Wilson (New-York History Co., 1893)

New York City History from the HistoryBox

The old merchants of New York City by Joseph Alfred Scoville (T. R. Knox, 1885)

South Street Seaport Historic District, Lower Manhattan

New York City Docks And Ships, (an article originally published in the early 1900s )

DAYS OF THE OLD PACKET; CONTRAST BETWEEN PRESENT AND PAST ATLANTIC LINERS. REMINISCENCES OF THE OLD PASSENGER SHIPS -- MOST OF THEM WERE FLYERS -- HARDSHIPS FROM WHICH PRESENT PASSENGERS ARE EXEMPT. New York Times, Dec. 13, 1891. (First paragraph: "What a contrast there is between the present facilities for transportation between Europe and America and those of years ago. Now there are daily departures from either side of the Atlantic of large, well-appointed steamships. The ocean greyhounds now land passengers at Queenstown, Southampton, or New-York within a week from the day of sailing, and the longest transatlantic voyage can be made in a fortnight.")

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Notes:

[1] A list of Westphalia families, in German, gives the following: "Erlaubte Auswanderung ... a) Heinr. Lefmann aus Warendorf, Kaufmann b) 6. 7. 1804 Telgte c) Witwe Elise Lefmann geb. Windmüller o) 1831 p) Nordamerika / New York s) Der Onkel Samuel Windmüller lebt seit längerem in New York."

This roughly translates as: "Permitted Emigration ... Name: Heinrich Lefmann, Residence: Warendorf, Occupation: merchant, Birthdate: 7 June 1804, Birthplace: Telgte [Telgte is a township in the Warendorf District], Parents: Widow Elise Lefmann, maiden name Windmuller, Year of Emigration: 1831, Country and Place of Emigration: North America / New York, Remarks: His uncle Samuel Windmuller has lived for many years in New York."

-- Source: Beitrage zur Westfalischen Familienforschung (Verlag Ascendorff, Munster, 1966).

[2] Longworth's American almanac, New-York register and city directory (New York, T. Longworth, 1839). A commission merchant was one who would import goods for customers in return for a commission fee.

[3] This was Bernard Roelker
Here is an excerpt from his obituary in the New York Times:

A PROMINENT LAWYER DEAD; THE ACTIVE LIFE IN LITERATURE AND LAW OF BERNARD ROELKER; New York Times, March 7, 1888. "Bernard Roelker, who died at his residence, 17 East Twelfth-street, Monday afternoon, of pneumonia, was born April 24, 1816, at Osnabruck, Hanover. He received his education at the University of Bonn-on-the Rhine, where he devoted himself largely to the studies of law and philology. ... "
He was one of the few relatives who became sufficiently well-known for his portrait to be preserved:


[4] The firm was Louis Windmuller & Lefman --

[5] Family tradition says that Minnie was the "Belle of Hoboken." (Some may remember that this sobriquet figures in a 1929 Broadway musical, Sweet Adeline.) Her husband made a fine reputation as a civil engineer. I've previously written about him. Minnie comes up in a few of my previous posts, including this one. Although I write that Alfred and Hugo were brothers, I have not documentary evidence of that; it's simply part of the family oral history. It's clear they were closely related but may have been cousins, not brothers.

[6] The Windmuller family has been carefully researched, but there is no listing for an Abraham Windmuller or any Windmuller having a given name starting with the letter A with anything close to the appropriate birth and death dates.

[7] Isaac was thus a brother of Solomon.

[8] Com. mer. stands for commission merchant.

[9] Measurers were officials in the U.S. Customs House at the port of New York. They assessed imports so that tariffs could be leveyed on them.

[10] Doggett's New-York City directory, John Doggett (J. Doggett, Jr., 1845)

[11] Their mother was Yereth Sutro, aunt of my great-grandfather's mother, Rachel Sutro. Here are links to genalogical records for them: Philip Frankenheimer, Moses Frankenheimer, Abraham Frankenheimer.

[12] This information comes from a biography of another brother, Bernhard Frankenheimer. Here's an extract:

BERNHARD FRANKENHEIMER, a retired merchant of Stockton, was born in Bruck, near Erlangen, Bavaria, May, 1826, a son of Loeb and Yereth (Sutro) Frankenheimer. The father, a merchant of Erlangen, died at the age of seventy-five, and the mother somewhat younger. Her brother Emanuel was the father of the celebrated mining engineer, Adolph Sutro, of Sutro Tunnel fame, now of Sutro Heights, San Francisco. Samuel, an elder brother of our subject, came to America in 1842, and went into business first at Gainesville, Alabama, with a cousin as partner, under the style of Pfeiffer & Frankenheimer, in general merchandise. In 1848 they moved to New York city, where they carried on the manufacture of clothing until 1887, when they retired from active life. The subject of this sketch, on his arrival from Europe in 1844, went by sea from New York to Mobile, where his brother Philip was doing business as an importer of fancy goods, by whom he was soon afterward put in charge of a branch store in Macon, Mississippi. There he remained until 1848, and from 1848 to 1850 was similarly employed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
-- BERNHARD FRANKENHEIMER

[13] These images come from a database maintained by ancestry.com.

[14] This and the following fire insurance map images all come from Maps of the City of New York by William Perris, cartographer (Perris & Browne, 1852); source: NYPL Digital Gallery

Bragaws

In the early 1860s, my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, bought seven acres of rural property and on them built a comfortable home in which to raise his growing family. The location was a neighborhood in Newtown, Queens, called Woodside.[1]

Newtown came into existence in 1665 while the Dutch still ruled in New Amsterdam. Occupying an area where hostile Indians and predatory wolf packs had posed threats to European settlers, the new inhabitants of Newtown set out to buy out the former and kill off the latter. Accomplishing both objectives, their farms — worked by enslaved Africans — prospered. By 1689 the town contained 183 free white inhabitants and 93 mostly black slaves and by 1711 these numbers had risen to 839 and 164. During the 17th and most of the 18th centuries, the town extended over most of the area which later became known as Queens County.[2] It was not until 1764 that the county's boundaries were set and before then Newtown was simply part of Nassau, the name given to Long Island in those years.[3] Thereafter the town's extent diminished as Flushing, Jamaica, and Long Island City came into existence on its borders. All the while, the Village of Newtown lay near the town's center, surrounded by other hamlets of similar size. In time these satellites would come to include Laurel Hill, Dutch Kills, Charlottville, Corona, Maspeth, and, finally, the one where Louis Windmuller settled, Woodside.

When Louis Windmuller purchased the land in the 1860s, Woodside had only recently came into existence, having received its name from a journalist whose family estate bore that name and who wrote a series of "Letters from Woodside" for a Brooklyn newspaper.[4] The name comes from the woodlands in and near the property, but, though it suggests verdant parkland — much like a neighboring section called Sunnyside — the area was not uniformly bucolic. Along with prosperous farms and extensive commercial gardens, the area was dotted with pestilential swamps and the forests themselves did not have entirely pleasant associations.[5]

The land he bought belonged to man who shows up on a property map of 1852 as "R. Bragaw." This was undoubtedly Richard Bragaw, member of a large family by that name which had thrived in Woodside and its environs back when the land was still being contested between Dutch settlers and the local Indian tribes. They were a colorful lot, said to be large in body and spirit. Able and energetic, they were quick to take up arms in an area that, throughout most of the Revolutionary War, was occupied by the British.[6]

Unlike their neighbors, the Bragaws were originally neither Dutch nor English, but French. Like most old families, they found that the spelling of their name evolved as it passed over national boundaries. Huguenots from La Rochelle, they had moved to Manheim and then to first Manhattan, then Brooklyn, and finally, in 1675, they set themselves up on land in what was then Mespath, later to be Newtown, and, still later, the Village of Woodside in the Town of Newtown.

An ancestor writes of the archetypical Bragaw, named Bourgon Broucard, that he arrived in Maspeth in 1692 and a year later was there farming 40 acres of a property called "Mill Land".[7] In 1721, Isaac, a son of Bourgon, helped build a school house on his nearby property along the track that led from Hallett's Cove to the west (on the shore of the East River) through to Newtown Village on the east. This building, probably the first school in that part of Long Island, was still standing in 1892. In 1805, Richard Bragaw, father to the man who sold Windmuller his land, deeded the school house and its property for the use of his neighbors.[8]

When Louis Windmuller bought his land from Richard the Bragaw properties extended along much of the old Hallett's Cove track, now called Middleburg Avenue. For a long time this road had been known simply as the causeway. It lay upon high ground connecting school and mill, and on it the population would frequently meet one another in passing to and fro.[9]

I wonder, when Louis Windmuller, moved there, did he know how many of his wife's ancestors lived in the vicinity. William Thorne, the first of her predecessors to land in America, quarrelled with the Puritans of New England and followed Lady Deborah Moody to land held by the Dutch in Gravesend, Nassau, Long Island. He and most of his family eventually farmed in and around Hempstead, but some, notably one of his Mott descendants, bought land in Newtown, and one, Jacob Mott, became a progressive farmer in on land next to Richard Bragaw's farm, down the road from Windmuller's property.[10]

Via his wife, Windmuller was also distantly related to other neighbors.[11] This is not really surprising. There were four dominant faiths: Anglican, Independent, Reformed Dutch, and Quaker. The families who settled in western Long Island in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not that numerous, they did not move around very much, and they naturally tended to marry within their own churches. This meant that a reasonably small number of family names recur in most genealogies of these folks. Within Annie Windmuller's line, the names Thorne, Lenington, Kissam, Mott, and Van Wyck are common and some of them intermarried with the settled residents of Newtown, including the Townsends, Brinckerhoffs, Burroughses, and Dentons.[12]

At the time of the War of Independence, Bragaws aligned themselves on both sides of the conflict. While Richard, father of the man who sold Windmuller some land, was an ardent Patriot, his cousin Andrew adhered to the Loyalist cause. At the close of the war many Loyalists, now called Tories or worse, fled to Canada. Gradually, some of the exiles returned and it's recorded that Richard and Andrew were thereafter amicable neighbors.[13]

There's much more to be learned about the Bragaws as you can see from the list of sources I've included below. William O'Gorman's quaint historical sketches are a good place to start. The Bragaw section of these sketches has been copied into Francis Skillman's Skillmans of New York (1892 -- in pdf format). The most interesting part of them is really about the British occupation of the Morrell estate during the rebellion. O'Gorman describes the many thousands of troops camped just across the way from the property Windmuller bought: "Ten thousand British troops defiled through the Morrell gate, at that time west of the house, around which, winding and passing north of the barn through the orchard, the steel river of bayonets still flowed, rippling from the inequalities of the ground, until the heights of Shursdorf being ascended each regiment ‘was told off by ‘the steady British sergeant for miles through the woods, to remain for the night." The Sussdorf property was right next to Windmuller's estate and O'Gorman's "heights of Shursdorf" undoubtedly is meant to cover both pieces of land and somewhat more. O'Gorman continues: "The Morrell farm often surrenders to the plow relics of the former camp; Mr. Susdorff [this is closer to the modern spelling of the name] a few years since, rooted up the remains of a broken musket, doubtless buried by some soldier of the occupation. Near the juncture of Betts avenue and the Newtown road, immediately opposite the Kelly mansion, is still to be seen a singular mound of ring form, to which tradition assigns a date coeval ‘with Captain Kidd, but in the absence of positive information we may theorize that a guard may have been stationed there on the junction of the two roads, always an important position to military men. Traces of embankments are said still to be found in those woods." Since the Sussdorf and Windmuller properties were mostly woods and the rest of the area was either swamp or farmland, it's likely O'Gorman's phrase "those woods" refers to the two estates.

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This is the house of Richard Bragaw who sold Windmuller the property which he made into his suburban estate. The photo comes from a 1903 article on the destruction of this and other old houses during an expansion of the Long Island Railroad.

{source: "Historic Houses Being Razed to Make Way for the March of Improvement," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 2, 1903}

As it says, this house on Middleburgh Avenue was purchased by William Gosman from John Bragaw. Bragaw had moved into it in the middle of the 18th century and it was, as the 1903 caption indicates, old even then. The photo is also from the same newspaper article as its neighbor above.

{source: "Historic Houses Being Razed to Make Way for the March of Improvement," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 2, 1903}

Woodside received its name and began its transformation from rural community to New York suburb in the 1850s and '60s when an innovative housing development sprung up and when the Long Island Rail Road Co. built its Flushing Line, making the place a station stop on the way from the western terminus at the 34th St. ferry dock out to Flushing. This early photo shows the LIRR going out island.

{source: Old Queens, N.Y., in early photographs (Courier Dover Publications, 1991)}

Although this photo was taken in 1899 in neighboring Winfield, it conveys a rough idea of the farming countryside that surrounded the Windmuller property when he bought it. Although Woodside was accused of having some "snake-infested swamps and wolf-ridden woodlands," much of the area would actually have looked like this back in the 1860s. Its farmers were proud of the flowers they grew as well as the quality of their fruits and vegetables, dairy produce, and pork which they brought to market.

{source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This photo, taken nearby in 1900, gives an idea of the appearance of much of Windmuller's hillside propery.

{Maurice Woods, 1900. Old Queens in Early Photographs, Seyfried, Asadorian; my source is a forgotten-ny blog post by Christina Wilkinson on St. Saviour’s Church.}

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Maps

This map from Kelly's Historic Queens shows Newtown's roads of the 17th and 18th centuries. I've marked Richard Bragaw's home and the seven acres he sold to Louis Windmuller. The old road connecting the two was then called the causeway and, in Windmuller's time, Middleburgh Ave.

{source: bklyn-genealogy-info.com/}

This map shows Woodside as it was in 1852, before it got the name. I've marked it to show the Windmuller property and that of his nearest neighbor, Adolf Sussdorf, and also marked the home that John Bragaw sold to William Gosman in the 18th century and the home of Richard Bragaw with his school house close at hand. The large area marked "Kelly" is the old Kelly estate which was the first to be "developed" into small lots for suburbanites. The Great Chestnut Tree was a local landmark which died before the end of the 19th century.

{source: Woodside: A Historical Perspective 1652-1994 by Catherine Gregory (Woodside On the Move, 1994), found macaulay.cuny.edu/ and forgotten-ny.com (Woodside, by Chrisina Wilkinson)}

This shows Manhattan and Long Island in 1639. Note that west is on top, not north, and thus Long Island is below Manhattan. I've marked the spot where Woodside would eventually come into being and Gravesend where Annie Windmuller's Thorne relatives settled first, after leaving Lynn, Massachusetts — before they moved on to Hempstead.

{Caption: Anonymous, Manhattan on the North River, 1639. Detail showing Dutch settlements on Manhattan and Native longhouse in Brooklyn; source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division}

This detail comes from a British map made in 1776. I've shown Manhattan, Newtown, Gravesend, and Hempstead.

{Map of the progress of His Majesty's armies in New York during the late campaign, 1776; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

I've marked this satellite view to show the Windmuller property.

{source: Google}

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Some sources:

Woodside, Queens County, New York: a historical perspective, 1652-1994, by Catherine Gregory (New York, Woodside on the Move, 1994)

Long Island on the New York Parks web site

Maspeth/ Middleburgh/Hastings/Newtown on the New York Parks web site. Excerpt:

1. New Amsterdam
Maspeth/ Middleburgh/Hastings/Newtown

The European settlement of what is today the borough of Queens did not begin auspiciously. Its leader was an English firebrand minister named Francis Doughty, whose preaching — in particular his belief that the descendants of Abraham were entitled to Baptism — became too radical for the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay colony. When Doughty showed up on the streets of New Amsterdam, director-general Willem Kieft, who was searching desperately for settlers, offered him the chance to start an English town on Long Island, under Dutch protection. Kieft promised Doughty that he would also be free to preach his chosen gospel. In 1642 Doughty brought several families to his new community, called Maspeth.

Kieft was rather generous, granting a "certain parcel of land situate on Long Island…containing…six thousand six hundred and sixty-six Dutch acres or thereabouts, comprehended within four right lines…"-more or less the entire western half of the borough of Queens. But the newcomers had just begun their settlement in earnest when an Indian attack leveled the place in 1643. The survivors limped back to Manhattan, and Rev. Doughty established himself for a time as minister to the English residents of New Amsterdam. Thus ended the original community of Maspeth.

Nine years later, however, another group of English who had moved south from New England tried again on the same land. This time they named the place Middleburgh. With the English takeover of the province of New Netherland in 1664, the name was changed to Hastings. Apparently, however, the residents had long called the place Newtown, as if to make a clear distinction from the earlier, abortive settlement, and so the community was called well into the nineteenth century. If you are looking for Newtown today, however, you won't find it, beyond such references as Newtown Avenue and Newtown Creek (the East River tributary that forms the boundary between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens). Confusingly enough, however, Maspeth later resurfaced as a name for part of the area within Rev. Doughty's original patent. In 1725, a Judge Sackett built his house in Maspeth, and by the time of the Revolution Maspeth was an industrial center.

The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York on longislandgenealogy.com

HISTORY TOPICS: NAMES OF LONG ISLAND CITY. Excerpt: "Woodside Avenue, earlier Hurl Gate Road, earlier Road to Narrow Passage.
Either an Indian trail or one of the first roads built, this was the main road from western Queens to the Village of Newtown. A tongue of dry land between the swamps of "Long Trains Meadow" (towards Jackson Heights), "Wolf Swamp" (towards Maspeth) and Burger's Sluice (along Northern Boulevard.) Strategic point garrisoned by Hessians during the Revolution. The slight hump in the terrain at Woodside Ave. and Northern Blvd. may have been a beaver dam."

Register in alphabetical order, of the early settlers of Kings County, Long Island, N.Y. by Teunis G. Bergen( New York, S. W. Green's sons, printer, 1881). Excerpt: "Broucard, Broulaet, Bourgon, or Bragaw, Broucard, a French Huguenot who emigrated to this country from Manheim in the Palatinate of the Rhine with his w. Catharine Le Febre in 1675. In 1664 he bought and resided on a farm in Bushwick, which he sold in 1688 and removed to Newtown. Previous to this he appears to have resided at Bedford, as per Do. Van Zuuren's lists of R. D. ch. mem. of 1677, on which he is entered as removed from Bedford to Flatbush. Issue: — Maria, m. Myndert Wiltse; Jane, m. Hans Coevert; Catalina; Isaac, baptised Aug. 7, 1676, m. Heyltie; —— John, m. Sarah ——, and settled at Three Mile Run, N. J.; Jacob, settled on the Raritan; Peter, m. Catharine and settled on the Raritan; and Abraham, m. Marytie or Maria, and settled on the Raritan. The N. J. branch of the family write their surname Broka or Brockaer. Made his mark to documents."

Long Island Unveiled: Early Colonial Maps

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

THE HISTORY OF ST. SEBASTIAN PARISH: 1894 - 1994

Prominent Families of New York (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009)

History of Green Point Transcribed for the Bklyn Pages by Mimi Stevens

Historical guide to the city of New York, City History Club of New York, Frank Bergen Kelly (F. A. Stokes company, 1909)

Ancestors of Walter Edgar Fry

Up The Creek - October 22, 2000 by Frank J. Dmuchowski

HISTORY TOPICS: STREETS STREET NAMES: CURRENT, Greater Astoria Historical Society

A History of the Bragaw Family

Bragaw Genealogy (pdf)

The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York; containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns by James Riker(New York, D. Fanshaw, 1852). Excerpt: "Several of the citizens of Newtown, namely, Richard Bragaw, George Brinckerhoff, Abraham Devine, and Ludlam Haire, all of whom had been with Gen. Woodhull, driving stock, were also surprised and captured at Hinchman's tavern, Jamaica, and taken from thence to a British prison-ship, where they were urged to enlist, but, by bribing a friend to government, were released."

The Skillmans of New York (pdf) compiled by Francis Skillman, 1892

Sketches of Ancient Newtown; The Bragaws. (pdf); from the Long Island City Star of April 25, 1879; also published in 1886 in the Newtown Register as "OLD NEWTOWN. Selections from the Town Scrap Book, Originally Written by William O'Gorman."

Religion in New Amsterdam by Donna Speer Ristenbatt

The Baptists in New York

Rev. John Moore of Newtown, Long Island, and some of his descendants by James W. Moore (Easton, Pa., Printed for the publisher by the Chemical Publishing Co., 1903)

The New York genealogical and biographical record, Volume 83 (New York, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1870)

Documents and letters intended to illustrate the revolutionary incidents of Queens county: with connecting narratives, explanatory notes, and additions by Henry Onderdonk (Leavitt, Trow and company, 1846)

Proceedings of the annual meeting, Volume 23 (New York State Agricultural Society, 1864)

Newtown Register, Thursday, March 1, 1877 -- "E. T. Bragaw. Esq., of Woodside. is President of the New Stock Exchange recently organized by New York Brokers."

The Jones family of Long Island; descendants of Major Thomas Jones (1665-1726) and allied families (New York, T. A. Wright, 1907)

Descendants of William Thorne & Susannah Booth

The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate

Pioneers of Woodside; Story of the Early Residents Of the Lately Famous Long Island Village. Marks of German Influence — Story of the Freedle Family from the Time of the Napoleonic Wars — The Rikers, Kellys, and Howells on the Old Farm. New York Times, August 1, 1897.

Present Day Neighborhood of Woodside

Woodside - The Peopling of New York City

The Kelly Family, in The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York, by Owen Clough

The family of Joris Dircksen Brinckerhoff, 1638 by Roeliff Brinkerhoff and T. Van Wyck Brinkerhoff (R. Brinkerhoff, 1887)

“Woodside of Long Ago," The Woodsider, March 1983

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Notes:

[1] The area of his property may been a bit more than seven acres. Some old sources show that number and others show ten. A good starting point for investigating Woodside is a blog post on forgotten-ny: by Christina Wilkinson.

[2] Early settlers enslaved American Indians, but there were never many and their numbers dwindled as African slavery proved to be more profitable. To learn more about the early history of Newtown, go to James Riker's book: The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York; containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns by James Riker(New York, D. Fanshaw, 1852) Riker explains that slaves were bought and sold as chattels, but had some rights nonetheless. "They were protected by law. In infancy they were baptized, and at a suitable age were allowed to marry. "

[3] Queens would not become part of New York City until 1870 and until then was in, first, Nassau, and then Long Island.

[4] The journalist was John A. Kelly who wrote "Letters from Woodside" about his experience, growing up on his parents estate in a series of reminiscences written for The Independent Press, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (See: The Kelly Family, in The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York, by Owen Clough, and The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate.)

[5] The woodlands came to be called "Suicide's Paradise" from a custom, it was said, for people to take their own lives in an area called "Snake Woods" (source: an article in the Woodsider, March 1983). One source says the area "was largely comprised of snake-infested swamps and wolf-ridden woodlands."

[6] As for example: "During the Revolutionary War the house was a rendezvous for patriots when hard pressed by the British. Once Richard Bragaw, its owner, was captured by the British and sent to the prison ship Jersey. Later by bribing one of the sentinels he escaped and went back to the aid of the patriots. After the British took possession of that part of Long Island the house was searched almost daily by bands of soldiers in search of rebels or plunder." -- The Sun, Sunday, December 28, 1902: "Old Homesteads Doomed Must Make Way for the Tunnel in Long Island City The Bragaw House On of Them — Built by Descendants of a Huguenot Two Centuries Ago — Its Revolutionary Record — Other Interesting Houses to Go." And also:

The Bragaws! The Bragaws of Dutch Kills; like Ajax of Homer the name by a natural onomatopoeia resounds their physical build and mental stature. Plucky sons of action; in war they will not be neutrals; without demonstration they obey the call to arms and retire from the conflict at its conclusion. Well fitted to endure hardship, this Huguenot race can abandon home without a pang, sustain the hardships of military life, and return without emotion. Daniel T. Bragaw, sergeant 4th N. Y. Cavalry; Townsend Bragaw, 4th N. Y. Calvary; George McAlister Gosman, 15th N. Y. Engineers; E. T. Bragaw, John Goldsmith Bragaw, Edward G. Burnett and John G. Bragaw and brother, sons of Richard P. Bragaw, close an imperfect list of men, all immediate cousins from one family engaged in our great rebellion. -- (Sketches of Ancient Newtown; The Bragaws; From the Long Island City Star of April 25, 1879.)

[7] From a Bragaw descendent:

The Dutch in America had a difficult time handling the French name of Broucard. It is found in more than twenty different variant spellings including, among others, Bergaw, Borcaart, Bragan, Brega, Brocca, Brokaerd, and Burgau. The Christian name Bourgon also gave the scribes trouble, being found as Bergoon, Bergun, Bregu, Brogun, etc. His descendants in New Jersey finally adopted the spelling Brokaw, while those on Long Island called themselves Bragaw.

Bourgon Broucard settled in Brooklyn where he was assessed in 1676 as owning about 11 morgens (about 23 acres) of land and valley and two cows. The following year he was in Midwout, at which time his wife was, transferred from the Dutch Reformed Church of Brooklyn to the French Church in Manhattan by certificate, but her name does not appear in the early French Church records. In 1684, he moved to Cripplebush in Bushwick, L.I., where he bought a farm, and four years later to Dutch Kills, now a part of Long Island City. Here, in 1692, he bought a large estate, which he sold in 1702. In a deed, dated June 21, 1690, he and Hans Tunis Couert "of Bedford in Kings Co.," yeomen, bought land in Maspeth Kills, Newtown, and on July 16, 1693, he bought 19 morgens and 400 rods of land there, called the Mill Land (Queens Co. Deeds, B 2, pp-352-53). On Oct. 30, 1700, a bill was brought before the Assembly for the quieting of title to the lands of "ancient freeholders," including those of "Bergoon Bragan," who were "inhabitants of Hellgate Neck, within the bounds of Newtown, on Long Island." -- The Story As I See It by Dennis Brokaw

[8] See "The Bragaws, Sketches of Ancient Newtown," in Skillmans of New York by Francis Skillman (Jones, 1892) and Bragaw Genealogy (pdf)
William O'Gorman, the Town Clerk of Newtown during the 1880s, wrote a series of historical sketches which he said were taken from Newtown Scrap Books. Three of them relate to the Bragaws. In one he writes:

Richard Bragaw granted the site of the old Dutch Kills School House by deed bearing date 20th December, 1805. An extract can hardly be refused:

Know all men by these presents that I, Richard Bragaw of Newtown, Dutch Kills, in consideration of the good will and affection I have and bear to my neighbors, namely Francis Duryea,. Charles Debevoise. John Debevoise. Johannes De-Witt, Derick Brinckerhoff, Abraham Polhemus. William Payntar, Joseph Goslice, David Miller, James Blackwell, George Van Alst, Isaac Van Alst, James McDonough. William Parcels, John Debevoise, James; Larremore, Richard Bragaw, Abraham Rapelye, Isaac Rapelye, Andrew Bragaw, Daniel Townsend, William March and William Payntar, and also for other divers and good causes and considerations, me, the said Richard Bragaw, hereunto moving, have given, granted and confirmed, and hereby give, grant, and confirm, unto my said neighbors that certain piece of ground on which the School House now stands, to have, hold and enjoy with an addition of three feet on each side of said School House unto my said neighbors, their executors, administrators, and assigns, forever to be applied to the use of a School House, and for no other purpose whatever, with the proviso that I, the said Richard Bragaw, my heirs, administrators, and assigns, am to receive the ashes which shall from time to time be made in said house or in whatever School House may be erected on said ground, etc. In witness whereof, etc.. Richard Bragaw. Elizabeth Bragaw. Signed in the presence of William Gray.

-- Sketches of Ancient Newtown; The Bragaws. (pdf); from the Long Island City Star of April 25, 1879; also published in 1886 in the Newtown Register as "OLD NEWTOWN. Selections from the Town Scrap Book, Originally Written by William O'Gorman."

[9] From William O'Gorman:

The causeway — let us people it again with its neighbors down later generations, even to the times of Richard Bragaw on their wagons going to the mill. Great conversations and profound disquisitions were held thereon. Romantic courtship also has diffused its charms over the Ravine Road, for a comely young widow owned the mill, the cottage and the farm; she too was wayward like her maiden sisterhood of the Kills in preferring strangers whilst she was the widow Polhemus.... But before this period, say May 12, 1776, Richard Bragaw had developed an extraordinary thirst for education under the eye of Professor Gilbert, who kept school precisely where No. 2 now stands. Here he also lived and educated his daughter. The old causeway was not unfaithful, and the two were married. She departed pending the Revolution, leaving her widowed spouse to cross over to the opposite corner and seek consolation from the sympathizing soul of the bright-eyed Catherine Payntar. And still the old mill dam was faithful to the trust reposed in it by young hearts: the pair were married January 21, 1786.... Mindful of the ravine where in childhood he played, and full of the emotional recollections we have touched on, Richard Bragaw granted the site of the old Dutch Kills School House by deed bearing date 20th December, 1805.... The old School House itself was cremated a few years since. Whether or not the heirs of Richard were entitled under the terms of the deed to its ashes the [author] will not aver. W. Gray, the witness, was the teacher. The foundation stones still mark the spot a few yards down the ravine from its brick successor, No. 2. -- Newtown Register, June, 1886; "Old Newtown, Selections from the Town Scrap Book, Originally Written by the Town Clerk." The Town Clerk was William O'Gorman, who served in the 1880s and wrote historical sketches which appeared in the Long Island city Star as well as the Newtown Register.

[10] Jacob Mott 1715-1805 was a grandson of Adam Mott. Born in Essex, England, in a family whose roots can be traced to 1375, he arrived in Boston in 1636. In 1646 he settled in Mespath Kill, which would, much later, beome the Woodside section of Newtown. In 1655 however he was in Hempstead. His first wife was Jane Hulet of Buckingham England. Jane and Adam had eight children, including Joseph. Joseph had a son Jacob. Adam also had a son Richbell by his second wife, Elizabeth Richbell, and Richbell married Elizabeth Thorne in 1696. Elizabeth was daughter of William Thorne, second of that name. This William Thorne was a grandparent, quite a few generations back, of Annie, wife of Louis Windmuller. Jacob Mott was also connnected to Annie Windmuller's Thorne relatives via her Kissam ancestors. It was his Aunt Elizabeth who married John Kissam and he, John, was son of John and Susannah (Thorne) Kissam. Windmuller and Jacob Mott were thus distant cousins in two family lines. Jacob Mott himself became prominent in NY politics and was an alderman, 1804-10, president of the Board when De Witt Clinton was Mayor, and at one time an acting Deputy Mayor. Mott Street in Greenwich Village perpetuates his name in the map of the city. -- Prominent Families of New York (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009). Jacob Mott won awards for his skill at farming. (Proceedings of the annual meeting, Volume 23, New York State Agricultural Society, 1864).

[11] Windmuller's neighbors included Samuel B. Townsend, George Brinckerhoff, Jacob J. Burroughs, Joseph Burroughs, Theodore Burroughs, and B. Denton. Samuel B. Townsend was, like Jacob Mott, connected to Annie Windmuller via the Kissams. Anna Mott first married Daniel Kissam II then Jotham Townsend. Samuel B. was very likely a descendant of Jotham. George Brinckerhoff was connected to Annie via Magretia Brinckerhoff who married Theodorus Van Wyck in 1693. Their daughter, Altje Van Wyck married Richard Thorne from whom Annie was directly descended. Jacob, Joseph, and Theodore Burroughs were sons of John Burroughs (m. Sarah Debevoise), himself son of James Burroughs (m. Gessie/Grace Colyer), son of Jeremiah (m. Hannah Way). Jeremiah had a sister Abigail who married Thomas Thorne in 1759. B. Denton there is a likely connection with Phoebe Denton, wife of Richard Thorne (m. 1699). -- I have this from my genealogical research into the Windmuller family.

[12] See Windmuller Family Genealogy

[13] O'Gorman writes: "Richard Bragaw, an uncompromising patriot, at once took sides with his country by joining General Woodhull's Cavalry. He was taken prisoner at Hinchman's Tavern, Jamaica, at the time Woodhull was killed, and sent aboard the "Jersey" prison ship; but his strong constitution baffled the horrors of that floating pandemonium, and he finally made his escape to find his horses and farm stock confiscated and his other property pillaged. His Tory relative, Andrew Bragaw, was suspected of unfriendly feelings, but probably without foundation, for we find both parties on very friendly terms after the proclamation of peace. One fellow named Titus, however, narrowly escaped a bullet from Richard, who encountered this over active Tory near Newtown village." -- "OLD NEWTOWN. Selections from the Town Scrap Book, Originally Written by William O'Gorman," a series of articles published in the Newtown Register in 1886.

cliff dwellers

This is a painting by George Bellows called Cliff Dwellers (as usual, you may click the image to view it full size).

{Cliff Dwellers, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 by 42 1/8 inches, currently hung in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; source: the web pages from last winter's exhibit called American Stories at the Metropolitan Museum of Art}

He showed it in the 1913 Armory Show which he helped organize.

Bellows was known for his gritty scenes of working class life in New York. Associated with the realist artists of the Ashcan School, he, more than others, depicted the "crudity and chaos" of city life in the immigrant neighborhoods.[1] Although he was not known to flinch from depicting violence and raw emotion, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art points out that in Cliff Dwellers, he "offers a genial narrative:"

Bellows acknowledges that much life in the neighborhood was lived in the street or on stoops and fire escapes, as residents sought respite from dark, poorly ventilated, overcrowded apartments. Yet he minimizes hardship, using bright colors and showing children at play, laundry snapping in a passing breeze, and other cheerful details. While Jacob Riis made a disquieting photographic record of New York's slums about 1890 and social commentators urged tenement reform, Bellows offers a genial narrative. Like Basil March, a character in William Dean Howells's novel A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) who visited a tenement neighborhood, he seems to proclaim: 'I haven't seen a jollier crowd anywhere in New York.'[2]

Jacob Riis did not just photograph, but, in telling detail, described the awful conditions endured by these immigrant masses. From a text of his written two decades before, here's roughly the same scene: "Evening has worn into night as we take up our homeward journey through the streets, now no longer silent. The thousands of lighted windows in the tenements glow like dull red eyes in a huge stone wall. From every door multitudes of tired men and women pour forth for a half-hour’s rest in the open air before sleep closes the eyes weary with incessant working. Crowds of half-naked children tumble in the street and on the sidewalk, or doze fretfully on the stone steps. As we stop in front of a tenement to watch one of these groups, a dirty baby in a single brief garment — yet a sweet, human little baby despite its dirt and tatters — tumbles off the lowest step, rolls over once, clutches my leg with unconscious grip, and goes to sleep on the flagstones, its curly head pillowed on my boot." -- How the Other Half Lives, Jacob A. Riis, 1890.[3]

Here are some details from the Bellows painting.

1. The windowsill sports a flowering plant by which a young person looks out. A man takes a nap on the fire escape as another observes life going on below.



2. I think this shows a man lighting a cigarette. Tobacco was a luxury and young boys would scavenge for cigar butts, combining the remnants to sell. Guys like this would buy their tobacco and roll cigs.



3. The electric street car is on its way to Vesey Street, packed with commuters. We're on East Broadway and the sidewalks are jammed with other commuters afoot, as well as Riis's "multitudes of tired men and women [seeking] a half-hour’s rest in the open air before sleep closes the eyes weary with incessant working." The barber poll indicates that this block draws custom from places where men can afford a haircut and shave.



4. It's women who put out the wash to dry of course, doing so in the evening after they've finished work for the day.



5. Here are the romping kids to whom the Met curator drew our attention, but also one in exhausted sleep by the curb as Riis described.



6. An older girl has some harsh words for a boy, presumably her brother.



7. Two women, one with sleeping babe, relax in the pleasure of each other's company. If you're like me your eye was drawn first the white frocks of the girls directly above, and then to these two.



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The East Broadway of Cliff Dwellers was an area that Riis called Jewtown. The term seems offensive but he meant it as we say Chinatown or Little Italy. In a piece called The Sweaters of Jewtown, he both described and depicted the sweated labor of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe.[4] Here's one of his photographs. It shows a tenement home and place of work. Note the girl's smile, the pet dog, and the hands-in-lap of a woman at rest, all of them mitigating the viewer's sense of outrage over the exploitive toil that's the photo's main subject. Riis says: "Up two flights of dark stairs, three, four, with new smells of cabbage, of onions, of frying fish, on every landing, whirring sewing machines behind closed doors betraying what goes on within, ... in a dimly lighted room with a big red-hot stove to keep the pressing irons ready for use, is a family of man, wife, three children, and a boarder. 'Knee-pants' are made there .... Three cents and a half is all he clears, says the man, and lies probably out of at least two cents. The wife makes a dollar and a half finishing, the man about nine dollars at the machine. The boarder pays sixty-five cents a week. He is really only a lodger, getting his meals outside. The rent is two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, cost of living five dollars. Every floor has at least two, sometimes four, such shops."[5]

{Riis's caption: Knee-pants at 45 cents a dozen – a Ludlow Street sweater’s shop; source: Child Labor Resources at the Catherwood Library and the Kheel Center}

Riis says the these Jewish immigrants appear to present policy makers with an intractable set of problems. Organizations such as United Hebrew Charities try to better their living conditions and to break the economic system that ties them to poor-paying piecework, but they are stymied since there are so many Ostjüdin, eager to flee the desperate poverty and constant danger of life in the Russian Empire. As current residents move out, others, in greater numbers, move in. In tenements, says Riis, "the lodger of Jewtown can 'live like a lord,' as he says himself, for twenty-five cents a day, including the price of his bed, that ranges all the way from thirty to forty and fifty cents a week, and save money, no matter what his earnings."[6]

I've done sets of blog posts on the African-American underclass of former slaves in New York's Five Points neighborhood and on the destitute Irish immigrants who moved in with them.[7] After a bit of mid-century urban cleansing the Irish moved north to Mulberry Street and Little Italy and the African-Americans spread out to other neighborhoods, many of them to blocks east of Mulberry Street in and near Chinatown.[8] What Riis called Jewtown lay further to the east.

In 1890 Riis took this photo of the worst part of Mulberry Street, called Mulberry Bend. It's hard to tell from the photo, but destitution and crime were worse here than they were in Riis's Jewtown. From the shadows, it seems to be mid-day, a time on East Broadway when most residents would be inside making sweated garments; yet here there are many men out and about, most not seeming to have any occupation. The only woman we can see is stooped, collecting something from curbside.

{Mulberry Bend by Jacob Riis on Meisterwerke der Fotografie -- zeno.org}

This map shows East Broadway, Ludlow St., Mulberry St., and Vesey St. The blue line indicates the route of the Vesey St. electric car. I've also indicated Mulberry Bend and Reade St. My great-grandfather worked out of an office at 20 Reade St. for all of the second half of the 19th century and for most of that time commuted on foot from his home at Woodside in what was then rural Queens. He didn't usually pass through East Broadway, but he did cross its western end as he strolled back and forth each day.[9]

{The city of New York, by Will L. Taylor, 1879; source: Library of Congress}

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Some sources:

George Bellows (American, 1882–1925) Cliff Dwellers, 1913, Metropolitan Museum of Art

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915: Cliff Dwellers by George Bellows, transcription of a podcast on the subject; Barbara Weinberg interviews Joyce Mendelsohn and Annie Polland, two historians of New York’s Lower East Side

After 1915: The Evolution of American Stories, a blog post from the Met including a discussion of the painting:

In Cliff Dwellers, children play, vendors sell from carts, and a streetcar inches its way through the lively throng. (For more information about Cliff Dwellers, listen to the related Met Podcast episode with Joyce Mendelsohn and Annie Polland, two historians of New York’s Lower East Side.) Like Bellows’s painting, early-twentieth-century films of New York City streets often emphasized the sometimes chaotic movement of the crowds that passed before the lens. (As an example, see the 1903 film by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company called At the foot of the Flatiron, available through the Library of Congress website.) In Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880–1910, the art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews writes that films and paintings in the early twentieth century often presented cities as living things. In Cliff Dwellers, with its emphasis on the surging, crisscrossing crowds, we see the streets of New York as a living being, which parallels the visual language of motion pictures.

New York City, Tenement Life

New York City Play Areas for Children of the Tenements

Seward Park

New York Songlines: East Broadway

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Notes:

[1] The quote comes from the wikipedia article on Bellows.

[2] George Bellows (American, 1882–1925) Cliff Dwellers, 1913

[3] A photographer as well as sociologist and urban reformer, Riis was, like Bellows, associated with the Ashcan School.

[4] The piece is Chapter XI of How the Other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob A. Riis (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890)

[5] Here's the whole section:

Up two flights of dark stairs, three, four, with new smells of cabbage, of onions, of frying fish, on every landing, whirring sewing machines behind closed doors betraying what goes on within, to the door that opens to admit the bundle and the man. A sweater, this, in a small way. Five men and a woman, two young girls, not fifteen, and a boy who says unasked that he is fifteen, and lies in saying it, are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, “kneepants” in the Ludlow Street dialect. The floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. In the alcove, on a couch of many dozens of “pants” ready for the finisher, a bare-legged baby with pinched face is asleep. A fence of piled-up clothing keeps him from rolling off on the floor. The faces, hands, and arms to the elbows of everyone in the room are black with the color of the cloth on which they are working. The boy and the woman alone look up at our entrance. The girls shoot sidelong glances, but at a warning look from the man with the bundle they tread their machines more energetically than ever. The men do not appear to be aware even of the presence of a stranger.

They are “learners,” all of them, says the woman, who proves to be the wife of the boss, and have “come over” only a few weeks ago. She is disinclined to talk at first, but a few words in her own tongue from our guide set her fears, whatever they are, at rest, and she grows almost talkative. The learners work for week’s wages, she says. How much do they earn? She shrugs her shoulders with an expressive gesture. The workers themselves, asked in their own tongue, say indifferently, as though the question were of no interest: from two to five dollars. The children — there are four of them — are not old enough to work. The oldest is only six. They turn out one hundred and twenty dozen “knee-pants” a week, for which the manufacturer pays seventy cents a dozen. Five cents a dozen is the clear profit, but her own and her husband’s work brings the family earnings up to twenty-five dollars a week, when they have work all the time. But often half the time is put in looking for it. They work no longer than to nine o’clock at night, from daybreak. There are ten machines in the room; six are hired at two dollars a month. For the two shabby, smoke-begrimed rooms, one somewhat larger than ordinary, they pay twenty dollars a month. She does not complain, though “times are not what they were, and it costs a good deal to live.” Eight dollars a week for the family of six and two boarders. How do they do it? She laughs, as she goes over the bill of fare, at the silly question: Bread, fifteen cents a day, of milk two quarts a day at four cents a quart, one pound of meat for dinner at twelve cents, butter one pound a week at “eight cents a quarter of a pound.” Coffee, potatoes, and pickles complete the list. At the least calculation, probably, this sweater’s family hoards up thirty dollars a month, and in a few years will own a tenement somewhere and profit by the example set by their landlord in rent-collecting. It is the way the savings of Jewtown are universally invested, and with the natural talent of its people for commercial speculation the investment is enormously profitable.

On the next floor, in a dimly lighted room with a big red-hot stove to keep the pressing irons ready for use, is a family of man, wife, three children, and a boarder. “Knee-pants” are made there too, of a still lower grade. Three cents and a half is all he clears, says the man, and lies probably out of at least two cents. The wife makes a dollar and a half finishing, the man about nine dollars at the machine. The boarder pays sixty-five cents a week. He is really only a lodger, getting his meals outside. The rent is two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, cost of living five dollars. Every floor has at least two, sometimes four, such shops. Here is one with a young family for which life is bright with promise. Husband and wife work together; just now the latter, a comely young woman, is eating her dinner of dry bread and green pickles. Pickles are favorite food in Jewtown. They are filling, and keep the children from crying with hunger. Those who have stomachs like ostriches thrive in spite of them and grow strong—plain proof that they are good to eat. The rest? “Well, they die,” says our guide, dryly. No thought of untimely death comes to disturb this family with life all before it. In a few years the man will be a prosperous sweater. Already he employs an old man as ironer at three dollars a week, and a sweetfaced little Italian girl as finisher at a dollar and a half. She is twelve, she says, and can neither read nor write; will probably never learn. How should she? The family clears from ten to eleven dollars a week in brisk times, more than half of which goes into the bank.

A companion picture from across the hall. The man works on the machine for his sweater twelve hours a day, turning out three dozen “knee-pants,” for which he receives forty-two cents a dozen. The finisher who works with him gets ten, and the ironer eight cents a dozen; buttonholes are extra, at eight to ten cents a hundred. This operator has four children at his home in Stanton Street, none old enough to work, and a sick wife. His rent is twelve dollars a month; his wages for a hard week’s work less than eight dollars. Such as he, with their consuming desire for money thus smothered, recruit the ranks of the anarchists, won over by the promise of a general “divide;” and an enlightened public sentiment turns up its nose at the vicious foreigner for whose perverted notions there is no room in this land of plenty.

[6] This chapter is worth reading in full. Here's some more of the context:

The tenement has defeated its benevolent purpose. In it the child works unchallenged from the day he is old enough to pull a thread. There is no such thing as a dinner hour; men and women eat while they work, and the “day” is lengthened at both ends far into the night. Factory hands take their work with them at the close of the lawful day to eke out their scanty earnings by working overtime at home. Little chance on this ground for the campaign of education that alone can bring the needed relief; small wonder that there are whole settlements on this East Side where English is practically an unknown tongue, though the people be both willing and anxious to learn. “When shall we find time to learn?” asked one of them of me once. I owe him the answer yet.

I know of a couple of restaurants at the lower end of Orchard Street that are favorite resorts for the Polish Jews, who remember the injunction that the ox that treadeth out the corn shall not be muzzled. Being neighbors, they are rivals of course, and cutting under. When I was last there one gave a dinner of soup, meat-stew, bread, pie, pickles, and a “schooner” of beer for thirteen cents; the other charged fifteen cents for a similar dinner, but with two schooners of beer and a cigar, or a cigarette, as the extra inducement. The two cents had won the day, however, and the thirteen-cent restaurant did such a thriving business that it was about to spread out into the adjoining store to accommodate the crowds of customers. At this rate the lodger of Jewtown can “live like a lord,” as he says himself, for twenty-five cents a day, including the price of his bed, that ranges all the way from thirty to forty and fifty cents a week, and save money, no matter what his earnings. He does it, too, so long as work is to be had at any price, and by the standard he sets up Jewtown must alide.

It has thousands upon thousands of lodgers who help to pay its extortionate rents. At night there is scarce a room in all the district that has not one or more of them, some above half a score, sleeping on cots, or on the floor. It is idle to speak of privacy in these “homes.” The term carries no more meaning with it than would a lecture on social ethics to an audience of Hottentots. The picture is not overdrawn. In fact, in presenting the home life of these people I have been at some pains to avoid the extreme of privation, taking the cases just as they came to hand on the safer middle-ground of average earnings. Yet even the direst apparent poverty in Jewtown, unless dependent on absolute lack of work, would, were the truth known, in nine cases out of ten have a silver lining in the shape of a margin in bank.

New York can “beat the world” on cheap clothing. A single Bowery firm last year sold fifteen thousand suits at $1.95 that averaged in cost $1.12 1/2. With the material at fifteen cents a yard, he said, children’s suits of assorted sizes can be sold at wholesale for seventy-five cents, and boys’ cape overcoats at the same price. They are the same conditions that have perplexed the committee of benevolent Hebrews in charge of Baron de Hirsch’s munificent gift of ten thousand dollars a month for the relief of the Jewish poor in New York. To find proper channels through which to pour this money so that it shall effect its purpose without pauperizing, and without perpetuating the problem it is sought to solve, by attracting still greater swarms, is indeed no easy task. Colonization has not in the past been a success with these people. The great mass of them are too gregarious to take kindly to farming, and their strong commercial instinct hampers the experiment. To herd them in model tenements, though it relieve the physical suffering in a measure, would be to treat a symptom of the disease rather than strike at its root, even if land could be got cheap enough where they gather to build on a sufficiently large scale to make the plan a success. Trade schools for manual training could hardly be made to reach the adults, who in addition would have to be supported for months while learning. For the young this device has proved most excellent under the wise management of the United Hebrew Charities, an organization that gathers to its work the best thought and effort of many of our most public-spirited citizens. One, or all, of these plans may be tried, probably will. I state but the misgivings as to the result of some of the practical minds that have busied themselves with the problem. Its keynote evidently is the ignorance of the immigrants. They must be taught the language of the country they have chosen as their home, as the first and most necessary step. Whatever may follow, that is essential, absolutely vital. That done, it may well be that the case in its new aspect will not be nearly so hard to deal with.

[7] Here's a list of the posts: This blog post is one of a series on the Five Points district of Manhattan. Here are others in the series.

• Five Points
• Collect Pond and the origins of Five Points
• an office on Reade Street
• some residents of Five Points
• African Americans in Five Points
• "black Irish"?
• Irish emigration in the famine years
• exodus
• doing well

[8] Here are the posts in that series.

• Mulberry Street 1900
• Mulberry Street, again
• a tenement on Mulberry Street
• five-cent den on Pearl St.

[9] More on his walks here.

Mulberry Street, again

A couple of years ago I did a post on a favorite photo. It shows Manhattan's Mulberry Street on a warm Spring day at the turn of the twentieth century (1899-1901). The photographer placed the camera on a support about twenty feet off the ground near the center of the street. He was placed about where Hester Street crosses Mulberry and he faced south toward "The Bend," where Mulberry turns to its terminus at Worth Street. The big cross street in the middle of the photo is Canal.

The photo I showed then was digitized from a print that had been prepared using the photochrom colorizing process. It was a one-off special prepared by the publisher, Detroit Publishing Co., to use in a catalog in its office.

This post shows a black and white version of the same view. It comes from an eight by ten inch glass negative and, having higher resolution, shows somewhat better detail.

Here's the photo. Click the image to see a larger version.

{Mulberry St., New York, N.Y. c1900; Detroit Publishing Co.; source: Library of Congress}

Here are details of this image paired with ones from the color print.
This first pair illustrates the main advantage of the monochrome version: it has much greater clarity.



This pair illustrates an obvious advantage of color: it's a colorful scene.



Here is a map from the same period showing the location of the camera and the direction in which the lens is pointed. Little Italy was then bounded on the north by Houston Street, on the south by Worth Street, on the west by Broadway, and on the east by the Bowery.

{The is from a ward map of Manhattan made in 1899; the dashed lines show ward divisions; click to view full size.}

Directly below you'll find more detail views from the monochrome image. There's much to see. The street has shops at ground level and in some cases offices on the second story. The buildings are mostly given over to tenement-type occupancy: high-density living quarters renting for small weekly sums.

Mulberry Street, then the heart of Manhattan's Little Italy, was being rapidly transformed by an immense volume of immigration. Many arrived and settled in, many quickly moved on to other parts of the U.S., and many spent enough time in New York to earn a bit of money, then returned home. Most kept their language and regional heritage alive in the new environment and in doing so transformed the environment so that it took on much of the character of the places they called home. This preservation of strong ethnic identity seems obvious to me from looking at this photo. Compare these images to the photos of nearby Fifth Avenue that I've shown recently;* the two places seem hardly to belong to the same nation much less same (relatively) small area of city blocks.

The people we see in this photo are mostly engaged in some form of commerce, both social commerce and the commerce of buyers and sellers. The density of people and the ease and cheerfulness they show one another are festive, but I don't see evidence that the photograph was taken on a holiday. Notice, for example, that boys have schoolbooks and that many adults seem to have work-day occupations, not just the hucksters, but the draymen and laborers, and the women in their work-a-day aprons and smocks.

Here are more detail images from the shot.

1. Look at the man entering the dry goods shop; with so much to see outside, it's surprising there's an inside to be explored. I suspect the young man seated below the boot sign is there to watch for shoplifters as well as to call out to passers by and haggle over prices.


2. It's interesting that the crowds have formed various affinity groups; this one is strangely focused on a boy holding what looks like a glass of beer. A few of the children in this detail have noticed the photographer; others seem to have something else in view, something that's presumably taking place at the intersection of Mulberry and Hester.


3. These guys are interested in what's going on below; notice the potted plants. If you look closely, you can see lots of flowers on fire escapes, window sills, and balconies.


4. The guy on the left is evidently about to toss something small, but you can't tell what his target is; I like the haircut and bow tie of his companion.


5. There's much to see here. The boy, not much older than a toddler at the curb, the woman seated with her back to us working on something in her lap, the polkadot blouse on the woman standing to her left, and to the left of her a pile of stuff outside the Banca Malzone. The men to the boy's right seem to be working on the box at which they stand. I can't tell what's being carried in the goods wagon whose back we see. On the left side of this image is a furniture store with chairs piled high, both on the sidewalk and on a curb-parked wagon.


6. Notice the modern touch: a sign advertising the local Bell System telephone and telegraph office; yet looking to its right yu can tell the street lamp hasn't yet been converted from gas to electricity. The teeming crowds continue into the distance as Mulberry makes its bend to the south at Bayard St. You can't miss the quilt hung out to air, but looking closely there are other buildings where laundry is hung out from the fire escapes.


7. On the left is a street salesman with a tray of small objects held by a strap around his shoulder; to his right is what appears to be a waiter from a nearby restaurant (white shirt and apron); It looks like the hand cart is displaying old books for sale. I like how the young girl in white is concentrating on something in her hands and ignoring the hubbub around her.


8. Here, a young guy gives the photographer a streetwise skeptical eye. The man next to him has a typical Sicilian or maybe Neapolitan mustache.


9. I like this view of women's heads, most engaged in conversation, but two standing a bit apart, observing.


10. Arms akimbo, this guy attracts the eye in both the color and monochrome photos. The world-weary expression on the face of his neighbor contrasts nicely with his challenging pose and the guy with the carefully blank face seems to complete this little triangular composition.


11. Looking a bit more closely at the kids around to boy with his beer glass, you see that most are looking back at the cameraman, including the boy with a big baby in his arms. It's an interesting mix of boys and girls.


12. Another baby; if you're looking for them you can see quite a few toddlers and babies.


13. With the tenement buildings out of sight, this looks more like Southern Italy than Manhattan.


14. Your attention leaps to the nose picker, but the guy brushing his derby is as interesting and I like the arty composition made by the heads of men, women, and baby.


15. A barefoot child and one with a handkerchief for headgear.


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This image shows Mulberry Street from its turning, "The Bend," looking back toward Bayard and Canal. It was taken in the late 1880s by Jacob Riis and appeared in How the Other Half Lives.


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See also:

How the Other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob A. Riis, With Illustrations Chiefly From Photographs Taken By The Author (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890)

How The Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (The Authentic History Center)

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Here are some previous posts on Mulberry Street.

five-cent den on Pearl St.

a tenement on Mulberry Street

Mulberry Street 1900

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Note:

* Here are links to recent posts that show fashionable Fifth Avenue in the period before World War I.

• living high
• Madison Park 1905
• nothing to wear
• a tenement on Mulberry Street
• five-cent den on Pearl St.