Glass put Atco to work

Glass put Atco to work

Friday, November 19, 2004

Brothers built Waterford industry and a mansion
By ERIK SCHWARTZ
Courier-Post Staff
WATERFORD

http://www.courierpostonline.com/news/southjersey/m111904j.htm


When the township board of education held a contest to name a new elementary school in 1979, student Bambii Smith won by submitting a giant of local history.

More than a century before, Thomas Richards Jr. had earned the title of "first citizen" while leading his family's pioneering glass works, building the community's grandest home, and founding Atco with his brother Samuel in 1866.

Thomas Richards Sr. had been a merchant in Philadelphia and wanted to make his mark in an area other than his family's iron businesses, which included one in Batsto. Around 1827, he founded the Jackson Glass Works, named after President Andrew Jackson, in what is now the Louden section of Waterford.

All that remains of the glass works today are a few shards that occasionally pop up in the gardens of residents on or near Jackson Road.

But at its peak, the works spanned 3,000 acres and would eventually employ 150 people, many of whom were recruited from Germany, according to Family Empire in Jersey Iron by Arthur D. Pierce.

One glass cutter, Caleb B. Githens, arrived from Kane, in northwestern Pennsylvania, about 300 miles from Philadelphia. "A lot of the glass workers came from there, following the jobs," said a Githens descendant, William C. Zoppel, 75, of Atco.

Githens' father, uncle and brother also worked at Jackson, Zoppel said.

As Thomas Jr. and Samuel took on management roles and "as demand for glass continued to increase during the middle years of the 19th century, Jackson Works continued to prosper," Pierce wrote. "It enjoyed particularly brisk trade in window lights for buildings and railroad cars and street lamps."ADVERTISEMENT - CLICK TO ENLARGE OR VISIT WEBSITE

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The firm won a contract to provide 15,000 panes of glass for the Crystal Palace at the 1853 World's Fair in New York, according to a December 1985 article in the Bulletin of the Gloucester County Historical Society.

The 1850s were boom times for the family and Waterford. The glass works and the community benefited from the arrival of the new Camden and Atlantic Railroad, on whose board the brothers sat, and Thomas Jr. built his mansion, on what is now Atco Avenue.

From atop a hill the house faced west, with a driveway leading down to what is now NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Line.

"His bride, Deborah, was a Southern girl and the mansion was built to resemble one of the grand homes of Virginia," according to an Oct. 7, 1971, article in the Hammonton News.

The 4,500-square-foot house was huge for the 19th century, but it's not extravagant by today's standards, said current owner Stanley N. Drinkwater III, who lives there with his wife, Lisa. The couple bought the house in 1996 for $182,000 and did "a huge amount of renovations," he said. "We kept it so that it was as original as possible."

After their father's death in 1860, Thomas Jr. and Samuel carved from the estate 60 acres for a town they advertised as a health resort amid the pines. They called it Atco.

"The geologist for the State of New Jersey has pronounced Atco as absolutely free from malaria of all sorts," according to a developer's prospectus reprinted in Waterford's tricentennial program. The unidentified geologist is quoted: "I heartily recommend Atco to all who desire a bracing climate, invigorating water supply and what may be better than all, good, pure air to sleep in; physicians have recommended patients to live in this place."

Caleb Githens bought a house off Fifth Street and Atco Avenue, Zoppel said. Githens got out of the glass business and purchased what had been the first shop in town, Day's General Store. He renamed it C.B. Githens Pioneer Store.

The community grew, exceeding 300 people in 20 years. Residents organized a library, followed by churches and schools. Thomas Jr. donated land for the Presbyterian church, a cemetery and a science hall, according to Pierce.

"Personally, Thomas Richards Jr. was what some would describe as a character and others would call eccentric. Tall tales have come down about his activities. On one occasion he somehow put out a sizeable fire 'with his bare hands.' On another he felt in an Izaak Walton mood, couldn't find his fishing line, took one of the wire strings from the grand piano, and went fishing with that," Pierce wrote.

While the Richards brothers enjoyed considerable wealth and success, they were not beyond the grasp of economics. They "carried on the (glass) works until the exhausted timber supply made further operation unprofitable. They were destroyed by fire in May 1877," according to The History of Camden County, New Jersey by George R. Prowell.

Thomas Jr. lived his last years in Philadelphia, visiting Atco weekly, Pierce wrote. At the beginning of one such trip on Jan. 18, 1910, the 81-year-old slipped in the slush and fell at the Fifth Street subway station. He died a short time later of a fractured skull.
 
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