The Story Of Atco’s Beginnings

Thomas Richards Jr. and his brother Samuel founded Atco in 1866, about four decades after their father began the Jackson Glass Works in what is now the Louden section of Waterford.

 Gone today, the works once spanned 3,000 acres and would eventually employ 150 people, according to Family Empire in Jersey Iron by Arthur D. Pierce.

As Thomas Jr. and Samuel took on management roles and “as demand for glass continued to increase during the middle years of the 19th century, Jackson Works continued to prosper,” Pierce wrote.

The firm won a contract to provide 15,000 panes of glass for the Crystal Palace at the 1853 World’s Fair in New York, according to a December 1985 article in the Bulletin of the Gloucester County Historical Society.

The 1850s were boom times for the family and Waterford. The glass works and the community benefited from the arrival of the new Camden and Atlantic Railroad, on whose board the brothers sat. Thomas Jr. built a mansion on what is now Atco Avenue.

After their father’s death in 1860, Thomas Jr. and Samuel carved from the estate 60 acres for a town they advertised as a health resort amid the pines. They called it Atco.

“The geologist for the State of New Jersey has pronounced Atco as absolutely free from malaria of all sorts,” according to a developer’s prospectus reprinted in Waterford’s tricentennial program. The unidentified geologist is quoted: “I heartily recommend Atco to all who desire a bracing climate, invigorating water supply and what may be better than all, good, pure air to sleep in; physicians have recommended patients to live in this place.”

The community grew, exceeding 300 people in 20 years. Residents organized a library, followed by churches and schools.

While the Richards brothers enjoyed considerable wealth and success, they were not beyond the grasp of economics. They “carried on the (glass) works until the exhausted timber supply made further operation unprofitable. They were destroyed by fire in May 1877,” according to The History of Camden County, New Jersey by George R. Prowell.