Richard Kerr Was a Chick Magnate

Here's a photo of Kerr's big hatchery that stood on the outside bend of Front and Lott streets from 1926 to 1973..

CHICKEN HATCHERS – In 1892 Joseph D. Wilson (1867-1961), working on his father's farm in Rosemont, “was the kind of genius who discovers the obvious that had stared millions of others in the face without result,” wrote Louis Kovi in “As Ye Sow” (1981). Wilson “remembered that newly hatched chicks don't need food the first few days of their life. Remnants of the yolk sac inside their bodies supply them with nutrients. This means you can send them through the mail.”

In 1892 Wilson shipped 50 chicks to East Orange, then 500 chicks to Illinois, and they all arrived alive. His new mail-order business took off like a rocket, and many Frenchtown entrepreneurs followed his example.

In September of 1923, the Star announced:

FOUR OR FIVE MILLION BABY CHICKS SHIPPED

Frenchtown is probably the leading post office in the world for the number of baby chicks shipped by parcel post this season. The number estimated, including some sent by express, is four or five millions.

They come from the half dozen hatcheries located in and near Frenchtown. A man named Nason from Lakewood first engaged in the business on the old Hinkle farm a mile south of the borough limits. E.E. Cooley, then mail carrier, took it up and is yet in the business. Then E.S. Lambrite, R.W. Kerr, W.F. Hillpot, E.R. Hummer, A.E. Hampton and others engaged in the work.

As success crowned their efforts the most of them yet engaged in the business increased the size of their plants and added improved equipment; hence today they have got it down fine; benefitting not only themselves but also the farmers who keep large flocks of poultry to produce the variety of eggs wanted for hatching. These are brought in during the late winter and spring by truck and wagon to the hatcheries. Each variety is put in incubators producing that kind of chicks; so when they come out they are easily classified to fill the mail orders, which come here by the thousands. It is a great industry and growing.

Postmaster Britton informs The Star that there were a million more of the chicks parcel posted this year than there were last year. At times the post office was swamped with them and they had to be removed to the railroad station as soon as listed. Besides those sent by mail there was a small number sent by express – therefore the output must have been five or more millions in the past season, with the sales at the plant.

Gloria Sipes Paleveda recalls that as a child in the 1930s, she'd hang around the railroad platform “poking a finger into the round air holes of the Kerr Chickeries cardboard baby-chick boxes piled up in towers on the freight wagons. I stroked the fluffy, yellow balls who were waiting to be shipped out, and listened to their peeping.” Sometimes she would improve their air supply where cardboard disks had been ineffectively stamped. She'd remove the disks and pretend they were coins.

Kerr, Richard W. – (1885-1929) was the most successful of the several Frenchtown chick dealers. Joseph D. Wilson recalled that his cousin Richard dropped by “just to see how I was doing,” and then plunged into the chick business.

In 1907 the Kerr family bought the Prevost mansion at 12 Front Street and property extending to the south. Kerr started his mail-order chicken hatchery business that same year.

He was mayor in 1920-21 and also engaged in the coal and ice business. His ice ponds and ice houses were just north of Frenchtown.

H. Milbern Taylor, recalled, “Of course, Pop (Irvin) working for the Kerrs, they had the ice and coal, usually (Kerr) frowned upon his employees getting electric refrigerators, so we had an ice refrigerator for some time past the time we should've. The same with oil heat; we had to have coal.”

Kerr's hatchery thrived, and “by 1923 his firm was sending out chicks by the boxcar load,” according to Kovi. Kerr built a huge hatchery in 1926 on his land at Front and Lott streets beside the railroad. It was two-stories high and measured 106 by 130 feet.

James C. Weisel (1898-1984) joined the company in 1922, became vice president and worked there for 27 years. Then he and Harold Arnwine bought Rosemont Poultry Farms and he moved to that hamlet.

When Richard died in 1929, his son Owen B. Kerr (1904-1947) took over all the family businesses. He and wife Erma lived on the northeast corner of Eighth and Harrison streets. Gloria Sipes Paleveda remembered him as a portly and affable man, who enjoyed the camaraderie of the Candy Kitchen and Heisel's Gulf station.

Kerr Chickeries' 1939 calendar boasted the company, with its many satellite hatcheries, was hatching 4 million chicks annually. The 128-page “Kerr Poultry Manual,” written by A.C. Schlott, manager of the 240-acre Kerr Breeding Farm in Alexandria Township, was published in 1944. It lists Kerr Chickery branches in New Jersey (Woodbury, Paterson and Jamesburg), Pennsylvania (Lancaster, Belleville and Dunmore), Connecticut (Danbury), New York (Middletown, East Syracuse, Kingston, Binghamton and Schenectady), and Massachusetts (West Springfield).

When Owen Kerr died in 1947, Sherwood L. “Bud” Anderson Jr. bought Kerr Hatcheries. Over the years, he shifted its emphasis from selling chicks to farmers to becoming the country's largest supplier of embryonated eggs to the pharmaceutical industry for research and the production of vaccines.

When he died in 1966, S.L. Anderson III inherited the business, but he had other interests, including a law practice in Connecticut. In 1970 he sold the company to Holton Industries, owned by John Holton Jr., a Rumson chemical engineer. At that time, the hatchery employed 30 people during its busy season. Robert Wills, who'd been with Kerr since 1955, continued as vice president and general manager.

The huge hatchery burned down in 1973. John Wagner, one of the many witnesses, remembers the smell of burning feathers. The company resumed operations in a converted roller rink in the south end of the borough.

In 1976 Kerr was buying fertilized eggs from 30 different farms, most of them in Lancaster, Pa., then incubating them for 11 or 12 days, before trucking the eggs to Merck, Sharp & Dohme and Merrill-National. Then flu virus would be injected and the egg fluid would be extracted to make vaccine. That year Kerr's 450,000-egg output was bumped up 300,000 by the swine flu epidemic.

By 1980 demand had dropped off because weaker vaccines were being made and required fewer embryos to create the same amount of vaccine. Kerr had gone from producing two million embryos a year, down to one million. Kerr didn't need so much space and moved to Cedar Knoll Farm on Route 513 in Alexandria Township.

Holton Foods, which had been processing eggs for commercial use in a small building on the inside curve of Front and Lott streets, was moved out of town in 1986.

– from “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia” (a work in progress)