IF YOU'VE EVER SHOT A PHARMACIST, Tried to conquer Mexico, Or been knocked off a bar stool at 9:30 a.m., you'll relate to the true stories you'll hear on my Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour of downtown Frenchtown. It takes place this Saturday, Aug. 7, at 10 a.m.
Registration is important. If no one registers, I just stay home and contemplate my own poor choices.
If you have questions or want to sign up for a tour, please email me at rickepstein@yahoo.com and I'll tell you where we'll meet. Each tour costs $15 per person, payable in cash upon completion of the tour.
Masks are optional. (Get vaxxed!)
Here are the dates for my Frenchtown Walking Tours:
Saturday, Aug. 7 – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour 10 a.m.
Saturday, Aug. 14 – Downtown Tour, 10 a.m.
Saturday, Aug. 21 – Gloria Sipes Cemetery Tour 10 a.m.
Saturday, Aug. 28 – Capt. Slater Cemetery Tour, 10 a.m.
Saturday, Sept. 4 – Downtown Tour, 4 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 11 – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour 10 a.m.
Rick Epstein
Borough Historian
PS: Here's some info on the tours:
CEMETERY TOURS
Capt. Slater Cemetery Tour – mostly of personages of the 1800s. It includes the man who swam away from the Milford Tran Wreck of 1878; Frenchtown's first car owner; mischief makers Powers Williams and Lew Slater; the man who hanged Jeff Davis in effigy; and the Civil War captain who got a boost from Abe Lincoln. Zinc monuments will be examined.
Gloria Sipes Cemetery Tour – mostly of personages of the 1900s. It includes a grieving father's pink granite monument to the victims of a spinal meningitis epidemic in 1907; the homicidal Amos Hart; Frenchtown's Tom Sawyer; Miss Frenchtown of 1931; the constable slain by a madman; and The Man Who Worked One Day a Year.
DOWNTOWN TOUR – How the guillotine caused our founder to flee France and come here and do some founding; the mystic rites of the Odd Fellows; why Frenchtown had three hotels; the Great Fire of 1878; Senator Martin's alligators; the Flood of 1955; the boy who fired revolvers (with blanks) in the movie theater; the girl who liked to smooch in the covered bridge; the old Gem Theatre; and why Annie Oakley and Mary Tyler Moore slept here (on different nights).
BAD LUCK & POOR CHOICES TOUR – It includes true stories squeezed from the Frenchtown archives, including the banker who outsmarted himself (1926); truck hits a hotel and spills a drink (1984); why Aaron Burr never slept here (1806); a bank robbery foiled by a woman's screams (1873); gunplay in the drug store (1939); Tippoo the killer elephant (1869); why the A&P opened a day late (1922); the deadly boiler explosion and George Hummer's narrow escape (1879); lunch-break electrocution (1888); and a little tale of small-town benevolence (circa 1920).
This tour covers much of the same terrain as the Downtown Tour, but it is more of a true-story tour and less of the basic history of Frenchtown.
This one is upon request:
UPTOWN TOUR -- Old Frenchtown High School and the home of the Original Terrier (Delaware Valley High School's mascot), the former doll-carriage factory, the Doughboy statue and the waitress who was obsessed with it, the first mayor's mansion, the old Pontiac dealership, the Barn Theatre, Doc Mullins' hospital, and a World War II love story. We'll also see the subtle Fifth Street “seam” where the first developer left off and the next developer took over in 1866.
For even more info on the tours and for lots of Frenchtown history, visit bit.ly/frenchtowntours
