My previous post about Gerrit Lansing Hoodless mentions him recorded in the 1855 New York State Census. He was living with his wife in the house of a W J Hoodless, in Brooklyn, and I had no definite family connection at the time for them. I have since found an obituary for his mother, clipped from the New York Times, 15th November 1890, which confirms he and Gerrit were brothers, both sons of Captain William Raithby Hoodless and his wife Margaret. Captain William R Hoodless was naturalised as a US citizen in New York on 13th October 1831 and was a Lincolnshire Hoodless, born in 1800 in North Somercotes.
William J married Harriet Boughton on 28th April 1850 at the Methodist Episcopal Church, Green Street and they moved into an apartment in Brooklyn. It was located somewhere close to the harbour and William worked first as a clerk (1850 Census) and then as a ship broker (1855). By 1860 William and Harriet are living in Mid-town Manhattan and William works as a bookkeeper in a retail business. We can tell he has a reasonable education because he has a series of occupations that require one, i.e., entry level jobs in business that involve accounting, deals, figures and logistics. All this sounds fairly mundane for William but, in fact, he is living smack bang in the middle of one of the most chaotic, fast changing, violent and unpredictable periods in the fastest growing, melting pot city in America.
In the eleven years from his marriage in 1850 until the start of the Civil War in 1861 William and his fellow New Yorkers witnessed many events:
- Between 1850 -1858 tens of thousands of Irish and German immigrants flood into the city fleeing famine and violence in their homelands and drawn to the prospect of a better life by the demand for their labour.
- Riots and gang wars break out with regularity.
- In 1857 two gangs known as the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys rioted and fought in the streets while the Police fought amongst themselves as a result of the disbanding of the New York Municipal Police and the creation in its place of the New York Metroplitan Police.
- The Staten Island Quarantine facility has become the largest hospital facility processing immigrants. Residents rioted in 1858 against its presence and attacked it, eventually burning it to the ground.
- In 1853 the State Government purchased the land designated to be Central Park, changing the face of Manhattan and guaranteeing a green space escape from the dense built-up development of the city.
- A World’s Fair exposition was held at Bryant Park in 1853 and included a Crystal Palace based on the one in London and the Latting Observatory Tower which stood 96m high and allowed views of Staten Island and New Jersey.
- The arts scene begins to flourish from the Bowery towards Broadway, with nightclubs, theatres, the Opera House all opening. Steinway & Sons establish a piano manufacturing business.
- Financial institutions like the Lehman Brothers follow the center of stocks and commissions trading to New York in 1858.
By March 1861, Abraham Lincoln has won the presidency and the city became embroiled in debate about whether to secede (an ultimately unpopular stance) or whether to commit its vast reserves of manpower and finances to the Union and join the Civil War against the Confederacy.
No doubt influenced by the marine career of his father, William signs up with the United States Navy on 30 September 1862, the same month that his brother Gerrit, now living in Chicago, does the same and they are both appointed Acting Assistant Paymaster. William is eventually assigned to the steamer Glaucus as part of the North Atlantic Blockade. On 5th March 1864 they depart New York on a mission to return the newly elected president of Columbia, Senor Manuel Murillo, home. He had been the Columbian minister to the United States. The Glaucus returned to the North Carolina coast and saw action off Cape Fear where it caught fire while chasing a blockade runner on 28th May 1864. The crew managed to contain the fire and sailed to Philadelphia for repairs. The Glaucus then joined the West India Convoy Fleet and was eventually decommissioned on 6th June 1865, after running aground on a sand bank off the Bahamas. William J Hoodless’s naval military service was over, as was the Amercian Civil War and he returned to civilian life in New York.
By 1867 William had an apartment at 181 Pearl Street in the Financial District of lower Manhattan.
The New York Stock Exchange had established itself in its first building on nearby Broad Street in 1865 and, with its well-established port facilities nearby, the area became the hub of commodities trading in America and subsequently the world. Cotton and tobacco, the main exports, would be shipped in, weighed, tallied, valued, stored and traded directly from this area. William’s occupation as a “weigher” place him in one of these warehouses and storage facilities watching the financial titans like J P Morgan build banks and other leaders of business, mining, industry, agriculture and trade would have walked the same streets. Because William was in business for most of his life, the New York directories he published his details in help trace his movements through several decades.
By 1870 William had formed his own goods inspection business W J Hoodless & Co and was working out of the Kemble Building on the corner of Whitehall and Bridge Streets at the southern tip of Manhattan. It was located opposite the US Custom House and alongside the New York Produce Exchange. His residence however was in the Mid-town area of Chelsea at 273 W 22nd Street (which is now a cinema complex). So, he was commuting to his office potentially utilizing the newly developed elevated railways that began to appear in the 1870s. They were steam locomotive driven creating noise, steam and soot.
W J Hoodless & Co. expanded through the 1870s as this 1875 advertisement from The Tobacco Leaf industry newspaper indicates. William was specialising in the handling, inspection and trade of tobacco and had also established a warehouse in the notorious waterfront area of Red Hook, one of the busiest wharf and port facilities in Brooklyn.
In the1878 New York City Directory, William’s business premises have moved to 45 Broad Street and he is living on Staten Island. A year later in 1878 he is working out of 54 Broad Street and living at 121 East 64th Street. William remained in the tobacco inspection business until 1880 when he seemingly has a change in career direction.
Throughout the 1880’s William described himself as an “architect”. This period in New York became known as the “Gilded Age”. As New York attracted more and more of the higher echelons of society – industrialists, investors, innovators, artists and so on, so the city expanded and developed an architecture all of its own. The skyscraper had its origins there in 1889 and construction and real estate development would dominate the city for the next several decades.
In 1891 William Hoodless is now registered as a Real Estate Agent. A profession that would have him showing, selling and letting New York real estate for the next decade until his death in 1903. William moved around regularly, changing address almost consistently every year. His last known address was 11 W 123rd Street in East Harlem close to a well-designed greenspace, Mount Morris Park, which is now known as Marcus Garvey Park. He commuted from here to his offices at 69 Wall Street.
The apartment building at 11 W 123rd Street, East Harlem.
Commercial building at 69 Wall Street in the Financial District of New York
William was buried on 30 November 1903 in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, a 478-acre rambling cemetery established in 1838.