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Note: George Edward Stitcher, son of George Washington, was born on September 22, 1897, in Philadelphia. Like his grandfather before him, he died of a stroke, on January 16, 1970. Young George picked up a smattering of German words from his surrounding neighborhood and could mimic the calls of back alley fruit and vegetable vendors. Half-brother William was his mentor and closest friend, until the two were forced to part. Coddled by his adoring mother and sister, George became a teenage dandy, courted young ladies and wrecked his father's Essex automobile. A collie dog named "Shep" replaced William in his affections and only school kept them apart. George was no scholar, so high school went unfinished. When the First World War came along, George enlisted in the Merchant Marine and reported to a southern port. Alas, it was shortly before Armistice Day, in 1918, and George never went to sea. The authorities sent him home in full uniform, which he wore for a formal photograph. Luckily for George, the Plainfield office of the Public Service Company accepted his application for employment, without a high school diploma. He worked in the Watchung Avenue office, for over forty years, retiring after his wife's death in 1961. In Dunellen, N.J., next to Plainfield, an Irish couple, Edward Francis Gray and his wife, Catherine Marie Sullivan, were raising three sons and six daughters. George courted Kathleen Marie Gray in his roadster and won her hand in marriage. In 1918, Kathleen had left highschool and traveled to Washington, D.C., to work as a telephone operator in the war effort. Upon her return home, she became a permanent telephone operator in the Plainfield office. During the Depression, and then, World War Two, George and Kathleen raised three children in a small house, at 643 Front Street, Dunellen. Kathleen arrived in 1928, George in 1931 and Joyce Ann in 1933. In 1944, when Margaret Ella Macready Kline Stitcher died, the family moved to her house at 955 W. Front St., Plainfield. After his wife's death in 1961, George Edward lived in various boarding houses, due to a mental condition. He had sold his house on Bleecker Street, South Plainfield, because it was filled with memories. Upon his death in 1970, he was buried next to his wife, in Holy Redeemer Cemetery, South Plainfield, New Jersey.
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