Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1911 — LONG ON SAME SPOT [ARTICLE]

LONG ON SAME SPOT

New Yorker Lived in One Place for 78 Years. Edward Jackman Used to Catch Fish Where Skyscrapers Now Are— Kept Out of Doors Much as He Possibly Could. d New York.—lnhabitants of this Island to whom life is just one apartment after another may read with wonder tinged with skepticism that one of their fellow-citizens, Edward Jackman, who was born some time ago on Third street, has been content to live on the same spot ever since. Not in the same house, nuderstand, for the old frame dwelling, with the garden in front, where Jackman first opened his eyes upon the light of New York, was bruned to the ground in a memorable fire that wiped out the whole neighborhood. That was when he was a little boy, but he heard the story of the big fire from his father, who promptly built upon the same site the three-story brick dwelling, where his son has lived to this day. So It is not quite three-quarters of a century that Jackman has made his home in the one house. Still, that is long enough to justify him in referring to 310 East Third street ns his permanent residence. “Do you suppose you’ll always live here?” persons often ask the old man. “I don’t rightly know,” was his answer the other day. “Perhaps I’ll sell. Don’t know where Td go if I did, though’. Might move out to Westfield with my son, or up to Harlem, but If I did that I don’t know what I’d do with my dogs. Guess I’ll have to be moving on, anyway, pretty soon.” He said this last with the intonation that left no doubt as to itß meaning. Jackman was 78 years old a few days ago, and he does not forget it. But he !b a brisk old man, who has kept out of doors for a good share of his life. That is because he loves to fish. Time was when he didn’t have to go very far from his father’s front door.

“There used to be a big pond between Avenues C and D and between Sixth and Seventh streets,” he said. “That was a long time ago. We called it Green’s pond, and the boys used to fish there. “All around these parts there were a lot of vacant lots. Astor owned a lot of them, and held them for a rise In value. These lots, all around here, would be let out to Germans who ran vegetable gardens. It’s all changed now, and the only gardens I see are those little soap boxes with , green things trying to grow In them that you see all along the street in the tenement house windows.” Yet that part of town 18 not so very modern. Very close to Jackman’s door the horse car, trundling by, solves part of the rapid transit problem of the neighborhood. In his earlier days, the Drydock line of stakes ran up from the Battery to Twelfth street, and Second street had a crosstown line that was very convenient When Jackman talks of selling and moving, he speaks with no great conviction. Yet he’s Just a little lonely In Third street “Do you know," he said, “there isn’t a person left anywhere about here that I used to know as a boy. They’ve all died or moved away.”