The Story of Friederick Nusbickel
Friederick Nusbickel came from his village of Wöllstein, in the fertile wine-producing region of
Rheinhessen, Germany in 1839 along with his sister, Christina Nusbickel.
Friederick had left
Wöllstein, Rheinhessen just ahead of a possible conscription into the Hessian army.
Friederick and Christina traveled up the Hudson River from the port in New York City, and then across the state by packet-boat on the Erie canal. After thirteen weeks on a sailing vessel, Friederick was understandably impatient and eager to reach his destination port, Lyons, NY. So much so that he couldn't sit still on the packet-boat.
Friederick got off and walked along side the boat on the tow-path between the locks.
Friederick arrived in Lyons at age 21 with 23-cents in his pockets. He also arrived with an "immigrant's chest", which his father Johann had prepared for him. An immigrant's chest is a steamer trunk filled with clothing, boots and other necessities.
Friederick traveled from Lyons to the Rose Valley where he went to work on the Gaylord's farm. He didn't take his salary for eight years, and lived by the contents of his immigrant's chest. At the age of 25, Friederick married Elizabeth Wagner, December 5, 1843, four years after his arrival, and while he was still employed at the
Gaylord's farm. Elizabeth had come to America in 1836 along with her parents, Henry (1793-1867) and Mary Wagner, from
Sieversheim, Germany, a village only about a mile from Wöllstein, Friederick's hometown.
In 1844, Frederick and Elizabeth had their first child Margaret. For three years they lived in a log cabin which Friederick built. During that time, they saved enough money to buy their own farm and built a tiny house with huge barns. Mary was born in 1847 and Frederick in 1849. From a record of births in Rose, Wayne County, NY in 1849: Frederic
Newspiccle, Mar. 2, 1849 to Frederick & Elizabeth Newspiccle
[sic].
Elizabeth was born in 1851 and Kathryn was born in 1855. (DIRECTORY OF THE TOWN OF ROSE, 1867 -1868: Nusbickel,
Friederick, farmer, 125 acres)
FRIEDERICK NUSBICKEL'S HUGE BARN
In 1852, Friederick sent for his father and any other of his family that wanted to come. Friederick's father Johann Adam came along with his children Johannes, b.1811,
Katharina, b. 1814, Adam, b. 1824 and Anna Maria, b. 1828. The eldest brother, Andreas did not come, but his 5 year old daughter Mary did. This is the Mary Nusbickel listed in the DIRECTORY OF THE TOWN OF ROSE, 1867 -1868: Nusbickel, Mary Miss, school teacher.
Friederick eventually sold his prosperous farm in Rose in 1875, and moved to Lyons where he bought a small hardware business and prospered there as well. His son, Frederick Jr., joined him in the business in Lyons, and eventually the Nusbickel Building was built in 1879. It was from there that father and son shipped wholesale produce, cabbage, onions, potatoes, hay and grain in car-lots to the ports of New York and Boston.
Source: Mary Smart, great grand-daughter of Friederick Nusbickel.
ELIZABETH WAGNER AND
FREDERICK NUSBICKEL
1886-1887 DIRECTORY OF LYONS, TOWN OF LYONS, WAYNE COUNTY, NY:
Nusbickel Frederick (Nusbickel & Co.) Broad corner Water, h Pearl
Nusbickel Frederick, Jr. (Nusbickel & Co.), Broad corner Water, h do.
Nusbickel & Co., Hardware, etc., Broad corner Water Nye W. S., gate tender
N.Y.C.R.R., h 7
BROAD STREET
(Taken from Lyons, the Shire Town)
On the east side of Broad Street, there remains only one business: Sapp's Market. The west side of the street was once a very busy commercial center. On the northwest corner of Water and Broad Streets, is the three-story Nusbickel block, built by Frederick Nusbickel, who came to the United States in 1839 from Wöllstein, in Germany's fertile
Rheinhessen.
After thirteen weeks on a sailing vessel, he walked with understandable impatience between locks on the Erie Canal as he was slowly drawn to this area, where he knew many others from his district had settled. He was twenty-one and had twenty-three cents in his pocket--but he did have a large chest filled with boots and clothes, and hence was able to save most of his earnings for the eight years he worked on the Gaylord farm in Rose Valley.
During this time, at twenty-five, he married a young neighbor, Elizabeth Wagner, whose
family had brought her from Sieversheim, a village only three miles from his old home.
For three years they lived in a log cabin, which he built. At the end of eight years, however, he had saved enough to buy his own farm--virgin land on the Rose Valley road, which he cleared and on which he built a tiny house and enormous barns. By 1875 he was able to sell the prosperous farm and buy a small hardware store in Lyons, where he and his wife moved with their son and four daughters. Within a few years they were able to buy a lot diagonally opposite their store and erect the large brick hardware store building still standing bearing the proud stone marker "Nusbickel 1879." There were three large hardware concerns in Lyons at the time, but there was enough business for all, since specialists had not yet taken over either the trades of plumbing and heating or the sales of farm equipment. The second floor of the block was filled with rows and rows of kitchen and parlor stoves mostly coal burning--and on the third floor was a tin shop, where every needed article was made, from dozens of "worms" for peppermint stills, to scoops, kettles and cookie cutters.
Profits increased when the West Shore Railroad came through Lyons, giving all its work to this shop--and when the
Nusbickels' son, Frederick, returned from Northwestern College in Naperville, Illinois, bringing his bride, a fellow-student, the business was expanded to include an apple- drying house. Shipments of dried and fresh apples and other fruits and grains, went by the carload, to markets in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.
The family hardware business was turned over briefly to Samuel Hartman from about 1901 to 1902; then to Rogers and
Sucher; then in 1930 to John L. Rogers alone; but by 1942 when competition of specialized stores proved too much for it, it went back to the Nusbickel estate.
The building was sold to Anthony Tiballi, the present owner, as a warehouse in l945 and it stands empty today in need of extensive repairs.
This was an advertising card from the
Rochester Co-operative Foundry Co. showing a happy young homemaker on one side
and the Standard Red Cross cast iron oven on the other side. Featured at
Nusbickel & Co. Hardware, Lyons, NY.
