Gradual Transition to Hicksville
Around 1850, only two years after he was first listed in the city directory, John Heitz bought his first property in Hicksville, and by the following year a home had been built on it. Although he now was nominally a resident of the village, his business was still in Manhattan. At the time, travel was still too arduous for daily commuting to be feasible, and he maintained a Manhattanresidence as well. Eventually, he had only a room in a boarding house there, in which a state-wide census found him in 1855, and recorded him as a "jeweler."
Alas, the "good old days" were not necessarily perfect. One night in 1859, a burglar broke into Heitz's shop and made off with merchandise totaling (in 2020 dollars) almost $4,000. As the thief was arrested promptly the next day, one can assume that the stolen items were recovered.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 27, 1859
In 1861, at the age of 43, John Heitz married Jane Sutton Norris, an Irish-born woman almost twenty years his junior. Within two years, he had retired from his business and was living full-time in Hicksville with his new family. Thanks to his investments, he continued to prosper, and to buy more local real estate.
Although Heitz was quite active in the community, he missed running a hands-on business. Thus, in 1869 he opened a dry goods and clothing store. The next year's census showed the Heitz family living in Hicksville, but it was not alone - sharing the house with them was the family of John's brother-in-law, William Sutton.
Location of John F. Heitz's dry goods store
(across Heitz Place from the Herzog store)
Beers, Comstock & Cline, Atlas of Long Island, etc., 1873
digitalcollections.nypl.org
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