Wilson
Ernst

GEORGE WILSON ERNST was born of German parents in New Jersey around 1843. He went by his middle name. The 1870 Census shows him and his older brother Frederick engaged in a restaurant. He was still living in Philadelphia when he married Emma Wilkinson in Camden County NJ June 13, 1872.  The Ernst family was living at 118 North 2nd street in Philadelphia when the 1880 Census was taken. Wilson Ernst at that time owned a restaurant. He also was involved in construction, and had been active in Camden beginning in 1876.

Wilson Ernst was active as a builder in Camden in the 1880s. He lived at 312 South 4th Street, and in the late 1880s and early 1890s had offices on Benson Street above 4th Street and at 521 Kaighn Avenue, and a mill at the head of North 2nd Street. 

In 1886 George Reeser Prowell wrote, in his History of Camden County New Jersey that "Wilson Ernst has been actively engaged since 1876 and about four hundred buildings, chiefly dwellings, attest to his enterprise." Prowell cited Ernst as one of the three most active builders in Camden at the time.   

Wilson Ernst developed Baring Street, a one block street that runs from Chestnut Street south to Kaighn Avenue between Broadway and South 6th Street in 1888. He was active in Camden as late as 1890.

Baring Street
Looking South from Chestnut Street

Staff Sergeant Benjamin Kaplan
of
111 Baring Street
On Leave In Camden, about 1942