TELEPHONES – In the spring of 1901 Frenchtown Borough Council granted William Strouse and Wesley Bodine the right to install telephone poles and string phone wires along borough streets and alleys. The first telephone exchange of the Farmers' & Merchants' Telephone Co. was set up in a spare room in J.P. Lance's candy and tobacco store. A 1903 Sanborn map confirms it. That building currently houses the Frenchtown Cafe.
In August of 1901 a new telephone wire enabled Frenchtown to converse with Flemington, but they wouldn't be able to talk to Milford until 1922.
In 1919 Bert Trimmer, who had taken over Lance's store, needed the room occupied by the phone company, so that operation was relocated over the post office. As Oliver Kugler was postmaster, that would mean it moved to his store at 24-26 Bridge Street. William J. “Billy” Hill, age about 54, was the operator in charge. He'd been a farm hand as recently as 1915.
Gertie Gulick, who lived in Frenchtown from 1925 to 1982, said that the telephone gave many Frenchtown residents their first experience with radio. She said that before anyone else had a radio, a man from New York came home to visit relatives and brought a radio with him. When everyone's telephone sounded one long ring, everyone knew to pick up the ear piece to listen to the radio over the phone.
At least that's her story as passed along by reporter Anice Hurley in the News in 1979.
Here are some phone numbers from the 1940s: Harman's Drug Store, 30-R-2; Biledeou Electric Supply, 2-R-4; Eichlin & Son, coal and Richfield oil products, 48-R-2; Heisel's Gulf station, 71; Farmer's Dairy 68; and funeral director Wilbur E. Johnson, 20. The phone numbers containing an R were for party lines. For example, when the drug store's phone rang, its R-2 designation meant that unless the druggist heard a double ring, it was for somebody else.
In 1931 United Telephone Co. bought the Shurtz mansion (see accompanying photo) on the southeastern corner of Second and Harrison streets and installed a 24-hour, two-seat telephone switchboard on the second story. With the new setup, Frenchtown residents could make phone calls all over the nation. Gloria Sipes (Paleveda) worked there as a switchboard operator in 1944-47. Customers were still using the old candlestick-style phone. When the earpiece was removed from the cradle, a light would glow on the switchboard. Sipes, wearing a heavy headset, would plug in and say, “Number, please.”
Their service was personalized. A customer might say, “Please put me through to Mrs. Chester Niece,” counting on the operator to know the number. With a clear view of Harrison Street, the operator might reply, “I can put you through, but she's not home; I just saw her walking toward Bridge Street.” It happened.
Ruth Hurst was the chief operator, but for her final year there, Sipes was the boss. She recalls, “We were Information, Long Distance, and rang all local numbers manually, which included the Baptistown, Barbertown, Erwinna, Everittstown, Pittstown areas, and the numbers were dillies to ring on the party lines. Numbers like 926R23 were a matter of manually pulling the small black lever two long pulls with a pause between and three short pulls.”
Sipes regularly handled calls from boys at Treasure Island Boy Scout Camp, who were homesick and weeping; and there were weekly interactions from one conscientious cleaning lady whose client's light would glow, and in response to Sipes' “Number please,” she'd explain, “Oh, this is Cora, I'm just dusting the phone.” (That was Cora J. Housel, 1884-1971).
At that time two of Sipes' teachers had apartments in the building. Miss Blanche Elithorpe (grades 6 and 7) was across the hall, and Miss Margaret Carpenter (high school) lived on the third floor. Herb Heisel Jr. and his bride, the former Mary Agnes Muir, the school's music teacher, lived on the ground floor. Also on the ground floor was a tiny room equipped with a chair and a public telephone.
Milford's phone system was automated with direct-dialing and seven-digit numbers in 1951 and its 995- exchange was designated WYman 5. But Frenchtown and Uhlerstown would be talking to operators for another decade.
Expect the sequel on Friday.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
Good article Rick...I remember when we had party lines on our phone in Warren Glen when I was a child. Some of my family members were operators back in those days.