[TUHS] Fred Grampp

M Douglas McIlroy m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu
Tue Mar 16 11:12:56 AEST 2021


Serendipitous find! I hadn't realized that Fred had been the third
generation in the hardware store.
His father ("Pops") retired to Drayton Island in the St Johns River
about 60 miles south of Jacksonville.
Fred often visited him, driving the 19-hour trip in one stint.

Doug

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 6:47 PM Brian Walden <tuhs at cuzuco.com> wrote:
>
> Amazing coincidences. A week prior I was researching Topper Toys
> looking for their old factory ("largest toy factory in the world")
> As there was litte on it's location and it lead me to find out
> in 1961 it took over the old Singer Factory in Elizabeth, NJ.
> So looking up the Singer factory led me to "Elizabeth,
> New Jersey, Then and Now" by Robert J. Baptista
>
> https://ia801304.us.archive.org/11/items/ElizabethNewJerseyThenAndNowSecondEdition2015/ElizabethNewJerseyThenNowThirdEditionApril102018607Pages.pdf
>
> Which had no information on Topper, but had had this paragraph in it's Singer
> section on page 28 --
>
>     Boys earned money "rushing the growler" at lunchtime at the Singer plant.
>     German workers lowered their covered beer pails, called growlers, on ropes
>     to the boys waiting below. They earned a nickel by filling them with beer
>     at Grampp's saloon on Trumbull St. One of these boys was Thomas Dunn who
>     later became a long term Mayor. In the early 1920s Frederick Grampp went
>     into the hardware business at the corner of Elizabeth Ave. and Reid St.
>
>
> When I read it I thought funny, as I know the name Fred Grampp. But beleived
> just a coincidenental same name. After reading the biography post, I went back
> to the book as it turns out that Fred Grampp is your Fred Grampps's
> grandfather.  You can find more his family and the hardware store and
> Grampp himself on pages 163-164, and 212.
>
> -Brian
>


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