Conrad
Hoer

CONRAD HOER was born in Germany around 1871. His family came to America in 1882. A story he would tell in later years was how he was "bound out" to learn his trade as a boy. In exchange for training he received his bed and board and something like $10 a month. When the fellow he worked for sold his business, the young apprentice went with the sale. 

Conrad Hoer, "Con" to his many friends, appears first in the 1890 Philadelphia director as a barber living at 626 Columbia Avenue. He also appears in the Camden  directory for that year as working for Andreas Beck as a barber at 116 Federal Street. It would appear he was commuting by ferry at the time. He soon afterward relocated to Camden NJ to ply his trade as a barber. In June of 1896 Conrad Hoer married his wife Rose at the Trinity German Evangelical Lutheran Church on Stevens Street near Broadway. By 1920 the Hoer family included three daughters, Marie, Helen, and Ethel, and they owned a home at 636 Elm Street in North Camden. A few doors away at 521 North 7th Street lived Irvin Nittinger and his family, who operated Nittinger's Tavern at that location into the 1960s. Another neighbor on North 7th was Dr. Elmer Scholl.   

During Conrad Hoer's 60 year career as a barber, he had for patrons President Benjamin Harrison, General William Joyce Sewell, who also served as a United States Senator, Congressmen William J. Browning and Harry Loudenslager, newspaperman Dan McConnell, and countless other notable lawyers, judges, newspapermen, legislators, and others. Conrad Hoer retired due to illness in 1949. He died at home on March 20, 1950 at the age of 79. 

Conrad Hoer was buried at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden NJ on March 23, 1950. His daughter Marie married Thomas Bantivoglio, and lived to the age of 101, passing in February of 1999. Thomas Bantivoglio also lived to be 100, passing in November of 1998.