John
H.
Heaton

JOHN H. HEATON was born around 1878 to Clayton C. and Anna Heaton. His parents had married in Camden County in 1864, and by 1870 had moved to the Cinnaminson and Palmyra area in neighboring Burlington County. Clayton C. Heaton supported his family which included three children older than John in a variety of jobs. The family was living in Cinnaminson in 1870, Clayton Heaton then employed as a store clerk, and in Palmyra in 1880, when he was working as a farm laborer. In the mid 1880s Clayton Heaton, having found work as a salesman in Philadelphia, brought his family to Camden. The 1887-1888 City Directory shows the Heatons at 69 State Street, which later became Kelly's Bar before being razed in the 1970s. The family relocated to 319 North Front Street in 1888, and was there as late as 1891.

John Heaton grew up and followed a career in sales. He married at the age of 18. Already a prominent businessman by 1912, he was a charter member of the Rotary Club of Camden. His business, the John H. Heaton Piano Company, was then located at 21 Broadway.

At the time of the 1920 Census, John Heaton, with his wife Eda owned a home at 423 North 4th Street, between Cole and Pearl Streets. The John Heaton family also included a 10 year old daughter, named Eda after her mother. By this time John H. Heaton had moved his piano business to 528 Market Street in Camden.  In the early 1920s James J. Scott purchased two pianos from John H. Heaton for use at the new Walt Whitman Hotel, at Broadway and Cooper Street.

The property at 528 Market Street was one of many acquired by the City of Camden in the very late 1920s for the site of the new City Hall. By April of 1930 John H. Heaton and family had moved to Moorestown NJ, where they bought a home at 112 Colonial Ridge, the corner of Camden Avenue and Colonial Ridge, where he was still living as late as 1936. As the 1936 New Jersey Bell Telephone Directory, however, has no listing for the piano business in Camden, it appears that he moved his business Moorestown. 

Camden Morning Post
November 21, 1930

North 4th Street
Market Street
Markley Place

John Stoer
Louis Katz
The Temple Bar - Jennie Gondolf
T. Yorke Smith & John Rand
The Temple Building
John H. Heaton
John Dick
Alice M. Wesley
Louis Berkowitz

Post Office & Federal Building