Walkabout: A Fortune from Gold and Guano

Thomas D. Carman was a very successful merchant, living in 19th century Brooklyn Heights, at 3 Poplar Street, an address that is now part of the on ramp to the BQE. While life as a successful merchant certainly has its economic and social perks, it’s not usually a profession that inspires storytelling. But Mr. Carman’s life was different. He lived a very long and interesting life at an interesting time, and was a party to history. Here’s his story.

The Carman family was an old one, with a long history in Hempstead, Long Island. Thomas D. Carman’s parents, Richard and Ann, were both Carman’s, distantly related. Their marriage joined two separate branches of the family. They had ten children. Thomas was born in Hempstead in July of 1809. Richard Carman, Thomas’ father, was a very successful businessman and property owner. There was a Richard Carman who made a fortune rebuilding Manhattan after the Great Fire of 1835, and was the builder of India House, at Hanover Square. This Richard Carman also founded Carmansville, a small village along the Hudson River about where Trinity Cemetery is located at around 152nd Street in upper Manhattan. In fact, he sold the land upon which the cemetery is built to Trinity Church, and was good friends with the Audubon family. But it is unclear if he is the same man as Thomas D. Carman’s father. Some of the dates don’t match up, but some family members doing their genealogies think he’s the same man. At any rate, Thomas Carman was from successful stock.

Thomas went into the merchandise business, first in Hempstead, and then in Brooklyn. He married Ann Denton in 1830, and moved to Brooklyn in 1840. He was a partner in a merchant and tailoring business in 1844, with a large storefront on Fulton Street. But his health began to fail, and his doctor recommended that he go somewhere with large open spaces. So, in 1852, he chartered a schooner, and set sail for Australia. But like the good merchant he was, this was not a vacation or a health cruise. He filled the hold of his ship with a cargo of small cast iron cooking stoves, and headed to the site of Australia’s booming gold rush. The miners in their remote locations snapped up the stoves for exorbitant prices, and a fortune was made. Carman immediately had more stoves shipped on the next boat out.

He also discovered that the Australians knew nothing about stage coaches, so he established the first stage coach route to the gold fields. This venture netted him even more money than the stoves did, and three years later, Thomas Carman returned to Brooklyn an extremely wealthy (and healthy) man. That was in 1845. A year later, he built his house at 3 Poplar Street, which was reportedly a large comfortable and elegant home, one that he lived in with his wife and two children, for the rest of his life.

He was still in trade, however, not one to simply sit on a fortune. Perhaps it was his farm upbringing in Hempstead, perhaps it was his time in Australia, but Thomas Carman then went into the guano business. Bird poop makes great fertilizer. A series of ads that ran for weeks in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1859 report: “Pure unadulterated guano – the American Guano Company have on hand and offer for sale, the cargoes of the ships White Swallow, Flying Eagle and Flying Dragon, contained from Jarvis Island. This guano is sold in quantities to suit purchasers. Price, $40 per ton. Other cargoes are expected soon, and the supply will be regular. The farmers and gardeners of Long Island are urged to give this guano a trial. Those who have used it consider it fully equal to the best Peruvian. Pamphlets with details and analysis, certificates, references, etc, will be furnished on application to Thomas D. Carman, 29 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.”

The Carman family had a lot of land on Long Island, and in 1867, Thomas added to it by purchasing what became known as the Rural Experimental Farm in East Rockaway. The Carman’s had a summer home there, and part of the fifty acre farm overlooked the sea. Thomas and Ann had two children, a son named Elbert and a daughter, Adelaide. Adelaide would marry into the wealthy Snedecker family, a prominent and old Dutch Knickerbocker family. Elbert became a very well respected agriculturist and writer. His father gave him the editorship and running of a magazine he bought, called “Moore’s Rural New Yorker”, and Elbert turned the magazine into one of the most influential publications on farming.

The farm in East Rockaway became his grand experiment, in which Elbert experimented with different varieties of corn, wheat, and potatoes, developing hardier strains in all of them. He developed several new varieties of potatoes, and, in 1884, Elbert grew the largest yield of corn ever to grow in a field of the size he used, in the world. The corn was the result of his experiments in cross breeding different strains. The entire crop was sold to the Department of Agriculture for further development and distribution across the country. He also hybridized the Rosa Rugosa with another rose, and developed the Agnes Emily Carman rose, named after his wife, a hardy rose with a delicate fragrance. Elbert would actually outshine his father, for his many contributions to agriculture, and he appears often in 19th century publications. Unfortunately, Elbert was never in the greatest of health, and he died in 1900, only a few years after both his parents.

Meanwhile, well before 1900, his father Thomas would continue to purchase land in Long Island, his next purchase being a tract of land in Massapequa, upon which he built the Massapequa Hotel and resort, a popular summer retreat with cottages, as well as a large, well-appointed resort hotel. He sank a lot of money into the hotel, over $365,000, by the time of his own death in 1896.

Thomas Carman was worth well over a million dollars during his lifetime, and was one of Brooklyn’s many Gilded Age millionaires. Like many of Brooklyn’s rich men, he sat on the board of directors of banks and insurance companies. He was a large stockholder and board member of the Brooklyn City Railroad, and had stock in the Union Ferry Company and the Brooklyn Gas Company. He was not an ostentatious or overly social man, and he and his wife rarely made the society pages. He was an active member of Holy Trinity Church. His beloved wife Ann had died at the age of 83 in 1890, and on April 6, 1896, after a sudden fever, Thomas Carman died in his home at the ripe old age of 87. His funeral was at home, at 3 Poplar Street, and he was buried with the seal of the Society of Old Brooklynites.

After the death, four years later, of Elbert Carman, the family fortune went to daughter Adelaide Snedeker. Only months after her brother’s death, the Snedekers sold the valuable land comprising the Massapequa Hotel. The Long Island Railroad had an interest in the property, and it was ripe for development, as it lay near the sea. Two months later, in November, the Snedekers also sold Elbert’s Rural Experiment Farm in East Rockaway. They did really, really well. The developer who bought it planned large estates on the property. Thomas and Ann Carman are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. Forgotten except by distant family members, now exploring their genealogy, the Carman’s are part of Brooklyn’s history of success and innovation.