Historical Research has its Own Direction

HISTORICAL RESEARCH HAS ITS OWN DIRECTION

While doing the two posts on Guillermo Thorn and Thomas Moran, I had the pleasure of referring to a wonderful document, In Search of the Feltville Tract, The Feltville Historic District Research Project, prepared by Dennis Bertland Associates for Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, in November 2021. Checking through the detailed chronology, I noticed that Nancy Townsend owned the Feltville Property at the time of the visit of both these artists. As my previous posts discuss, the two artists’ works, depicting “the Deserted Village,” suggest that Nancy was not operating a thriving manufacturing concern.

At the time of these visits, Nancy was the widow of Dr. Samuel P. Townsend, or “Sarsaparilla Townsend.”¹ As the latter name suggests, Samuel made his fortune manufacturing and bottling sarsaparilla, a “patent medicine” claimed to be the wonder drug of the ages. Nancy and Samuel had come to the village together from New York City, apparently to make a new start for Samuel’s business. But, as the chronology shows, both before and after Samuel’s death, it was Nancy whose name was on the property transactions, both for the Feltville properties and some others in the surrounding area.

Of course I started wondering about Nancy—deeming it to be, in a way, on her watch that the Village had gone “deserted.” I was interested, of course, to see a woman be the one buying and selling property, but even more interested in figuring out what she might have been trying to do with the village property after the death of her husband and any aspirations he might have had for a new business start.

Nancy may have showed up repeatedly on property transactions, but, like other women of her era (and since, for that matter) she has so far remained rather elusive, without extensive historic traces.

She was born Nancy Coughtry in or around 1820, and married Samuel P. Townsend on “the 24^th of 12^th Month 1844”² in Albany, New York. The officiant was Elder Stephen Wilkins, Baptist Minister, who apparently was serving at the time as pastor of the South Baptist Church in Albany.³

I am indebted to Jane Thoner, Librarian, Special Collections Department, Plainfield Public Library for two obituaries with some further information. From an obituary for Samuel, who died in 1870, I learned (erroneously, it appears) that Nancy married Samuel in Boston, and also (hopefully truthfully) that Nancy was, at the time of their marriage, “an amiable and accomplished young lady.”⁴ The same obituary also told me that “Some years ago [Nancy and Samuel] met with the irreparable loss of their only child, an interesting daughter, who now lies in Greenwood.”

The second obituary, that of Nancy, established that she died in 1901, thus, after a widowhood of more than 30 years. Her obituary was depressingly short on detail:

Death of an Old Resident (Special to the Daily Press) Fanwood, August 23—Mrs. Nancy Townsend, an old resident of this place, died this morning after a brief illness at the home of her nephew, Albert McKown, of Martine avenue. She was eighty-one yers old and leave a host of acquaintances in this vicinity. The funeral services will be held from her late residence. Interment will be made at Greenwood.5

A far more fun source of information, but still disappointingly short on detail, is the single mention of Nancy by her grand-niece, a (locally) famous author named Marion Nicoll Rawson, who, in her folk history Under the Blue Hills says this: “Sometimes she [Rawson’s mother] dropped in to see “Aunty” [Nancy] from old Fifth Avenue, who now lived simply and apart in her Victorian rooms among her remnants of mahogany grandeur.”⁶ Although the book had been written by Rawson earlier, it was apparently not published until 1974, with edits by the author’s sister, and additionally with all sorts of place notes by local (unnamed) Scotch Plains experts. One finds the following entry in the book’s index: “Townsend, Mrs. Samuel P., “Aunt Nancy,” home, (1910-1916 Westfield Ave. gone), 54.” This may be the “late residence” referred to in her obituary.

Not very much, indeed! There are many places I will eventually look for further traces of Nancy. But, as I tried to fill in what I thought was similarly scarce data on Nancy’s husband Samuel, I discovered much new-to-me material for him. In the end, it was as if the research itself assigned me the reading of two complete historical books, in order to understand Samuel and some of his actions. I ended up with more material than I could prepare or fit into one post. So, this is the first of two posts, bringing Samuel—and Nancy—from Albany to New York City on a flood (almost literally) of sarsaparilla. The second one will look at Samuel—and hopefully, Nancy—after they got to Feltville and New Jersey.

“SARSAPARILLA TOWNSEND” AND HIS CLAIMS

Sarsaparilla was just one of many “patent medicines” being sold to the public in America, starting from its earliest history, and purporting, often with very questionable evidence, to cure various more or less severe medical conditions. Although the name, “patent medicine,” come from the “letters patent” granted by the English crown, apparently very few of the “patent medicines” created in the United States were actually patented.⁷ These medicines especially began to proliferate in the decades leading up to the Civil War, when Samuel was developing and beginning to market his sarsaparilla.⁸ Beyond the fact that many or most of the claims made for the bulk of these medicines were unverified by any independent authority, there was the fact that many of the medicines included often dangerous levels of alcohol or narcotics, or other potentially toxic chemicals. Eventually, concerns over these medicines led to the first federal Food and Drug Act, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, which was soon followed by stronger acts. Enforcement was originally within the purview of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry, replaced later with the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration (whose name was later shortened to today’s name, the Food and Drug Administration).

In his annual 1848 circular promoting his product, Samuel says: “Our business, which commenced by accident, on the discovery of a process of extracting the Sarsaparilla, and a formula of compounding it with other ingredients, which more nearly resembles the saliva, or gastric juice, than any medical compound yet discovered, and which possesses the most extraordinary powers of purifying and invigorating the system, and creating new [emphasis in original], rich and pure blood, a power possessed by no other remedy.”⁹ In that same circular, Samuel explains a bit further, stating “It is a compound extract of the best Honduras Sarsaparilla, ground by a steam engine, as fine as Indian meal and extracted without heat—heat kills the virtues of the Root—this is compounded with some of the most active alterative medicines and possesses powers never before discovered in controlling disease.” Also in the same circular, Samuel swears, under oath, that there is no trace of any of the following in his Sarsaparilla: “no Corrosive Sublimate or other Mercurial preparation” and that “it does not contain a particle of opium.”

There is a biographical sketch of Samuel on the Virtual Museum site of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC). This sketch was written by historical bottle collector Rick Ciralli.

Before I get to the sketch, however, I will note that this post introduced me to the level of passion and meticulousness of historical bottle collectors. The FOHBC describes its mission as: The mission of the Federation is to encourage growth and public awareness of the bottle hobby and to enhance the enjoyment of such through collecting, dealing and educational endeavors and to promote fair and ethical conduct within the bottle hobby.”¹⁰ The FOHBC maintains a wonderful “Virtual Museum,” whose stated purpose is to provide “A digital expression of what one might find in a real ‘bricks and mortar’ museum. With galleries, exhibitions, research, resources and support functions to enhance the visitor experience.”

Samuel’s biographical sketch on the Virtual Museum site, at Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla Albany N.Y. – FOHBC Virtual Museum of Historical Bottles and Glass indicates that Dr. Townsend was an “apothecary and physician selling his concoction locally” in the Albany, New York area when his father, William C. Townsend, apparently stepped in, retiring from his own business, and negotiating contracts for increased production of Samuel’s sarsaparilla and for broadening its distribution. William convinced Samuel’s brother, Tappen Townsend, to come to Albany and help Samuel grow the business, which by the 1840s was at the peak of its success.¹¹ The Virtual Museum writeup indicates that sometime in the 1840s Samuel went to New York City to grow the business, leaving Tappen and, now, two other brothers in Albany, all three by then working on Samuel’s Sarsaparilla business. The business grew exponentially, and competitors, including one calling itself Dr. Jacob Townsend’s Sarsaparilla, tried to siphon business away from Samuel’s Sarsaparilla.

In the 1849 Circular promoting his sarsaparilla, Samuel states that he attended “two of the best Medical Schools in the country, has studied the different theories of medicine and practiced for the last fifteen years.”¹² It should be noted that admission to the medical practice required a much less formal route at the time, and there is no reason to believe that Samuel had not completed enough education, study and practice to be properly considered a doctor.

This circular, and the other one I have found, the 1848 Circular are both chock full of testimonials and information on the many benefits of the medicine to a wide range of users.

In the 1848 Circular, the following claims are made: Dr. Townsend’s Compound Extract of Sarsaparilla! Wonder and Blessing of the Age The Most Extraordinary Medicine in the World. This Extract is put up in Quart bottles; it is six time cheaper, pleasanter, and warranted superior to any sold. It cures without vomiting, purging, sickening, or debilitating the Patient. The great beauty and superiority of this Sarsaparilla, over all other medicines is, that while it eradicates the disease, it invigorates the body. It is one of the best Spring and Summer medicines ever known; it not only purifies the whole system, and strengthens the person, but it creates new [emphasis in original], rich and pure blood: a power possessed by no other medicine. And in this lies the grand secret of its wonderful success. It has performed within the last two years, more than 100,000 cures of severe cases of disease; at least 15,000 were considered incurable. It has saved the lives of more than 10,000 children during the two past seasons.

Samuel thanks the many medical professionals who have prescribed his sarsaparilla. He also thanks the press for essentially good press, pharmacists for ordering his product, and his many users. He includes examples of the coverage in the press, including the following:

From the New York Sun Our readers are aware we seldom call their attention, in our editorial columns, to any of the numerous advertised remedies prescribed for “all the evils that flesh is heir to.” Our reasons are obvious: health is of such vital importance, and especially to those who have disease, that we require to be well assured of the virtues of a medicine before we recommend it to the two hundred thousand readers of the Sun. Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla has been before the public for several years, and has become deservedly popular. The immense and increasing demand for it, together with the numerous certificates from gentlemen of the first respectability, who have been cured of chronic and other distressing diseases by using it, is conclusive evidence of its valuable properties. We learn that it is prescribed by a large number of physicians in this City and Brooklyn. We advise our readers who have weakly children, or are afflicted with the Dyspepsia, Rheumatism, or any cutaneous disease to give it a trial.

The circular for the following year, 1849, includes another testimonial from the New York Sun, one which indicates that Samuel’s office is located right next door to the newspaper’s offices, and that Samuel has spent at least $10,000 on advertising with them.

In both circulars, there are testimonials from physicians and testimonials from clergy (e.g., “Methodist Testimony.”), along with those of various individual users. Headlines announce special sections about the value of the medicine to a variety of disparate populations, including: “Gentlemen and Lady Mechanics,” “Emigrants going West,” “Advice to Sailors,” “To Persons in Health,” “Girls Read This,” “Notice to the Ladies,” and perhaps the most affecting: “Don’t let them die!” This section of the 1848 Circular section is complete with drawings of mothers dressed more like ancient Grecians than women of their era, hugging naked children. The section states that several thousand children could have been saved from death in New York City during the last season with the help of Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla. The 1849 Circular also has a section called “Don’t let them die!” regarding the various diseases from which Samuel’s sarsaparilla could save children. The illustration this year has left off the naked children and the mother’s one-shouldered classical attire, and has added a father along with the mother, all family members being dressed in a more nineteenth century style.

The 1848 Circular warns against counterfeits. Because of the rise of competitors, Samuel is alerting users that he has created a special label with a facsimile of his signature and “a Magnificent steel-plate engraving for the outside wrapper” with a portrait of Samuel; this will alert the user that they are receiving the genuine article. The 1849 Circular goes beyond avoiding counterfeits in general to warnings about the concoction of a competitor, “old Dr. Jacob Townsend’s Sarsaparilla.” Apparently, in addition to trying to pass his Sarsaparilla off as the original, Dr. Jacob must also be claiming that Samuel is not actually a physician, a claim that Samuel counters by noting that he attended “two of the best Medical Schools in the country, has studied the different theories of medicine and practiced for the last fifteen years.

Samuel’s bottles are collector items now—collected by the historical bottle collectors I referenced earlier. For some wonderful sites showing the beauty and diversity of the bottles, click to see the Virtual Museum exhibit, the Facebook page of historical bottle collector Rick Ciralli, and the Facebook page of Peachridge Glass, curated by historical bottle collector Ferdinand Meyer V.

SAMUEL JOINS THE UPTOWN MARCH OF MANHATTAN

Samuel had started his sarsaparilla business in the Albany area, but like many “nouveaux riches” individuals migrated to New York City, America’s most fashionable city, probably first establishing an office there, but eventually making his home (and that of Nancy) there. Manhattan was busily marching uptown, mowing down farms and homes—seemingly deemed shanties—and other businesses unworthy of the city’s newly most fashionable areas. This march is fascinatingly described in Charles Lockwood’s Manhattan Moves Uptown, An Illustrated History, which is one of the two complete books I was “assigned.” As I expected, the book gave me a good sense of what Samuel’s mansion represented, in historical context. The book is meticulously researched and engaging; my only complaints being that it contains neither footnotes nor a bibliography, and that it fails, in my mind at least, to adequately convey a sense of the landscape that was being replaced by development, focusing more on what took its place.

The book reminds the reader that New York City had been the site of a seven-year occupation by the British during the Revolutionary War. After the war, much of the city was in ruins, trade was nearly non-existent, and perhaps half of the city’s residents—presumably largely those who supported the revolution—had left the city. Lockwood notes that at the end of the war, the city extended no more than ten blocks up from the Battery. By 1820, construction—which was to continue nearly unabated after that, throughout the entire nineteenth century—had extended the edge of the city another 10 or 15 blocks, and by 1850, another nearly 2 miles further, to Fourteenth Street.

At the end of the Revolution, and as Manhattan rebuilt, Wall Street was residential, the home of many prominent families, with homes in the “English style.”¹³ Lockwood describes Wall Street as “the first fashionable neighborhood to fall to trade,” when business from the already commercial Pearl Street area began to spill over to Wall Street in the early nineteenth century. Interestingly, Lockwood notes that Pearl Street itself had once run along the shoreline of the East River, but garbage fill along the shore had first created enough new land for the creation of Water Street, and then two more streets out into the river, Front Street, and South Street.¹⁴ All of these were turning commercial, but that did not stop the spread to Wall Street and beyond. Residents of Manhattan soon became accustomed to a pattern of constant construction, with increasingly more fantastical residences lasting only a short while, before they were demolished and fell to other uses; ¹⁵ the wealthy continued to moved uptown, erasing the still rural portions of the island. Lockwood seems to accept the clearly prevailing notion that each property subsumed in the areas beyond the city itself was either run down or a slaughterhouse, or something equally noxious. He does note that hills were leveled, streams channelized or piped, ponds and marshes filled, natural features erased—and then, of course, reintroduced, but in a designed way, when Central Park was built in the mid nineteenth century, to provide green space that had been lost to construction. Lockwood quotes the Daily Tribune as noting “there is no other city in the world where builders are allowed such a perfect monopoly of the streets.”¹⁶ Even in the fashionable districts, builders left piles of building materials everywhere, worked in the street at all kinds of tasks—sometimes for months at a time. Streets and sidewalks were often blocked.

Land prices went up and down drastically, depending on how close a property was to the areas where the wealthiest were building and living. Land speculators and millionaires alike tried to keep ahead of the march by purchasing land in the still untidy, rural, outlands.

After Wall Street, Broadway was one of the original residential streets of choice, boasting, in 1828 more than 100 of the richest 500 men in the city, with its nearest rival being Greenwich Street. Then, almost to New Yorkers’ surprise, Fifth Avenue took over as prime location, going from a “muddy rutted road” with few homes to a “street of palaces.”¹⁷

According to an article from the Albany Evening Journal, reproduced in Samuel’s 1849 circular,¹⁸ Samuel was already living somewhere in New York City, where he had offices, when he decided to build himself a fabulous mansion, from 1853 to 1855, on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 34^th Street, in the City’s then most fashionable district. Fifth Avenue had gone from having just 20 of the city’s 200 wealthiest men in 1846 to being the uptown street that was home to the largest number of them by 1851. Thirty-fourth Street, on which Samuel’s home fronted, was one of the periodic wider streets—120 foot wide, versus the usual 60 foot wide street—which, because of their width lent themselves—and generally attracted—construction of particularly grand residences. So the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue was extremely prime real estate. Samuel appears to have been one of the residents along the north side of West Thirty fourth street who owned a double lot, extending back from Thirty-fourth Street through the lot in back, which went all the way to the south side of West Thirty Fifth Street. The back part of these lots generally held servants’ quarters and stables, to the great annoyance of their neighbors on Thirty Fifth Street. Samuel’s stables are referenced and confirmed in a folk history written by his grandniece Marion Nicholl Rawson, who speaks of a neighbor who was “allowed to approach [Samuel’s] stables at the rear through the long Townsend lane from Thirty-fifth Street.”¹⁹

Lockwood reports that Samuel spent between $200,000 and $250,000 to create what the Daily Tribune called the “finest and most costly decorated in the city.”²⁰ Lockwood further reports that, after the mansion was finished, Samuel opened it to the public for a week, charging visitors twenty-five cents apiece to marvel and appreciate his over the top mansion. The money raised was donated to the Five Point Mission, which served poor New Yorkers, particularly in the Five Points neighborhood, made famous (at least for me), in the movie Gangs of New York.

Lockwood describes the interior of the mansion: The building’s Italianate brownstone façade was not much different from other on Fifth Avenue and gave little hint of the surprises awaiting the visitors within. Once past the front doors, the crowds entered the great hall, where several tiers of gilt Corinthian columns supported galleries reaching up three floors to a stained-glass dome. A profusion of frescoes decorated the various rooms: scenes of Italy in the great hall and parlors, classical figures and fanciful scrollwork in the picture gallery and library, and nymphs and baby angels in the black walnut and marble bathrooms. The most expensive French furniture filled the various parlors, the largest of which was thirty by eighty feet. Other Fifth Avenue mansions boasted boatloads of French furniture and fifty-foot entrance halls. With his “period rooms,” Townsend forged ahead of his nouveaux riches rivals for the city’s most improbable mansion. A Gothic chapel, sixteen-by-thirty-three feet, occupied part of the third and fourth floors. A single rose window filled the room with what the Herald called “the requisite amount of ‘dim religious light,’ properly colored.” A door in his well-filled but little-used library opened into the Pompeii Room, “a unique apartment,” which was supposedly a “facsimile in size and frescoes of a room in the exhumed city.” His picture gallery, though not a period room, contained what everyone through were the works of Italian old masters as well as the Voyage of Life paintings by Thomas Cole.21

Interestingly, the Five Points Mission, the beneficiary of Samuel’s tours, was later built on the same site as a building famed for its population of drug dealers and criminals, and its multiple secret passages allowing any residents involved in less than legal activities to evade capture. When the mission founders bought that building, it too, prior to being demolished, was thrown open for paid tours, so that “respectable” New Yorkers could enjoy gawking at the dark passages and the decrepit conditions lived in by the poor. It is around the time of this tour that newspapers began covering the conditions suffered by the poor more frequently.

Samuel built his house at a time when central heating, indoor plumbing and gaslights were becoming de rigeur for upscale fashionable homes. Interestingly, the move from private wells to water piped from the Croton Reservoir had had the side effect of allowing the water table to rise to levels that threatened to flood basements.²² On the whole, New Yorkers were very proud of these improvements in their lifestyles,²³ although clearly they were unequally distributed.

According to the Virtual Museum writeup, Samuel sold his business in 1855, just as his mansion was being completed and two years before New York experienced the Panic of 1857, when New York based Ohio Life and Mutual Trust Company went bankrupt, dragging down progressively more Wall Street brokers, and other banks and businesses.

SAMUEL’S FALL?

Samuel may have avoided the Panic of 1857, but he couldn’t avoid troubles, even after the sale of his business. On February 2, 1858, the New York Times picked up and ran an article originally published in the Albany Argus the day before:²⁴

A Large Verdict against Dr. S. P. Townsend An interesting case has been on trial before Judge Hogeboom in the Circuit Court for some days, and was terminated by a princely verdict on Saturday night. The action was against TOWNSEND [emphasis in original} of New York, the well-known sarsaparilla millionaire. Townsend and Ruell Clapp, formerly of this City [Albany], now deceased, were partners in the sarsaparilla business, having offices in this City and in New York.

The lawsuit had been brought by Clapp’s widow and next of kin, claiming, essentially, that they had not received their fair share of the business, due to fraud and concealments after Clapp’s death, presumably when Samuel sold the business in 1855.

Samuel’s 1849 Circular confirms Clapp’s prior role in the business, in an article reproduced from the Albany Evening Journal:

There probably has never been so popular a remedy, or patent medicine, as Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla, which was originally and continues to be manufactured in this city, at first by the Doctor himself and afterwards for several years, and to the present time by Clapp & Townsend, the present proprietors. Since the partnership was formed, the doctor has resided in New York, where he keeps a store and attends to the business that accumulates at that point. The manufactory is in this city, and is conducted by the junior partner, Mr. Clapp—here all the medicine is manufactured.

The New York Times article recounting the action by Clapp’s widow ends with the following:

The trial of the case has, on account of the amount involved, been one of much interest. The Jury gave a verdict Saturday night for the whole amount claimed, reaching with interest the sum of $104,000.

If the article seems to be crowing over Samuel’s comeuppance, it probably was. Lockwood notes that “Fifth Avenue was such a well-known address that almost any crookedness or foible of one of its residents became news.”²⁵ Other New Yorkers, indeed, were calling the nouveau riches residents of Fifth Avenue the “Avenoodles” or “the Shoddy Aristocracy,” and liked to disparage the ways in which the fortunes of these individuals had been made.²⁶

Samuel reportedly sold his mansion a year after this verdict, and apparently began plans to move to Feltville, with the assistance of a friend or acquaintance named Amasa S. Foster, who bought the Feltville tracts in 1860. In 1864, Foster sold the entire property to Samuel’s wife, Nancy Townsend. In Search of the Feltville Tract speculates that Nancy bought it with the idea of Samuel using it for a revamped sarsaparilla venture.²⁷

We will stop here, with a note that my original draft about Samuel Townsend’s presence at the Village was titled “Sarsaparilla King in Decline,” because I imagined Samuel, on the heels of his ignominious court defeat, as arriving, somewhat tail between his legs, at Feltville, seeking to make a new start in the backwaters of New Jersey. I’m not so sure now, but I’ll let you decide, along with me, in my March post.