WORMAN MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN – Philadelphia liquor distributor Samuel C. Worman (1836-1912) had a farm near Frenchtown. When he died childless, he left Frenchtown and Lambertville $2,000 each for a public drinking fountain. Frenchtown's tombstone craftsman William Weiss got the contract for the project. I don't think Weiss sculpted it from scratch. News reports indicate that monuments were brought in by rail and our local artisans would personalize them.
In any case, Frenchtown's fountain was installed on Bridge Street in front of the bank in 1917.
It was 8 feet tall and topped with an electric light. In order to better serve thirsty horses and to impede pedestrians less, it jutted out into the street. That summer the Frenchtown Star reminded its readers: “Do not forget that your horse needs and appreciates plenty of pure, cold water in this hot weather.”
In 1919 Postmaster Oliver Kugler installed coiled piping inside the fountain and in the summer of 1920 collected money from the merchants to buy ice to put among those coils to provide cool water to the thirsty.
In the 1930s, there were no more horses to slurp water out of the fountain's stone trough, so Bess Gano, who lived across the street, planted geraniums in it.
By 1957 too many motor vehicles had dented their fenders on the obsolete fountain, which also was an obstacle for pedestrians. So it was moved to Borough Park and then to the nearby corner of Creek Road and Kingwood Avenue.
Providing a water supply to the fountain was a condition of the original bequest, but no one is complaining about the dry fountain. Nowadays people carry flasks of water with them everywhere they go, as if they were marching across a desert. (I don't.)
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
Came to Frenchtown in 1946 with parents Coach and Ruth Shiding.
lived on 28 Fifth Street, which house once owned by School Board of Education, Ron Rogers and wife once lived on the other side and Chief Lessing and wife Jean, shop teacher at Frenchtown High.