Found Brooklyn trade token - J. Thorner's Clothes Shop

[Patrol]

Found this token "good for $1.00 on original purchase of suit or overcoat - one for customer". "J. Thorner's Clothes Shop 4-10 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y." at my aunts house in Monticello, NY. Her family built the house in 1910 and has been occupied by a member of the family since. She told me, "You won't find anything, but go ahead". Well, two silver quarters and silver plated belt buckle, a New York State Seal and numerous other artifacts later she wanted us to do more detecting. She was a believer!

What little research available to me was a court judgement against Jacob Thorner for selling inferior goods to clothes to another person in 1911. http://books.google.com/books?id=yn4...page&q&f=false

If anyone has an idea as to value or history I would appreciate knowing more. It's my first old token and I am really excited about it.

Tom

[Bramblefind]

Hi! Great find! I did a little research and found that Jacob Thorner died on 6/20/1912 but his widow Lena continued the store in his name. She died in 1937.

I found this article in the Monticello Republican newspaper from circa 1920 that I wanted to pass along since it was the same city in which you found the token -

[Patrol]

Thank you. My Aunt Molly will be ecstatic. She knows everyone in town as she was a bank teller there for many years. I am sure she has heard of some these people. $2,000 diamond ring in the 20's must have been a real "honker" of a diamond.

I did a Google Maps search of the address in Brooklyn and it seems the original building is still there and it is a good sized building. Man, I love this stuff. The history I find is worth much more than any monetary value.

Tom

[intimer]

neat token. a little different wording than usual.
i don't know about it.
only ones similar i've seen are aluminum?

nice find!

[brt712]

Tom, not sure if you will ever see this -- it's been a few months since the original post. Anyway, I stumbled across this site and your thread as I was doing a little genealogy research. Jacob Thorner was my great-grandfather. Not sure when the store was actually founded, but I believe it was open into the 1950s. After Jacob died, my grandfather, Arthur, ran the store with his brothers Jerome and Harry. The irony finding the clipping about Jerome's party in the post was that I was always told that Jerome was the black sheep who embezzled from the store and ultimately caused its demise. Sadly, while Arthur, Jerome and Harry are all long since gone, so are my father and his brother, who would really be able to tell me more about the store. I know they lived above it for a number of years and then eventually moved to E 16th Street in Brooklyn where my father lived from his mid-teens on.

Back in the mid-80s, when my dad was still around he and I went to the store location to see what there was to see. There was still the original store door (behind a barred security fence) with the initials JT etched in the glass. My father and I desparately tried to figure out who owned the building but in the days before the Internet it was to no avail. We hoped to somehow get the glass out of the door so we could frame it as family memorabilia. Never happened. Anyway, you note you looked on Google Maps. Actually, I'm pretty sure the building has been knocked down. If you check the Street View on Google I think the store was where the food store is now, not on the other side of the street, so it is long gone.

As for the coin, I have one just like it in pretty prisitine condition somewhere among all the family heirlooms in the attic. Finding your post has now inspired me to go up there and try to find it again.

Nice to see that someone had interest in the story. BTW, despite the fact that Lena was portrated as a wealthy widow in the article, somehow that money is long since gone (probably due to the aforementioned embezzlement by Jerome).

Brian