The Three Acts of James Henry Opp
Some stories hide behind the records
Born on 11 March 1870, James Henry Opp grew up in the small town of Dansville in Livingston County, New York. His father, Jacob Edward Opp, was a veteran of the Civil War, and his mother was Mary Elizabeth Palmer, descended from a family of New Jersey shipbuilders.
Jacob and Mary had three children: Lillie May, James, and my great-great-grandmother, Emily Amelia Opp. Lillie May was born in 1868 and died in 1881 when she was 13. I don’t know what caused her death, but she was born in Brooklyn, New York, died in Paterson, New Jersey, and was buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Dansville.
The Opp family had moved to Paterson by 1880, and Jacob was working as a fireman on the railroad. Paterson was about a 270-mile journey from Dansville, but since Jacob worked for the railroad, and his roots were in Dansville, I imagine they made the trip back to visit family as often as they could.
Act I: A Family Man
James married his first wife, Evelene Darcy Stevens (1870-1940), on 14 Jul 1889 in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. Evelene was the daughter of Charles H Stevens (1840–1921) and Margaret "Maggie" Ferguson, and she was born on 20 Sep 1870 in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey.
Evelene’s mother, Maggie, died when Evelene was young. Evelene grew up in the home of her father and stepmother, Carrie W (Palmer) Stevens (1856–1931). As it happens, Carrie Palmer was the youngest sister of James Opp’s mother, Mary Elizabeth (1837-1889).
James and Evelene had a son and a daughter in Jersey City, Richard Dana Opp (1890–1944) and Lillian Elisabeth (Opp) Johnson (1893–1943). Since there are no surviving records from the 1890 Census, we don’t know for sure where they lived, but in 1896, James resided on Pacific Avenue in Jersey City. We know this because The Jersey City News reported on their divorce. The article1 described James as “a commercial traveler” and alleged that Mrs. Opp spent the previous summer in Monroe, New York, where she and the “Fascinating Mr. Rogers” spent enough time together to create a scandal, which prompted James to sue her for a divorce.
James appears to have gained custody of the two children, and Evelene lived in her father’s home until she married George W Gifford (1868–1926) in Manhattan on 11 Aug 1900. The Giffords lived in Brooklyn until after 1915, when they moved to Newark, New Jersey. George died in 1926, and Evelyn (using that spelling of her name) resided in Essex County, New Jersey, until she died on 5 June 1940.
Act II: Till Death Do Us Part
The timing of James’s second marriage seems unusual, but I can only tell you what the records say. According to the records, he married Lillian Jones (1871–1915) on 20 January 1896 in Newark, Essex, New Jersey. You will notice that the report from The Jersey City News about the hearing of his divorce suit was dated 10 June 1896. I don’t know how to account for that, but they remained together for nearly twenty years.
It’s hard to know what sort of business James was in, but in 1900, he and his company went bankrupt. According to the official notice published in the Brooklyn Eagle,2 his partner, Arthur Grundy of Cape Town, South Africa, seems to have disappeared and left his partners, James Opp and Mortimer Clark, to the mercy of the U.S. bankruptcy court.
Meanwhile, James and Lillian had three children in Brooklyn, New York. Only their son, Julian Thayer Opp (1899–1978), survived to adulthood. Lucine J Opp was born in 1901, but died on 12 July 1902 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow, New York. They had another daughter named Emily Amelia, after James’s sister, on 23 February 1904. Emily was baptized in the United Methodist Church at ten years old, and she was only 12 when she died on 15 January 1917. She was buried in Sleepy Hollow, near her sister.
Sadly, Emily Amelia had outlived her mother, Lillian, who died in 1915. The records don’t tell us what kind of person Lillian was, but it is easy to imagine that James relied on her through these difficult events. And to lose their daughter so soon after losing his wife, we can only imagine how he felt in 1917.
Act III: The Girl from New York City
So, as we discussed last time, James found himself a 45-year-old widower in October 1915. His family lived in Newark, and James ran an export business in New York. I don’t know what circumstances put a middle-aged widower in the orbit of a 20-year-old mother of two who was living in the Bronx, married to a machinist, but we surmise that he married Jessica Viola (Owens) Slaker and adopted her two children before moving to Elmira, Chemung County, New York, where their blended family included Jesse’s parents and sister.
We don’t have all the records we would expect to tell us this part of the story, but we do know that James and Jessica had a son, James Henry Opp, Jr., who was born on 13 October 1917. We also know that Jessica’s first husband, Stanley Slaker (aka Slicinski), had been listed as “married with two children” in June of that year on his World War I draft registration, and that he enlisted in the U.S. Army on 11 October, two days before his wife delivered her son to her new husband.
Whatever happened in 1917, early 1918 saw a big business opportunity for James. The Elmira Star-Gazette reported on 30 January 19183 that a newly incorporated “Aluminum War Manufacturing Company, Inc.” was founded in Albany, and would absorb the National Aluminum Works of Elmira, as well as the Aluminum Distributing Company and Toyphone Company, both of New York City. James H. Opp was named as a vice president in the new company, under the president, John E. Potter.
In March 1919, the same paper reported that James H. Opp had purchased the home of Myer Friendly at 510 West Church Street and moved there from Newark. Presumably, that is the home we see the Opp family living in on the 1920 Census. In May, it was reported that James had purchased the interests of Mr. Potter and that the company would undergo an expansion. His son, Richard, was reportedly “in charge of the operations at the plant.”
Things took a turn in April 1921, when stockholders began to question the inventory and whereabouts of Richard D. Opp.4 Within a few days, James was ousted and his family left Elmira, deeding the Friendly house to the Aluminum Ware Company and returning the home’s furniture to creditors to satisfy their debts.5
The extended family relocated to Elizabeth in Union County, New Jersey, where James’s occupation was listed as “Salesman; Electrical.” He and Jessica had a daughter there in 1926. Not long after his father-in-law, Walter Owens, died in 1933, the family moved into Newark, where they remained until James died in 1941.
Epilogue
James died on 1 August 1941 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. Jessica stayed in New Jersey until around 1962, and she spent her later years in California.
For all of the information we do have about the life of James Henry Opp and his family, there is so much left unsaid. Was he the villain or the victim in these stories of businesses and marriages gone wrong? How well did all of these people living in his blended family get along? Were they supportive of each other, or were there tensions and dramas that were left out of the story?
As I said several times, the timing of the records suggests that James and his wives did not have conventional courtships. He married Lillian before it is clear he was divorced from Evelene, and one interpretation of his marriage to Jessica is that he stole her from her first husband. His various business ventures imply that he could be aggressive and took risks, but there isn’t necessarily any evidence that he did anything wrong.
All we can do sometimes is keep digging and assume the best.
Newspapers.com, The Jersey City News, Jersey City, New Jersey, Wed, Jun 10, 1896, Page 2, Divorce Suit Heard Before a Special Master Today.
Newspapers.com, Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, Thu, May 24, 1900, Page 17, Opp & Grundy bankruptcy notice.
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Wed, Jan 30, 1918, Page 13, "Aluminum War Co., Million Dollar Firm To Be Located Here."
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Tue, Apr 19, 1921, Page 9, "Sockholders' Representative Takes Charge of The Affairs At Aluminum Company Factory."
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Fri, Apr 22, 1921, Page 7, "James H. Opp Turns Over Property To Aluminum Company As Protection."
It's very frustrating for you to have questions left unanswered but you just never know when that little bit of information will turn up that you need.