USA > New Jersey > Hudson County > Jersey City > History of Jersey City, N.J. : a record of its early settlement and corporate progress, sketches of the towns and cities that were absorbed in the growth of the present municipality, its business, finance, manufactures and form of government, with some notice of the men who built the city > Part 52
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In 1853 Mr. Lembeck married Miss Mary Beadle, of New York, whose chil- dren are : Henry F., Mamie (Mrs. H. W. Harms), Katie, Albert B. and Victor H.
Mr. Lembeck in politics is a democrat, and has taken an active part in local polit-
ical issues. He was for four years a member of the board of public works of Jersey City, two years of which period he was president. He is also a director of the E. B. Parsons Malting Company, of Rochester, N. Y., and of the Third National Bank of Jersey City. He has resided : in Greenville since 1857.
WILLIAM HENRY CUMMINGS was born in Troy, N. Y., on November 5, 1844. His father, William Cummings, was for many years one of the principal manufacturers in Jersey City. He carried on an extensive factory on Washington Street for building railroad cars; subse- quently the plant was removed to West Bergen, and very much enlarged. The firm was originally Cummings & James ; later, William Cummings, and finally, William Cummings & Son. The factory was one of the land- marks of the city for more than half a century, and the senior Mr. Cummings was a prominent citizen, and an important factor in shaping the history of the city in its earlier days.
WILLIAM HENRY CUMMINGS. William H. was educated at Peart Seminary in Eliza- beth, N. J., under the direction of Rev. David H. Pierson. He has been a resident of Jersey City from infaney, and was for many years associated with
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his father in car construction. He has been in the commission business for a number of years in New York City. He is a member of a number of social organizations, and is a steward and trustee of the Methodist church. He is an active republican, but has never accepted an official position. He was married on October 21, 1868, to Miss Sarah Meekes Durkee, and they have had three sons, all now adults.
FRANKLIN B. JONES was born in the old town of Bergen, N. J., January 12, 1855. He re- ceived his rudimentary education in the publie schools, after which he was graduated from Hasbrouck Institute in 1871. After leaving school Mr. Jones entered business life as a clerk with the firm of George F. Gantz & Co., of New York City. On January 1, 1877, he became a member of that firm, which was changed to Gantz, Jones & Co. In 1890 the firm was dissolved, Mr. Jones succeeding to the entire interests of that establishment, that of importing fine castile soaps, canary and hemp seed, tapioca, borax, etc.' During the same year he purchased the soap manufacturing plant of Billington Brothers, at the corner of First and Coles streets, Jersey City, and has conducted that business under the firm name of F. B. Jones & Co. ever since. It is one of the leading manufacturing industries of Jersey City, and the goods manufactured in the
establishment find a market all over the United States. The main office of the concern is at 39 and 41 Cortlandt Street, New York.
Mr. Jones is well known in Jersey City and New York, socially, and was a charter member of the Carteret Club, and is a member of the Union League Club of Jersey City. He is also a member of the Seventh Regiment Veteran Club of New York City. He served eight years under Col. Clark in the latter- named organization. He is single, and is prominently identified with the Dutch Reformed Church, of Jer- sey City. He is a large property-owner in Jersey City; has traveled extensively through every State in the Union ; he went to San Antonio, Texas, before the railroad was built there, when it was necessary to travel 150 miles by stage-coach. He enjoys fishing very much, and always spends three or four weeks on the St. Lawrence River, among the Thousand Islands, every summer.
A. J. CORCORAN was born in Dublin in 1841. His father, who was a blacksmith, removed to New York in 1846, and carried on his trade at the corner of Warren and Washington streets for ten years, removing his business to South Brooklyn in 1856.
FRANKLIN B. JONES.
His father wanted him to learn the blacksmith trade, but his bent being for machinery, he left his home in 1857, and went to Syracuse, N. Y., to serve an apprenticeship, and at the age of twenty-one he became a journeyman. Subsequently, he went to Marcellus, a town twelve miles from Syracuse, to build some machinery for a manufacturing firm there. While working in this town, a man named Mills appeared with a windmill pump, and it made such a strong impression upon Mr. Corcoran that it decided his course in life. He perfected the mechanical devices contained in Mr. Mills' ernde machine, and it was so successful that Mr. Mills bought the entire plant in which Mr. Corcoran was employed, and turned it into a windmill manufactory. Mr. Corcoran became superintendent, and, after much labor, produced the first windmill that was self- regulating. It took the prize at the Rochester Fair in 1862. At this period he met with an accident which it was thought had made him permanently blind. He was using babbitt metal, and it exploded in his face. While he was suffering he was drafted for the army, but was excused on account of his blindness. He slowly recovered his sight, but it has never been the same as before the accident. Mr. Mills had organized the Empire Windmill Company, and the first work done by Mr. Corcoran, after he regained his sight, was the erection for the company of a number of windmills for pumping-stations on the line of the Union Pacific Railroad. They
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were at that time the largest windmill-pumping plants in the world. In 1866 he removed to New York, as the agent of the company, and opened a place of business at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. Soon after this the members of the Einpire Company got into litigation, and the contract which gave the company control of his improvements having expired, he went into the manufacture of windmills on his own account. He located at 76 John Street. He manufactured and sold there until 1887, when he removed his factory to Jersey City. His office remained at 76 John Street until the building was torn down, when he located at the corner of Broadway and John Street. There he has offices in the Corbin Building. · The factory is at Jersey Avenue and Thirteenth Street. It consists of two buildings, one for wood-work, the other for iron-work. The windmills now manufactured are from designs patented since he removed to Jersey City. The new patents are dated in 1888, 1889 and 1891, and the mill produces the highest efficiency known in windmill power. Fifty per cent. of the output is sold in foreign countries. These mills are working over deep wells in New Zealand : they are irrigating land in India and Italy ; they are draining land in Egypt, Japan and China ; they drive cotton gins in the East Indies ; they pulverize ore in Peru ; they supply the motive power in the nitrate works in Chili and the salt works in Brazil ; they supply water to the rail- roads in Cape Colony, South Africa, and are scattered over the British Isles, doing many kinds of work. In this country they are the standard. Along the sea coast they are very numerous. On one stretch of five miles along the Rumson road, between Sea Bright and Red Bank, there are fully one hundred of the mills in operation pumping water.
EPHRAIM S. WELLS. The name of E. S. Wells, with the expression of "Rough on Rats," has traveled around the earth. Both are known to every civilized people throughout the world. Dr. Wells was born February 15, 1841, near Morgantown, Monongahela County, W. Va., and is of Welsh, English and Irish 'ancestry. His grandfather, Augustine Wells, was a prosperous farmer, descended from New England stock. His own father, Ephraim B. Wells, being possessed of unusual mechanical and inventive genius, quit the farm to follow these pursuits. In perseverance and thriftiness Dr. Wells' Welsh-English blood strongly predominates ; but in push, sanguinity and personality he evidently inherits his mother's characteristics and traits, who descended from one of Baltimore's aristocratic old Irish families, the O'Neills.
Dr. Wells is the youngest of eight children. During his youth he attended such of the common schools as Virginia at that time afforded. When he was nine years of age his family moved to Uniontown, Fayette County, Pa., now the scene of immense coke interests. When he was eleven years old his mother died, which was the beginning of the breaking up of the family. A year later he engaged as an apprentice in one of the village drug stores. He at in- terrupted intervals attended the public schools, and for a short time Madison College, until he was eighteen years of age. Having secured a fair education, he started by stage (then the only means of travel over the Alleghany Mountains) for New York City, where he arrived with a balance of $1.25 in hand. He relates with great satisfaction some of his early experiences. When he was about sixteen years old, having no home, he remembers occasions whereon he did not have money enough to pay for the necessary laundering of his linen. The day after his arrival in New York he secured a drug clerkship at a salary of $2.50 a week. Out of this salary he was obliged to board himself, and to sleep upon a mattress kept in a closet during the day and thrown upon the office floor at night. He religiously preserves to this day the diary of his expenses kept at that time, wherein it appears that his board eost him an average of 17 cents a day, or $1.19 a week. This was accomplished by buying bread by the loaf, butter and pickles by the penny's worth and milk by the glass from a German corner grocery. These articles of diet constituted his food during the entire fall and winter of 1858. During that time he was in the employ of Dr. Cochran, a clever, big-hearted Scotchman. In February, 1859, his employer, being a man of poor business tact, failed, losing the store, and was himself left about penniless. The combined capital of Dr. Wells and his employer was $2.40-$1.60 and 80 cents, respectively. Young Wells, having expended $1.20 in advertising for a situation, the two then pooled their funds, hired a basement room for the night, purchased a penny's worth of wood, a pail of coal, and, through the generosity of their landlady, secured a cot to lie upon. The next morning, by means of the advertisement referred to, young Wells secured a position in the West (Dowagiac, Mich.), at $100 a year, with board. This chance, a happy solution of a pre-
RESIDENCE OF E. S. WELLS, 11: SUMMIT AVE., JERSEY CITY.
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MRS. E. S. WELLS AND HER SONS CHARLES A. t.
WM. HENRY (2). EDGAR S. (3). GEORGE T. (4).
E. S. WELLS, ESQ
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E. S. WELLS' PROJECTED NEW LABORATORY AND ROUGH ON RATS FACTORY.
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CARRIAGE HOUSE AND STABLE OF E. S. WELLS, 11, 13, 15 GARDNER AVENUE, IN REAR OF HIS RESIDENCE, In SUMMIT AVENUE.
RESIDENCE OF E. S. WELLS AT HIS STOCK FARM, AT GLENMOORE, MERCER COUNTY, N. J.
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RESIDENCE AND MAIN GRAIN AND HAY BARN AT E. S. WELLS' STOCK FARM, GLENMOORE, MERCER COUNTY, N. J.
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carious financial condition, came very near being lost because of the inability of the clerk to pay his way West. The employer was loath to risk the outlay, but did so, however, to the great relief of the subject of this sketch, who, out of work in the dead of winter, and after a frugal breakfast, had only a cash balance of 12 cents.
In 1861 he went to the war (Fourth Michigan Volunteers), and in 1862 he returned to New York City. In the fall of the same year he secured a position in Jersey City (South Bergen), in the drug store of the late Stephen Wilkinson, a nephew of Dr. James Wilkinson. This store was located in the old frame building, No. 640 Communipaw Avenue, nearly opposite Sackett Street, and was started by John Longstaff, a druggist from 61 Montgomery Street, downtown. Druggist Wilkinson tired of the drug business, and sold out the store to clerk Wells for a small sum on time. This store and that of the late Dr. Ph. Hommell, then at the southeast corner of Bergen Square, were the pioneer and only drug stores at that time on the Heights south of old Hudson City. Dr. Wells had almost a complete monopoly froin bay to bay, and from Mont- gomery Street to Bergen Point. Quick to realize that the original store could be better located, he removed in the spring of 1863 to the northeast corner of Monticello and Harrison avenues, where he remained for eighteen years, and here it was that "Rough on Rats" was born and christened. It is still a drug store, conducted by Frank Eveland, Esq. With a large field to draw from, and it being the palmy days of the war, and the Doctor a man of great persever- ance and energy, soon established an extensive business. In those days Jersey City was in a state of primitiveness compared with the improvements she enjoys to-day. "Monticello Avenue was lined with large willow trees, and Communipaw Avenue was a plank-road to Newark ; there were a few houses on Bergen Avenue, in Claremont and on Ocean Avenue, with an occasional house in all the territory between Communipaw Avenne and Greenville. One could stand at the old Wells' drug store, corner of Monticello and Harrison avenues, and look over green fields from that point to Greenville. In those days there was no police or paid fire department ; the Doctor "ran " with the only hook and ladder company at that time in Sonth Bergen. Within two years from the time he began business on his own account he purchased the property at the corner of Grand Street and Summit Avenne, adjoining Library-Bergen Hall, where his factory is now located. Here he started a branch retail drug store, which in time he sold to his clerk, now the Hon. Frank O. Cole. When Mr. Cole removed his drug store to the brick building on the corner opposite, Dr. Wells appropriated the vacated stand, which he still owned, to his rapidly increasing manufacturing business, which had already outgrown the facilities at the old stand at Monticello and Harrison avennes. Out of these old wooden buildings, within a period of about twelve years, the Doctor has sold more than $2,000,000 worth of his preparations, most of them being ten, fifteen and twenty-five cent articles, and his name has become a household word all over the civilized world.
Dr. Wells built and conducted the old drug store at the corner of Harrison and Monticello avennes, from the spring of 1863 to the spring of 1881, at which time he traded it to Messrs. Biddulph & Eveland, that he might devote his sole attention to his manufacturing and advertis- ing business. He had, in nine years from 1872 (when he began advertising) to 1881, squan- dered about $10,000, representing hard earnings up to this time. He was indeed poor again, and in debt ; impoverished and placed in desperate straits; but with faith in the efficacy of ad- vertising, and in the merits of his goods, his courage never deserted him ; he persisted ; he had only sown the seed, and in 1880 and 1881 the tide turned in his favor ; and from this time, for twelve years, the Doctor expended on an average $140,000 annually for advertising, reaching one year, $184,000 ; and until within two years past, he has taken very little out of the business ; as the business increased re-expended in advertising every dollar received. To-day he has, how- ever, one of the most completely organized, best paying proprietary plants in this or any other country. It is so thoroughly systematized that it requires now, of necessity, but very little of the Doctor's time or attention, and if all advertising were discontinued, would no doubt for many years pay a net income of $50,000 to $75,000 a year.
Within two years from 1881 (the time of discontinuing the retail business), by unparalleled effort, energy and activity, Dr. Wells had placed his goods and advertising, not only through- out the United States, but in Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America, England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, South and West Africa, Egypt, and in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, in India. In all of these countries he has an established, substantial
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business. He is a very rapid, indefatigable worker ; a man of tireless industry. His mind is ever engaged, figuring and planning methods whereby his business may be increased. Many of his evenings and holidays are spent in his laboratory and works ; when others may be sleep- ing or recreating, he is devising plans in connection with his vast interests. At the beginning of his advertising career, when yet in the drug business, he was all alone, between customers he was busy making advertising contracts throughout the country, frequently carrying on corre- spondence or setting type, printing circulars, and mailing them out, well into the night, till fonr or five o'clock the following morning. He has from the incipiency of his business written all of his own advertising matter ; devised his comic and other illustrations ; created all the formulas re- quired for his varions preparations ; designed all the wrappers and labels and the styles of paek - ing goods for the markets of the world. His various " Rough On" specifics, toilet, pharma- centical and honsehold preparations aggregate 100, besides eighteen other proprietary articles. He employed no stenographers, type-writers or road salesmen when establishing this exten- sive business, but accomplished it all through his own efforts and personally written correspondence.
Dr. Wells is genial, sympathetic, generous and withont arrogance ; is decidedly fond of the Indicrons, and, though quick-tempered, is agreeable, pleasant and unobtrusive in manner. His unassuming, retiring nature, with hardly enongh assurance and conceit for his own inter- ests, gives one the impression of social reserve ; on the contrary, with a dne regard to the pro- priety of things, he is naturally very democratic in his ideas. The humblest can always ap- proach him; this cardinal trait, so predominant in his nature, has been confirmed, no doubt, through his struggles with adversity in the past. Upon very short acquaintance with the Doctor it is soon found that his instincts and sympathies are with the poor masses, rather than with the rich; but, being of an industrious, frugal nature, and of a practical turn of mind, he has no patience with the shiftless, the improvident or the visionary, nor on the other hand with "shoddy." He is decidedly a domestic man in his habits, and when not engaged at his business is nearly always found within the circle of his home, surrounded by his interesting and charming family. He is possessed of the peculiar characteristic of being cantious and economical, even close in small things, but in matters of magni- tnde is venturesome, liberal and generous to a fault. He has walked five or six blocks to save a five-cent car fare, and during the same day sent a check for $100 to a needy relative. He has made a single contract for advertising amounting to $60,000 within an honr, and then has gone a long distance home to dinner to save restaurant charges. He is loath to part with an old suit of clothes, but it costs him $20,000 a year to maintain his city and country homes. When, in 1892, his stock farm buildings were burned with nearly all his stock, machinery, crops, etc., in- volving a net loss of $24,000, no one, from his appearance or actions, would suppose anything out of the ordinary had happened.
Dr. Wells is a typical self-made man. Keeping eternally and everlastingly at it, constant, persistent effort has had much to do with his success. The prominent position Dr. Wells holds to-day is in fact entirely due to his own efforts and perseverance, and he has "gone it alone " in the world, never having joined any fraternal organization, any benefit or partnership associations.
Dr. Wells is naturally a progressive, public-spirited citizen, always manifesting an interest in all movements that are beneficial to Jersey City. He has always contributed liberally with his purse to any cause that had a tendency to promote enterprise or good government; and although he has never taken any part in ward or city politics, few men are better posted in national or international politics and affairs. In religions matters he is, as he is in all things, liberal, and somewhat of an agnostic. He has never permanently allied himself with any religious denomination or church, but few laymen, however, are better read in religions literature or have given more thought to the subject.
Dr. Wells maintains one of Jersey City's handsomest residences at 111 Summit Avenue, the interior of which is richly furnished. denoting art and refinement. He also is the owner of a thoroughly equipped stock farm of 500 acres, and a handsome summer residence at Glenmoore, N. J., at which he spends much of his time during the heated term, when not actively engaged in his advertising and manufacturing business. He says he bought this country home for the triple purpose of a quiet, lonely rest and communion with nature; to get away from a
E. S. WELLS' GLENMOORE STOCK FARM SCENES.
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E. S. WELLS' GLENMOORE STOCK FARM BUILDINGS.
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business where the temptation is ever to advertise, for which he has a passion, and to get rid of the bore of spending summer vacations at fashionable watering places. He has spent $80,000 on the farm since he bought it. He has built miles of roads ; sent out $3,000 worth of manure in four years. It is a garden spot. His woods are as clean, well kept and beautiful as a city park. Along the brook are shady nooks of quiet repose. He has built a fine half- mile training track, and has seventy head of horses and many cattle.
Dr. Wells has been married twice. His first wife was Miss Isabella Lane, of New York City, whom he married in 1868. Her demise occurred a year later. His present wife was Miss Susan S. Titus, a daughter of Enoch A. Titus, a descendant of the Titus-Christopher-Armitage lines, three old New Jersey families of English origin, and whose land, near Pennington, N. J., adjoins the acres of Dr. Wells' stock farm. Mrs. Wells' mother descended from the Guilds, the Blackwells and the Harts, New Jersey families of Revolutionary times. Four of the five children born to this union are living. They are: Charles A., William Henry, Edgar S. and George T. These, with Mrs. Wells and the Doctor's adopted orphan niece, Miss Anna P. Drabelle, constitute Dr. Wells' immediate family.
The following short extract from a two-column article that appeared in the New York Sun a few years ago would not be out of place, and is of interest in connection with his success : "Returning from the war in the fall of 1862, he got a place in a drug store in the outskirts of Jersey City. This was a very primitive store. The proprietor, growing tired of it, sold it to the clerk for $600, half cash. This young clerk, now proprietor, was destined to become, take it the world over, the best known and one of the largest advertisers in the world. At about the end of eighteen years of retail drug proprietorship, 'Rough on Rats' was born, to his active, energetic mind, in this wise : His family away on summer vacation, he and the clerk were keeping bachelors' hall in a room at rear of the old drug store on Monticello Avenue. The other habitues cf the place were scores of very cheeky rats. Through neglect and bachelor habits the place had become literally alive with them. They had the baseness to steal all the provisions that were left lying loose about the premises. One night, when the exchequer was low, they divided a loaf of bread between them and went out, pending the feast, to wait upon cus- tomers, leaving the bread on the table. As soon as CHAS. D. BURBANK. General Manager of E. S. Wells' Manufacturing Business. they were gone the rats came and gnawed the in- terior out of the section of loaf belonging to the proprietor. It was, perhaps, the most foolhardy and disastrous trick ever done by a rat. It scaled the doom of himself and future generations of his family. The druggist had been selling rat poison several years, but he had discovered that the exterminators did not extermi- nate to a successful extent. There were the old phosphorous compounds, which are calculated to thrill the rat's vitals with a burning shame for his past misdeeds, but the odor and flavor of the toxic dose made all rodents suspicious, and the fervid poison was not a success.
"The rats seemed to have found out all about these poisons and exterminators, and they con- tinued to live to an alarming extent. The future antocrat of advertisers entered the store, made his way through a cordon of impudent rats behind the counter, and set to work to con- coct a preparation that would lure the most wary of rats to destruction. He asked himself. ' Have I handled, studied and bought and sold poisons all my days, and do not yet know how to prepare a dose that will be eaten by thein, kill or drive them away ?' He had on his shelves at the time the old-fashioned pastes and potions, so-called rat-killers, and had, as had others, used them to no avail. He had discovered that rats are wondrous wise, and that a poison, to be effective, must be odorless and tasteless. He prepared such a toxic preparation, and the next night, when the rats who permeated his premises came around to steal their provender, they
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