Harvey Fisk is the namesake of Fisk Elementary School
By Helen Kull
June’s column began a series on the namesakes of some of Ewing’s public elementary schools. This month we continue that series with a look at the Fisk family and Fisk School in the West Trenton area of the township.
Students of United States financial history may recognize the Fisk family name, but it’s unlikely to be familiar to the rest of us. Harvey Fisk was born in 1831 in rural New Haven, Vt., the third of eight children born to a poor Congregationalist minister and his wife.
Poor, perhaps — but not lacking in a basic education and a loving, hard-working and religious family, at least according to “The Letters of Harvey Fisk,” compiled and written by his son, Harvey E. Fisk in 1895. The family moved to rural New York on the shore of Lake Champlain when Harvey was quite young, and he grew up living a very simple life in a place of natural beauty.
In 1844, Harvey’s family moved to Montreal, and Harvey lived on a French-Canadian farm, where he learned the French language. By 1846, he was hired to teach French at an academy in Vermont, earning tuition to study as well. In 1848, his Uncle Jonathan Fisk, a businessman of Trenton, contacted him about a clerk position at a dry-goods store in Trenton, which brought him to New Jersey.
For the next 15 years or so he learned and honed business and finance skills, working first as an apprentice in Mr. Titus’ store, and then moving on to teller and other positions at the Mechanic’s Bank on Wall Street in New York City. His patience, persistence and intense curiosity about work and working relationships earned him promotions and greater opportunities to learn and lead
But his son says in the book that “there was no more marked characteristic of father than his love of home.” He came to know, fall in love with and marry (in 1853) Louisa Green, the daughter of the prominent Trenton Township (Ewing) businessman, Alexander B. Green, and grew to be devoted to her, considering her to be his most trusted counselor and friend — as well as the mother of their 11 children.
In 1862, Harvey Fisk and his business partner, A.S. Hatch, began a firm dealing primarily in U.S. Government bonds. The country was at war, and the debt was staggering and growing daily. Fisk and Hatch were able to successfully market and sell countless bonds on the basis of patriotism, trust and loyalty to help the government — much as was done decades later for World War II.
While the tale of their successes — and failures — is a fascinating story, it must go untold here. Suffice it to say that their business, and that of the succeeding business of Harvey Fisk and Sons in banking and railroads, was ultimately immensely successful. The tallest memorial obelisk in the Ewing Church Cemetery stands forever as a reminder of that success.
But it is not the only reminder. In 1868, Louisa and Harvey had a sumptuous 35-room summer home built on the Delaware River, on a portion of a large tract of land belonging to the Green family.
They named it Riverside, and it remains in Ewing to this day, on the campus of Villa Victoria. Harvey wrote to one of his children (not at home) in 1870, “It is so splendid here, and we are getting a splendid rest… Pigs, hens, chickens, trees, grass, flowers, cat, dog and toad are all having a jolly time, greeting us.” Harvey was never as content as he was when home at Riverside with his wife and family.
Clearly Harvey Fisk was in many ways a successful man. But his son — admittedly a biased source — writes of his father that “his success was, in my judgment, the legitimate outcome of the training in self-reliance, thoroughness, accuracy, and truth” learned early on.
He was a confident, genial, disciplined, savvy, and charitable man. And he seems to have passed those traits on to his children — two of whom eventually donated the land on which the Fisk School building still stands. Find our more on that NEXT month!
Do you have a Ewing story to tell, a memory to share, or a suggested topic? Send it to Helen at ewingthenandnow@gmail.com.
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