German toys in antebellum America

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2002 by Mary Audrey Apple

(29.) Toy dealers listed in the 1829-1830 Longworth's New York City directory include: Claudius Ledger, toys, 167 Greenwich; John G. Escher and Company, importer of toys, 305 Broadway; and Margaret Perrine, toystore, 446 Washington.

(30.) These were Gerding, an importer on Pearl Street; Lil[l]iendahl, fancy goods store at 34 Maiden Lane; John F. Bittell, basket store at 446 Broadway; Anthony Bollerman, importer at 10 Exchange; and Bailly and Ward, fancy goods store at 96 William Street.

(31.) Page, New York, to Lindner, February 8, 1831, letter book. p.46.

(32.) Page to Lindner, July 9, 1831, ibid., p.52.

(33.) Page to Lindner; November 7, 1832, ibid., p.90.

(34.) Page to Lindner; March 9, 1832, ibid., p.73.

(35.) Page to Bruckner, December 3, 1830, ibid., p.35.

(36.) Page to Lindner, November 7, 1832, ibid., p. 90.

(37.) Page to Lindner, January 18, 1830, ibid., p. 12.

(38.) Page to Bruckner, December 3, 1830, ibid., p.35.

(39.) Page to Lindner, March 9, 1832, ibid., p.74.

(40.) Page to Lindner, February 8, 1831, ibid., p.44.

(41.) Page to Lindner, May 9, 1831, ibid., pp.52-53.

(42.) Page to Lindner, November 10, 1832, ibid., p.91.

(43.) Page to Lindner, December 18, 1831, ibid., p.57.

(44.) Page to Lindner, February 8, 1831, ibid., p. 46.

(45.) Page to Lindner, June 19, 1832, ibid., p.80.

(46.) Page to Lindner, November 10, 1832, ibid., p.91.

(47.) Page to an unnamed customer, January 2, 1833, ibid., p. 98. There is ample evidence to show that toys were given as gifts at Christmas and New Year's by the early nineteenth century. This evidence includes advertisements in Georgetown, Virginia, in 1807, in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1817, and Baltimore in 1818. Christmas and New Year's presents were regularly advertised in the December issues of New York City newspapers in the 1830s.

(48.) Page to Lindner, September 19, 1832, letter book, p. 83. The Sonneberg region had been a center for marble production for centuries, using a seam of shell lime found on the mountainside. With the help of the entire family, lime was cut into cubes and ground into balls at a marble mill. Germany continued to be the major source of marbles for the United States throughout the nineteenth century.

(49.) Page to Kreamer, September 5, 1830, ibid., p.30.

(50.) Page to Bruckner, February 8, 1831, ibid., p.48.

(51.) Bachmann, "Kommentar," in Das Sonneberger Spielzeugmusterbuch. The translation of this passage is mine.

(52.) Page to Lindner, May 9, 1832, letter book, p.72.

(53.) Page to Lindner, September 19, 1832, ibid., p.83.

(54.) For example, the 1826 probate inventory of Eliza Dannenberg, the proprietor of a variety store on Maiden Lane in New York City, includes large numbers of the same German toys ordered by Page (Inventory of Eliza Dannenberg, November 15, 1826, Downs Collection, Winterthur Library). The Lindner firm sent a shipment of toys to the Philadelphia toy store of Jacob Imel in 1836. The Adolph Fleischmann firm, Lindner's major competitor in Sonneberg, shipped cases of similar toys from Bremen to the Philadelphia merchants Miesegaes and Unkart in 1838, according to Philadelphia Customs Papers (microfilm in Winterthur Library). In 1841 the Fleischmann firm solicited business from "Louis Page & Son" and three other New York City businesses, as well as two firms in Baltimore and one in Philadelphia. The firm had been given the names by contacts in Nuremberg (Fleischmann, Kopierbuch, 1823-1843).