Benjamin & William Wilde    

BENJAMIN and WILLIAM WILDE were brothers. Both were born in England and both came with their father to America to engage in the manufacture of woolens, the business the father had been pursuing in the old country. A factory was soon in operation in New Jersey for he had brought many of his former employees with him. Shortly after 1840, the sons came to New Brighton and started a factory to manufacture shawls and some other woolens in a building that had been formerly used as a felt works. Apparently the structure was not large enough or suitable for their purpose for in a few years they erected new and much larger buildings.

The shawl works of B. & W. Wilde are described in an editorial of the New Brighton Record, issued June 10, 1854, as an extensive brick factory, five stories high, the power of which was furnished by a powerful water wheel. It was sixty-eight feet in front and thirty-eight feet wide, with a small wing in the rear used as a dye room. The operations on each floor are then enumerated, and there follows additional description beginning “Immediately opposite the factory building is another large four story brick, the first floor of which is occupied by the offices of the proprietors etc.” Then more details of the use of the other three floors of this structure. Evidently there were two factory buildings. Nothing is stated about the number of employees, but it is averred that 40,000 pounds of wool were used annually in the manufacture of about 400 shawls per week, ranging in price from $1.50 to $6.00 each.

There followed many prosperous years in which it would appear that at one time, David Shields, Horatio W. Wilde, son of Benjamin, and Charles Hoopes became interested in the proprietorship, but descendants state that when the works burned later, B. & W. Wilde heirs were the sole owners. During their days of prosperity or about 1851, Benjamin Wilde erected for his residence what is now known as the VanDyke Apartments at Sixteenth Street and Third Avenue. It was made of brick from the abandoned St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at Fallston, and by reason of its construction of old material, it was stuccoed on the outside, a novelty in good house building at that time. It was his family home for many years, but was sold before his demise.

A new church was projected for New Brighton and the Messrs. Wilde were both upon the building committee, and in addition to being chairman, Benjamin was its dominant personality. It was due to his architectural ideas that the Christ Episcopal congregation is housed in what is said to be one of the most perfect examples of small Gothic construction in America. Its cornerstone was laid in 1851 and a memorial window in it is dedicated to Mr. Wilde for his artistic achievement.

Then within the next few years, probably about 1867, came the fire that not only destroyed the larger factory and contents, but wiped out most of the Wilde brothers’ assets. William Wilde, meanwhile became temporarily employed in a large New York City store, where he was accidentally injured and from which he never recovered, but died in the home he had just shortly before purchased at Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street. He had for years before lived in the stone Barkers Bank Building at Eighth Street and Third Avenue, torn down and replaced by the Y. M. C. A. building. He was born in 1816 and died in 1864. His wife was Cynthia Peck who died in 1902. Mr. and Mrs. William Wilde had 4 children, Miss Elizabeth, living in New Brighton; Louisa, died in 1899; Alfred, died when 22 years of age; and Ella G., wife of George D. Douglass, who died in 1925. The latter couple are the parents of Herbert W. and Thomas L. Douglass.

Benjamin Wilde was considerably older than his brother. After the fire he was a Justice of the Peace with his office in what is now the Merrick Art Gallery. His wife was an English lady and they were the parents of Horatio W. and Isabella Wilde. Louisa, wife of Benjamin Wilde, died July 13, 1879 and her husband about three years later. Horatio W. Wilde married Amelia, daughter of William P. Townsend. He died in 1936. Mrs. Wilde died about 1923. Three children survive, Edwin, Maurice C. and Herbert, the latter two of Beaver.

History of New Brighton 1838-1939, published by the Historical Committee of the Centennial, Butler, PA, pages 57-58. More Beaver County History Books  Search Hundreds of 1880s-1890s Pennsylvania County History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file! Free Access to the old history books - plus birth & death records, census images and ALL other records at ancestry.com