Little Old Canarsie
Our Isolated Village With The Quaint, Friendly People

In this story of things that were done in the old days when Canarsie was a small town, more or less isolated from downtown Brooklyn, I will relate some of the things that were told to me by someone much older than I.

First, at the time of the great blizzard of 1888 on Rockaway Parkway at Flatlands Avenue, there was a bakery shop opened and managed by Joseph Gross Sr. on the second day of the blizzard. The first cash sale he made eight days later. But when the weather cleared and business grew he had two well-known Canarsiens, Honus Wagner and John Walker, who worked for him for many years, drive horses and wagons around town and sell and deliver his nice baked crullers and rolls, etc.

At this same time, another well-known Canarsien was Jacob Truckleman, who has a lane named after him about a thousand feet south of Flatlands Avenue. On the corner of this lane he had a building called the Half Way House where he sold beer and wines. Jacob's daughters had a candy store on the side of the building. Across from his place, Edwin J. Weinhold had a grocery and deli and general store with a coal box outside where you could buy a scuttle or a hundred weight to take home to keep the home fires burning, as there were no oil burners or gas heating in those days.

When they ran a shuttle trolley service from Canarsie depot at Rockaway and Church Avenue, there were two men working as motormen for the B.M.T. at that time who were very well known by all the residents, and if you were at a distance and running to catch their trolley, they would stop and wait for you. They would even pay your fare if you had no small change and wait until the next day for you to reimburse them for it. Their names live and will always be remembered by those still living among the real old timers. Mr. John Salmow and Mr. John Duffy.

Another Canarsien who will always be remembered was Hagar James who had a general store and a small garden farm in the back at East 92nd Street and School Lane, just a little north of Avenue G (now Glenwood Road) where all the kids would come out of school at noon and buy a large square of Geo. Washington cake or a large dill pickle for two cents, which was a popular item those days. On the way back to P.S. 114, down the lane, they would help themselves to a carrot or turnip or beets or radishes which Pop James sold out of the store. Besides his son who he had working for him many years, another man from a well known family, George Belford, helped out in the store and delivered orders for him. On Rockaway Avenue next to the volunteer fire house in the 1890's, there was one of Canarsie's first funeral directors besides Harry Serene and Mohr Funeral Home, which was also on Rockaway Avenue at Flatlands Avenue. The Funeral director next to the volunteers was Mrs. Mary Ripp, a widow who resided with her daughter Margaret. The first hardware store on Rockaway Avenue across from the B.M.T. station where the bakery stood was owned by a Mr. Howland, who was married to a daughter of the Hodgkiss family who had a hardware store on Atlantic Avenue near Alabama Avenue in the East New York section.

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