CHAPTER XXII 



THE OLD TIMERS' ASSOCIATION 



Men Who Have been Residents of The Bronx for Fifty Years or More — 

 An Interesting Chapter By its Historian, Sidwell S. Randall. 



S a vast new population came surging into The Bronx, 

 old residents who had lived for half a century or 

 more in the comparatively new district north of the 

 Harlem River, became slowly and by degrees aware 

 of the fact that they were involuntarily becoming 

 strangers in a land where they had resided from boyhood 

 upward. Indeed, many of these old settlers became startlingly 

 aware of the further fact that they, who but a few years previously 

 were the owners of much of the lands in the old towns of Morris- 

 ania, West Farms, Melrose, East and Westchester were no longer 

 important factors in the territory of which once they might have 

 been said to be "Lords of the Manor." In few words, death and 

 change and time had apparently deprived them of their identity 

 and status. Naturally this altered condition of affairs reluctantly 

 forced the knowledge upon them that, unless they combined and 

 formed an association which would bring together in a close fel- 

 lowship the older members of the community in which they were 

 once so powerful and well known, they would be lost in the busy 

 stirring City that had so suddenly sprung up all around and about 

 them. 



Acting upon this conviction a number of old citizens met to- 

 gether one evening two years ago, at the headquarters of the 

 Exempt Firemen at Third Avenue and 147th Street and their de- 

 liberations resulted in the formation of a society known as the 

 "Old Timers of The Bronx," whose end and aim would be cordial 

 amity, friendship and the promotion of the best interests of all its 

 members socially and mentally. The sole qualifications of admis- 

 sion to membership in this organization is a nominal fee and a 

 residence in the Borough of over fifty years. By a unanimous vote 

 Hon. Louis F. Haffen was selected as its first President, for he is 



183 



