Presented by
The Historical Society
Elizabeth NJ Inc
2007

A Special Thanks to our Oral
History Sources – Mark and Mary Bannworth – Paul and Lois Hattrich

The Belcher – Ogden Mansion

The Belcher Ogden mansion on the corner of Catherine and East Jersey Street dates from the 1750s. The stately Georgian design rests on the site where earlier, wooden and less permanent buildings once stood, as early as the 1720s. The Ogden family were the original builders and owners   until it became the residence of one of New Jersey’s royal governors, Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757), who lived there until he died in 1757. The building served as the seat of New Jersey government in those years. The house’s 18th century history included important visitors like Elizabeth pastor, Rev Jonathan Dickinson, who would serve as the first president of a school that eventually became Princeton University. His friend and Belcher’s friend, Rev Jonathan Edwards, one of the important theologians and intellectuals of the colonial period, visited here a number of times. In 1778 George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton attended a wedding   here joining Catherine Smith (whose father, William Peartree Smith, owned the house then) and Elisha Boudinot, whose family resided down East Jersey Street at Boxwood Hall. Later the home served as the residence of Aaron Ogden, an aide to Washington, a standout military presence during the Revolution, esp at the conclusive Battle of Yorktown. In 1812 he served as Federalist governor of New Jersey.

All of these associations combined gave the Belcher Ogden a special historical character. Even the British during the Revolutionary War considered the residence a strategic outpost where they hoped to capture Washington during the Boudinot-Smith wedding reception. Fortunately for the Americans, the British timing was off and the event was over by the time the redcoats arrived. The British took out their exasperation on the house itself.   So one inference we have begun to entertain is that this house is not a passive locus in history but an active agent all by itself, one which continues to carry its history with it into the next several centuries.

Nassau Hall, Princeton University

The Sacking of the Belcher-Ogden Mansion

The 1856 Ernest L Meyer Map

Our current Belcher-Ogden project set out to learn two major things: first, how did its subsequent history extend or change its 18th story; and secondly, how have its neighbors in the 19th and 20th century regarded their proximity to such a resonant historic place. The Historical Society of Elizabeth NJ set out to reconstruct the Mansion’s historical landscape. Our first task was to learn when and how the original property – supposedly five acres at the end of the 18th century –   changed, altering its holdings which extended from the present building to the Elizabeth River. This 1856 map   prepared by Ernest L Meyer shows several buildings on Catherine Street in this year and an additional structure on the corner of Catherine and Elizabeth Avenue, originally called Water Street. However, the opposite border street, Morrell St, has virtually no buildings on it until it reaches Elizabeth Avenue. Along this border residents recall a lilac alley extending from the Mansion to the river, but eventually cut short as Elizabeth Avenue widened and became commercial. The Belcher Ogden mansion on the map extends the entire length of the East Jersey St block, making clear the residence has expanded and contracted over the centuries.   

All of these associations combined gave the Belcher Ogden a special historical character. Even the British during the Revolutionary War considered the residence a strategic outpost where they hoped to capture Washington during the Boudinot-Smith wedding reception. Fortunately for the Americans, the British timing was off and the event was over by the time the redcoats arrived. The British took out their exasperation on the house itself.   So one inference we have begun to entertain is that this house is not a passive locus in history but an active agent all by itself, one which continues to carry its history with it into the next several centuries.

2006 Morrell St Townhouses

MORRELL ST POLICE STATION – CONSTRUCTION IN 1929

The absence of structures along Morrell St in 1856 has become more important as we probe the 19th century landscape of the Belcher-Ogden house. The next oldest residence on the Catherine St side of the Belcher property became 26 Catherine St built in 1837. The stately federal design of the home complemented its 18th century neighbor up the street and incorporated parts of the old Belcher lilac alley into a beautiful garden,   owned in 1856 by David Woodruff who registered himself in the 1860, 1870 and 1880 federal census as a “mason,” though he was likely a contractor as well. 26 Catherine Street extended the entire block from Catherine to Morrell. The garden received fond attention from subsequent owners, the silk merchant Edward Bouton and later Richard and Lillian Bahr, when they purchased the house in 1954 from the Bouton family. When this family sold the house in 2001, that owner turned out to be a developer who put two row houses   in the bottom of the garden, facing Morrell Street. In excavating the foundation for these homes, the contractor discovered a tunnel, which had clearly been in place a long time. It turns out that by this time, other structures like the old Morrell Street police station,   built in the 1929 by Dan McCarran Construction Co, had also uncovered a tunnel. In retrospect, the tunnel connected the Belcher Ogden Mansion to the Elizabeth River for many decades and more importantly opens a dramatic window not only to the house’s landscape history but to the history of Elizabeth NJ itself.  

All of these associations combined gave the Belcher Ogden a special historical character. Even the British during the Revolutionary War considered the residence a strategic outpost where they hoped to capture Washington during the Boudinot-Smith wedding reception. Fortunately for the Americans, the British timing was off and the event was over by the time the redcoats arrived. The British took out their exasperation on the house itself.   So one inference we have begun to entertain is that this house is not a passive locus in history but an active agent all by itself, one which continues to carry its history with it into the next several centuries.

THE ELIZABETH RIVER

The tunnel, subsequent owners believed, made the Belcher Ogden mansion a station on the Underground Railroad. Others thought it dated from earlier times because of   colonial smuggling and the evasion of the British Empire’s efforts to tax and stamp imports and exports between the colonies and non-British ports. There is no question that both options connect Elizabeth via its river   with its strategic location to New York Harbor, Newark Bay, and the Staten Island border with the Arthur Kill.   Let us explore both options to see how Elizabeth fit with its larger transportation world.

After they captured New York from the Dutch in 1664, the British began to solidify their gains with a set of imperial strictures. They tried to control the city’s multi-national trade by having American goods shipped on British ships   and charged tariff on American goods in non-British ships. From the middle of the 17th to the Revolution at the end of the 18th century, the British government passed a constant string of imposts on rum, tobacco and other goods. They tightened these tariffs with the 1733 Molasses Act on through the succession of Navigation Acts in the 1760s. But, the continuous passage of these laws with stiffer and stiffer fines actually meant that the enforcement of British laws had many loopholes (at least until the 1760s). Not the least of these involved smuggling and piracy, often, as in the case of   Capt William Kidd, drawing in highly respectable New York and British merchants. They could not afford to ignore the high prices for finished goods paid by Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French West Indies and their low prices  

All of these associations combined gave the Belcher Ogden a special historical character. Even the British during the Revolutionary War considered the residence a strategic outpost where they hoped to capture Washington during the Boudinot-Smith wedding reception. Fortunately for the Americans, the British timing was off and the event was over by the time the redcoats arrived. The British took out their exasperation on the house itself.   So one inference we have begun to entertain is that this house is not a passive locus in history but an active agent all by itself, one which continues to carry its history with it into the next several centuries.

SLOOP

ROYAL GOVERNOR JONATHAN BELCHER

Prices for sugar and molasses.   Many of Britain’s own officials in the colonies turned a blind eye to questionable practices to insure the vibrant economy under their charge    By the time of the Revolution smuggling had become a way of life, accounting for an estimated one-third of all North American commerce. Smuggling profits of the colonials guaranteed the colonists had money to pay for British manufactured goods.

British royal governors often had to walk a narrow path between maintaining the colonial economy and meeting the letter of British law. Jonathan Belcher himself   lost the governorship of New Hampshire and Massachusetts because the British crown thought him too lenient in many matters with the colonists. Ultimately Belcher went back to Britain, cleared himself of all suspicions and regained his career with the governorship of New Jersey (where he continued to be a better defender of colonial than of crown interests). The original tunnel may well have been the product of the governor importing goods to avoid the taxation from his own employer. It would not have been a first precedent, especially for a governor so partial to Madera wine.

HUDSON RIVER SLOOP

One might also note that until the time of the American Revolution the Elizabeth River was navigable to the bridge at the present-day Elizabeth Public Library. Such ships were likely to be sloops, favored by coastal traffic and indeed enterprising pirates who did most of their work raiding places on land rather than commandeering ships on the high seas. Eighteenth century sloops were prized for their speed and maneuverability; they had single masts but with a large spread of sail, fore and aft, and shallow drafts. These hundred-ton boats, carrying a dozen guns and at times up to 50 persons, were perfect coastal vessels, navigating estuaries and harbors without much depth; in other words, perfect for ocean travel and riverport delivery. One British sloop was actually sunk in the Elizabeth River during the Revolution. Sloops could negotiate the Atlantic to the Indies, could cruise places like the Arthur Kill and deliver goods to Elizabethtown and warehouses below the city’s Broad Street bridge. Not too far below this bridge would be the likely outlet for the Belcher-Ogden tunnel, which could have been built just below the Mansion’s garden walkway.

BELCHER-OGDEN GARDEN WALKWAY

Privateering and smuggling in 18th century Elizabeth had an important comparable, clandestine use in the 19th century. From the 1830s abolitionists supported the estimated 1,000 successful escapes a year between 1838 and 1860. The enterprise was known as the Underground Railroad and was often most successful when its “conductors” like Harriet Tubman,   were African-Americans themselves. Though it was named after a recent invention – the BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD dating from 1831 – the Underground railroad was neither as organized as a railroad nor was it underground. It was primarily a locally generated alternative without commanding organization. Many escapees did not know of it or use what little organization there was, but many of the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 runaways (less than one percent of 4M slaves) in the antebellum period did. On the eastern route,   originating in the border states of Virginia and Maryland particularly, runaways traveled by night, usually between safe houses called “stations” about twenty miles apart. The threat of sale – which intensified in the 1850s   – and often the splitting of slave families became a   common precipitating event.

HARRIET TUBMAN

ROUTES OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

The ultimate destination of the eastern route was Canada. The majority of runaways on the eastern route, crossed from Delaware at Cape May and made their way, often by stowing away in coastal steamers to arrive at Perth Amboy,   Jersey City or Elizabeth. They then sought a Hudson River ferry to New York City. They would continue up the Hudson by whatever means, west at Albany along the Erie Canal, then to Buffalo and eventually Toronto. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 intensified escapes as well as   the penalties for hiding and aiding them.

Many of the white abolitionists in the cities were either ministers or physicians. Between 1837 and 1858 the Belcher Ogden Mansion was owned by a renown medical doctor, Charles Davis, age 53 in the 1850 Federal census, who resided in the historic building with his young wife, Caroline, seven children (Anna, Emily, Fanny, Charles, William, Luther and Helen, probably his mother in law Frances Gildersleeve, two Irish servants (Mary Heany 21 and Ann Burnes 30) and a 40-year old Scottish handyman. William Bender. In Elizabeth Dr Davis had a reputation not only for his medical skills but for his ardent advocacy for temperance. In the antebellum period one’s involvement in temperance reform often put one in contact with equally ardent advocates of social reforms like abolition. Davis also held important economic and civic posts alongside his medical practice. From 1840 to 1851 he was president of the State Bank of Elizabeth and was president of the Elizabethtown Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

ESCAPING TO CAPE MAY, NJ

DISCOVERY ON A COASTAL STEAMER

STEALING AWAY

DR. CHARLES DAVIS

The very secretive nature of the Underground Railroad means that there is no solid evidence for Dr Davis’s participation but according to historian, Giles Wright, there are circumstantial features that help make the case for a “station.”   In the case of the Belcher-Ogden residence,    Charles Davis’s   profile, the ample space for sequestering runaways, the Elizabeth access to the Hudson River crossings and,   above all, the tunnel,   strongly suggests that the Belcher-Ogden mansion was a station on the Underground Railroad. The Mansion’s brick stairway to the attic could also have been complicit in this endeavor.

The tunnel remained a secondary thread that wove together the relations of the neighborhood. It was known by the successive owners of 26 Catherine Street and likely the owners of the   Belcher-Ogden mansion itself, some of whom wrote in detail about the house’s history. One owner’s grandson at 26 Catherine St continually poked shafts down into the backyard to find the empty space, but without avail. Parties were held in their backyards atop their very special history,   all knowing a murky story lay below their festivities. The Catherine St neighborhood remained very cohesive for much of the 20th century. The dominant ethnic group was German but there was also residents from Ireland, Russia and Greece and on parallel streets African Americans beginning in the 1930s. As one longtime resident explained, neighborhood boundaries change. In the late 1940s it was possible to set the eastern boundary of the neighborhood over by St Michael’s church where children walked.

BELCHER OGDEN BRICKED UP BASEMENT ENTRY

BACKYARD PARTY AT 26 CATHERINE STREET

THE 1929 JEWISH Y

Some, like Mark Bannworth,   made their trip crossing Spring St (now Routes 1 & 9) four times a day, because of lunch at home in the middle of the school day.   St Michael’s also reinforced a strong German presence in the area but with the expansion of Spring St in 1928, the neighborhood contracted and its eastern boundary became either routes 1 & 9 or Prospect. A small group of Russians on Prospect in 1930 probably signaled the movement of the Elizabeth Jewish community out of First Street and Elizabethport up to their East Jersey temple, B’nai Israel, and concomitantly the Jewish Y on the corner of Catherine St in 1929. One Catherine St neighbor testified that the coming of Jewish Y represented a prosperous upgrading of the neighborhood’s anchors, even though few ever went inside the building. Through the Y’s street windows local children often watched as the Jewish kids   bowled on their   alleys. Gradually the influx of other ethnic and racial groups diluted the earlier German presence but never achieved the vibrant ethnicity of the neighborhoods nearest Singer Sewing Machine on Trumbull St. With the coming of Jefferson High School, the neighborhood’s western boundary shifted, away from a small chain of physician’s office/residences. In 1910 one of these (#1062) East Jersey residences belonged to Dr. Victor Mravlag (b 1839), himself an immigrant (1873) from Austria, who was then serving as the first and only Elizabeth mayor of German descent (1909-11; 1913-23).

But the largest concentration of residents in the Belcher-Ogden Mansion area were native Americans, especially residents born in New Jersey.

DR. VICTOR MRAVLAG’S RESIDENCE – 1062 E JERSEY

ORIGINS OF BELCHER OGDEN NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS

THE 18 TH CENTURY BELCHER OGDEN MANSION

The only neighborhood to have more American-born residents than this East Jersey/ Catherine St sector was that surrounding the Elizabeth Train Station. It was as if the older settled places hung onto their early traditions. The actual owner of the Belcher-Ogden in 1910 was a lawyer Warren Dix, who invested large amounts of time researching the history of his home, especially its 18th century records   . His Catherine St neighbors claimed to be proud of this heritage, but few remembered socializing with the Dixs, respecting their privacy while watching for ways to visit and get inside the historic place. Both the Belcher Ogden Mansion and the Bonnell House across East Jersey may have been significantly historical benchmarks for the city and indeed shelters for its owner’s antiques but primarily they were individual residences until later in the 20th century. In part, this mental conversion of the historically significant to the ordinary helps explain the dormancy of the Mansion’s history as a smuggler’s depot or as an Underground railroad station.

But the largest concentration of residents in the Belcher-Ogden Mansion area were native Americans, especially residents born in New Jersey.

26 CATHERINE STREET

The 1837 house at 26 Woodruff   seems to have provided more of a cultural orientation or the neighborhood. Its original owner – David Woodruff – and later his son-in-law – Edwin Bouton – were staunch members of the Third Presbyterian church (f 1851). The Woodruff name appears early in the city’s history, on the roster of Elizabeth Associates, who were its first settlers in the 17th century. The 20-room residence   clearly had the capacity for gala events and holiday fetes, which it surely had even into its post-Woodruff owners. The Woodruffs and Boutons must have worried some about the non-Presbyterian affiliations of their neighbors, because when the house finally passed from the family’s hands in 1954, they sold it self-consciously to new owners who were Presbyterians. They specified a desire, never to have crucifixes hung on the house’s walls.   The buyer was Lillian Bahr (nee Brunenmeister) and her husband Richard, both of   whom had been born nearby in German families and raised in nearby (Bahrs at #1059) Elizabeth Avenue tenements. Lillian recalled she walked past 26 Catherine St all her elementary years, admiring it enormously and thrilled when she eventually became its owner and experienced a Horatio Alger ascent. Her garden became a jewel of the neighborhood,

A SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

THE ELEGANT HALLWAY

THE CATHERINE STREET FLOWER GARDEN
(Richard Koles Photo)

THE CATHERINE STREET INTERIOR
(Richard Koles Photo)

Incorporating portions of the Belcher-Ogden lilac allee   and sustaining the neighborhood’s own flowery tradition. In 1976 the city paper, the Elizabeth Journal, did a cover story on the house and garden, showcasing exteriors and interiors.   Lillian’s mother initially passed on fears of Catholics, especially Peterstown Italians, but later Italian and Cuban neighbors and friends (not to mention her marriages to two Catholics among her three husbands)    provided Lillian a more expansive acculturating experience. In its way her story captures the powerful acculturating impact of a 20th century urban neighborhood

Many of the houses, especially on Catherine St, had front porches, a major device for socialization and mutual information. Indeed even before the Morrell Street police station was built in the 1920s, the walking policeman remained a known figure, especially to front porch sentinels. Before World War II, much of the city’s policing concerned the domestic peace and arbitrating domestic disputes. The patrolman’s knowledge of many of the family histories permitted them to settle issues short of actual arrest and incarceration. Such arrests, as Pat Maloney made clear in an interview, also generally meant the loss of a job Monday morning and no paycheck the following Thursday. The patrolman’s sensitivity to such issues became a major resource to the neighborhood, abruptly cut short by the 1950s with the coming of the radio car and cruising rather than schmoozing. But always the police building provided its own special sense of order and propriety. One neighbor explained the collective insight: “You had to behave” or even more forcefully, as longtime Catherine St resident Paul Hattrich insisted, everyone then had    pride in their neighborhood.

AN ELIZABETH FRONT PORCH STILL IN SERVICE

THE BELCHER OGDEN LANDSCAPE – OCCUPATIONS OF ITS RESIDENTS

For much of its early 20th century history the Belcher Ogden neighborhood reflected a strong middle-class continuity. On its western and northern boundary (Scott Plaza east and East Jersey St, physicians and lawyers made their homes. A substantive managerial class lived on Catherine and Prospect streets not far from their Elizabeth Avenue businesses. These two groups plus the skilled craftsmen – carpenters, masons, machinists etc – formed two-third to three quarters of the residents in the 1910-1930 period. Individuals without specific “occupations” often listed themselves as retired or more frequently, especially female household heads, put “own income” on the federal census forms. It was not uncommon for these households to have a number of working family members or boarders. In effect, such women headed households which served as businesses, as functional keepers of boarding houses and hence managers in their own right. One such example in 1930 was Kathleen Donaldson, a 46 year old British born widow who had at her 1033 Elizabeth Avenue residence four boarders, all recent immigrants from Greece – George Dougarus, John and George Nicholas, all waiters in a nearby restaurant, and Minnie Lopaze, a machine operator in a shirt factory.     

14 CATHERINE STREET

If Elizabeth Avenue tended to acculturate many different ethnic and racial groups through commerce, its adjacent streets tended to be a bit more cohesive in terms of ethnicity and social class. In 1920, at 14 Catherine St   -now the Hattrich residence – (which didn’t exist in 1910) Harry Simonowtiz lived. He and his son, Julius, were Russian Jews who worked as musicians in concert orchestras; in 1930 this house sheltered the family of Frederick Berger, a German immigrant and a tool maker in a machine Shop. Up the same street – at 36 Catherine St    – still in the Talbot family – in 1920 was John Talbot (his wife Mary and son Leroy) John Talbot was a city policeman, a 43 year old New Yorker by birth; in 1930 at the same house Mary Talbot is   a 56 year old widow, a Jersey native with Irish-born parents.. She also houses her brother, Michael Tobin, a 59 year old watchman and   also a second generation Irishman.   Across the street at 37 Catherine in 1920 – for many later years the Bannworth residence   – lived the family of   John Kennedy, a 45 year old tinsmith who was born in New Jersey; ten years later the Franklin family resides there, headed by an 45 year old Irish born mason. In these years there were few Italians, Slavs, Hungarians, Poles,   etc, all of which had larger concentrations in other parts of the city especially nearer the Singer Sewing Machine plant on Trumbull Avenue.   Finally in both 1920 and 1930 on Spring and Prospect streets,   there is a small (3-4%) contingent of African Americans, born in the Carolinas and Virginia and recent arrivals, a part of the greatest internal migration in American history.

36 CATHERINE STREET

37 CATHERINE STREET

This vibrant influx of newcomers as well as the mobility of even native born Elizabethans dramatically affects the collective memory of urban communities. They are immediately pressed for shelter and survival upon arrival, then gainful work and a stability of routines. All of these issues take priority over, say, leisure, recreation and culture. It is hardly surprising, even if residents of the neighborhood knew the histories of the oldest neighborhood dwellings, that those past associations would have qualified their present needs. But each ethnic and racial group carries their histories with them and transforms them as they pursue life-sustaining needs. Indeed the way each group or family pursues their needs re-shapes the historical narrative of their city. Today we need to give some thought to the role of memory in shaping our image of Elizabeth and the way its historical narrative conditions how we understand an urban quality of life. What does it matter if Elizabeth physicians do not know the extra-medical role of Dr Charles Harris as a station master on the 19th century Underground Railroad?   How significant is it that many Elizabethan are ignorant of the presence of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton or the Marquis de Lafayette in their very community or their narrow escape from the British in 1778?   Would Elizabethans think differently of their governor, if he, like Jonathan Belcher, breached the laws he had sworn to uphold?

ORDINARY TO EXTRAORDINARY

The moment of reconsidering the actual narrative of a community’s past is itself both an historical and political act. Whose history should become the major story to explain how comparable residents lived generations before? The stories we have here recounted – some extraordinary, some richly ordinary – actually changes the fabric of our city and makes clear that a more accurate history must itself be more inclusive than is usually the case. Most of the extraordinary individuals in our tale were simply ordinary people who engaged unforeseen contexts and issues and carried them to unpredictable – occasionally remarkably successful – conclusions. But all of the experiences of residents have their place in a city’s narrative, and if not every story can be told with equal force, history manifestly cannot be simply a story of the fortunate survivors.   The Historical Society; Elizabeth NJ Inc has tried to tell a more inclusive story, has interviewed neighborhood residents to change the top-down perspectives that so often represent textbook history. 

THE BELCHER OGDEN MANSION TODAY

In doing so, we have excavated different perspectives for a major historical icon, the Belcher Ogden Mansion and liberated it from its 18th century chrysalis. Actually any long-standing residence has a special place in the narratives and experiences of many families, of all social classes, of every ethnic and racial group. The Belcher-Ogden residence enters the 21st century as a different social resource than it has been hitherto. It is more than a mere orientation device along East Jersey street; it is a testament to the elongated, checkered history of our city, a quiet witness to many distinct histories. By researching and retelling those histories, the Society plans to be receptive to various narrative, to enrich and inform its citizenry.  We hope to use this historic facility actively, to tell a more complex story, one in which every citizen can connect their own individual and family narratives. The result, we are confident, will make a more useful history, a better urban landscape and a better city.