John J. Burleigh

JOHN J. BURLEIGH was born in 1855 to Irish immigrant parents. His father, a doctor, died around the same time John Burleigh was born. At 14 he learned how to operate a telegraph, and he went to work at the age of 15. His initiative and ability were soon recognized, and he rose rapidly in the business world. He was instrumental in founding some of the first telegraph and telephone systems in South Jersey, and also was involved in bringing electricity to Atlantic City. At the age of 42 he was already in three building and loan associations, and was running many other businesses as well.

In the late 1880s John J. Burleigh made his home at 326 State Street. As his fortunes progressed, so did his address. By 1890 he had moved to 323 Cooper Street. This would later become the home of lawyer Francis D. Weaver. By 1906 he had moved to Merchantville.

John J. Burleigh was a member of and very active in the affairs of the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Broadway at Market Street. On January 28, 1897 J. J. Burleigh was one of several dignitaries who were in attendance at the opening of the Catholic Lyceum on Broadway at Federal Street, adjacent to the church. Other attendees included New Jersey Governor John W. Griggs, Mayor John L. Westcott, late Attorney-General Samuel H. Grey, Camden city solicitor J. Willard Morgan, Senator H. W. Johnson, then-Assemblymen Louis Derousse and Scovel, Sheriff David Baird Sr., then-Postmaster Harry B. Paul, ex-Judge Armstrong, Architect Henry S. Dagit, George A. Frey, and H. L. Bonsall. The Lyceum would evolve into Camden Catholic High School.

By 1906 he was vice-president of the Public Service Corporation, the predecessor of today’s Transport of New Jersey. By 1915 he founded and was president of the Broadway Trust Company bank on Broadway in Camden.

John J. Burleigh passed away on February 8, 1917 at the age of 62, at his home at Maple Avenue and Cove Road, Merchantville.

JOHN J. BURLEIGH, one of the foremost financiers of Camden, N.J., is a man who has pushed his way to the front by his own energy. He was born in Gloucester County, New Jersey, in 1855, the only child of Francis and Margaret (Dolan) Burleigh, who were both of Irish birth.

Francis Burleigh, who was born in Newtown, Lima Vady, Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, was the son of a physician, and read medicine with his father for a while; but he had no taste for professional work, and he had a desire to see the “land of the free,” the goal of so many of his countrymen. He sailed for America when a young man, and settled on a farm in Gloucester County, New Jersey, where he died in 1855, aged thirty-eight years. He was a member of the old Scotch Presbyterian church. His wife, Mrs. Margaret D. Burleigh, who was born in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, Ireland, also came to this country when quite young. She died in 1882, aged forty-four years. She was a member of the Roman Catholic church.

John J. Burleigh received his early education in the public schools of Salem, N.J., whither his mother removed when he was five years old. He took up the study of telegraphy at the age of fourteen, and a year later entered the service of the West Jersey Railroad Company (afterward a portion of the system of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company) as station agent and telegraph operator at Elmer, N.J. In those days the fuel used in all of the locomotives was cord wood; and a part of the young agent’s duty was the purchase of the wood used on the entire road, it being loaded upon trains at Elmer and distributed where needed. This contact with various classes of men, as timber-owners, choppers, and sawyers, so developed the young man that he attracted the favorable attention of the president of the company; and he was advanced to Philadelphia.

After serving in the various stations between Philadelphia and New York (on what is now the New York Division, Pennsylvania Railroad), he was in 1873, when only eighteen years of age, appointed chief telegraph operator of the West Jersey Railroad and leased lines. In 1883, in addition to his other duties, he was appointed assistant train master, and in 1888 train master. He continued in the latter position until June, 1892, when, his other business ventures requiring his entire time, he resigned. He began his first independent business venture in 1878, when he built a telegraph line from Bridgeton to Port Norris, twenty-two miles long. In 1879 he established a telegraph line from Woodbury to Penn’s Grove, twenty miles long, and a telephone exchange in Camden with about one hundred subscribers, connecting them with Philadelphia by cable across the Delaware River. Five cables were laid before one was found that fully answered the requirements. The company afterward sold out to what is now the Delaware & Atlantic Telegraph and Telephone Company, of which it forms a part.

Mr. Burleigh is now Secretary and General Manager of the following companies, many of them creations of his own, and all on a good dividend-paying basis: the Cape May, Delaware Bay & Sewell’s Point Railroad Company; the Camden Lighting and Heating Company; the Electric Light Company of Atlantic City; the Atlantic Electric Light and Power Company; the Cape Island Gas Company; the Merchantville Water Company; the Telephone Company of South Jersey; the Delaware River Telegraph Company; the North Camden Building and Loan Association; the Economy Building and Loan Association; the Homestead Building and Loan Association; and the Excelsior Investment Company; and he is receiver of the Bodine Glass Manufacturing Company. He is known throughout Southern New Jersey as a careful and painstaking business man, and he has a large clientage who rely solely upon him for the care of their property and investments.

Mr. Burleigh was married in 1874 to Miss Anna H. Smith, of Elmer, N.J., and eight children have been born to his home, who still gather about his board: namely, Margaret, Elizabeth, Charles Carroll, Isabel, Helen, Paul, Dorothy, and Frances.

Though an ardent and active Republican, he would never accept of public office, preferring to devote his energies to his financial work. In religious belief he is a Roman Catholic. He has a genial and whole-souled disposition, always seeing the good points in his neighbor in preference to the bad, and is universally beloved.

Broadway Trust Company
Broadway below Walnut St., Camden, N.J.

J. J. BURLEIGH, President
ANTHONY KOBUS, Vice President — WM. J. COOPER, Vice President
BURLEIGH H. DRAPER, Secretary and Treasurer

Directors: John J. Burleigh, William Mills, Dr. S. G. Bushey, Anthony J. Oberst, Ralph D. Childrey, John Wesley Sell, Robert H. Comey, Dr. Marvin A. Street, William J. Cooper, Wilbert L. Sweeten, George A. Frey, Edward B. Stone, Albert Fogg, Adam Schlorer, Frederick Grant, Bernhard F. Schroeder, John B. Kates, Edward Schuster Jr., Dr. Grant E. Kirk, John O. Wilson, Anthony Kobus