New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Industrial History

The Silk Train That Killed Financier Spencer Trask

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Ogdensburg Journal, January 3rd, 1910On the morning of December 31, 1909, Saratoga Springs philanthropist and financier Spencer Trask was just waking up after a night in a railroad sleeping car at the rear of the Montreal Express. The night before this southbound train had picked up Trask in Saratoga as it made its way toward New York City.

At 8:03 am, only moments after the express train had stopped unexpectedly on the mainline near Croton, Westchester County, New York, a train transporting bales of raw silk crashed into its rear, killing Trask, the porter in his sleeping car, and injuring several other of the passengers. While the direct cause of this deadly wreck pointed to a failure of signal equipment and railroad personnel, events leading up to the tragedy had been put into motion six thousand miles to the west seventeen days earlier. [Read more…] about The Silk Train That Killed Financier Spencer Trask

An Adirondack Lumber Camp at Twitchell Lake, 1860-80

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5a Objects dug up in Lumber Camp #2 about a half mile east of Twitchell Lake, Noel SherryMy uncle Frank Sherry taught my brother Tom and I orienteering, using a map and compass to navigate through the woods and find a remote pond or other location. We were teenagers and it was an exciting way to spend a Saturday.

On one of these adventures we were in search of Silver Dollar Pond to the east of Twitchell Lake in Northern Herkimer County,when we stumbled on our first lumber camp. The telltale signs were pieces of metal hanging from a tree and protruding from the ground, with old bottles half-buried in the forest floor. We made note of the location on our map, a half-mile from Twitchell, and returned to explore it. It wasn’t long before we located the camp dump, from which we dug up the items pictured here.

These and other objects triggered an active discussion on the date of this old camp, with an imaginative re-creation of what life might have been like for a lumberjacks living and working there. [Read more…] about An Adirondack Lumber Camp at Twitchell Lake, 1860-80

Logging the Adirondack Interior, Spurring Preservation (1840-60)

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One of the most satisfying pastimes for me at our summer home on Twitchell Lake in Big Moose in the Adirondacks in Northern Herkimer County), was taking the camp guide boat out for a spin. That privilege was earned by passing the family test, a solo swim across the lake, about the distance of a football field.

Weighing just over 30 pounds, this unique 14-foot wooden craft sped through the water powered by two oars. A cabin shelf still displays several awards for winning the annual guide boat race. I fondly remember the one-mile hikes to neighboring Oswego Pond, trailing my older brother Burt carrying that guide boat on his shoulders using a hand-carved yoke, my father in the lead bearing the oars and fishing gear. [Read more…] about Logging the Adirondack Interior, Spurring Preservation (1840-60)

Up Every River: Logging The Adirondacks (1820-40)

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3a Our Double-bladed AxeIn the 1820s the State of New York encouraged Adirondack exploration and settlement, benefiting from the land sales and taxes (when they were paid). Lewis County newspapers were abuzz with praise for the 1825 completion of the Erie Canal, and in less than a year, the Black River Gazette launched a discussion on “improving” the Black River as a connection between the canal and the St. Lawrence River, anticipating the economic benefit Adirondack timber would bring when this opened a commercial route to the rest of the world:

“The quantity of lumber which might be drawn from those vast forests, now covering a soil which would anticipate the desires of a husbandman are beyond all calculation. For it is a fact admitted by all who have the least acquaintance with this section of country, that a greater quantity of wood, timber, lath, staves, boards, shingles, masts and spars might be drawn from this northern triangle, by means of a Canal, than any other district or county in the state.” [Read more…] about Up Every River: Logging The Adirondacks (1820-40)

Logging The Adirondacks From The West (1800-1820)

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2a Eastern Lewis Co TownshipsIn the nineteenth century Lewis County settlements east of the Black River were just getting established; most of these included at least one saw mill. By 1820 these settlements were beginning to push their way up the rivers into the Adirondacks, and new mills were being built along their courses. A Copenhagen, NY farmer on Tug Hill, viewing the Adirondack panorama spread out to his east, wrote the following in a Journal & Republican article titled “North Woods Wonder:”

“All the wilderness is strewn with lakes as if some great mirror had been shattered by an Almighty hand, and scattered through the forests for Nature to make her toilet by … And how the rivers meander the woods as the veins of a human hand. There are Beaver, Moose, and Indian, Bog, Grass and Racket… And how rough and shaggy the wilderness is with mountains … Let them pass unnamed.”

One of these “shattered” gems was Twitchell Lake. [Read more…] about Logging The Adirondacks From The West (1800-1820)

The Night the Lights Came On: Electricity on New York State Farms

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Few New York State farms had electric power in the 1920s. Even as late as 1930 ninety percent of farm families nationwide had no line-run electricity. On long winter evenings city dwellers could read and sew long past sunset, but farm families sat in near darkness and did chores, such as milking the cows, in the dim light of kerosene lanterns.

Some farmers used Delco-Light Plants made up of ranks of glass-jarred lead-storage batteries located in dirt-floored basements for electric power. As Delco’s slogan was, “Delco systems sell best by night,” Delco salesman cleverly arrived at dusk with small Delco systems to demonstrate to farmers how these DC-units, when sufficiently massed, could bring to the farm what folks in the cities enjoyed. But Delco systems were expensive, and the batteries had to be recharged with a generator powered by a gasoline engine. [Read more…] about The Night the Lights Came On: Electricity on New York State Farms

Crimes Against Butter: The Oleomargarine Controversy

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Hippolyte Mège-MourièsThe butter trade was once so important to dairy farmers in Orange County, NY that the bank in Goshen, the county seat, printed its currency on yellow paper. Popularly known as “butter money,” this currency symbolized how significant the trade in butter was to dairy farmers in dairy regions across the state prior to the introduction of refrigerated railroad cars to ship raw milk, first using blocks of ice and then mechanical cooling.

The original shipment of milk from Orange County to New York City is believed to have taken place in the spring of 1842 via the New York & Erie Railroad. Prior to this raw milk could be transported only short distances by farm wagon.

Butter, however, could be transported to markets many miles from the farm or factory where it was produced. As symbolized by “butter money,” blocks of butter were once as good as gold. [Read more…] about Crimes Against Butter: The Oleomargarine Controversy

Chains Across the Hudson, Stirling Ironworks & The Townsend Family

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13 Links of the Great Chain across the Hudson at Trophy Point, West Point“The importance of the Hudson River in the present contest, and the necessity of defending it, are subjects which have been so frequently and fully discussed and are so well understood that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them.” – George Washington

It is hard to imagine a time in the United States when highways did not exist, but that was certainly the case at the time of the Revolutionary War. Some cities could brag of their cobblestone streets but once outside the residential area, roads could best be described as single-lane dirt paths, frozen solid but probably covered with snow in winter, mud bogs in spring, and deeply rutted, jarring, swaying and unstable conveyances the rest of the year.

A small military wagon could move along only as fast as a team of oxen could pull it. Moving armies and cannon along these roadways was a slow, difficult undertaking, offering opposing forces considerable advance notice and many opportunities to thwart progress or attack. [Read more…] about Chains Across the Hudson, Stirling Ironworks & The Townsend Family

The Eddy Family: Capital Region Industrialists

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Oliver Tarbell Eddy and Titus Egbert EddyWaterford, NY’s involvement in the Industrial Revolution was more significant than its geographical size would imply. Family-owned and operated business ventures were the norm and usually a first and second-generation operation.

Names that immediately come to the fore such families as brothers Hugh and Canvas White, the Knickerbocker, Kavanaugh, Button, Breslin, and King families all demonstrated the business model of the period; manufacturing firms that employed many hands from Saratoga County and surrounding communities. [Read more…] about The Eddy Family: Capital Region Industrialists