Perkasie is a borough that was built by the cigar industry starting in the Victorian era. Today, parts of a legacy still exist for a business that mostly left town by 1930—with one exception. Here is a brief look at Perkasie’s tobacco trade and the last survivor that became Perkasie’s best-known cigar maker.
Between 1888 and 1928, at least 20 cigar factories were based in Perkasie, including smaller operations. In 1927, local resident Horace E. Snyder was the last person to start his own cigar factory in Perkasie, after serving as a supervisor for another factory in town and running a home-based business. In a few years, H. E. Snyder was the only remaining cigar maker in Perkasie. Its White Ash, Izaak Walton and Senate Club brands were popular regionally for decades.
The new H.E. Snyder Cigar Factory on Fourth Street, 1929.
Cigars and the North Penn Railroad Corridor
The cigar industry played a major role in Perkasie’s early twentieth century growth as employment rates rose to 40 percent in the borough, and of that workforce, almost half working in the cigar industry between 1900 and 1920.[1] During that time, the most prominent cigar manufacturers in Perkasie were Boltz and Clymer Co., Jacob Langsdorf, Roig and Langsdorf, and Juan Portuondo, all of Philadelphia, and Theobold & Oppenheimer of New York City.
Perkasie, like other nearby stops on Pennsylvania and Reading railroad, offered favorable business conditions, access to affordable labor, and in the beginning, trained local cigar makers.[2] Sellersville, Quakertown and Souderton also benefitted much from the cigar business. Lansdale, while having a few cigar factories, had a more diverse industry base.
In an 1924 interview, one of Perkasie’s founders, Abraham Hendricks, recalled growing tobacco just south of the future borough in Bridgetown during the 1860s. Hendricks said it was common for farmers to make their own cigars, or for traveling cigar makers to make them for a nominal cost or a share of the crop.[3]
The economics of the railroad and the need for cigar companies based in Philadelphia to find better labor conditions led to the tobacco trade’s expansion north of Lansdale on the train line. In 1886, the Philadelphia firm Boltz, Clymer and Co., advertised in Perkasie’s newspaper, the Central News, for workers to travel to the city. Two years later, Boltz, Clymer bought land in Perkasie for a two-story factory at Seventh and Walnut Streets that opened in April 1888. That same year, Otto Eisenlohr of Philadelphia was looking for cigar workers in Sellersville.
The 1894 Fowler Map of Perkasie. Roig (marked as 22) and Boltz (marked as 21). The Perkasie Train Station is marked as 25. Main Street would be renamed as Chestnut Street.
In 1892, Philadelphia cigar maker Roig and Langsdorf took over the original Perkasie School House on Chestnut Street as a factory. Local investors then formed a group to build a second large factory to keep Roig and Langsdorf in the borough. It took possession of the three-story facility on June 1, 1894. [4] Boltz and Roig employed about 300 workers at each building by 1901.
Perkasie’s other cigar in 1894 was Jeitles, Sulzburger and Jeitles, which moved into the former Perkasie school house on Chestnut Street in 1894 when Roig and Langsdorf moved to its big factory. Jeitles employed 100 workers and left town in 1896. At the same time, Jacob Langsdorf Cigars moved into a large Victorian Queen Anne style building, the Cressman block on Seventh Street. The building could hold between 400 and 500 workers, but it was mostly used as a space shared with other businesses.[5]
A Regional Business Takes Root
The tobacco industry’s regional importance in the area from Souderton to Quakertown during the 1890s, setting the stage for three decades of growth. An examination of official inspection reports, state industrial directories, trade journals, and newspapers shows
In 1896, Sellersville had nine cigar makers, including H.C. Nolan with 47 workers and Otto Eisenlohr with 43 employees. Quakertown had eight cigar makers, with Henry Sommer with 80 workers and Allen & Marshall with 75 employees. In comparison, Perkasie had three cigar makers: Boltz with 192 workers, Roig with 104 employees and Jeitles with 60 workers.[6]
Sellersville had its own Cigar Factory row in the early 1900s
As the cigar trade grew on the North Penn line, its towns were popular locations for outside businesses to relocate. Over the next 20 years Perkasie’s major cigar makers were managed from home offices in Philadelphia and New York City, except for a few small local firms. Noah Crouthamel of East Rockhill Township operated a cigar factory with about 30 employees in South Perkasie, which later moved to Arch Street in the early 1900s. Monroe Gabel, John Fly, and Joseph Gerhart were also local cigar makers who ran small shops. In the World War I era, local cigar makers Nungesser-Bowen had a store and shop with six employees on Chestnut Street.
In 1903, Perkasie remained an important location for cigar making. According to state inspection reports, there were 564 people working in four Perkasie factories: Boltz, Clymer (244), Roig and Langsdorf (220), Perkasie Cigar (57), and Langsdorf (43), with 19 children under the age of 16 working in factories.
The Antonio Roig & Langsdorf Factory, circa. 1910. Traveling cigar makers could stay at the Trio Hotel.
In comparison, Souderton had 318 cigar workers at H.B. Gramley, Pent Brothers of Philadelphia and Vetterlein of Philadelphia, with 31 children under the age of 16 working in the business. In Sellersville, Allen B. Cressman (57 workers), Otto Eisenlohr of Philadelphia (206 workers), and H.C. Nolan (60 workers) were the borough’s main employers, with a combined workforce of 323 employees, with 15 minors. Quakertown had two major cigar makers with 173 employees: Graham Ernst of Connecticut (75 workers), and H. Sommer (98 workers), with 18 minors.[7]
In 1905, it was reported that the major cigar factories in Perkasie produced more than 36 million cigars per year, similar to the production scale of nearby towns and boroughs such as Quakertown and Souderton which had comparable populations at the time.[8]
By 1910, Perkasie’s population grew once more, to nearly 2,800 residents, and almost half of the residents who had jobs worked in the cigar industry.[9] In 1913, the Perkasie Central News reported that five of the six biggest employers in the borough were cigar makers, producing 630,000 cigars a week.[10]
The three-story Jacob Langsdorf Cigar Factory in 1908 also known as the Cressman Block. The American House hotel was below the building.
During the period between 1910 and 1920, more outside firms set up shops in the North Penn corridor, including Perkasie. In 1916 Industrial Directory of Pennsylvania, Theobold & Oppenheimer of New York had factories in Perkasie and 10 other regional locations, including Quakertown, Trumbauersville, Reading, and Pottstown. (In a similar 1913 survey, T&O only had four factories in the state and none in Perkasie.) Roig and Langsdorf’s regional locations in 1916 were Perkasie and Quakertown and its home office in Philadelphia.[11] The Boltz Clymer business had closed in 1914.
The End of an Era
The regional cigar business began experiencing long-term problems by the end of 1919. Perkasie’s three biggest employers were still cigar factories: Roig and Langsdorf (261 workers), Otto Eisenlohr (164 workers), and Theobold & Oppenheimer (91 workers). Eisenlohr had significant factories in Sellersville with 194 workers and in Souderton with 204 workers, while Theobold & Oppenheimer employed 167 people in Quakertown and 111 workers in Telford.[12]
However, after a nationwide strike in July1919, automated cigar-rolling machines were introduced to the manufacturing process and led to mass layoffs at cigar factories throughout the country. In Perkasie, 368 workers at five of its six cigar factories went out on strike in late July, with Eisenlohr the exception.
The J.G. Moyer building at Seventh and Market hosted several cigar operations as late as 1928.
During the 1920s, cigar makers retained a presence regionally, but employees saw more seasonal layoffs and fewer work hours. The 1921 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for Perkasie showed seven cigar makers in town: Otto Eisenlohr, General Cigar, E. Kleiner, Julius Klorfein, Nungesser-Bowen, Roig & Landsdorf, and E. Vallens.
Slowly, the remaining cigar makers faded away. In March 1922, Julius Klorfein moved to Pennsburg after its rent increased in Perkasie. Eisenlohr left Perkasie in 1923, with General Cigar hiring its workers at its Fourth and Chestnut Street factory. Vallens had left Perkasie a year earlier.
By 1925, the cigar business regionally had greatly diminished. Roig and Langsdorf had factories in Perkasie with 98 workers, Quakertown with 156 workers and Trumbauersville with 131 workers, but many of the former major players statewide were out of business.
On August 6, 1926, Roig and Langsdorf announced the company was leaving Perkasie. It owned three factories in town, but Roig was only using its main Chestnut Street facility, with just 60 employees. In late 1927, Perkasie’s General Cigar factory shut down, leaving 160 people in Perkasie without jobs. General Cigar had hired most of Roig, Eisenlohr and Klorfein workers when those firms left Perkasie.
By 1930, Perkasie’s workforce in the cigar industry dropped from 30 percent to just seven percent.[13] That year, the workforce had shifted over the past decade from making cigars to clothing and other light manufacturing companies began operations in the borough.
Perkasie’s Last Cigar Maker: Horace Snyder
One exception to the exodus was Perkasie cigar maker Horace E. Snyder. He owned a home business in 1919 with his wife and family members as employees while Snyder was working full time as the cigar factory supervisor for E. Kleiner and Co. Snyder owned the rights to the popular White Ash brand five cent cigar that he developed in 1915. That same year Snyder began working full-time at the Kleiner factory. In 1924, Horace, his wife Sallie, and his son Harold legally formed H.E. Snyder Cigar Company. The company hired Horace’s brother to set up and run a cigar factory in Sumneytown.
Horace E. Snyder, 1953
In September 1927, Horace Snyder resigned from Kleiner and officially started a project to add a new cigar factory on Walnut Street near his home. Initially H.E. Snyder rented space at the former Roig factory on Eighth Street while his new factory, designed by Perkasie architect Edward L. Smith, was built.
By 1928, Snyder employed 101 workers in Perkasie and Sumneytown for his own brands. Coraza Cigars, operated by Howard Pent of Philadelphia, had 67 employees in 1928 at the J.G. Moyer building in Perkasie, and Kleiner had 40 employees in Perkasie on Arch Street. In comparison that year, Souderton had one cigar firm left, J.H. Wisler, with 13 employees, while Quakertown had 78 employees at the C. Sommer factory and 69 employees at William Muhlhauser.
In December 1928, the 52 employees at Kleiner learned they were losing their jobs just before the holidays. Snyder, their former supervisor, hired them all to join his company, which needed help for his growing business.
Snyder’s success did not go unnoticed. In a speech at a Perkasie Chamber of Commerce meeting, President Walter Terry noted that “Twenty years ago, Perkasie’s population was approximately 1,800 and of those 800 were cigar makers. Today with 3,500 population we have less than 250 cigar makers. It is conclusive evidence that we have outgrown the one-industry stage.” He then introduced Snyder to the group whose success was called “little short of phenomenal.”[14]
The success of H. E. Snyder continued into the next decade. In 1931, Snyder now employed 320 workers at his own cigar factory on Fourth Street in Perkasie and about 200 more workers at other facilities.[15] Regionally, only the C.A. Nolan factory in Sellersville (120 workers), Somner in Quakertown (59 workers) and Wistler in Souderton (16 workers) remained on the old North Penn rail line. The Coraza firm closed because of a financial scandal related to a bank that secretly owned the company.[16]
H.E. Snyder’s Izaak Walton brand in later years.
By 1935, H.E. Snyder was facing difficult conditions in the cigar trade as one of the few makers who insisted on only selling handmade cigars; his competition almost exclusively used machines. On March 23, 1935, Snyder announced the company would use machines going forward to produce its two for a nickel brands, which made up 75% of its production.[17] Since its peak production years, Snyder had already reduced his force of traditional cigar makers greatly and annual production fell from 20 million cigars to 6 million.
In the following years, H.E. Snyder had a loyal following for its various brands and in 1940 the Perkasie factory was producing at a rate of 11 million cigars per year, and hiring extra shifts.[18] During World War II, Snyder’s employment rose to 130 workers, including women hired to run the machines in the absence of male workers.
At the time of his death in 1953, H. E. Snyder Cigars had 75 workers in Perkasie; it remained in business until the early 1960s.
In April 1953, Snyder’s friend (and a former cigar worker) Perkasie News-Herald editor John Sprenkel recalled how Snyder got his own business. “His life’s work epitomizes the volumes that have been written about the free enterprise of our American system,” he said. “Thousands of cigarmakers in the North Penn area observed the transition in cigar values but only Snyder interpreted it as ‘opportunity knocking at his door,’” as Sprenkel recalled the 1920s.[19]
Remaining Buildings in Perkasie
At least nine of the former cigar factory buildings remain intact in Perkasie today.
- The original Roig and Langsdorf factory at 800 West Chestnut Street is owned by a non-profit charitable organization that runs a food pantry and offers social services.
- The Theobold & Oppenheimer factory, designed by Oscar Martin in 1907, at 820 West Market Street, has been converted to condominiums.
- The H.E. Snyder facility at 214 South Fourth Street has been subdivided into flexible office space.
- Perkasie’s former Opera House at 401 West Walnut Street hosted several cigar makers including General Cigar and Godfrey S. Mann; today it is owned by an architectural antiques firm.
- The Fourth and Chestnut Street factory, once used by Eisenlohr, General Cigar, and Juan Portoundo, at 111 South Fourth Street, was damaged in a fire of suspicious origins in 1930, but repaired. Today, it is a storage facility for another antiques trader.
- Julius Klorfein’s factory at 522 Walnut Street has been converted into apartments.
- Roig and Langsdorf used the original Perkasie School House at 509 Chestnut Street from 1892 to 1894 for cigar making.
- Harry Neamand’s Drug Store at Seventh and Chestnut hosted the Gerhart Cigar Company in 1913.
- The former Relief Circle Hall in South Perkasie at 410 East Walnut Street hosted a cigar factory for several years in the early 1900s.
Lost Buildings
- The Cressman Block fire of 1922 destroyed the entire facility shortly after cigar maker Eugene Vallens Co. relocated to Argus, Pa. It was being used for retail businesses and fraternal organizations. The current Perkasie Improvement Block building, designed by Oscar Martin, took its place in 1924.
- The J.G. Moyer Building, designed in 1896 by Milton Bean, was expanded to include a cigar factory. It was first used briefly by M.D. Neuman Cigars and then later by the Perkasie Cigar Company, United Cigars, Roig & Langsdorf and Coraza Cigars. The Moyer building was lost in Perkasie’s Great Fire in 1988. A modern office building is now in the same location.
- The Boltz, Clymer building was lost in the Juvenile Furniture plant fire of 1961. A municipal parking lot is in the same location.
- The building used by E. Kleiner and Co., at 530 Arch Street, designed by Oscar Martin, was demolished in 1936 and replaced by a service station. It is currently an automobile repair shop.
- The Nungesser-Bowen shop, later acquired by Harry Diehl, operated just before and after World War I on the second floor of 603 West Sixth Street. The building was lost in a fire in the 1920s.
- Horace Snyder in 1918 used the former Bourse Building on Sixth Street next to the Union Hotel to start making his White Ash brand outside of his home. Both buildings were demolished in 1968 for urban renewal. A retail kitchen design store is in the location today.
Known Cigar Manufacturers in Perkasie
- Boltz, Clymer
- Coraza (Pent)
- Eisenlohr, Otto
- General Cigar
- Hilbronner & Jacobs
- Jeitles, Sulzburger and Jeitles
- Kleiner, E.
- Klorfein, Julius
- Langsdorf, Jacob
- Mann, Godfrey S.
- Neuman, M.D.
- Nungesser-Bowen
- Perkasie Cigars
- Portoundo, Juan
- Roig and Langsdorf
- Snyder, H.E.
- Standard Cigar Company Martin Sacks
- Theobold & Oppenheimer
- United Cigars
- Vallens, E.
Footnotes
[1] United States of America, Bureau of the Census. 1900. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C. Available at: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7602/?redirectFor=db.aspx.
[2] Patrica Cooper’s, Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900–1919 is the seminal work in the field and explains the importance of unions in the cigar trade.
[3] A Collection of Papers Read Before The Bucks County Historical Society, vol. 5, 1926. Available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x030224090
[4] Perkasie Central News, Jan. 10, 1901.
[5] Perkasie Central News, Nov. 26, 1896.
[6] Pennsylvania. Dept. of Factory Inspector, Annual report of the Factory Inspector of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the year (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, State Printer), 1896.
[7] Pennsylvania. Dept. of Factory Inspector, Annual report of the Factory Inspector of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the year (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, State Printer), 1903
[8] “The Cigar Business,” Perkasie Central News, Nov. 30, 1905.
[9] United States of America, Bureau of the Census. 1910. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. Washington, D.C. Available at: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7884/?redirectFor=db.aspx.
[10] Perkasie Central News, Nov. 12, 1913.
[11] Industrial directory of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Labor and Industry v.2 (Harrisburg: Bureau of Statistics and Information, 1914-1920).
[12] Industrial directory of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Labor and Industry, v. 3 (Harrisburg: Bureau of Statistics and Information, 1914-1920).
[13] United States of America, Bureau of the Census. 1930. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington D.C., available at: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6224/?redirectFor=db.aspx.
[14] “Walter Terry on the Cigar Business.” Perkasie Central News, Jan. 25, 1928).
[15] Industrial directory of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Labor and Industry v.7. 1931.
[16] Philadelphia Inquirer, March 17, 1953, 8. Pent was absolved in the scandal 20 years after his fraud conviction.
[17] Perkasie Central News, March 28, 1935.
[18] Perkasie Central News, June 25, 1940.
[19] Perkasie News-Herald, April 9, 1953.
