Nails (and a little bit of Bodo Otto)

I'm willing to bet that 30% of carpenters working today can't drive a nail. I'm sorry to sound like a geezer, but before screw guns and nail guns became the standards of fastening, we used to bang a lot of nails. As much as I love these newer, faster tools, I'm nostalgic for the physical motion, the rhythm, and the noise of nailing off with a hammer and a pouch full of nails, and the natural syncopation of a crew of carpenters working away. tap Bang BANG! tapBANG!bang tapBANG!bangBANG!

One time, I was working in the circa 1790 townhouse of Penny and George Bachelor in Society Hill, with my co-worker, Paul. Paul was the person who got me fascinated with antique tools, and aspired, I think, to be a "period" carpenter in some place like Colonial Williamsburg, where he could give public displays of his considerable talents using the old methods of woodworking. He was a little wacky, that guy, but more about him later. He had purchased some very expensive boxes of hand forged wrought iron finish nails for his own use, but thought that Penny's house was the perfect place to use some of them. Penny walked in while he was nailing some edge on one of the shelves we had built for her, and although she was a naturally calm and cool person, pitched a fit, and told him to use regular finish nails, from the hardware store.

Nether of us understood why this was so important to her. We knew that she was an architectural historian for the National Park Service. What we didn't know is that she had written the definitive study of dating buildings by the type of nail used, and was vehement about not confusing the unlikely archaeologist studying her house in the future, by using inappropriate nails.

Penny was a member of the Yearly Meeting of the Arch St. Meeting House, along with my employer at the time, Ted Nickles. Quakers, being notorious in their thriftiness, as well as meticulous record keepers , they had kept detailed records of every addition, repair, and alteration to the building over the course of its 250 year life. Penny began examining every record, and then carefully disassembling the area in question until she had a few nail samples, which she examined and documented. By the time she published the study, she could date a building within 5 or 10 years, simply based on the nails that were used. Her insistence on our using contemporary nails was quite understandable, in that light.
If you are interested in a simplified history of the changes in nails over the years, you can find it here:

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~histpres/services/naildating.htm

Before 1790, the only nails available were hand made by blacksmiths, and expensive, This accounts for the superior joinery found in buildings of the period; almost nothing structurally depended on just nails. Dating by nails before this date is further complicated by the fact that derelict buildings in colonial days were burnt to the ground, and the ashes sifted to recover the precious nails so they could be reused.

******************************************************

So recycling is not a new concept, it once was common sense. It used to be fairly common, in fact, to move entire houses, from one plot of land to the next. I mentioned the moving of the Salem municipal Building in that post, but smaller houses were often moved from town to town, and the process of doing that with no damage to the building was more art than science to its practitioners. I had the pleasure of working side by side with a team of two brothers who did that their whole lives.

Old Swedes' Church sits off to the right of King's Highway as you are leaving Swedesboro heading west. A new church was built in the 1770's and 1780's to replace the log church that had occupied the site since 1703. The present building was erected in 1884. By the 1980's, the structure of the huge open ceiling had begun to fatigue, and an engineer's report predicted imminent failure and collapse. In order to stabilize it until the considerable money needed to repair it could be raised, the two brothers (sorry I don't remember their names) were hired to erect structural scaffolding, the way they might secure a building before moving it.
Our job, as restoration and preservation carpenters, was to remove pews, floorboards, etc. so that they could run their scaffolding from floor to ceiling. I call this "surgical" demolition. Each piece is carefully removed, numbered and safely stored and catalogued so that it can be put back in pristine original condition.




Old Swedes' Church(Trinity Church) Swedesboro,NJ

What was fascinating to me was the way these two old guys worked. They had done this so many times, that I don't recall hearing them say more than a dozen or so words to each other, or to anyone. One of them would come up to the balcony and point to show us where the next couple of holes needed to be, then go back about their business.

The best place to eat lunch when you're working on a church is always the cemetery, and Old Swedes' is no exception. Clean, quiet, plenty of places to sit. One of the prominent graves there is that of Dr. Bodo Otto. His house is a couple miles further up King's Highway, though it's actually his second house, in the same location. The first was burnt down, not to retrieve nails, but to exact revenge.

Dr' Otto and his father, also a doctor, ministered to George Washington's troops over that brutal and fateful winter spent at Valley Forge. His house was burnt down by British loyalists.

The Bodo Otto House


Dr. Otto was an extraordinary man, much loved by his patients and neighbors. Before his death at the young age of 33, he added to his extraordinary legacy by successfully pleading for the sparing of the life of the only man captured for the burning of his house.


Further still up the road stands the "Death of the Fox" Inn, where Dr. Bodo Otto died of tuberculosis on Jan.20, 1782. I'll try to remember to tip my hat every time I pass it.




The Death of the Fox Inn

Summertime , Westville,NJ, ca.1900

I've been collecting versions of "Summertime" by George Gershwin, on my ipod. I'd made a cd a few years ago with as many versions as I could find. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, Billie Holliday, Miles, Coltrane, and on and on. But my All-Time favorite has to be Billie Stewart.
　http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xrhcQcAJSI

Summertime's also my favorite season, right up until its waning days, when regret and disappointment begin to replace the high hopes and optimism that seemed to settle in for good right around the first of June. It's probably an emotional hangover from our school days, when we suddenly wondered where the summer had gone, and faced the dreary days of school starting.
But being an optimistic person in general, and thus mandated by nature to look on the bright side, I've adapted by becoming an avid fisherman (because fishing kind of sucks in summer) and an avid football fan, which makes me look forward to autumn.

And I know summertime will be back; it always comes back. Some things, when they're gone are just gone.

I became enchanted with local history in South Jersey because there is so much physical evidence of it here, and not just in museums or official historic sites, but almost everywhere, and to a greater degree than I've seen anywhere else. A drive down King's Highway between Woodbury and Salem, though not as scenic as it was 20 years ago thanks to housing developers, still reveals something about its past every time I drive it. You can almost pinpoint the spot where Elizabeth Haddon, founder of Haddonfield, feigned a problem with her horse, so that she could drop behind the group of Quakers she was riding to Salem with , and have the opportunity to propose to John Estaugh in private. The proposal was immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Elizabeth."

Tarry awhile behind,

for I have something to tell thee,

Not to be spoken lightly,

nor in the presence of others;

Them it concerneth not,

only thee and me it concerneth."

And they rode slowly along through the woods,

conversing together.

It was a pleasure to breathe the fragrant air of the forest;

It was a pleasure to live on that bright and happy May morning

The spot's about a mile from my house. I'll show you where I think it is:

Just off King's Highway, south of Mantua Creek

But some things are just gone.

Edith Hoelle is gone, She was the librarian for the Glouscester County Historic Society library, and I used to see her cheerily going to work every day, while I was working on the Hunter-Lawrence House. She clearly loved her work, and wrote a column for many years in the local paper about Woodbury's history, and I thank her for giving me the bug, as well as for being an invaluble source. Much of the history she gathered was by word of mouth, from people in their 80's and 90's when she interviewed them in the 1950's.

One of my favorite articles of hers was about something that is so gone, it seems totally fantastic.

***************************

It was called Washington Park, and occupied 600 acres along the Delware River, just to the right of the Walt Whitman Bridge if you are driving into New Jersey. Its name derived from the fact that Gen. Washinton had rested a night there in1777, when the Howell farm occupied the site.

The Pier at Washington Park

50.000 people showing up on a summer weekend was a routine affair, Coming to swim (gulp!) in the Delaware, ride the "gravity roads," early versions of the roller coaster, walk the 1800 ft. long pier stretching into the Delaware, full of amusements, and served by an aerial trolley for those who were too pooped to walk out to the end. They'd come to hear John Philip Sousa and his band play those marches we all know, and 100,000 came one weekend to hear William Jennings Bryan speak about how the banks needed regulation, and how the rail monopolies had to be broken, not to denounce free enterprise, but to assure its survival.

Washinton Park Trolley Station

.

A trolley line was constructed between Woodbury and the park, so that the inhabitants of our little town could, for a nickel, be transported in minutes to the c.1900 equivalent of Disney World.

The Shoot the Chute at Washington Park

The park had the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world, at 100 feet. And it was right here, a couple of miles from Woodbury.
But the big attraction was the Electric Fountain. Seen above, its dancing, swaying streams of water would shoot as high as 80 feet, lit by an ever changing spectrum of light. In the center of the fountain was a huge glass stage, operated by an elevator, inside which Actors would enact various scenes from American history, changing sets and costumes up to 4 times in an evening. As Edith tells it, the stage was big enough that when Washington crossed the Delaware inside the glass stage, there was plenty of room for the large boat he and his men were "riding"in.

*************************************

If you follow Rt. 130 through Westville, you will see the Texaco oil storage facility to the right. This entire facility sits within the boundaries of what was once this summertime pleasure park.

I'm not sure what surprises me more: How so much physical evidence of history can survive the ravages of time and progress, or how something that was so much a part of local culture could vanish without a trace, making it seem more like a dream than reality.