Thomas Bell McAvoy

At age 29, Tom presided over a meeting of journeymen brickmakers concerned about the wages they were being paid in one section of Philadelphia while others were being paid more in other sections. The shoe was on the other foot at age 47 when Tom chaired a committee of the Brick Manufacturer’s Association of Philadelphia. He put forth a resolution that all brickyards in the city should close if the workers didn’t accept the new scale of wages going into effect June 1, 1886.

His story is noteworthy as one who helped build this city, one brick at a time. For 200 years, Philadelphia was built on the clay beneath its own soil. It started in the earliest days of William Penn’s “green country towne” and only began to lose its significant standing in the national marketplace during the final years of Tom’s life.

His bricks built thousands of homes and buildings in the city and around the country. They paved streets and sidewalks, and were used in the construction of City Hall in the mid-1890s. That was about the same time that he joined the board of the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, replacing  the late famous shoe manufacturer, John Mundell.

His bricks most likely were used here to build the office building and new entrance sometime after 1910. Bricks were also widely used in that era as individual grave liners and in underground vaults that were large enough to hold several caskets. More can be said of his professional side after a review of his personal and political life.

Personal

The McAvoy family, headed by Francis and Euphemia, left their famine-torn homeland of Ireland with six children in the mid-1840s. One more child was born in 1849, but that year Francis died. Being able to feed those children was why they left; now, without warning, the breadwinner was gone. The two oldest, Elizabeth and John, were teenagers at the time so they went to work to support the family. Tom was the third oldest and joined them in the early 1850s.

The 1860 census lists the eight family members together with the three boys working in a brickyard. Only Tom had a lengthy career with the clay; James died in 1872, John in 1876. On August 1, 1860, wedding bells rang at Westminster Presbyterian Church as Tom joined his life with Rachel Creighton, an Irish girl who immigrated a few years before he did. They had a large family, seeing all eight children live to adulthood. For most of their lives, home was just east of South Broad Street at 1331 Dickinson Street.

 Political

The Republican Party wielded great power in those days, more than the Democratic Party ever has, and Tom wanted to be part of it. Newspaper accounts at the time show that running for delegate seats to the nominating conventions was as hotly contested as the offices themselves. He was elected a delegate to the Republican ward and county conventions in 1875, then ran for office himself in 1878, winning a seat on the city’s Common Council. In 1880 and again in 1886 he was a delegate to the state convention.

A seat on the city’s Select Council was vacated in 1891 when Edwin Stuart of the 26th Ward was elected mayor. A great number of supporters convinced Tom to run against the party favorite, Robert Henderson. The race drew more intense rivalry between the candidates’ backers than it did between the candidates, who were nicknamed because of their stature, “Big Tom” and “Wee Bobbie.” (Tom was six feet six inches tall.) 

Near-riots broke out before the vote and raucous parades followed Tom’s victory. He filled the vacant seat, won a full term the following year, and stepped down in 1895. In 1893 this erroneous newspaper report of his demise after his bout with stomach trouble briefly puzzled and angered his family and friends. A dozen years later an operation for that “stomach trouble” did put him in critical condition for a time but he fully recovered.

Professional

The business John McAvoy ran with his brother, until he died in 1876, was known as “T.B. and J. McAvoy Bricks.” Their brickyard encompassed the area from Reed to Tasker and 22nd to 24th Streets. South Philly was where the best quality clay was, and many others knew it too.

Their competition at that time included more than 75 other companies in the city. The combined labor force in 1880 numbered almost 3000, and before the century ended there was still enough clay to produce 220 million bricks annually.

Of Tom’s eight children, the four boys each had their first job in their father’s business, prompting a name change to Thomas B. McAvoy & Sons. The oldest was Frank, who served several terms as treasurer of the National Brick Manufacturers Association, as did his father as president. Frank was a “brick man” for life.

Alexander (shown at left) had the title of “brick boy” at age 13, and he rose through the ranks. From 1902-1911 he represented the 26th Ward on the Select Council and was grand marshal of the 1908 and 1909 Mummers parades.

John Creighton McAvoy listed his occupation in 1900 as a bookkeeper with the firm, where he remained until after the First World War. He was a party leader in the 24th Ward. Both he and Alexander left the bricks in later life to work with the state highway department.

Thomas Jr. (shown at right) was the youngest son but he had the longest career in the business. His term as president of the company began after his father’s death and ended 37 years later when he died in 1955.

Making bricks in South Philly often meant starting a new brick yard after the old location had been depleted of its clay. In 1892, as Tom was on a train passing Valley Forge, he saw a hillside exposing a shale deposit and the type of clay he was looking for. It was ideal for making paving bricks which were in great demand, and it was adjacent to rail transportation. 

He got off at the Phoenixville station and discovered the 76-acre property was owned by one of the Pennypackers, a prominent family in Phoenixville. (One member of that clan named Samuel would later serve as the state’s governor from 1903-1907, followed by former Philly mayor Edwin Stuart.) It so happened that the farm was for sale, so he bought it.

The farm house also became the favorite vacation spot for the eight children and their descendants. Neighboring farms were later purchased by Tom Jr. with some of it sold a century later for a housing development. The name was changed to McAvoy Vitrified Brick Company to describe the type of brick they made. It was mixed with shale and fired at higher temperatures, making it hard and impervious to water, so it was ideal for paving streets and sidewalks.

By the end of 1899, huge orders for McAvoy bricks had been placed by cities as far away as Cuba and the Philippines to pave their streets. Walnut and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia were covered in McAvoy brick. Of course, as the automobile changed the landscape, highways were better served by asphalt. But diversifying and customizing their products is what has kept the family business in continuous operation since then. 

This photo shows two of the fifth-generation officials of the firm in 1994, Creighton “Butch” McAvoy and Steve McAvoy. The fourth person named Thomas Bell McAvoy held the chairman’s post until he died in 2001.

Rachel, the wife of the original Tom, died in 1900, as did his mother in 1902. They were buried here in Section 129 and he moved his father’s grave to be next to them. Tom died in 1918 of pneumonia but the underlying cause was myocarditis. Four of his siblings and six of his eight children are also at Mount Moriah.