USA > New York > Rockland County > The history of Rockland County > Part 18
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In 1871, a Nickle mine was opened on the iron ridge in lot No. 2, of the Cheesecocks patent by John Sneviley, of New York City. Sneviley worked this mine till 1875, when he sold it to the Rockland Nickel Com- pany by whom it is still conducted.
It was soon found that the gray and red conglomerate sandstone, of which large quantities exist in our County, formed the best hearth stones that could be obtained for iron furnaces, and quarries were speedily opened. The first worked was situated one and a quarter miles north of New City. This quarry was begun in 1788, and continued for twenty years. From 1808 to 1838, it was not used, but in the latter year work was again be- gun in it by Joseph Bird, who paid the owner-Isaac Van Houten-$10 for every set of furnace hearths quarried. About a half mile north of Van Houten's was the quarry of Cornelius De Pew, which supplied the hearths of the Greenwood, Woodbury and Cold Spring furnaces. Blauvelt's
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quarry, three miles northwest of New City, was worked in 1838 by Isaac Springsteen. Three miles north of New City, Richard Coe, had a quarry. One quarter of a mile west of this was one belonging to Levi Smith ; while others were opened along the south base of the mountain by John Smith, Jacob Green and Jonas Conklin.
A common furnace hearth from these quarries, required 14 blocks of stone, 10 of which contained each about 20 cubic feet, and 4 contained each about 10 cubic feet, or in the whole 240 cubic fect. Bird, who leased the Van Houten quarry, estimated the value of a set of hearth stones, de- livered at the landing, at $100 and the income from this business was about $6,000 a year.
Early in the history of the settlement of the County, freestone quarries were opened and worked sufficiently to supply the buildings of the settlers; but it was not till the close of the War for Independence that thesc quar- ries were developed as a business speculation. About 1785, quarries were opened south of Nyack by Garret Onderdonk, and at Upper Nyack by John 1 .. and Auri Smith. The demand for stone from Nyack steadily, though slowly, increased till 1804, when the business obtained a solid footing, and another form of quarrying, that of trap-rock for dock-stone, was begun. In working a freestone quarry the workmen came first upon a facing of callus, which was perfectly useless, and had to be removed. Then came the material of commerce, which consisted of building stone, "principal " stone and " flagging." The " principal " stone was a better grade of building stone. It was compact, grainless, capable of being cut, but incapable of being split, and was used for finishing purposes, door and window sills, cornices and door-steps. The "flagging" was the most compact of the varieties of freestone; it contained a perfectly straight grain, could be split to almost any thickness, and was capable of a very good polish. From the " flagging" mantles were made.
For many years the freestone from the Nyack quarries was used for buildings in New York and neighboring cities. As the city increased, new quarries were opened along the shore from the present Grand View Station to the mountain at Upper Nyack. The exciting complications of our nation with foreign powers, during the early years of the century, gave a fresh impetus to the business, and from Nyack stone were built Fort Dia- mond on Hendrick's reef, later and now known as Fort Lafayette, before 1824. Castle Williams, on Governors Island, finished in 1811, and the Red Fort, which used to stand at or near the corner of Desbrosses and West streets in New York city. In filling the contracts for these works, the quarrymen were in no wise particular about the quality of the stone,
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and as a result the fort walls soon began to crumble. The labor of re- placing the poor stone was not complete at the time of the destruction of Fort Lafayette by fire, Dec. Ist, 1868, and that work had cost the govern- ment, till that catastrophe, $350,000.
Never was the freestone business so good as during the decade between 1820 and 1830. In that period over two hundred outside laborers were drawn to the County, and it was common to see froin ten to twelve vessels, loaded with stone leave the docks each day, while as many more were drawn in to take their places. Wages were high. The quarrying of build- ing stone would pay from $3 to $5 a day, while, if a vein of "flagging" was struck, it was not uncommon to make from $10 to $15 a day.
In 1830, the quarries at Beleville, N. J., were opened, and the stone found to be of a better grade than that from our County. Quarrying here began to decline and never recovered its prestige. In 1838, the leading quarries at Nyack were those of Westervelt's at Upper Nyack, on the property belonging to George Green. Here the " flagging" was a foot and a half wide and from two to three inches thick; Clark's, two miles from Nyack; Wilkin's, one mile south of Nyack, from which 5,000 or 6,000 feet of slabs were annually shipped; Daniel Onderdonk and brother, who shipped from their two works 2,500 flags; Richard Clark's, near the Onderdonk's, ; and Gesner's. In all, in 1838, there were thirty-one quarries at Nyack, sixteen being below and fifteen above the village, and from them were shipped during that year:
62,000 feet of slabs, valued at $9,300 00
15,500 cart loads of rubble 9,687 00
Giving an annual income from the business of - .- $18,987 00
In the report of the State Geologist for the year can be read: "That the annual amount of sales a few years ago was near twenty times greater than this."
While these quarries at Nyack were being worked to an extent now unthought of, one was opened just south of the Long Clove road, at the present Conger's quarry by John Blackhurst. At the same time James Thom, a native of Scotland, purchased Richard Coe's quarry north of New City, and Blackhurst hired that of Cornelius De Pew, at Stagg's Corners, together with others.
The business relationship existing between Thom and Blackhurst is unknown, but they evidently worked together, and stone was taken from these quarries to build the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, begun in 1844, and in part to build Trinity in New York. Besides these, many
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private buildings in New York were trimmed with stone taken from this County, and finished by Thom. After a short ownership, the quarry above New City was sold by Thom to John A. McPherson, of Paterson, N. J., but he still continued to get stone from it.
An anecdote of this sculptor may, perhaps, not be out of place. While resident in our County he was seized with a serious illness, which at one time threatened to terminate fatally. Many of his employees were Scots, and they loved the " Boss," as they affectionately termed Mr. Thom. During the hours of his illness, they had held many consultations regard- ing his condition, and at last determined that some one should pray with and for him. But who would be the petitioner ? One after the other declined or excused himself till only the final member of the party remained unheard from, and he was deputed to perform the labor of love. At the hour appointed, the employees filed into the invalid's room and bent their knees while the prayer began. "O Lord bless Bossie Thom, an' if ye dinna ken who Bossie Thom is Lord; He's the mon that cut Tam O'Shanter."
While Tam O'Shanter was doubtless his greatest, it was by no means Thom's only work. "Old Mortality," "Touter Johnnie," and the " Statue of Washington," which many of the older inhabitants remember as standing in the door yard at the corner of the Nyack Turnpike and Erie Railroad, near Nanuet, were fashioned by his hand. The vine which twines over Trinity church entrance was hewn from insensate stone by his chisel, and much of the scroll work of old time houses in New York gives evi- dence of his masterly skill.
At length, in 1842, the work which had been growing less and less, practically ceased in the Nyack quarries. Since that time but little stone has been taken out and that almost entirely for local structures. For a short time longer the quarries, managed in Thom's interest were kept employed. Then Thom died, and these, too, were abandoned. That known as Conger's, on the river front south of Haverstraw, was worked to obtain material for the new bridge across the Minisceongo in 1883, and slightly to supply the West Shore Railroad, but to all practical purposes this industry has stopped.
Among the prominent buildings in this State, constructed in whole or part, from the freestone of this County, besides the forts already mentioned, is the old Capitol at Albany, built in 1807; the rear of the New York City Hall, built in 1806-10; and in New Jersey, the first building of Rutgers College erected in 1809.
I have already said that the dock stone business began to be active in
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1804. Trap rock was the material used for this purpose, and, as the city of New York grew, fresh quarries were started from Fort Lee to Rockland Lake. From this material the first docks of New York, cribs of logs, were filled, foundations were occasionally built, and the sea wall at Governors Island constructed. Later the stone was tried as a pavement for the streets, but proved a failure owing to its certainty to split at the edges and become round. The ease with which gneiss could be obtained on the island, and the change from crib to spile piers in New York, lcd to the abandonment of this enterprise. In 1838, but three quarries of trap rock are mentioned in the County. Two of these belonged to Jacob Voorhis, and one, situated near by, to Peter White, and they were on the river front of the mountain north of Nyack. During the year, Mr. Voorhis shipped about 6,000 tons of stone, and Mr. White 1,200 tons. This was about one-fourth of the usual amount shipped annually. At the quarry the stone was valued at Is. 3d. per ton, and sold in New York for 4s. per ton. The construction of the Hudson River Railroad in 1851, led to a temporary revival of trap-rock quarrying, and much of the sea wall of that road is built from this stone.
We must now turn back to the Ramapo Valley and observe the tre- mendous manufacturing interests which grew up there in the early days of our County. At the birth of the century, Abram Dater had established iron works at Pleasant Valley. In 1813, he had six forges at work and gave employment to about 140 people. These forges were located on both sides of the Ramapo, on the spot now occupied by the store of Geo. W. Dater.
In 1820, the firm controlling these works, was Dater & Ward. Thos. Ward being Mr. Dater's son-in-law. In 1831, upon the death of Abram Dater, the works were sold to the Sterling Company, and operated under this management for a short time. In 1849, they were managed by N. Potter Thomas, and later A. H. Dorr, ran them ; after him, and till 1854, they were under charge of John Sarsen.
Besides these works, Mr. Dater also ran a grist mill, located on the west bank of the Ramapo, and a forge on Stony Brook, about three quar- ters of a mile from Sloatsburgh, at the present site of E. F. Allen's mill dam, known as the Split Rock Forge. At this spot about 1835, Thomas Ward, built a saw-mill, which, in 1847-49, was used by Adna Allen as a hoe factory. Later, as we shall see in the history of Ramapo township, it was used for other purposes.
A half mile south of Dater's were the Sloatsburgh Works. As early as 1792, a tannery was operated at this place by Isaac Sloat, but it was
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not till 1815, that the first mill for the manufacture of cotton cloth was built. This mill, still standing, was a frame building 20 by 60 feet, three stories in height, with two wings, one being a machine and smith shop where heavy mill screws and vices had previously been made. In this mill Jacob Sloat began the manufacture of cotton cloth in connection with stocks and dies, in which latter article he led the market of New York. Till 1836, the mill was continued with but little change. Then one of the wings was torn down and a new one-20 by 30 feet and three stories in height, was erected in its place ; an addition was also built on the north side of the main structure.
In 1838, weaving was discontinued and the mill was run on fine and coarse wraps. In 1839, the firm of J. Sloat & Co., consisting of Stephen and Jacob Sloat, John Quackenbush, and John S. Westervelt-was estab- lished. New and improved machinery was added, and in addition to the old branches of business, the manufacture of cotton twine was begun.
In 1840 Jacob Sloat, patented a process for dressing cotton twinc, and the demand for twine became so great, that all the spindles were turned upon its manufacture. This led to the building of the first brick mill in 1846, a structure, 152 by 34 feet, which increased the manufactur- ing capacity of the company from 2,500 lbs. per week to 6,000 lbs. In 1853, the company was incorporated under the name of the " Sloatsburgh Manufacturing Co." In 1857, 128 feet were added to the brick mill, con- necting it with the original structure, and making a building 340 feet in length. This addition increased the capacity of the company to 8,000 lbs. per week. In 1858, Jacob Słoat, who had retired from the management of the business in 1851, died. The War of the Rebellion depressed this, as it did every business in which cotton entered as a factor, and the com- pany finally ceased operations in August 1878.
Four men stand prominently forward, in the first half century of the County's history, as public benefactors. Other men have worked actively for the interests, the prosperity of this portion of the commonwealth; other and many other men have pushed forward a work, which was begun, to full completion, but to Jeremiah H. Pierson, who gave the present suc- cess to Ramapo township; to James Wood, who, by his discovery of the present plan of burning brick, rendered the enormous business, which is the source of vast wealth to Haverstraw and Stony Point townships, possi- ble, to John Edward Green, through whose courage, energy and financial aid the first steamboat was built and successfully run, changing the career of Nyack; and which with the Erie Railroad, labored for and carried through by Eleazor Lord, LL. D., gave an entirely new character to the
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business interests of Orangetown, belongs, preeminently, the meed of praise.
Up to 1795, Sidman's Clove still retained its pre-revolutionary solitude, and the wonderful water power of the Ramapo flowed untramelled savc by an occasional grist or saw mill, on to join the Pompton. The steam engine was in its infancy, and water power was of a value now little realizcd. The abundance and force of the river in Sidman's Pass, the vast quantities of wood, scarcely less necessary to the manufacturer than water, which lined the mountain sides, determined the Pierson Brothers in their selection of this site for the permanent home of their factories.
In 1795 Josiah G. Picrson was engaged in the manufacture of cut nails, by machinery of his invention, from iron imported from Russia, and rolled and cut at Wilmington, Del., the nearest rolling-mill to New York at that time. His factory was located on Whitehall street, where the Produce Exchange now stands.
The first purchase in the Pass was of 119 acres from John Suffern, and on this purchase preparations were at once begun, under the superintend- ence of J. H. Pierson, for the erection of the necessary dam and buildings. Mechanics and laborers soon raised factory walls in this primeval wilder- ness, and in 1798 the rolling-mill, slitting-mill, and nail factory were all in operation, under the firm of J. G. Pierson & Brothers. This firm con- sisted of Jeremiah H. and Isaac Pierson, Josiah G. having died Dec. 17th of the previous year, before the works he had planned were completed. From 1798 to 1812 the works were constantly employed. In 1807, the growth of whale fishery had so increased the demand for hoops for oil casks, that the rolling-mill was extended to meet it, and hoop-iron was added to the product of the Valley. In 1810 Pierson's works supported about 800 people.
In 1812, the buildings at the Ramapo Works were as follows: The river was spanned, as now, by a dam 120 feet long. On the north side, adjoining the dam, stood a blacksmith shop, rolling and slitting mills, and works for cutting and heading nails. On the south side of the river, ad- joining the dam, was a saw-mill, next to this on the west was a "Straw House," a two-story building, in which was stored and cut by water-power, the straw for the numerous mules and oxen employed for the works. Still further west, up the stream, along the pond, stood the horse, ox, and four mule barns, all two stories in height.
On the south side of the river, also, a few rods east, and a little to the south of the saw mill, was a store, built in 1805, and now occupied by William Van Wagenen. A short distance to the east and north of this
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was the homestead of J. H. Pierson, built very soon after the works were established, rebuilt in 1805, and now occupied by F. Taylor. In the northwest corner of this homestead the first store was kept.
East by north from the homestead, and just west of the present depot, stood a grist mill, a four story building. Down the river, a few rods east of the grist mill, was a forge, and near by, to the south, a coal house. West by south from this last building, up the hill on the south side of the turnpike, stood the "Yellow store," built in 1810. In this was stored beef, pork and other provisions for winter use. East of this was a house built for John Colt, in 1808. It is now known as the " Prayer Rooms." The church, erected in 1810, still occupies its original site. The second school house, a yellow building in two parts, stood on the south side of the turnpike, nearly opposite the present "stone store." The first school house, built in 1798, was located on the north side of the pike just east of the present " prayer rooms." A gate, through which there was no admission except on busi- ness, filled the space between the store and the homestead, and through this gate the road, bending to the east, ran down the slope in front of the grist mill, and so across the river to the nail works and rolling mill, the present bridge being several rods east of the bridge of those days. Such, says the Rev. Eben B. Cobb, from whom I have drawn so largely in treat- ing of the different works in the Ramapo Valley, that quotation marks would be superfluous, was the Ramapo of 1812. And, when we think of the multitudes of farmers' wagons bringing produce of all kinds to this, the market for the neighboring parts of Orange and Rockland coun- ties-Mr. Cobb gives the names of sixty-one farmers who delivered their products at this mart-when we think of the four and six mule teams going and returning, with their heavy loads, to and from Haverstraw, Buskirk's Landing on the Hackensack, and Hoboken; when we read that in 1810 a million pounds of nails was the yearly output of the nail factory alone, I think that the placing of J. T. Pierson first in the list of the four leading men in the County, of that time, needs no further explanation.
But large as these works were, they were almost doubled by the erec- tion of the cotton mill in 1814-15. This mill was built to spin yarn to send to Russia, in exchange for iron, three-fourths of that used in the Ramapo Works being Russian ore. It was a five story building with a dye house on the north end, and a machine shop-a four-story brick building with an attic; torn down in 1852, to give room for the double tracks of the Erie-on the south. On the Turnpike, too, the stone build- ing, still standing, was erected, for the storing of cotton. From this build- ing it was slid on a shoot to the mill below.
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These mills, built at an expense of $155,848, were furnished with 7,500 spindles, capable of making 506,250 pounds of No. 13 yarn, per year, and 78 looms, capable of producing 486,720 yards of striped shirting, sheeting, and checks per year. In 1820, they furnished employment to 119 people. In 1822, the joint interest of the surviving brothers, J H. and Isaac Pier- son, was incorporated under the name of the Ramapo Manufacturing Com- pany. In 1830, the manufacture of blister steel and wood screws was commenced. In 1851, operations at Ramapo were virtually suspended and the works closed.
We may review the principal industries of this period from 1798 to 1851. Cut nails were manufactured from 1798 to about 1840; cotton yarn and cloth from 1816 to 1836; spring steel from 1810 to 1850; and blister steel and wood screws from 1830 to 1851.
To our County the Pierson brothers generally, but Jeremiah T. par- ticularly, gave an impetus that has only been equalled by the discovery of James Wood. In the language of Mr. Cobb, "We see nothing of the traffic which 'strung along' them (the wagon roads) when teams were hauling grain and other produce for the sustenance of those who wrought, or of the droves of cattle which encumbered them when being driven hither to be slaughtered and packed away in huge cisterns or tanks. A record has been kept of this traffic, and we give a summary from it for the years 1820-21 : 15,758 bushels of grain and 181,254 pounds of provisions (beef, pork, mutton, veal and butter) were brought to Ramapo in those years." It was owing to the existence of the Ramapo Works that the Nyack turnpike was cut through, in spite of opposition more violent and long-continued than ever greeted any other enterprise in this County, and the presence of the works and the opening of the Turnpike, rendered the building of the first steamboat feasible.
But it was not alone to the material prosperity of the village he founded, of the County where he became resident, that Mr. Pierson devoted him- self. He looked beyond the temporal to futurity. In great measure the controller of his employees, lives, he so far respected the State as to foster and press forward educational facilities. Realizing the deleterious influ- ence of liquor, he stopped the allowance of grog, which theretofore had been considered a necessity among employees, in 1828, and earlier, in con- junction with John Suffern, he had joined in buying out and tearing down a groggery kept by a widow named Jenkins. In 1810, he built the Pres- byterian church, the first place for divine worship in Ramapo clove, and long bore the burden of its expense. For several years before his death, Mr. Pierson was afflicted with blindness; at length, on Dec. 12th, 1855, he found rest, in the 90th year of his age.
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Preceding the Revolution some slight attempts at the manufacture of brick were tried where the clay was found, but, as in the case of the free- stone, the little done in the business was only for local use. On the prop- erty of Mrs. Nellie Hart, in Upper Nyack, a yard existed before the be- ginning of this century, and some of the brick then made are now in the possession of Mrs. Hart; but so brief was the existence of the work, and so slight the impress which it made upon the minds of the residents in the neigh- borhood, that all data respecting it are lost. I have seen in the possession of Adam Lilburn a brick, which was taken from the chimney of the old Treason House, marked 1792, and made at Haverstraw.
The first kiln of bricks for a regular market ever prepared in this County, was baked about 1810, under the management of a company from Philadelphia, and the yard then opened was on the bank of the Minisceongo, not far from where the present iron bridge crosses the stream. The enter- prise ended in failure, and the work was abandoned. In that year the total number of bricks made in this country was only 94,371,646. Five years elapsed before a second attempt was made. Then, in 1815, James Wood, a native of England, who had learned the trade of a brickmaker in his native land, and who had been in the brickmaking business in Sing Sing and at Verplanck's Point, attracted to Haverstraw by the vast quan- tities of brick clay and the apparently unlimited supply of wood, leased from the De Noyelles a piece of land on the river shore, directly opposite their family burying ground, and started the first successful brickyard in the County.
When Wood opened that first yard in Haverstraw, the process of making brick was the same as that pursued by the Israelites while in their Egyptian bondage, over three thousand years before. True, it seems to be, that a few manufacturers in England had used coal dust in their brick- clay, but so little was the advantage of this process known, that the cause of a long and bitter litigation was needed to demonstrate it. In the old primitive way the clay and a due proportion of sand were mixed, tem- pered by treading with the fect, and, when properly mingled, placed in the moulds by hand. These moulds-boxes without tops or bottoms, divided by partitions so as to hold the clay for three bricks placed length- wise-were placed upon a table, the clay put in them and struck off and then the mould, drawn sideways to the edge of the table, was carefully tipped on its side, and thus carried to the drying ground. It does not re- quire an inspection of that old process to become assured, that however much care might be used, the soft clay would settle out of shape and the bricks be distorted and rude.
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