Living Large: Moving Up the Social Ladder with the Newcombs
Francis Newcomb: 1857-1922
I discovered so many interesting things about the Newcomb
family while researching the life of my newsworthy second-cousin 3x removed,
Nathaniel Newcomb. I realized that both the Newcomb brothers had re-invented
themselves in order to move up the social ladder. They left behind their life
in Massachusetts where they struggled financially after the death of their father,
and re-wrote their history to sound as if they were better educated and from a
higher social class. They both lived a little too large, however, using social
and political connections to build their businesses and their wealth, and they
may have misappropriated money to fund their higher class lifestyles. Francis
Newcomb was the more successful of the two, however. He was a good businessman,
starting in the hat industry and moving on to real estate investing and working
for the Postal Service. He ended up far higher on the social ladder than where
he began.
Francis Newcomb was born in Easton, Massachusetts on April
24, 1857 to Sarah Augusta Dane and Josiah LaPrelet Newcomb. Josiah was a
housewright or master carpenter, so a skilled working class craftsman. Josiah
died suddenly in 1868, and Francis and his mother, who preferred to use her
middle name of Augusta, relocated to Brooklyn where she ran a boardinghouse.
Finances were apparently tight, because Francis was forced to leave school and
was holding a full-time job as a clerk at only fourteen.
In 1879, Francis, now calling himself Frank, married 21 year
old Abbie Boenum. She came from a working class family as well. Frank was
working as a jeweler by the time their daughter and only child Florence was
born a year later on April 6, 1880. Francis apparently changed careers shortly
after that. According to his obituary, “He was practically a self-made man. He
entered a large hat factory to learn the business and later founded a hat
business at 136 Flatbush Ave.”
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| Subway building at Flatbush and Atlantic in 1890s. FH Newcomb hats nearby |
F.H.Newcomb Hats became quite successful. The business was
located adjacent to the subway terminal in Flatbush, and Frank was eager to
promote the area. He began campaigning for a postal substation to be built in
this section of Brooklyn, circulating a petition in Flatbush in the 1880s. The
post office opened a substation adjacent to Frank’s hat store, and appointed
him the superintendent of the station. He tried to run the post office and his
business simultaneously, but it was difficult. An article from the November 17,
1891 Brooklyn Eagle reported that Frank Newcomb was reluctantly quitting,
despite the substation doing brisk business, selling $27,000 worth of stamps
alone. Frank’s pay was only $400 per year! Frank told the reporter, “I simply
cannot afford to neglect my interests to attend to this work for the money
received. Of course, it was intended to help me in trade, but it has outgrown
that and now demands most of my time and that of an assistant.”
The Postmaster and other Flatbush businessmen sympathized
with Frank’s plight, and sought greater remuneration for him at the very least.
The postmaster said he knew of no one better to replace Frank. In the end,
Frank received a pay raise, and by 1899 a list of postal employees’
compensation shows that Frank was earning $800 per annum.
In January 1902 Frank was promoted to the position of
Assistant Postmaster. By this point, he was already involved in politics,
socializing with city councilmen and state officials from the Democratic party.
His political connections may have helped him. A Brooklyn Eagle columnist who
went by the pen name “Mul” and specialized in researching corruption penned a
criticism of the Brooklyn post office management, suggesting that Frank Newcomb
was using his new position to benefit his hat business. He noted that,
“Mr. Newcomb has been
a bidder on contracts for carriers hats, but was not very successful under
Postmaster Wilson. He may be more fortunate under his friend Roberts. At all
events, already there has been quite a demand for Newcomb hats among postoffice
employees, and it is said that some the purchasers have taken pains to place
their tils in such a position that the name of the maker may be easily read by
anyone passing their desks. ‘I wear a Newcomb hat’ is a popular cry in the postoffice
nowadays.” The fellow included a mocking business card suggesting that Newcomb
could advertise he was hatmaker to the president, the postmaster and federal
postal workers.
In Newcomb’s defense, his hat company was already providing
uniform caps for a variety of industries, including several rail lines.
 |
| Conductors cap circa 1920 made by FH Newcomb Hats |
Frank must have been doing quite well financially, for he
was able to bail out his older brother Nathaniel when he drove his steamship
company into bankruptcy. Frank bought up the assets of the New York Steamship
Company at auction in February 1892, and helped to reorganize the company along
with a couple of other investors. The company failed, according to news reports,
from “mismanagement arising from personal jealousies” which I suspect were due
in part to Nathaniel, who also ran the new company into the ground and may have
misappropriated funds to pay for his lifestyle, which included a stable of
horses. The other investors in the company were New York political figures or
political donors, so I suspect that Frank was mixing his business and political
life in order to capitalize his brother’s ventures.
 |
| Flatbush Ave. near 136 where FH Newcomb Hats was located, circa 1913 |
Frank made the papers for stopping a bribery scheme at the
Post Office providing preferential access to immigrants trying to become
naturalized. He also ran ads steadily for his hat store, strongly promoting the
Stetsons he sold.
Frank stayed with the Post Office until 1911. He resigned
after twenty years when his influence and power as assistant postmaster diminished
under new Postmaster Voorhies. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that Newcomb had
promised to “make it hot” for his enemies, but the October 7, 1911 issue quoted
him as denying this, saying, “It isn’t true that I have said that I would make
trouble for someone in the service. I left with the good will of everybody.”
By this point, Frank was earning $3000 per year from the
Post Office. He had enough political pull that the reporter writing about his
resignation opined that Frank was positioning himself to become a candidate to
replace Voorhies when his term would expire in 1914.
According to the Times-Union’s September 8, 1911 article on
Francis’ resignation, he said, “I have a hat business which is growing
steadily. Then I have a hotel at Martha’s Vineyard, and other property there.
Aside from this, I have a patent which promises to be a money maker…”
I have been unable to track down the patent, but I did find
the hotel. My research revealed that Francis and his family began vacationing
in Martha’s Vineyard in the 1890s. The social columns in the Boston Globe spoke
glowingly of the Newcomb Villa wryly named “Kill Kare”. Visitors included
Francis, his wife and his “charming daughter Florence”, social acquaintances,
and the occasional political figure, such as Brooklyn city councilmen.
Frank invested in additional Martha’s Vineyard properties,
and eventually acquired a hotel, the New Eastville Inn located in Oak Bluffs.
It boasted easy water access, spacious grounds, lawn tennis and Croquet courts.
It appears to have been a successful business.
In addition to his business ventures, Frank’s family had
grown to resent the demands of his postal service job. The Eagle reported that “his
wife and daughter had been urging him for a year to leave the department and
that it was the ‘the happiest day of his wife’s life’ when he finally laid down
the burden.”
Frank continued to participate in politics. He escorted the
New York governor to an event, and was elected to the Republican committee for
the 11th District of New York in October 1915. He enjoyed wheeling
and dealing.
Alas, Frank never attained any political office. After a
meeting at the Internal Revenue office on December 6, 1922, he dropped dead of
a heart attack as he exited the building. He was 65 years old.
As to what became of Frank’s family, his daughter Florence
married Fred H. Eastman on October 17, 1905. Fred had been a bookkeeper, but
Frank brought him into the family business as manager of the hat store, a
position he continued to hold long after Frank’s death. Florence and Fred had
one child, a daughter named Janet Edna. Fred died at 64 from “hereditary
chronic progressive chorea”, now known as Huntington’s disease. Eastman was
likely disabled by the disease, but due to Frank’s business sense and
investments, the family seems to have continued to live in financial comfort in
Brooklyn.
Frank’s impulse to live large and move up in the world was
quite successful. Although he used political connections to help build his
business and improve his financial situation, he was far more honest and
hard-working than his older brother, who frittered away every opportunity that
came his way.
Sources:
“May have to Close Substation”, Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
Brooklyn New York, 17 Nov 1891.
The American Hatter, Vol. 45, “Miscellaneous Items”, Google
Books
“Newcomb Out as Assistant in Post Office”, Times Union,
Brooklyn, New York 08 Sep 1911, Fri pg 2.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/56160065/info-on-newcomb-resignation-sep-8-1911/
“Newcomb Has No Grievance”, Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, Brooklyn NY Oct 7, 1911,
pg. 16 https://www.newspapers.com/image/54449320/?terms=newcomb%2Bhas%2Bno%2Bgrievance
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