Rick Epstein
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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