Hard Times Merchant Token – Howell Works Garden Allaire Village, New Jersey

Reverse

Legend and date

Script: Latin

Lettering: SIGNUM 1834

Translation: Token 1834

Edge

Plain

Comment

HT-200 is R-4 with 76-200 known. It is a smaller diameter, and less common than HT-201, the other Howell Works Garden token.

Benjamin Betterton Howell (1786-1841) was the lessee of the Manasquan Furnace iron works in Monmouth County, New Jersey when James P. Allaire (1785-1858) bought the property in 1822. He named his iron works after him. Howell was lost at sea along with 135 other passengers and crew of the steamboat President sailing from New York to Liverpool in 1841. The Howell Works used charcoal furnaces to smelt iron. Allaire village was built which Allairevillage.org describes as “a community of approx. 400 workers and their families. The Howell Works was designed to be a self-sustaining community that would integrate all of the economic components needed to support Allaire’s businesses (production of the bulk pig iron to be shipped and cast into machine parts at Allaire Works in NY, for use in the building of the ships for the (Allaire owned) Steamboat Packet Lines.” The village of Allaire had three blocks of row houses, a chapel, a blacksmith shop, a bakery, the “big house” where Allaire and his family lived when there, and a general store. It is likely these tokens were used in the store. The iron business peaked around 1836 then gradually declined until it closed in 1846. Many of the buildings have now been restored as The Historic Village at Allaire, a living history museum in Farmingdale, New Jersey.

The Monmouth Enquirer, Freehold NJ, 15 Sept 1836