APGAR, Mae Ruth – (1891-1984) who went by her middle name, was born in The National Hotel. To complete her high school education, she took the train to Lambertville for junior and senior year. In 1924 she was working as a stenographer in the Trenton offices of the Pennsylvania Rail Road. Later she would do office work for the Delaware Valley News.
When I came to town in 1977, Ruth was the last of her family residing in the mansion at 12 Bridge Street, along with her cat, Nipper. We'd publish a historical photo on the editorial page of the Delaware Valley News each week, and Ruth had a big collection of photos of family and Frenchtown. She would lend me one picture at a time, partly to keep track of the heirloom photos and partly because she liked to have a visitor.
Ruth would let me into the parlor, which was full of chairs, all facing the same way, as if children were about to put on a show. She'd pour me a shot of whiskey – she was a saloon-keeper's daughter – and we'd sit in the front row and look through her photos. She'd identify the people in the photos and do her best to tell me the year it was taken – “Well, this was taken before The War,” she'd say, “because that place burned down, and I was at the fire with with my boyfriend, and he was killed in France.” For Ruth, “The War” was World War I. The boyfriend, George D. Britton had “disappeared” before the war, which Ruth figured, saved her from being a widow. She never married, and referred to herself in her sardonic way as “an unclaimed treasure.”
In November of 1978 we published a photo of the Milford Cornet Band, and my phone rang. Ruth said, “We can't let Milford get the better of us. Come see me and I'll lend you a picture of the Frenchtown Cornet Band.”
In those days tweenager David Johnson used to hang around the News office, so once or twice he tagged along to see Ruth. When she found out he was Dave Johnson's boy, she said, “When your father was little, he used to run around with – I forget her name – but she was wild. Once they took a lot of garden seeds from the grocery store, and ran down the street, ripping open the packets and throwing the seeds. That summer we had flowers coming up all over.” Young David listened open-mouthed.
(Dave Johnson, the elder, confirmed the story with one correction: It was the girl – Sheila Hamilton – whose family lived in an apartment in the old Shurtz mansion, who grabbed the seeds from an outdoor display in front of the Public Market. He estimated that he and Sheila were about 6 at the time of this caper.)
In 1982, Ruth was in an automobile wreck that broke both her ankles, and she was sent to Stone Arch nursing home, north of Pittstown. I found her despondent, wanting only to return to her cat and her home. Knowing that was never going to happen, I promised to come see her every week. (I didn't think she was going to live very long.)
She continued to yearn for home and cat, and rebuffed people wanting to buy her house. “Save it for your old age,” I kidded her.
I'd always find her fretting about whatever she'd just seen on TV. Unwilling to engage with her gloomy topics, I'd ask her something about the old days, and she'd start smiling and talking. We had about 100 visits, and I wish I'd taken notes.
She died in Hunterdon Medical Center in December of '84. I remember because I'd go from visiting my first baby in the maternity ward up to another floor to visit Ruth, who was busy dying.
Nine years previous, in an interview with News reporter Ellen Kolton-Waton, Ruth went introspective. Koton-Waton wrote: “She sees her life in a way similar to how she sees Frenchtown – just out of the stream of things. She said she relates to Moses in his struggle as told in the Bible. He could just go so far, but he could never reach the promised land. He could see it, but he couldn't get in.
“It's been that way, too, she says, 'Things have always been within my grasp, but just couldn't get them. Why, I don't know.”
In 1985 her big house became a bed-and-breakfast hotel called the Old Hunterdon House.
--From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia" a work in progress
This was a great story. I used to see the Apgar sisters (what was Ruth‘s sisters name?) a lot as my Aunt Bess and Uncle Sid lived right next door And I spent a lot of time at their house. I was probably in the Apgar House a few times, I can recall the feeling but not recall any details. And of course I remember Beanie. You could not grow up in Frenchtown in the 50’s and early 60’s and not recall the rare Black person we ever saw. My father’s mother was an Apgar but I’d have to go dig thru the genalogy to see if she was related to Ruth.
Margaret, I am going to give this my best guess. I think it was the building that used to be on the southeast corner of second and Harrison. It was a big old brick house that was torn down some years ago. Checking the census records, a Nathan Shurtz lived on Harrison St. and his near neighbors were the Eichlins and I know where they lived. And not too far away were Preston and Leovella Bloom and at the time that Sheila lived in town, we lived in half of the Bloom home. I seem to remember that as the placewhere Sheila's family lived. I know there were several apartments in that building. One of my old school teac…
Where is the old Shurtz mansion where Sheila Hamilton lived?
Marvelous memories crop up as I read this. David, Sheila and I started Kindergarten together. Her family moved away shortly thereafter---probably when we were in first grade. Maybe the "caper" with David was her last hurrah in Frenchtown.