He printed the posters that sold circus tickets and published a Civil War history in monthly parts. In Astoria, a new lodge made him its first Treasurer.
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James D. Torrey was a charter member of Advance Lodge No. 635 and its first Treasurer, named among the officers who helped the new lodge in Astoria get underway. He was a Manhattan printer whose trade ran on credit extended to circuses, and the brethren handed him the lodge’s purse.
The record does not say how he came to be the one. It does show a career spent managing the risks of other people’s payments, which is not a bad apprenticeship for the work.
Thirteen Spruce Street
Spruce Street, in lower Manhattan, was where the circus came to be pictured. Show printers there glued pine blocks together, cut them for each color, and pasted the printed sheets into posters up to nine feet high. An 1894 printer’s dictionary guessed that the entire country held no more than thirty houses that printed large posters at all.
One of them stood at number 13, directly across from the larger Clarry and Reilley establishment, and by the 1870s it traded as Torrey Brothers.
The historian Richard W. Flint, writing in Printing History, says the firm was established by James D. Torrey sometime before the Civil War. By the war’s beginning he had handed much of the business to John and Christopher Torrey, whose relationship to him is not known.
A New York Times item of March 6, 1854, preserved in the research notes gathered for this article, may record a fire at his printing shop, with five buildings burned and $20,000 in materials lost. The notes alone do not securely establish that the printer named in the report was this James D. Torrey.
On May 29, 1854, Torrey was raised in Eastern Star Lodge No. 227 in New York City.
Twenty-Two Men in Odd Fellows’ Hall
In 1866 twenty-two Master Masons met in Odd Fellows’ Hall in Astoria, tired of traveling to lodges scattered across the city and beyond. Their petition went to Grand Master Robert D. Holmes, seeking permission to establish a lodge of their own.
In the lodge’s register of petitioners, Torrey is number four: age forty-five, a native of the United States, a printer, raised in 1854 in Eastern Star Lodge.
The first officers included John R. Clark as Master, John E. Oloff as Senior Warden, Edwin A. Cadwell as Junior Warden, and Caleb G. Francis as Secretary, with Torrey as Treasurer. The charter followed in 1867.
The lodge’s historian, Brother Henry Martin, compiled the charter names for the cornerstone ceremony of the temple on November 20, 1915, and Torrey’s was among them.
The notes do not establish where he lived in Astoria or how he traveled between his Manhattan business and the lodge. They establish his place among the charter members of Advance Lodge No. 635, and the office entrusted to him at the beginning.
The Publisher of the Rebellion
While John and Christopher Torrey took on much of the poster business, James D. Torrey’s imprint turned up somewhere else.
In 1861 he published the first numbers of Orville J. Victor’s The History, Civil, Political and Military, of the Southern Rebellion, a serial that appeared in installments and was not finished until 1868. A New York Times notice of October 22, 1861, lists him at 81 Nassau Street as publisher of a work titled The Southern Rebellion and the War for the Union.
By 1863 the advertisement for Victor’s history and the imprint of Victor’s History of American Conspiracies, copyrighted by Torrey that year, both give his address as 13 Spruce Street. He also published Victor’s Incidents and Anecdotes of the War in 1862.
Nothing in the notes says whether his own presses printed every volume that bore his name.
Paper on Credit
The 1870s were harder. A New York Times notice of March 4, 1870, records the dissolution of a partnership, Torrey and Greene.
A notice of May 1, 1871, lists a Democrat named James D. Torrey among the aldermen of Long Island City. The notes do not establish that it was the same man, but the name and the neighborhood make the possibility worth keeping.
In 1872 Torrey Brothers printed from wood a thirty-two-sheet bill for P. T. Barnum’s circus, then in its second year. Newspapers later recalled that it created a sensation and sent the smaller shows running. That same year John Torrey died, and James D. Torrey took back a larger hand in the firm because his own credit was stronger than the shop’s.
The poster trade paid late. Posters for a summer circus were printed in the winter and stockpiled, so printers carried their customers on credit and hoped the season was kind.
R. G. Dun’s agents, who sized up the firm around 1870, called it honest, slow to pay, and short of ready money. By late 1874 they reported large claims against several failed circuses. The Great Eastern Circus owed it $70,000, the Great Southern Show $17,000, and the Wooten and Andrews show $4,500.
Torrey sued the showman Andrew Haight, and the contents of Haight’s Great Eastern and Great Southern shows were auctioned in Lebanon, Ohio, on February 26, 1875. The sale did not bring in what was owed.
Torrey, whose real estate and other holdings were thought to be worth about $75,000, had some $90,000 locked up in traveling circuses. He tried running one or two himself and lost heavily, and the firm was sued and sold by a sheriff in the late 1870s.
Mrs. James D. Torrey became a partner in a smaller successor, Torrey and Clark. According to Flint, James D. Torrey died on February 21, 1884.
The Lodge He Left Standing
A treasurer’s best work leaves almost nothing behind but figures that came out even, and whatever Torrey entered in Advance Lodge’s first books has not turned up in the material gathered for this article.
The credit reports preserved in Flint’s account tell a harder story: roughly ninety thousand dollars tied up in traveling shows that could not pay. The lodge proved more enduring than the business.
It outlasted the Spruce Street firm and the circuses whose unpaid bills helped ruin it. In 1915, with a temple going up on Grand Avenue, its historian still gave the first Treasurer his place on the list of founders.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635 records as examined by Brete Murphy: the charter petitioners’ register, listing James D. Torrey as age 45, a native of the United States, a printer, and raised May 29, 1854, in Eastern Star Lodge No. 227, New York City; and the narrative of the dispensation and first officers.
- Brother Henry Martin, “Historical Data of Advance Lodge No. 635 F&AM,” prepared for the cornerstone ceremony of November 20, 1915, including the modernized transcription.
Newspapers
- The New York Times, March 6, 1854, fire loss at a printing shop; identification with this James D. Torrey remains uncertain.
- The New York Times, May 19, 1858, dissolution of Torrey, Barden and Co.; consulted but not used in the article.
- The New York Times, October 22, 1861, publication notice for the Southern Rebellion serial.
- The New York Times, March 4, 1870, dissolution of Torrey and Greene.
- The New York Times, May 1, 1871, Long Island City aldermen; identification with the printer remains uncertain.
- Contemporary press cited by Flint, including the New York Clipper and Billboard.
Organizational and Published Records
- Richard W. Flint, “A Great Industrial Art: Circus Posters, Business Risks, and the Origins of Color Letterpress Printing in America,” Printing History 25, no. 2 (issue 50), Journal of the American Printing History Association, including the R. G. Dun and Company credit reports cited there.
- Orville J. Victor bibliography, Northern Illinois University.
- Imprint and copyright of A History of American Conspiracies (1863) and the 1863 prospectus for Victor’s history, as described in the research notes.
Public and Genealogical Records
No census, vital, or probate record for Torrey was consulted.
The notes include a WikiTree entry for a James Dawson Torrey (1808–1880) and a Find a Grave record for a James D. Torrey who died September 21, 1880. Neither is connected to this Torrey, and neither is used.
The death date of February 21, 1884, comes from Flint alone.
Note on the Record
Several items remain uncertain. The 1854 fire notice and the 1871 alderman notice are taken from research notes and could not be securely matched to this man from the notes alone.
A note about a lawsuit over a bill of sale found to have been made in bad faith, involving Torrey Brothers, is not used because its details are unclear.
A machine-generated summary in the notes asserting that Torrey never served in the Civil War is not used, since no military record was consulted.
Flint states that the relationship of John and Christopher Torrey to James D. Torrey is not known. The firm’s name should not be taken as proof that they were his brothers.
Continue Reading
- Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History — Follow the lodge from its founding to its later home on Grand Avenue.
- The Charter Members of Advance Lodge No. 635 — Meet the men who helped establish the lodge.
- Caleb G. Francis, Advance Lodge’s First Secretary — The merchant entrusted with the lodge’s records alongside Torrey as Treasurer.
- William M. Berger: A Founder Who Became Master — Another charter member who went on to lead Advance Lodge.
- The Lodges That Built Queens: Start Here — Explore the full series.
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