I’d seen the dealer at this auction house many times before. I never found him very friendly, but lately he had begun to nod or offer a quiet hello to me.
I knew that he drove down from New York to this South Jersey spot, and he wasn’t the only one with the name of a faraway state on a truck. Some folks come from far-away towns in the South.
He was a squat man, a bit chubby, and like many of us auction-goers, he had developed an expertise in the items that had sold well for him. That’s a skill learned from spending many years dealing in vintage and antique items – some junk, some not – and developing a good eye.
On this Sunday, I stood outside the auction house taking in a full-size painted horse and wagon when the dealer came out a front door that led to a room where auction numbers were handed out.
The black wagon was long and lean, and bore the name of its owner and its purpose in bold yellow lettering:
“Seabrook and Sons. Fancy Jersey Produce.”
It was likely an advertising display that I’m sure brought back memories for a lot of older buyers and dealers who walked right past it to get to the auction in the back. It called up no memories for me, but it did for the dealer from New York.
I used to ride on the back of one of these when I was young, said the man, whose name I did not know. That’s not uncommon at auction: We all know each other’s faces because we end up at the same auction houses, but we rarely exchange names. One thing we do know is what a particular person specializes in.
The man told me he was raised on a farm and recalled sitting on the back of his father’s wagon while cars passed by. He lamented how things had changed since those laid-back days. His family’s wagon was smaller, he said, and it was pulled by a mule.
As he moved on to the auction with scarcely a “see you later,” I remembered my mother, aunt and uncles sharing the same experience. They, too, had sat in the back of their father’s wagon as he hauled produce to market to sell or to be weighed. They were children in the 1930s and they lived on a farm in Georgia where they were required to plant and harvest. It was hard tedious work that they complained about even then when they were older.
The name Seabrook had been spoken quite often during the auction. A lot of items – particularly household goods – from the estate were being sold that day. Much of it went for very little money; many times, the auctioneer dropped the price to $2.50 before anyone would bid.
The company was originally called Seabrook Farms and was founded in 1870 by Albert C. Seabrook. In the 1930s, his son Charles F. entered a business partnership with Clarence Birdseye to quick-freeze vegetables. Seabrook was one of the largest producers of packaged frozen food in the country and had the world’s largest processing operation, based in Upper Deerfield, Cumberland County. The company also supplied frozen food to the U.S. military during World War II.
Charles F. was known as the “Henry Ford of Agriculture,” a nickname given to him by the founder of Forbes magazine.
Seabrook Farms appears to also be known for its diverse workforce at the time – consisting of Japanese Americans (whom Charles F. recruited) who had been detained in U.S. internment camps, German prisoners of war who were used as laborers, migrant workers, and European and Asian immigrants. There were so many new people coming to the area that the company built housing (some of which was both crowded and drafty).
While Charles F. offered employment, these jobs were labor-intensive and tough, and the pay and working conditions were awful.
By the late 1940s, more Japanese lived in the town of Seabrook – which was named after Charles F. – than anywhere else in the country. After the war, many of the workers of all ethnicities stayed in the county.
Charles F. sold his stake in the company in 1959 during a time of strained relations with his sons, who eventually sold their shares. His son John is said to have helped re-start “the sport of horse-drawn ‘coaching’” in this country, assembling a collection of carriages. The company itself was revived in the late 1970s by Charles F.’s grandsons who opened a new processing plant under the name Seabrook Brothers and Sons Inc.
