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Rick Epstein
Jul 18, 20206 min read
Frenchtown Builds its High School
FRENCHTOWN HIGH SCHOOL – Less than a month after the Hillside Academy burned down on March 20, 1923, the school board voted to rebuild on...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 16, 20202 min read
Past Lives of New Life Island
ISLANDS IN THE DELAWARE New Life Island – hugs the Pennsylvania shoreline just south of the Frenchtown bridge. Over the years it has been...
1,057 views1 comment
Rick Epstein
Jul 14, 20202 min read
Frenchtown's "City of the Dead" (I Can Show You Around)
CEMETERY – The Frenchtown Cemetery began as the Prevost family graveyard. Paul Prevost was the founder of Frenchtown. In 1810 the first...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 12, 20201 min read
The Man Who Worked One Day a Year
BARRETT, Franklin “Frank” – (1941-2013) inherited the house on the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Milford Road in Frenchtown from...
1,101 views4 comments
Rick Epstein
Jul 10, 20202 min read
Luralee, Frenchtown's Little Telephone Belle
TELEPHONES PART II – In 1960, the Shurtz mansion was still home of Frenchtown's telephone switchboard operators. It stood on the...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 8, 20203 min read
Telephones Part I: "Number, Please."
TELEPHONES – In the spring of 1901 Frenchtown Borough Council granted William Strouse and Wesley Bodine the right to install telephone...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 6, 20201 min read
Sudden Death Under a Maple Tree
LIGHTNING STRIKES Death on Third Street – On Aug. 27, 1888, during the lunch break at the Upper Third Street spoke factory in Frenchtown,...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 4, 20202 min read
How Frenchtown Partied on July Fourth, 1834
FOURTH OF JULY – In the 20th and 21st centuries, Independence Day hasn't received the amount of attention in Frenchtown that Memorial Day...
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Rick Epstein
Jul 2, 20201 min read
Slavery in Frenchtown
SLAVERY – Maybe it's a good thing we haven't erected a statue of Frenchtown's founder, Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost. Because his Front...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 30, 20201 min read
Jilted Lover Shot Frenchtown Woman at Dance Hall (1938)
MURDERS Hazel May Cronce Shrope – was killed by her former sweetheart Amos Hart Jr. in Raubsville, Pa., on Saturday, Oct. 15, 1938....
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Rick Epstein
Jun 29, 20201 min read
Onward and Upward: The Stairs Up Academy Hill
THE STAIRS – The walkability of Frenchtown took a leap forward in November of 1888 when a wooden stairway was built above Fourth Street...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 28, 20203 min read
School Burns Up, Victrolas, Microscope and All (1923)
SCHOOLS Second Hillside Academy – The new and grander Hillside Academy opened in mid-September of 1901, built by John W. Lancaster...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 27, 20202 min read
The Rise & Fall of the First Hillside Academy
SCHOOLS The First Hillside Academy – In the 1850s Hugh Capner, the developer who had laid out Second through Fifth streets, donated an...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 25, 20206 min read
Britton Bros. Big Brick Store's Complete 1915 Inventory
APPENDIX C of "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia" THINGS THAT YOU WILL FIND AT BRITTON BROS.' You can learn a lot by plowing through the...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 24, 20203 min read
The Retail Colossus of Frenchtown
BRITTON BROS. BIG BRICK STORE -- The Britton brothers were Daniel D. (1850-1923) a sewing-machine agent, and George M. (1854-1917) a...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 22, 20203 min read
Author James Agee, his fiancee and his goats
AGEE, James – (1909-1955) a Pulitzer-prize winning author who resided in Frenchtown from the spring of 1938 to the summer of '39....
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Rick Epstein
Jun 20, 20202 min read
Frenchtown Loved Its Guns
GUNS – Like the rest of rural America, Frenchtown has enjoyed its guns. Shooting matches were held on “the flat” (now Borough Park) a...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 18, 20201 min read
Frenchtown's Other Church
CHURCHES Christian – Built in 1846 at what is now 15-17 Kingwood Avenue, the Christian Church had a wooden spire that gave the building a...
462 views1 comment
Rick Epstein
Jun 17, 20202 min read
Troop Train Pauses in Frenchtown; Texas G.I. Meets THE Girl
HUMMER, Anna M. – (1924-2006) Anna was born in Milford to Floyd and Anna Hummer, and was living at 5 Twelfth Street in 1942. One day a...
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Rick Epstein
Jun 16, 20202 min read
Why the Indians Killed Edward Marshall's Wife
ISLANDS IN THE DELAWARE Marshall's Island – is a few miles south of Frenchtown, and is part of Tinicum Township, Pa. The 200-acre island...
1,022 views1 comment
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