- This topic has 7 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 1 year ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
Usually when I get an email from the UK, it is from a confused person asking about Kingsbridge in Devon, Southwest England. However, last week I received an email from the UK asking about someone named Isaac Merritt Singer, who allegedly lived in Kingsbridge in 1863 on the site of PS 7. I did an internet search on the name and saw that this was the Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Co. If this Isaac Singer lived in Kingsbridge, that would be news to me!I searched the local land deeds and found that he purchased property north of Kingsbridge in Yonkers in 1864 but nothing in 1863. But it seems Singer may have rented a property as opposed to buying one as the “Singer” name does appear on this 1863 map of Kingsbridge.
The person that sent the email also sent along this quote from an issue of Town and Country magazine, which printed a 3-part series of articles about the Singer family:
When they arrived in America 1863 Isaac and his new mistress, who immediately captured the hearts of his children, went to live in Kingsbridge. This was far out in the country in those days, and from the large, comfortable wooden building atop a high knoll they were able to see the magnificent panorama of the Hudson to the West and Harlem and East Rivers to the east/ (Eventually Isaac’s Kingsbridge homes became the site of Public School no. 7, the Bronx).
Just from reading the Wikipedia page on Singer, it seems like he would be a good subject for an HBO miniseries. He ran away from home at age 12 to join a “traveling stage act,” traveled all over, patented numerous inventions, and fathered 26 children with multiple wives and mistresses.
-
Isaac M. Singer, must have owned a substantial piece of property to get such a prominent identification on the map.
It appears that his son Isaac Augustus Singer was also an inventor ( see attachment )
and 150 years ago today, filed for a patent. Isaac A. Singer was born 7/27/1837 and died 9/25/1902 and is now resting in Woodlawn. -
-
A curiosity in Isaac Merritt Singer’s will filed in Westchester County https://www.google.com/books/edition/De_Bernardy_s_next_of_kin_gazette_unclai/V0YFAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22isaac+m.+singer%22+westchester&pg=PA49&printsec=frontcover
-
Estate of Isaac Merritt Singer at Kingsbridge Avenue, Corlear Avenue & West 232nd St
-
Singer was very wealthy by the time he moved back to the States with his new young bride and to Kingsbridge. But what doesn’t fit is the location of the name Singer on the map with Isaac Merritt Singer. The Town & Country article states his home as “large, comfortable wooden building atop a high knoll they were able to see the magnificent panorama of the Hudson to the West and Harlem and East Rivers to the east” while the name on the map indicates a location in the Kingsbridge Valley with little to no view. P.S. 7 is located on Kingsbridge Ave. Another article on the net states he built a large home called The Castle in Yonkers. The Bronx was at his time part of Yonkers so his house must have been up on the Riverdale ridge or further north into today’s Yonkers.
-
Good sleuthing Tom. And Peter, you are right of course that if you were living in the valley of Kingsbridge you would not have a “magnificent panorama” of the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. That must be an error. This 1868 map of Yonkers (Kingsbridge was still part of Yonkers at the time) shows the Singer property between Corlear and Kingsbridge Ave that you found a record of, Tom. It is in the center of the clipping below:
This map was made four years after Isaac Merritt Singer purchased property in today’s downtown Yonkers so one could assume he was no longer living in Kingsbridge. So who was living in the Kingsbridge “Singer” house at the time this map was made? That would have been Isaac’s son, John Singer, his wife Henrietta, and their son, Walter. The 1870 census of Yonkers lists them just above their neighbor, Peter Murray. The singer property was probably pretty nice to be valued at $20,000, a large sum in those days. Also interesting that John Singer had no occupation listed.
They would have had a nice panorama of Tibbetts Brook to the west and the nearby salt marshes but Spuyten Duyvil Hill blocked the view of the Hudson.
The 1873 patent for chest protectors that you found is pretty cool, Tom. That was the year that Kingsbridge declared independence from Yonkers and one year before it joined NYC, which is probably why it says “Isaac A. Singer of Kingsbridge.”
-
It was a major accomplishment to have invented the bestselling sewing machine in the world. But I have to be honest that his earlier life is very interesting. “Isaac Merritt Singer was born in Pittstown, New York, on October 27, 1811, and raised in the upstate town of Oswego. At 12, he left home with minimal education and started working a string of odd jobs as an unskilled laborer. As a teen, Singer took on a promising apprenticeship as a mechanic, but his interest in acting soon spurred him to abandon the job and form a traveling theater troupe instead. While on a national tour with the Merritt Players, Singer frequently engaged in promiscuous behavior, resulting in the birth of some dozen and a half illegitimate children. After nine years on tour, Singer went broke and the group was forced to disband.”
Singer died in 1875, dividing his $13 million fortune unequally among 20 of his living children by his wives and various mistresses, although one son, who had supported his mother in her divorce case against Singer, received only $500.
In today’s dollars Singer’s $13 Million would be worth about $355 Million.
I don’t think I can look at a Singer sewing machine again without thinking of Isaac.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.