AUTOMOBILES – Frenchtown entered the Automobile Age very quietly on July 2, 1900. The Star barely gave it a mention: “The first automobile was here on Monday and was quite a curiosity.” When time travel is perfected, and after Adolph Hitler has been dealt with, I'm going back to July 1900 to see that car, and to ask Editor William Sipes: “Dude! REALLY? That's all you give it? One sentence?”
Three months later the Star reported, “Three more automobiles in town Friday afternoon (Oct. 5). As they stopped at the hotel and hostler couldn't attend to the 'hosses' he was undecided what to do, but they drank water from the pump, the tanks of the autos did.”
The first Frenchtown resident to buy a car was Cornelius C. Hoff in 1904. That's a picture of the dapper shoe-store owner above. Clarence Fargo writes that it was a one-cylinder, curved-dash Oldsmobile with a “wigwag” instead of a steering wheel.
Fargo said that he and Dr. Frederick H. Decker were the next residents to take the plunge; in 1907 each acquired a used car. Fargo's was a 1904 Franklin, a four-cylinder runabout. Franklins were made in Syracuse, N.Y., 1902-34. Decker's was a two-cylinder, chain-driven Maxwell Queen touring car. Queens were manufactured in Detroit 1904-07.
Fargo wrote, “An auto on the streets of Frenchtown in those days was a sensation. Your friends and even mere acquaintances expected an invitation to take a ride, and if you were seen out alone, you were apt to be suspected of being selfish in not sharing.”
In 1912 Theodore Zielstorff opened an auto-repair shop near the corner of Bridge Street and Trenton Avenue, in a building at 3 Trenton Avenue, which was rebuilt for residential use by Sarge Russell in 1984. He and his wife, Ellen, live there now.
In 1913 Emly Bellis “E.B.” Apgar (1882-1976) opened an auto-repair shop on Kingwood Avenue. By 1916 Apgar was also operating jitney service to Flemington making several trips there each weekday. But in 1920 his shop was refitted as a silk mill. Currently it is Frenchtown Home & Hardware.
By October of 1915 there were 43 automobile owners in town. The Star observed, “Someone asks what has become of the garden that almost every home used to run in the backyard to reduce living costs. Well, in many homes at present that space is taken up by the new garage.”
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
Emly Apgar and his wife Sidney were "Uncle Em" and "Aunty Apgar" to me, like surrogate grandparents. Had a very strong influence in my life, and I am forever grateful to them. Uncle Em lived with my parents and me from 1955 to the time my parents moved to Florida in 1968.