Main Street, Ramsey, NJ
The second post card I’m going to post is my favorite from my personal collection, a picture of Ramsey, Main Street from 1908.
Main Street, Ramsey, NJ
What makes it my favorite is both the image of Main Street at the time, a dirt road with buildings such as the John Y. Dater building clearly visible (still there today, but minus the clock tower damaged by fire) and the message on the post card:
We have a sick cow with fever. Dr. F is here now, she is as
good as dead. John and I was to Jennie yesterday with the new
horse. He is all right.
- Ellen H.
The cards with messages reflecting life at the time are the really interesting ones.
And Dr. F? Likely Dr. John B. Finch, a veterinarian who lived in the home at the corner of Main Street and Arch Street that included stables and a barn at the time.
He was also our first mayor.
The postcard was published by Stern, Brooklyn NY.
Tags: featured, John Finch, John Y. Dater, Main Street
Uncle John!
Wish I could have seen it back then, it was so quaint
what is written on the side of the post card?
“We have a sick cow with fever. Dr. F is here now, she is as good as dead. John and I was to Jennie yesterday with the new horse. He is all right.”
My grandparents arrived in town in 1921, I believe, and from what they told me years ago, the streets were still unpaved then. Ramsey was just a small village along the train route.
I remember selling newspapers before grade school at the Ramsey Train Station—I got paid $1.25 an hour, worked from 6:30-8:15a.m., then the bus would pick me up when it stopped (required) at the railroad crossing, on its way to St Paul’s School. This was 64-65. My family moved to Chicago but memories of growing up in Ramsey are forever etched with me wherever I have gone. Selling papers and also delivering them (The Ramsey Journal) gave me an interest in writing at an early age–thank you Ramsey.
I thought the Clock tower was damaged by the Hurricane of 1938? and had to be taken down. The Dater building was later almost destroyed by fire in 1979. I remember riding my bike there to see it!
On arch street behind the old theater, there once was a blacksmith shop. When I was young in the 1940’s, they tore the barn down and my dad bought the lumber to built a garage/out building at 104 Church Street where we lived. It stood until I was in my late teens and became unstable. We knocked it down and burned it.