Albert R. Vogeler Papers

The Vogeler family arrived in Newark from Germany in 1869. The family consisted of Christian Daniel Vogeler, a veterinarian, his wife, Emily, and three children. Christian's son Otto began in business at age 21, ca. 1883, selling leather goods from a wagon. He eventually moved to a store front and by 1910 occupied a four-story building at 253 Market St. Otto's family lived in several homes in Newark, and finally built a large house on Renner Ave., near Weequahic Park. In 1919 the Vogelers moved to an even larger house at 27 Weequahic Ave. Otto's elder son, Albert O. Vogeler, became a partner in the business. He married Dorothy Flora Heller, the daughter of neighbors Henry W. Heller and Flora van Riper and a graduate of Barringer High School. Otto Vogeler and Henry Heller knew each other well; they were Freemasons and were active in a number of German fraternal and civic societies. Albert and Dorothy settled close by their parents in a spacious house at 155 Goldsmith Ave.

Albert R. Vogeler's memoir (in Folder 1) describes his childhood in the Goldsmith Ave. house, his family's German-immigrant servants, Sunday school at Elizabeth Avenue Presbyterian Church and his teenaged questioning of formal religion, the leather goods store on Market St. and its customers and staff, vacations at the Jersey Shore, and his education at Maple Avenue School and Weequahic HS (where he graduated in 1948). He provides comments on and sketches of his favorite teachers at both schools, among them Miss Cantrill, Grace Nolan, Frieda Abelson, Ernest Ranucci, Charles Brodsky, and Leola Rummer, and also writes of Weequahic HS principal Max Herzberg. The memoir concludes with sections on his studies at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, and his long career as a professor of history at California State University-Fullerton.