In only 150 years, we have completely forgotten the most popular flour merchant in the world. That this may have been an exaggeration I cannot accept.
Category Archives: Albany
Daguerrotype or Ambrotype? So hard to choose…
In 1862, S.J.Thompson & Co. was making photographs, daguerreotypes, and ambrotypes at 478 Broadway, in a now-lost building somewhere on the north side between State Street and Maiden Lane. Daguerrotype was the first commercial photographic process. Ambrotype was a positive image on glass, using a collodion solution (and such collodion, it is said, played a role in the invention of celluloid here in Albany). And by the time this was published in 1862, there were a number of other photographic processes known to the public.
The variety of fonts in this ad is typical of the time, when a printer (most likely Joel Munsell’s steam press) showed its prosperity by the number of fonts it could afford to keep, and advertised for its business by showing them off in its publications.
The Pencil Lead Wars of 1862
I could put in a phenomenal amount of effort to explain what was going on in the northern New York graphite mines, what sort of a stranglehold Joseph Dixon & Co. was holding over its competitors, and how he who controlled pencil leads held the fate of a free press in his hands. Or I could just explain that graphite from the Ticonderoga area was a key element of stove polish as well as pencil leads, and that Cozzens & Lay of Water Street in Albany really didn’t like Joseph Dixon. Perhaps having created the first wood and graphite pencil made him snooty (whereas stove polishing would make one sooty). Despite setting their prices to suit the times, we all know the “Dixon Ticonderoga” pencil, and their competitor only leads us to imagine a lot of 5th graders snickering when the Cozzens & Lay pencils were handed out.
By the way, the Dixon website seems to think the average American dolt can’t pronounce “Ticonderoga,” and therefore they provide elaborate instruction.
All Hoxsie, all the time
While I’m on this here Hoxsie kick, I might as well mention a little bit more about George Hoxsie, the Albanian with the audacity to think that his name alone was enough to sell mineral water (or perhaps sarsparilla) (or perhaps something else) to Schenectadians. In 1870, shortly after the rooster crowed, George Hoxsie was living in Albany’s Fourth Ward, listing himself as a mineral water manufacturer with real property worth $6000 and $500 in non-real property. For those days, that was a lot, but not nearly as much as his neighbor Abraham Koonz, the carpet merchant, who claimed $80,000 in real property. Wife Jane and mother Anelope (yes, one ‘t’ short of an antelope) lived with him, as did daughter-in-law Libbie (Elizabeth) and grandson Bismark. Yes, Bismark Hoxsie. Throughout the 1860s, George showed up on federal tax rolls, such as in 1862 when he was charged $5.62 in tax on $520 worth of root beer (apparently the soft drink tax is nothing new). George was also the Overseer of the Poor, a politically appointed city position that may have included the oversight of the Alms House. George may have seen better opportunities in the political world than in bottling, for in 1880 he was listed in the census as a foreman at the New Capitol.
And what happened to little Bismark? He won the prize for best speaker in his class at the 20th commencement exercises of Albany High School in June, 1888. He became an osteopath, married a woman named Huldah Van Doren (yes, she became Huldah Hoxsie), and moved to Bound Brook, New Jersey.