Frenchtown Walking Tours

08/04/2025

SATURDAY, AUG. 9, FRENCHTOWN CEMETERY TOUR
WILL BENEFIT HUNTERDON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Because the Hunterdon County Historical Society has been so helpful with my research, it will receive all proceeds from my Frenchtown Cemetery tour on Saturday, Aug. 9, at 10 a.m. This tour will explore the oldest part of the cemetery.

We’ll pay our respects at the graves of Capt. William Slater, who lost a leg in the Civil War; 19th-century juvenile delinquents Dory Williams and Lew Slater; Lillian Hinkle, who was slain by her son-in-law; and William Roberson, who swam away from the deadly Milford train wreck of 1877. We might even visit the grave of a fellow who lost a shoe button up his nose for several years.

The tour takes 90 minutes and costs $20 (cash or Venmo). It’s free for teenagers.

Please register so I’ll know whether to show up. Write to RickEpstein@yahoo.com.

After you take the tour, you’ll probably want to run downtown and buy my book, “Frenchtown; Fires, Floods, Fads & Felonies.” I won’t try to stop you.

Here’s the rest of the tour schedule:

Downtown Tour, Saturday, Aug 16, 10 a.m.
Upper Cemetery Tour, Saturday, Aug. 30, 10 a.m.
Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour, Saturday, Sept. 6, 10 a.m.
Downtown Tour, Saturday, Sept. 20, 10 a.m.
Lower Cemetery Tour, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2 p.m.

More October tours will be scheduled.

06/10/2024

FRENCHTOWN TOUR THIS SATURDAY
OF THE OLDER PART OF THE CEMETERY

A headstone might tell when a person was alive, but it doesn’t tell what the person did with that precious interval above ground. I can help with that.

Join me on Saturday, June 15, at 10 a.m. for my Lower Cemetery Tour and you’ll learn about the women who rescued Captain Slater of the Union Army, the man who swam away from the Milford train wreck of 1877, Frenchtown’s first car owner, headstones made of “white bronze,” and the time Lew Slater & Powers Williams liberated a gaggle of geese from the borough pound. And more!

Each tour costs $15, and it’s free for teenagers. If you are interested in the tour, email me at rickepstein@yahoo.com so I’ll know to show up. If I don’t get any emails, I’ll spend the morning among the living.

2024 TOUR SCHEDULE

Saturday, June 15, 10 a.m. – Lower Cemetery Tour

Saturday, June 29, 10 a.m. – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour -- On this tour of the downtown and riverfront areas you’ll hear about 10 true stories and one that might be true -- all recounted where they happened. Some questions that will be addressed: Why didn’t Aaron Burr visit Frenchtown in 1806? Who shot our druggist in 1939? Why was Tippoo the elephant so angry in 1869? Why did John Vanselous punch the barber’s daughter in 1922? Why did Austin Pendleton get fired from the bank in 1926? You’ll learn why George Hummer didn’t die in 1879.

Saturday, July 6, 10 a.m. – Uptown Tour includes Doc Mullins’ hospital, old Frenchtown High School, the Doughboy statue, the Barn Theatre, the doll-carriage factory, the Cigarette Train Wreck that got everyone smoking, the home of the Original Terrier that became the mascot of two high schools, and a World War II love story.

Saturday, July 13, 10 a.m. – Downtown Tour, $20 benefit for Hunterdon County Historical Society. It includes the Great Fire of 1878, Senator Martin’s alligators (1895), our secret societies, the floods of 1903 and ‘55, the Queen of Bridge Street (1935), the 1860s feud with the Pennsylvania boys, how Fred Sipes created buzz for his silent-movie theater (1921), and why our founder left France in a big hurry (1794).

Saturday, July 13, 7 p.m. – Once More Around the Block! Find out why Mrs. Snover assaulted a teacher (1926), how the constable rescued little Grace Stocker (1929), and why a book made the Great Depression even more depressing (1932). Learn about the eccentric lifestyle of author James and Alma Agee (1930s), Inky the dog and Inky the man (1940s), Murphy Jones the professional bridge diver, the boy who pretended to be hypnotized (1860s), the baker’s horse that wouldn’t wait (1901), and more.

Saturday, Aug. 3, 10 a.m. – Upper Cemetery Tour It includes the misfortunes of Constable Clarence Doan, Miss Frenchtown’s day of glamour, how Corporal Finney’s sudden death caused his father to put up a 7-ton pink granite monument, how Ron Rogers tried to make minstrel shows OK, Oliver Kugler’s passion for retail, the stubbornness of Old Mary Moore, the crimes of Amos Hart, and the misbehavior of Elden Cooley, who had a master’s degree in Monkey Business.

Saturday, Aug. 17, 10 a.m. – Lower Cemetery Tour

Saturday, Aug. 24, 10 a.m. – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour

Saturday, Aug. 31, 10 a.m. – Uptown Tour

More tours will be scheduled through October.

01/28/2024

IF YOU'D LIKE TO BUY A BIG BOOK of Frenchtown history, I'd love to sell you one. It is in hard cover and weighs 2 lbs., 5 oz. It has about 470 pages and 76 pictures. It was published in 2023 and people have been liking it. Just send a check for $35 ($30 for the book and $5 for postage) to Rick Epstein, 1 Twelfth Street, Frenchtown, NJ, 08825.

01/28/2024

TOURS SCHEDULED FOR 2025

Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2 p.m.
Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2 p.m.
Downtown Tour, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2 p.m. (rescheduled from Oct. 25, due to niece's birthday party)
Lower Cemetery Tour, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2 p.m.

MORE TOURS IN THE SPRINGTIME!

03/19/2020

https://rickepstein.wixsite.com/frenchtownnjtours/post/did-dr-deemy-s-horse-ignite-the-great-fire-of-1878

Buildings that burned up: (clockwise from left) The Temperance House Hotel, The Press newspaper and print shop, and Hummer's furniture & Williams' drug stores. Frenchtown Fire of 1878 Excerpt from “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia” (a work in progress) © 2020 by Rick Epstein “It's a bad thing t...

11/01/2019

THE FRENCHTOWN STAR OFFERED
NEWS AND VIEWS FROM 1879 TO 1932

For some reason, Laura Pointon has asked me to post something about the Frenchtown Star. Since I can deny her nothing, Here's an excerpt from the work-in-progress “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia”:

Frenchtown Star – (1879-1932) was a newspaper founded by William Sipes as a monthly, but starting March 31, 1880, it came out every Wednesday.
The newspaper contained national news, features and fiction, with a few columns of items from Frenchtown and outlying places like Everittstown, Milford and Uhlerstown, Pa. If a henhouse was plundered, a resident painted his house or Mr. and Mrs. Chester Niece entertained out-of-town visitors, you could read about it in the Star. The ads were placed by local businesses and manufacturers of patent medicines.
Sipes was an alumnus of two newspapers – The Frenchtown Press and the Whitehouse Family Casket, and he loved to wag the admonitory finger.
Here's a sample from 1889:
“Don't carry money in your mouth. It is said to often carry disease germs. You don't know where it has been.” There's no doubting the wisdom, but I wonder about its necessity. Maybe people didn't like to use their pockets for fear it would disrupt the lines of their clothing. Some months later he advised teachers to tell their pupils not to put coins in their mouths. That seemed more to the point.
You get the feeling that half the currency in Frenchtown was dripping with saliva, and Sipes was fed up.
Here's a nicely wrought admonition from 1891:
“There is entirely too much driving on our streets on Sunday. Some parties drive up and down Harrison Street for at least 10 or a dozen times during the afternoon at a faster gait than should be allowed. We hope the proper officials will see to it that this is stopped in the future.”
And one from 1911:
“The practice of throwing orange and banana peelings on the sidewalk should be stopped, especially in wet weather, as they become slippery and are dangerous to life and limb.”
He also warned about the evils of liquor and to***co; the unwholesome influence of the dime novel, which “is saturated with blood, and murders are its most frequent episode.” Sensationalistic newspapers were castigated, too. “The young are easily led astray. The majority of fictitious works now published are unfit for any, much less the young.” And don't even get him going on liquor!
Sipes' son and printer, Horace, said, “The newspaper was everything to Dad.” But it was not a money maker, and circulation was so negligible that printing it only occupied its print shop for a half-hour. Horace indicated that advertisers were not conscientious about paying their bills.
William Sipes died in 1930. Horace continued as editor, selling the newspaper's name and 500-reader subscription list to the Moreau family of Flemington in 1932, making it a stepsister publication of the Hunterdon County Democrat. The Moreaus changed the name to the Delaware Valley News.

10/08/2019

BOROUGH HALL WAS ORIGINALLY
A PRESBYTERIAN CHAPEL, BUILT 1845;
FRENCHTOWN BOUGHT IT IN 1874

The origins of Frenchtown's Borough Hall have been shrouded in mystery (to me, anway). But thanks to the research library of the Hunterdon County Historical Society in Flemington, some key info has emerged.

Here's what I've got so far:

BOROUGH HALL – on Second Street was originally a Presbyterian chapel that was built in 1845. After the Presbyterians built a grander church on Fourth Street in 1854, a Mrs. Smith conducted a private school in the old chapel.

Frenchtown achieved boroughhood in 1867, but it had no headquarters. In 1873 Borough Council was meeting in a rented room in I.H. Wilgus' building, which was a wooden structure on the northeast corner of Bridge and Harrison streets. Wilgus had a furniture store and undertaking establishment on the ground floor. (This building burned down in 1878.)

In 1874 the borough bought the old Presbyterian chapel, whose sanctuary measured 24 by 36 feet, for $550 and hired Civil War veteran Obadiah Stout (1823-1895) for $1,264.50 to “repair the old building and build 14 feet additional,” according to the Hunterdon Independent. I mention those figures not so you'll say, “Gee, things were cheap then.” I do it so you'll compare the purchase price to the reno price, and get an idea of the extent of the conversion.

On March 12, 1875, council's building committee – Isaac Taylor, Eli Swallow and Nathan Shurtz – submitted their final report to council and disbanded.

From the start, Borough Hall was a venue for performances. D.L. Shrope, writing in 1917, believed that the first show there was “The Idiot Witness” by the E.L. Davenport Dramatic Company of Easton, Pa., in a two-night stand, sponsored by the Knights of Pythias lodge. Many shows followed.

For example, on the evening of Saturday, July 29, 1882, Prof. C.R. Nightingale had use of the hall to exhibit his phonograph or “talking machine.” Admission was 15 cents for adults, 10 cents for children.

In November of 1888 Borough Hall hosted Prof. William Thompson's extravaganza which included Bohemian glass blowers; Nellie Majante with her monster den of performing reptiles; Griffin the Wonder Worker, illusionist, ventriloquist and fire king; Charles A. Bonney, the musical albino, Scotch bagpiper and mimic; Major Rhinebeck, the smallest man on Earth; a happy family of funny monkeys and birds and animals of every description; plus a Punch and Judy puppet show “for the little ones.” The professor promised, “A moral entertainment without an objectionable feature.” Admission: 10 cents. The Star later quantified Maj. Rhinebeck's smallness – 3 feet – and noted that he had previously been with the Frank A. Robbins circus, which was wintering just across the river.

Teen diarist Raymond Fargo wrote in 1906 of three programs that hall – one that featured combat between a bear and a bulldog, and two evening spelling bees, with adults competing, including Raymond's teacher.

From 1909 to 1919, and again in 1932 the council chamber doubled as a movie theater.

Over the years, Borough Hall has supplied space for other municipal uses – as school (in the 1920s and '60s), firehouse, lock-up, library and police headquarters. The belfry was added in 1890.

During the Depression, its warm furnace room was a shelter for vagrants. In December of 1933 the borough decided that its hospitality was being abused by “assorted bums, tramps, hoboes and hitch-hikers who put up overnight under the town hall,” according to the News. “Word has gotten out that Frenchtown is a great place to hole up for the winter,” reported Jerry Zich of the Delaware Valley News, who described one night's sleeping arrangements: “A half-dozen lay about the room on newspapers spread over the hard floor. All had their clothes on, and having taken off their shoes and socks, used these for pillows.”

Because some transients were not as transient as the borough would like – staying on for weeks – it was decided that guests would only be admitted at night, and their stays would be limited to one night.

Hospitality to the homeless was eliminated in March of 1941. Borough officials said that eight to 16 men a night were being sheltered in Borough Hall and then annoying residents with their panhandling. Mayor Hugh Sinclair ordered Marshal Godfrey Hawk and assistant marshal Russell Gordon to keep the place locked up.

The library has been on the ground floor since 1950, at first sharing that level with the police. When next-door-neighbor Ruth Klinkowstein died in 1990, she bequeathed her house to the borough, and it became police headquarters. The benefactress' painted portrait hangs in Borough Hall.

(Excerpt from "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia")

09/08/2019

EVER NOTICE THESE CONCRETE BLOCKS?

Rusticated concrete blocks or rock-faced blocks are hollow and shaped to imitate stone. The product of new technology, they enjoyed a time of popularity – the 1910s and '20s – nationwide and in Frenchtown. Although there were plenty of commercial manufacturers of the blocks, you could also DIY with a $50 Sears Wizard Block-Maker.

That coincides with the proliferation of the automobile, which is why this faux stone material was used in building Eichlin's Pontiac dealership on Harrison Street in 1922 and two big automotive repair shops – Theodore Zielstorff's auto-repair shop in 1912 and Apgar's Garage in 1913.

The Zielstorff building at 3 Trenton Avenue just used them to dress up the facade, and when Sarge Russell gave the building a makeover in 1984, he lovingly repurposed these blocks around his property.

Apgar's Garage is now the Frenchtown Home & Hardware store. Although the blocks have been covered with siding, some of them can be seen if you look at the east or west sides of the building.

In non-automotive contexts, it was also used in Worman's circa 1915 building on the southeast corner of Bridge Street and Trenton Avenue (Cycle Corner bike shop) and to build Hillpot's Hatchery on Upper Seventh Street.

When porches were added or repaired during those decades, the brown blocks were used. These can be seen at 214 Harrison Street, 15 Third Street, 15 Fourth Street, 9 Trenton Avenue and at 501 Harrison Street. The owner of that house, maybe Dr. Frank Grim, liked the blocks so much that he used them to build a low wall along the Fifth Street side of his property and to add a kitchen ell. The blocks were also used to add a front porch onto the old Christian Church on Kingwood Avenue when it was converted for residential use and at the base of the columns in front of the Frenchtown Inn.

BTW, about every fifth house in Alpha seems to made of these blocks. I think that's because Alpha Cement Works used to make them.

--Rick Epstein

09/05/2019

PEOPLE WHO GREW UP IN FRENCHTOWN
GET THE MOST OUT OF MY TOURS!

Tales of old Frenchtown will be told on my Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 10 a.m. Maybe I shouldn't call them “tales” because they are all true – pulled from the pages of the Frenchtown Star and the Del Val News, and a court document from 1806 (Aaron Burr Didn't Sleep Here). Another story, the 1878 account of George Hummer's Narrow Escape, came down from grandfather to grandson to friend to me, and probably isn't true. But it's a good one!

The other tour this weekend is the Uptown Tour on Sunday, Sept. 8, at 10 a.m. You'd be amazed how much history is contained between Second and Twelfth streets. We'll see the home of the Original Terrier (mascot of Frenchtown High School), the Barn Theatre, the old doll carriage factory, Doc. Mullins' hospital and plenty more.

So if you are interested in either tour, text me at 908-200-0480 or send an email to rickepstein@yahoo.com. That way I know to show up and I can also tell you where we'll meet. Each tour costs $15.

BTW, the following weekend there will be a Cemetery Tour on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 10 a.m., and the Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour on Sunday, Sept. 15, at 10 a.m.

– Rick Epstein

03/06/2019

AARON BURR DID NOT SLEEP HERE
(BUT HE WANTED TO)

In doing some research I found out something about Frenchtown's relationship to a colorful chapter of American history.

There's a legend, immortalized in Clarence Fargo's “History of Frenchtown” (1933) that Vice President Aaron Burr and his daughter showed up in Frenchtown in 1804 – on the lam from the killing of Alexander Hamilton. Travel-stained and weary, they dropped in on Frenchtown's founder, Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost, and “asked the privilege of a short period of rest.” (Did people DO that?) Sure, said Paul Henri. Later on, realizing who they were and recognizing that they were distant relatives, he invited them to spend the night, which they did.

But, according to Paul Henri's sworn testimony, that's not what happened.

First of all, here's how Paul Henri and Aaron Burr were related: Paul Henri's uncle, Marcus Prevost, was married to a woman named Theodosia, making her “Aunt Theodosia.” Marcus died, then Aunt Theodosia married Aaron Burr, almost but not quite making him Paul Henri's uncle. But anyhow, they were family friends.

In 1807 Aaron Burr was charged with trying to get the western states to succeed from the union and raising an army to plunder New Orleans. The charge was treason. Paul Henri was called to testify. Here's what he swore to: In 1806, after he hadn't heard from Burr for years, he got word that Aaron was nearby and wanted to come visit.

Paul Henri sent a message saying that coming to New Jersey was a bad idea (because Burr was wanted for murder here), but Paul Henri would come see Aaron in Bucks County. During the visit, Aaron told Paul Henri that there would soon be a war with Spain to settle territorial disputes, and Aaron was so confident of victory, he was buying land in some of that disputed territory. He invited Paul Henri to invest. Paul Henri said no thanks, all his money was tied up his New Jersey mills and plantation.

Paul Henri's testimony helped acquit Aaron Burr. But apparently the tale of the bedraggled visitors to Frenchtown is just a tale.

--Rick Epstein

PS: I have a website now, and it's about 98% under control. Here's its address:
https://rickepstein.wixsite.com/frenchtownnjtours