I didn't just pick this impression out of a hat. As I've already said, I have some reenacting experience, so I already knew I had the temperament and predilection to do historic impressions. The subject, however, is not one that the average person on the street would choose or even think of as a subject to recreate, unless...
I was a Correctional Officer. In late 1989 I walked into a correctional facility in New Jersey as a recruit Correction Officer. I walked out in mid 2015 into retirement as a Major, a commanding officer at New Jersey State Prison, the maximum security lockup at Trenton. In 25 1/2 years on the job I saw, heard and did many things, as one would expect- some good, some bad, and much of it challenging. In and around the career, I developed a burning curiosity about the history of the State Prison and the Officers who served there over the last two centuries. I'd always been curious about prison history, but the burning part started one evening while I was on an online genealogy site, working on my family tree.
I was hard at work filling in the blanks in my tree, searching and verifying resources, tracing family lines and connections, and with no warning whatsoever something pivotal happened: I found someone I was not expecting. I discovered a text transcription of a City Directory for Trenton, New Jersey dated 1882, and unsurprisingly I dove right in looking for people named Sanderson. After skimming the S section it became sadly obvious that there were none. I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised- I was to find out when I finally managed to trace my bloodline that my Sanderson family was not only very elusive, but also they weren't from New Jersey- They were from Massachusetts- My 2nd Great Grandfather came down to Jersey in the 1890's when he became a partner in a business in Trenton and married there a few years later.
When I didn't find any of the relatives I was searching for, I let my curiosity roam, settled in with an iced tea and browsed the document. It was an early enough edition- 1882- that there were no telephone numbers listed with the names- In 1882 very few telephones were to be found in private homes in America. The directory consisted of a simple alphabetical listing of names, followed by each person's address and their occupation. It was interesting to look at everyone's place of work and career written right there. Teamster. Cooper. Potter. Deputy State Prison Keeper. Dressmaker. WAIT- Go Back! DEPUTY WHAT?Yup, there it was. Deputy State Prison Keeper. This guy worked at the State Prison in 1882! I started scanning the occupations and I began to find more and more of them. I was tickled- Here I was, a modern day correctional officer, looking at the names of the staff who worked in the very place I was serving, back in 1882. It was very, very cool.
I then realized that the directory I was looking at had been scanned through an Optical Character Recognition program and had been posted as text on a web page, and I could therefore highlight and copy it. I did just that, and then pasted the text into Excel, formatted it and Voila! I had a sort-able list! I sorted it so that everyone in the directory with the word PRISON listed in their occupation came out at the top, and there it was- Several dozen names- The crew at the State Prison in 1882, at least those who lived in Trenton. One guy was actually named Ahab!
I browsed through the group, looking at all of the names- There it was, that quickly, right at the top- The name I wasn't expecting: Joseph Ashmore Jr., occupation: Deputy Keeper, State Prison. That took me by surprise. I realized with a start that I'm related to Ashmores, and my Ashmores lived in Trenton during this time period. I had a feeling... I switched browser tabs over to the genealogy website where I research my family tree, followed the trunk up to the Ashmores, went back past my 3rd Great Grandmother and... There he was- Joseph Ashmore Jr., nephew of my 4th Great Grandfather!
I don't know why, but it never occurred to me that I had relatives that I never knew about that worked at the State Prison. Having now identified one, I suddenly realized that I had to know about this, my Cousin, Joe Ashmore. This was the beginning of it all. This was the tipping point where I passed from being just one of any number of correctional officers with only a passing interest in the history of the prison service in New Jersey to eventually being a full-bore, hard charging researcher, and eventually the volunteer historian of the NJDOC.
As for the period impression, it came from the discovery of and curiosity about my cousins at the State Prison as well. Yes, cousins. Joe Ashmore wasn't the only one I found. There were four more that I could identify through the old records. One of them was shot and killed in the line of duty at the State Prison in 1894. When I found out that James Lippincott, the first documented line of duty death in the history of the NJ Department of Corrections was also a distant cousin, I was hooked. The history of the service, the people who served, it had to come out of the basements and the old dusty files. It wasn't just the history I shared with all other NJ State Correction Officers. It was also personal- It was my family history.
And that's how The Vintage Prison Officer came to be. He is myself, but only because someone must don the old uniform. He's also James Lippincott, Joseph Ashmore Jr., Winfield Scott Carty, and all the rest. They were there. They made it all work. They fought and bled. Several of them died in the process. They should be remembered- and they will be.
