Camden People - Francis Rittenhouse

FRANCIS HULL RITTENHOUSE was born in Camden NJ on June 29, 1923 to John F. and Madeline "Nell" Rittenhouse. He had an older brother named John and two older step-brothers Robert and William Rowan. The family lived at 941 Point Street in North Camden, where John F, Rittenhouse owned and operated a store at selling groceries, cigars, candy, ice cream and the like with his wife Madeline until his death in February of 1933. His wife carried the business forward through 1959, when his stepson, William "Woo-Woo" Rowan took over upon her retirement. The store, known in its later years in the neighborhood simply as "Woo-Woo's", remained open into he 1970s.

Both John and Francis Rittenhouse worked at the nearby Mathis Shipyard. as did stepbrother William Rowan, while stepson Robert Rowan worked in Camden's leather trade, most likely at the nearby John R. Evans & Co. leather factory. Francis Rittenhouse also was a mummer with the Fralinger String Band in Philadelphia.

Francis Rittenhouse was married, and with wife Gertrude had two daughters, Frances and Trudy. Sadly, like his father before him, Francis Rittenhouse passed away at an early age, in September of 1975, at the age of 52.

My grandmother and grandfather were the owners of the store at 941 Point Street. My father was his son... his name was Francis Hull Rittenhouse. He worked at Mathis Shipyard and so did my uncle John Rittenhouse.

My grandmother, after my grandfather died, needed to make money and was a bootlegger and she had an ice cream sign, an Eskimo ice cream sign. When the little red light was on, it meant she had liquor.

My grandmother was speaking to her delivery man on the phone, he was in a phone booth [on River Road] when Unruh went crazy and killed people in the store, he missed this man.

Frances J. Rittenhouse
October 2005