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Rensselaer County Industrialist Albert Fox: A Short Bio

November 10, 2021 by Peter Finn Leave a Comment

Albert R FoxAlbert Rodmond Fox was born on February 10, 1810, and came of age during a dynamic period in American history, as the new nation found its footing. Fifty years after the Declaration of Independence there was a new generation of leaders. It was a time of internal improvements (infrastructure) – new roads, canals, railroads and, eventually, the telegraph – and the industrial revolution. Fortunes were made.

It was also a time of social reform: circuit-riding preachers; new schools and churches; missionaries of all sorts; temperance and abolition advocates. Albert Fox of Sand Lake, Rensselaer County, was in the middle of it all.
map sliters corners from 1854Fox’s father, Isaac B. Fox, formed a partnership with Nathan Crandall and Abraham V.P. Gregory in 1818 to acquire the Rensselaer Glass Factory on the outlet of Rouse (a.k.a. Mighel’s) Lake, in the town of Sand Lake. (The lake is known as Glass Lake today.)

The glass factory changed hands several times in the ensuing years and eventually was reacquired by Isaac Fox and leased (and then subsequently sold) to his sons, Albert R. and Samuel H., who formed the partnership A.R & S.H. Fox in 1839. Albert was 29 years old and Samuel was 22.

Albert Fox was a well-educated man. He was an early graduate of The Albany Academy (and quite possibly a student of Joseph Henry who taught mathematics and science there). He had a classical education at a time when schooling was limited. He went on to the Rensselaer School (now R.P.I.) in Troy, graduating with honors in 1830, in the school’s fifth graduating class. In later years, Fox would serve as President of the RPI Alumni Association.

By 1847, the Fox brothers’ Rensselaer Glass Works was a success. Both Albany and Troy were booming, with the development of the Erie Canal and the railroads, and finished window glass was shipped along the plank road (approximately today’s Route 43) from Sand Lake to the Albany ferry at Bath (North Rensselaer), directly opposite the Erie Canal basin.

The Foxes purchased a second glass factory in Durhamville, Oneida County, along the Erie Canal, in 1845. Samuel took over its operations, and soon the Foxes were said to be the largest glass manufacturers in New York State.

In 1849, legislation was enacted to form the Albany and Sand Lake Plank Road Company, which acquired the interests of the earlier Eastern Turnpike Company. Fox would later serve as its President. Years later, he co-founded the Albany, Sand Lake and Stephentown Railroad which would have linked Albany to Sand Lake and on to Stephentown, connecting with the Harlem Valley Line to New York City as well as the Boston and Maine. Fox had big plans for Sand Lake.

Fox MansionThe Fox Mansion was a symbol of that success – and Albert Fox’s commitment to his hometown. Albert’s father, Isaac, passed away at the age of 57 in 1847, just as his son’s mansion was being completed. His mother, Eunice, remained living on Fox lands, in a house that still stands on Schumann Road, until her death in 1881 at the age of 91 – the same year Fox sold his manor house to James K. Averill.

According to 1854 maps, Fox properties extended from what is now Cemetery Lane in Sand Lake to Glass Lake Road, from the Wynantskill to Route 43 & 66 and what is now Schumann Road (before the 43 & 66 bypass), and included property on the east side of Schumann, as well. This was the Fox farm.

The glass-works burned on Christmas Eve in 1852, never to be rebuilt. But Albert and Samuel continued in the glass business, with operations in Lanesborough, Massachusetts (Berkshire County), and Durhamville, on the Erie Canal, in Oneida County.

Albert became General Agent for the glass business in Durhamville as well as the glass-works in Berkshire County. Water privileges (spillway rights) at Glass Lake were consolidated and eventually became part of the Wynantskill Improvement Association, which controlled stream flows on the Wynantskill for the mills of Sand Lake and eventually powering Henry Burden’s iron-works in Troy.

Albert Fox dabbled in other businesses as well. From 1855 to 1858, he was a partner in the F. Wager and Sons Stoveworks at 275 River Street in Troy (with a foundry at 279-293 North Third St), boarding at 1 Washington Place (at Washington Park) when he wasn’t at home in Sand Lake.

By 1860 he was a partner in the Troy flour business, H.T. Howland & Co. at 43 River Street; Henry Howland was married to Albert’s younger sister Julia, so Albert was using his business acumen and contacts to support a family member.

In 1862, Fox became President of the Sand Lake Plank Road Company, a position he held until his death in 1892. With Horatio Averill, in 1870, he formed the Albany, Sand Lake and Stephentown Railway Company; by 1876 they had acquired over one-third of the 30-mile right-of-way, spent over $10,000 on surveys and engineering ($2.2 million in today’s dollars), and opened an office in New York City at 120 Broadway (in the original Equitable Life Building, the first office building in the world with passenger elevators).

Fox Mansion circa 1910But, whenever possible, Albert Fox chose to conduct business in Sand Lake, welcoming visitors and business associates to his home.

There was much more to Albert Fox than being a manufacturer and a merchant. Albert, his father Isaac, and Mary Gregory were all founding members of the Sand Lake Baptist Church in 1831.

Albert and Mary would marry eighteen months later. Albert Fox was a member for the rest of his life, serving his last 25 years as senior deacon. It was Fox who wrote the initial history of the congregation in 1883, identifying himself on the cover humbly as the only remaining “constituent member” of the congregation.

Albert Fox served in several church-related leadership positions. He was a Trustee of Madison University (later Colgate), which was founded in 1819 as a Baptist seminary, from 1855 until his death, serving on the board alongside William L. Marcy, the former New York Governor, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of both War and State [and, briefly, a Sand Lake resident circa 1800 – Ed.]. (Coincidentally, Colgate lies just 20 miles south of Durhamville). He also was on the Board of Managers of the American Baptist Missionary Union and served as Vice-President the Rensselaer County Sunday School Union and Treasurer of the Hudson River Baptist Association.

Locally, Fox served on the board of the newly formed Sand Lake Union Cemetery (located across the creek from his house) and was a benefactor of the Sand Lake Institute. His son-in-law, Harvey Boone (who was married to Fox’s daughter Fannie) founded the Brookside Institute, next door to the Fox Mansion; in 1860 there were nine students in residence, ranging in age from 10 to 18 (all boys). Harvey Boone went on to become editor of the Syracuse Journal.

Politics was in Fox’s blood, too. He was a Whig, a progressive party of the era. Whigs believed that it was the responsibility of governments to shape an environment conducive to domestic progress, reform, and improvement. When Albert ran for State Senate in 1847, he was described as “a man of acknowledged talents and genuine Whig principles [with] a keen perception of the corruption of the times.” Fox served in the New York State Senate from 1848-49 and helped usher through the legislation that created the town of Poestenkill from Sand Lake.

In these roles, Fox would have been part of the split both in the Whig party and in the Baptist Church into northern and southern factions over the question of slavery.

There has been much discussion about Fox’s involvement in Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad. Former Sand Lake Town Historian Judy Rowe speculated that Fox & Co. wagons were used to transport of escaping former slaves from Bath (Rensselaer) to Sand Lake and Berkshire County, citing the presence of a free Black community near the Lanesborough glass-works. She also contended that Charles Nalle, then an escaped slave, was employed by the Foxes at the Sand Lake glass-works as a teamster.

The late Scott Christianson, a former resident of the Fox Mansion and author of Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War (2010), stated that Charles Nalle stayed for a time with the Foxes before moving to a cottage on the grounds of Scram’s Institute in Averill Park, where he worked before relocating to Troy.

Fox also was a Deacon of the Sand Lake Baptist Church when militant abolitionist Elder Abel Brown was hired as its pastor in 1840, only to dismiss him a year later for being too radical. So, it’s possible Fox may have been a quiet supporter of the abolitionist cause but only peripherally involved in the Underground Railroad movement.

Another Fox-related mystery involves the sale of the Fox Mansion to James K. Averill in 1881. Historian Peter Shaver stated that the sale of the house (plus an additional 90 acres of land) was likely due to “money problems” resulting from Fox’s never-built railroad. Both the properties and the remaining interests in the railroad were passed to the Averills. Years later a portion of the right-of-way in Sand Lake was used by James Averill for the Troy and New England Railway, the trolley connecting Averill Park to Troy.  The Hoosac Tunnel was completed in 1875, shifting rail routes through Rensselaer County.

Or, perhaps Fox was unwilling or unable to compete business-wise in post-Civil War Troy. Or, simply, by 1881, the 71-year-old Fox chose to retire from business and public life and “downsize,” moving into the house next door (on Schumann Rd) with his son Samuel A. Fox and family. His mother Eunice had just died (at 92). His wife Mary had passed away in 1869 (at the age of 58), his son-in-law Harvey Boone in 1875 (age 39), and his youngest son Abraham Gregory Fox in 1876 (age 24). In the 1880 census he listed his occupation as “retired merchant.”

Albert Fox died in 1892 in the house across the street from his mansion (on what now is Schumann Road), home of his daughter Eunice and her husband Andrew Knowlson. His obituary described him as “a gentleman of the old school” who “occupied many positions of trust,” a man of “refined tastes” who welcomed “intelligent visitors” to his home, “one of the most hospitable in the county, and its charming grounds, well stored library” and known for “his urbanity, cheerfulness and modesty and made friends wherever he went.”

This article first appeared in the Sand Lake Historical Society newsletter Historical Highlights.

Illustrations, from above: Albert Fox portrait; map of Sand Lake and Glass Lake; and photos of the Fox Mansion.

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Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Abolition, Agricultural History, Architecture, Charles Nalle, Colgate University, Durhamville, Erie Canal, Industrial History, railroads, Religious History, Rensselaer County, RPI, Sand Lake, Sand Lake Historical Society, Troy, Troy and New England Railway

About Peter Finn

Peter Finn is a Trustee of the Sand Lake Historical Society and lives in an 19th century house about one hundred yards from the site of the Fox brothers glassworks.

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