It Happened Here --The Tough, Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw

 

Robert Livingston (“the elder”) arrived in Charleston, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1674 at age 20 with little more than a few letters of introduction prepared by his father Rev. John Livingston.  John Livingston was a presbyterian cleric whose Puritan leanings had increasingly put him at odds with the established church promoted by King James II.  John had emigrated to avoid trouble to Rotterdam, Netherlands with his wife and youngest son, Robert, when the boy was nine years old. The Reverend quickly became a leader among the Presbyterian Scots living in voluntary exile there. The young Robert put his time to good use, becoming fluent in Dutch, and learning about business in perhaps the best school of business in the mercantile world, a Dutch counting house.

Arriving in Massachusetts the young Livingston used his letters of introduction to secure a loan and a stock of trading goods and set off for Albany. The colony of New York had just returned to English control, having been held briefly (1673-1674) by the Netherlands during the 3d Anglo-Dutch War. During that period traders from Massachusetts had reestablished trading links with Albany Dutch fur traders whose source of English trade goods had been cut off by the war. Now with the English (viz. The Duke of York) back in control, the Duke was insisting that all imports and exports be trans-shipped through the port of New York where duties could be levied on them. Livingston established himself as an agent for two of these Massachusetts traders as he was both fluent in the Dutch language and familiar with Dutch business practices.

Dominie Nicholas Van Rensselaer arrived in Albany about the same time as Livingston to share the pulpit of the Dutch Church in Albany and assumed the directorship of Rensselaerwyck when his brother, Jeremias, became incapacitated, then died, in the fall of 1674. Nicholas hired the young Scot for the position of secretary of Rennslaerwyck, and clerk of the Albany General Court, which by tradition were linked together. The receiving of quitrents and city taxes were part of his official responsibilities. Livingston was unafraid of courting public disapproval. When he negotiated for his salary he asked for a 5% commission on everything he collected, and having got it, appears to have pursued his official duty with tenacity. The following year Governor Andros traveled to Albany to negotiate a treaty with the Iroquois Confederacy. The young entrepreneur met the governor and charmed his way into a position as secretary of the New York Board of Indian Commissioners.  In all these positions fluency in Dutch was essential because not only were most litigants in the court Dutch speakers, and the traders engaged in the Indian fur trade were Dutch, but the Iroquois and Hudson River Indian diplomats/interpreters, themselves, generally spoke Dutch rather than English, at this time. Soon, as a political insider and self trained lawyer, Livingston began selling his services as a legal counselor. The young Scot also used his contacts and insider knowledge to further his fur trading enterprises. But as he continued his trading activities he continued to be plagued by a lack of capital. He spent a great deal of time and effort putting off creditors, while pursuing those who owed him money. Even his salaried clerical and secretarial positions were of little help. Both the Colony and the Patroonship were slow in paying the salaries owed him.

The young Robert appears to have had an active social life. There are references to at least two young women who occupied his attention during this period.¹ But he chose to court and marry a women who would do the most to improve his financial situation and elevate his social position. In 1679 he married Alida van Rensselaer who was the young widow of Nicholas van Rensselaer his former boss, after he died in 1678. In 1680 Alida was appointed to administer the Van Rensselaer's extensive land holding. As important as her wealth was to the struggling young capitalist, her family connections became more important. Alida was the daughter of Phillip Pieterse Schuyler, one of the foremost Albany fur traders. Her five brothers were all active in the business of the colony; and her sister was married to Stephanus Van Cortland a wealthy and powerful New Yorker. The effect of the marriage was almost instantaneous as the frequency of dunning letters from creditors decreased, to be replaced by offers for loans and business opportunities. Soon after they were married, Livingston brought suit on behalf of his wife for her share of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck. Though ultimately he was unsuccessful, his efforts earned him the approval of the Schuylers, and marked him as a man to be reckoned with.  Alida, for her part became a beloved and valuable help-mate, bearing him nine children, and running his enterprises for him, first, in Albany and later on the manor when he was away for extensive periods in New York City, and in England.²

Livingston Circle, Livingston

Like most men of his age, Robert Livingston associated his aspirations for greatness with acquiring large tracts of land. He petitioned Governor Andros for the right to buy 2000 acres from the Wappinger Indians along the eastern shore of the Hudson where the Roeliff Jansen Kill enters it. He received permission and negotiated its purchase for some 300 Guilders worth of muskets, gunpowder, wampum and various trade goods. In 1684 the new Royal Governor, Thomas Dongan bestowed on it a Royal Patent. The next year he applied for, and got permission to buy an additional 600 acres on the Massachusetts border, along the upper reaches of the Roeliff Jansen Kill, in an area the Indians called “Tachkanick”. The following year the two parcels were united by Dongan into one “Lordship or Manor of Livingston...with full power and authority at all times for ever hereafter in said Lordship and Manor one Court Leet and one court Baron to hold and keep”. Carelessly the Governor, by his act united the two tracts of land which were miles apart into one, turning Livingston's 2,600 acres into 160,000 acres and giving him and his heirs the right to adjudicate all civil and most minor criminal matters among his tenants on his new manor.

                                                                                                                                                                     

 Though Livingston's road, connecting separate parts of his manor principally benefited himself, by declaring it a "king's hie way" Livinston, no doubt. was angling for royal support, or at least hoped to claim royal protection against highwaymen. County Rte 10, Linlithgo

 An early map of Livingston's Manor labels this county road
a "waggon path" County Re 10, Linlithgo




Livingston had done his utmost to ingratiate himself with both Andros and the new Governor, and was becoming an important insider in the Albany government. The Van Rensselaer's having recently thwarted his attempts to take a share of their manor may have seen the value in supporting Livingston's efforts to gain a manor of his own. And finally, Livingston, like many successful colonial businessmen was making substantial loans to the governor. In an era when disbursements from the crown and local taxes often lagged far behind colonial government expenses, by 1689, the Governor personally owed Livingston  £ 3000 for sums Livingston had advanced him!

Though Robert built his manor house on a hill overlooking the Roeliff Jansen Kill in 1692 the lands of the manor remained largely unpopulated for many years. By 1700, in all of Livingston's vast holdings only four or five tiny struggling farms could be found along its banks.  The fact was there were simply too many other places from New Jersey to the Carolinas where settlers could buy land free and clear, farm it without burdensome rents and obligations and some day sell it with improvements they had made on it for its full market value. Not until 1710, with the arrival of a new governor, would this situation improve. Robert Hunter arrived at his new post with a scheme to produce naval stores for the British navy. The “War of the Spanish Succession” had produced a wave of German refugees from the Rhineland Palatinate that crowded into tent cities in open fields south east of London. The war also made the procurement of naval stores – pitch and pine tar, essential for ship building, produced in countries ringing the Baltic sea, expensive and difficult to obtain. Hunter reasoned if a large number of these refugees could be indentured³ and transported to America to produce naval stores from the apparently abundant stands of native pine trees, both problems could be alleviated. Hunter arrived at his new office bringing with him between two and three thousand Palatines and after some delay established them in two settlements, West Camp, on the western side of the Hudson, north of Saugerties, and East Camp on land within Livingston's Manor.

Site of the Palatines' first church in West Camp, on Rte 9W. Another state sign, now missing, near here proclaimed:
"West Camp,  Settled 1710 By Paletines from the Rhineland For Production Of Naval Stores. 
Built Church and School 
During First Winter."



 The government bought back a 600 acre parcel of land that contained large stands of white pine trees, paying the Lord of the Manor £400. Livingston was also appointed the government's “victualer”, contracted to supply each of the Palatines with daily rations of 1/3 of a loaf of bread and a quart of ship's beer for the duration of the project. And, he became a salaried inspector of the camps, at £100 per year. While he and his sons scoured the countryside for wheat at the best prices, Alida, his wife ran the baking operations from the manor. She would eventually run most of the family business on the manor, selling commodities from the manor storehouse and extending credit when necessary. 

 A Town Park in Germantown commemorates the Palatines of East Camp, Palatine Park Rd.

 

Site of the Palatine Church in "East Camp" State Rte 9G  in Germantown



The naval stores project, however, was fraught with problems. Naval stores, like many other specialized commodities in the 17^th and 18^th centuries were produced by craftsmen using trade secrets that the English imitators had little access to. More importantly, the white pines of North America were poor sources of the resins necessary for naval stores⁴. And finally the Palatine peasant-farmers, themselves, though they were desperate to escape their war – devastated homelands, had little enthusiasm for the hard, dirty work of producing pitch and pine tar, and for the prospect of what seemed to be perpetual bondage. Livingston, also had difficulty fulfilling his contract. The war that brought the Palatines to America was manifesting itself as Queen Anne's War in North America . With war preparations underway for an invasion of Canada, wheat had become scarce, and expensive. Livingston cut back on the rations he supplied to the Palatines.

In 1711 the Palatines rebelled and Governor Hunter sent soldiers into the camps to put down the rebellion and ensure that the Palatines continued to work. Time passed and no shipments of naval stores were forthcoming. Money for the project dried up and in 1713 Hunter was forced to admit defeat and release the Palatines. Many left for the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys where other Palatines had settled earlier.

 On State Rte 146 between Guilderland and Altamont




 Some eventually emigrated to Pennsylvania where Germans had settled and they encountered less hostility than they faced in New York.  A large number of Palatines had taken loans from Livingston, and indebted to him, they were obliged to become the first large group of tenants on the manor.

By 1715 the British government had begun to rethink the wisdom of its large scale grants of land given out to friends of the king and colonial governors. Britain was becoming anxious to see its colonies fill out with settlers and develop, particularly in the light of French incursions into its western reaches. But the Crown's large grants of land were often allowed to lie, unpopulated, as their speculator/ owners waited for land prices to rise or they became preoccupied with other matters. Several of these grants had been taken back by the government. The area that included West Camp, where the Palatines were settled, for example, had been the Evans grant of 6300 acres, repossessed by the Crown. In the light of these developments. Livingston sought to reconfirm his patent and applied to Governor Hunter. The exact nature of what Livingston offered Hunter is unknown, though Hunter was indebted to Livingston for several thousand pounds. Whatever it was that Hunter sought to gain, he issued Livingston a new patent for Livingston Manor and with it he created a new Provincial Assembly district, centered on the lands of the manor. With its freeholder/electors beholden to the Lord of the Manor, Livingston was assured of a seat in the Assembly for many years to come – his own “pocket borough” of the type notorious in the history of British Parliamentary politics. It wasn't long before Livingston's charm and political instincts secured for him the Speaker's chair of the Assembly which he held until his retirement in 1725. From it he furthered his financial interests and helped insure that his loans and outlays for government projects would be repaid. From it he also developed a political philosophy of opposition to British taxation and control of the colonies that he would share with most of the colonial Livingstons who came after him.

Site of Tenant Hans Dings House, on the Roeliff Jansen Kill, Silvernails

The population on the Manor continued to grow slowly, both from new tenants and black slaves that the first Lord of the Manor acquired. A census in 1718 reported 126 Palatine households, some 499 tenants were living on the manor. For several of their last years both Robert and Alida were in poor health. Livingston worked to carefully preserve his legacy, even to the extent of securing the political offices he had acquired for his eldest surviving son, Phillip, who became the 2^nd Lord of the manor. To Robert Jr. he gave 160,000 acres at the southern end of his estate,  that became the manor of Claremont. A family tradition holds that Robert Jr. with conspicuous bravery once thwarted an attempt by slaves to kidnap or kill the elder Livingston, and so he was given special consideration, though there is no apparent documentary evidence to substantiate this story.⁵

In 1728 the tough Scotsman who made a personal empire, starting with little more than talent, ruthless determination and cunning, died. He was preceded by his remarkable wife and partner in business and life a year earlier.

Wire Rd., Linlithgo

Marker of the Week -- Right Location, Wrong Battle?

 While NYSHM's are usually pretty accurate, their location  is occasionally wrong.  In this case, the reverse seems to be true. In 1755 Colonial forces and their Indian allies under William Johnson collided with French Regulars and their Indian allies. In a number of bloody engagements Johnson fought off the French under Baron Dieskau. The Baron was wounded and captured and the French broke off the battle retreating back north.  Following this Battle of Lake George, Johnson built a fort, Fort William Henry, on the high ground next to the battlefield.  Two years later, in 1757, the French returned to lay siege to the Fort, this time led by Montcalm. (When the Battle of Lake George occurred Montcalm had been living the life of a contented rural squire in the French countryside with his two young daughters, which he adored.) During this later battle, known as the Battle or Siege of Fort William Henry, the Colonial forces occupied a fortified encampment on the older battlefield. It is here in huts their sick and wounded were probably housed. Other wounded, from the siege itself were sheltered in the casements of the fort itself. Following the textbook siege that left the Fort shattered and indefensible the British Commandant surrendered,  with the understanding that the garrison and their families would be permitted to leave for Fort Edward unharmed. The Indian allies of the French, however, felt they were being cheated out of the spoils (scalps, prisoners and plunder) they were promised. After the surrender they rampaged through the British fort and encampment, scalping and taking whatever they could.

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog. 

1 Court records also reveal a suit brought against him when he borrowed a violin to entertain his friends, and tried to return it to the owner,  broken in three pieces!

2Unlike English society in the 17^th and early 18^th Centuries, Dutch society regarded women much more as equals in the world of business. Women did not give up their “surnames” when the married. They owned property and often ran their own businesses. After marriage, they often became full partners with their spouses.

3Indentureship was a common practice in Colonial America

4Later in the colonial period several species of southern pines would be found to be excellent sources of resins for naval stores, leading to a major industry in the south, including in North Carolina, “the tar-heel state”.

5John, the eldest son died a few years before, while pursuing his father's interests in London. A younger son, Gilbert, mismanaging his affairs almost to the point of bankruptcy. He was bailed out by his father, but not included in the will.

It Happened Here -- The "Lily"

Amelia Jenks, like a surprising number of her sisters and brothers in the social reform movements that swept through America in the first 60 years of the 19th century had been born and raised in central New York.  This area had been host to so many pentecostal type religious reform movements and fiery  traveling religious speakers that it became known as the "burned over" district. While these preachers' central message had been that individuals could save their souls by accepting Jesus Christ, implicit in that message was the notion that individuals through their personal actions and choices could improve their lives, reform their society, and create in a small measure, a heaven on earth. It was this notion that inspired the girl from Homer, New York, and so many of her contemporary central New Yorkers.

In 1830 Amelia married Dexter Bloomer, a lawyer, and they moved to Seneca Falls,  New York where he edited a newspaper the Seneca Falls County Courier. Though Amelia had only two years of formal education she was soon regularly contributing to his paper. Active in her church, she became involved in the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society in 1848. Americans had been heavy drinkers since the earliest colonial times, with homemade low alcohol beers providing a safe alternative to often fetid and disease laden water available to early settlers, but the post-revolutionary war era saw the rise in popularity of much higher alcohol content—distilled beverages, bourbons and rye whiskeys. Widespread inebriation had become a social problem, having the greatest impact on women and their families. She would write,

“Intemperance is the great foe of her (women's) peace and happiness. It is that above

all that has made her House desolate and beggared her offspring....Surely she has the

right to wield her pen for its suppression.”

The Lily, a newspaper for 'home distribution' was started by members of the Ladies Temperance Society in1849 but by 1850 Amelia Jenks Bloomer would be its sole editor. One of its early contributors would be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pen name “Sunflower”. Before long the Lily would be addressing not only temperance issues but issues about child bearing and education, women's rights and fashion, becoming a forerunner of modern publications for women—Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Oprah and many more. Beginning with a circulation of 500, by its final year of publication in 1853 it was being distributed to 6000 people.

The same year Amelia joined the temperance society, she attended, as an observer, the First Women's Rights Convention, in Seneca Falls. Women's Rights became an increasing focus of the Lily. In 1851 she introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton facilitating a partnership that would span decades and be the driving force in the Women's Movement in the 19^th century.

Also in 1851 Elizabeth Smith Miller visited her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton. There she met Amelia Bloomer. Mrs Miller was a women's rights activist and the daughter of Gerritt Smith, a leading abolitionist from Peterborough New York, near Rochester. She was also an advocate of women's clothing reform. The fashions and mores of women's dress in the mid-19th century dictated that women wear floor length, billowing dresses with up to fifteen pounds of petticoats underneath and tightly corseted waists, often strengthened with stays of whalebone.  Hot and fatiguing, such costumes, the women agreed, were  a considerable health and safety hazard.  Trips and falls were a constant threat especially for women attempting to negotiate stairways with children or arm loads of laundry. Such dresses dragged in the street, bringing all sorts of filth home with them and around hot stoves and open hearths they could be a menace.  The women believed the tight corsets. besides being extremely uncomfortable might be leading to a variety of health problem.

At their meeting, Elizabeth Smith Miller wore a costume inspired by middle eastern women's costumes, with a loose blouse, a short skirt and underneath, a pair of light loose pants,

fastened at the ankles.  Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia made their own versions of this outfit and Amelia began to enthusiastically promote dress reform in the Lily,  even supplying patterns to interested readers.  The New York Tribune picked up her articles and soon her clothes were the center of a storm of controversy with clergymen and male social commentators weighing in against “the Bloomer Costume” and the most controversial part of the outfit, the baggy pantaloons or “Bloomers.” Ridiculed by male opinion leaders, and condemned for undercutting the patriarchy of the family, or even being sinful the fashion was abandoned by most member of the women's rights movement who saw it as a distraction from their main cause of Women's Rights. Amelia persisted until 1859 when she too abandoned the fashion announcing the advent of crinoline petticoats and other changes made current fashions less objectionable. 

In 1853 Amelia moved with her husband to Mount Vernon Ohio, where she continued to publish her paper. The following year she sold the Lily when the couple moved again to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where there were no facilities to have the paper printed, but she remained a contributing editor .
Amelia Bloomer continued to be involved in Women's and other social causes throughout the rest of her life.

Marker of the Week -- Winners and Losers

Rte. 32,  Greenville

It is easy to forget that the American Revolution was actually America's first Civil War  with an estimated 1/3 of all Americans supporting the Crown; or that this nation that earned a reputation for accepting all sorts of political refugees was extremely reluctant to accept back the loyalists who had supported the mother country against the revolutionaries.
The displacement of people was extensive and widespread with every town seeing properties "abandoned" and realizing the necessity of having courts set up to dispose of "abandoned" properties.  Prejudices persisted. Thus on this sign, Benjamin Spees is held up as something of a pioneer, for occupying the home of a (nameless) Tory.

It Happened Here -- The "Naples Tree"

Grimes Glen a County Park  off of NY 21, Naples, N,Y.

It has always seemed a little odd that New York State Historical Markers sometimes have as their subjects geological features or paleontological discoveries, but of course, any discovery has a story (a history) behind it, and as it turns out there are some interesting stories behind several of the early discoveries associated with the New York State Museum.

Millions of years before land animals (much less man) walked the face of the earth a great shallow inland sea covered much of what became New York State. Great storms slammed into the eastern shores of this Devonian Sea, flooding the streams that made up the Catskill delta and undercutting the tiny fibrous roots of a tree of a species of large fern-trees.  Over the years probably countless trees were undercut and floated out far into this sea.  This tree drifted perhaps 150 miles west before it became waterlogged and sank to the mud at the bottom of the sea.  Eventually sediments covered and encased the tree and fossilization began, preserving the features of the tree to a remarkable extent.  Over the eons, uplift continued and the sea bottom became a plateau. During the ice ages the glaciers carved great furrows into this plateau which became New York's Finger Lakes, and small streams of runoff water drained into these lakes. One of these streams at the head of Lake Canandaigua flowed nearly over the fossilized tree and eventually eroded a gully that left exposed part of a limb of the long buried tree.

In the 1870's and 1880's two men were regular companions in the search for fossils around the Naples area and throughout western New York. The younger man, John M. Clarke was a college trained student of Geology who had earned his degree from Amherst five years before, and just recently secured a professorship in Geology and Mineralogy at Smith College.  The older man, his uncle, had been, like the tree battered by life's storms and cast adrift.  D. Dana Luther was a miller, by trade, like his father before him, but he developed "miller's asthma," an allergy to the flour he ground at his mill and he could no longer pursue his trade.  Then his wife of many years, Augusta (Wiley) Luther, suddenly died.  Luther bought a small men's clothing shop in the nearby village of Naples, New York, but his heart wasn't really in the business and he frequently closed his shop early to seek solace in the woods and pursue his passion for hunting fossils, often with his nephew. Over a period of thirteen years they spent much of their summers together collecting fossils.

In 1882 while exploring Grimes Creek, Luther spotted a small line of coal-like material on the edge of a rock ledge, along the creek.  Chipping into the ledge he discovered it was part of a branch-like structure that led to a flattened scaly trunk.  His excitement grew as his excavation revealed a fossilized trunk that went on and on, running out of the gully, up into the farmland above it, right under a pigsty and beyond, before terminating with the tops of broken roots. Luther had discovered a nearly whole tree, over 18 feet in length!  More importantly, it was unlike anything that had been discovered before.  Eventually, scientists would attach a scientific name,  Lepidosigillaria to it, but it would be known popularly as the "Naples Tree".  Luther, excited, contacted his nephew.  The State Museum was wired and James Hall, its Director, visited the site. Painstakingly, over the next months, Luther freed the fossil from its matrix and mounted it for shipment.  In 1887 it was placed in the State Museum.

John Clarke was named assistant State Paleontologist in 1886.  In 1891 he hired Dana Luther to the museum staff as a field assistant.  At age 51 the miller, turned haberdasher, with a passion for paleontology would begin what became a twenty five year career in paleontology/geology.  He would go on to map much of the geology of western and central New York State.  He would co-author dozens of monographs and papers, retiring in 1916 at age 76!


Next Week-- The Lily and the Marker of the Week Returns!

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog. 

It Happened Here -- The Oil Driller

(Corner of NY 32 and NY81, Greenville)

We expect large towns and cities to be the homes of, and stages for, important and famous people, but for small hamlets and little rural villages their connections with the famous can often be short lived and tenuous. Often even a brief association can be a sufficient reason for an historic sign.

Edwin Laurentine Drake's encounter with history occurred when he he drilled the first oil well in the United States in 1859. His connection with Greenville, New York, in northern Greene County was that he was born there in 1819 and lived there the first six years of his life until his family moved to Castleton. Vermont. (A Vermont State historic marker at Castleton Corners commemoratives his youth and boyhood growing up in that state, as well.)

Drake left home at age 19, after a basic one room school education, apparently without any clear intentions of what he wanted to do with his life. He traveled west to Buffalo and landed a job as a night clerk on a lake steamer shuttling between Buffalo and Detroit. After a short while he joined his uncle on his farm outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. But farm life didn't suite him any better in Michigan, than it did in Vermont. He soon left the farm for the nearby town of Tecumseh, Michigan where he clerked in a hotel for two years. Eventually, he tired of clerking. He missed his friends and family, and a scant three years after leaving he was back in Vermont. But Drake did not stay long. Sensing his restlessness, his family and friends suggested he pursue his fortune in New Haven, Connecticut.

In New Haven, the tall, relatively handsome, personable young man soon landed a job in a dry goods store. After three years Drake was ready to try his considerable people skills in the larger marketplace of New York City. In short order he had a job in a large dry goods emporium on Broadway. About this time he met a woman who would become his wife. He married Philena Adams of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1845. But Philena was in frail health and they moved back to Springfield where Philena's family could be with her. Edwin went to work as an express agent on the Boston and Albany Railroad.  They had two children, in 1847 and 1849 but both died before they were two years old. The Drakes moved back to New Haven, and Edwin took a job as a conductor on the New York and New Haven Railroad. A third son was born in 1850 but in 1854 while they lived in Port Chester, New York, Philena died in childbirth, with an infant daughter. Edwin and his young son, George returned to New Haven where he could be with friends. Father and son, took up residence in the Tontine Hotel and Drake continued his job as a railroad conductor. Within two years little Georgie would also die. While illness and early death were common in the 19th century, such a string of misfortunes must have been devastating for Drake, but his ability to keep going in the face of such tragedy suggests a degree of inner strength that would soon serve him well.

In 1857 he married Laura Clarisssa Dowd and the couple moved in together in the Tontine Hotel. Just when it looked like Edwin was beginning to get his life back on track, however, Drake came down with a “malarial fever” followed by “muscular neuralgia” that resulted in varying degrees of numbness in his limbs. Drake, unable to work on moving trains, was forced to take a leave of absence from his conductor job.

With little else to do, the former railroad man began to hang out in the lobby of the Tontine Hotel. There he met James Townsend, a New Haven banker who also lived at the Tontine and other local businessmen who frequented the lobby, to exchange news, talk about business prospects and entertain each other with stories. Drake fit right in, and with his varied background, easy manner and ability to tell stories he made an interesting and affable companion. Townsend had a friend, from New York, James Bissel, who was trying to get together a group of investors to form a company to collect, refine and market a strange smelly substance that oozed from the ground in northwestern Pennsylvania known as “rock oil” or “Seneca oil,” named for the Indian tribe that once gathered it for medicinal purposes.

For some time Eastern Europeans had been digging wells for “rock oil” (petroleum) in Galicia and Rumania and using fractional distillation to produce an oil suitable for lighting purposes. But this lighting fluid remained a smokey and smelly light source until almost the mid-1800's when a pharmacist from Lvov and a local plumber created a lamp with a chimney that largely eliminated the problems. For many years North Americans and the British ignored these developments relying on whale oil, as their primary source of illumination. With the decimation of the world 's whale population, however, top quality whale oil began approaching $25.00/ gallon, (over $200 in today's money), and demand for a cheaper lamp oil grew. An ex-British Admiral, Thomas Cochrane and a Canadian geologist, Dr. Abraham Gesner, refined an oil from asphalt, naming the product Kero-elaion (Greek--'wax-oil'), and then changed the name to Kero-sene, so it would resemble another recognized lighting fuel, camphene, which was refined from turpentine. Camphene, though a good lighting fuel was highly flammable and often caused fires in people's homes. In England, Scottish chemist James Young set up an industry refining Kerosene (called Coal-oil in Britain) using cannel coal as a base, while in some U.S. cities coal was converted to a gas and piped to city street lights and the homes of well-to-do subscribers.
 
 

 (Corner of Jefferson St. and Fifth Ave., Troy) The telescoping iron tank enclosed in this brick shell kept the
 gas at a constant pressure. Other buildings, now gone, included coal sheds, a retort house that converted the coal to a gas, a condenser building, an exhauster building (pump house) and a purifying house where sulphur was removed from the gas.

Another early experimenter with petroleum was Samuel Kier. Kier operated two salt water wells in Tarentum, a town about twenty miles northwest of Pittsburgh. In an age before refrigeration, salt and brine solution were important products in food preservation. In central NewYork and western Pennsylvania wells were drilled to reach underground pools of highly saline water which could be pumped up and evaporated to form fine crystalline salt, highly desired for preserving meat and fish. But Keir's wells became contaminated with “rock oil” – a common misfortune in Pennsylvania salt wells. Rather than skimming off and discarding the oil, as most salt well drillers did, or shutting down the well, in disgust if the flow of oil became too troublesome, as some producers did, Keir experimented to see if he could find any use for the substance. First he collected a large number of folk remedies that extolled the virtues of “rock oil” and he took his well skimmings and bottled the stuff as a patent medicine, selling it for $0.50 a half pint bottle. Next, he hired a chemist and with him developed a method of distilling the oil into several products, including petroleum jelly and kerosene.

In New Haven, Edwin Drake bought $200 worth of shares in the new “Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company” and for a time was elected its president. Eventually Drake would have to relinquish the shares and the office. But Townsend and the other investors thought enough of Drake and his enthusiasm for the project to hire him as their company agent in Titusville, Pennsylvania.   In fact, enthusiasm, an engaging personality, and the fact he was out of work and had nothing better to do may have been Drake's most outstanding qualifications for the job.  Drake also held a pass from his former employment as a conductor that allowed him to travel on any railroad for free – an additional plus for a cash strapped start-up company, that had to watch every penny.

In December 1857 Drake visited Titusville Taking the railroad to Erie, Pennsylvania, he stopped first at Syracuse and observed the salt works there. In Titusville Drake explored the “seeps” along Oil Creek and observed how oil was traditionally gathered. Wool blankets were used to soak up oil and water that collected in shallow collection trenches. The water was allowed to evaporate from the blankets, then the oil was wrung out into barrels. It was obvious to Drake that this method could never produce a sufficient quantity of crude oil, so Drake turned to drilling. Accounts differ about who first thought of drilling for oil. Two stories, set in different locations have George Bissel coming upon a display of bottles or an advertising poster in a pharmacy for Kier's rock oil patent medicine. Both featured a picture of a salt well derrick, the source of Bissel's panacea. Other historians point to early documents authored by Drake which described his intentions to “bore” for oil.

The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, originally chartered in New York, was reorganized as the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut¹. The new company bolstered by a report from a noted Yale chemist, Benjamin Silliman, who they had hired to research the feasibility of distilling Kerosene from petroleum, announced itself ready to begin the business of extracting oil. The former New Haven railroad conductor was dispatched back to Titusville. But before he departed, James Townsend began to mail him instructions and important looking packets addressed to “Colonel Edwin Drake – Titusville, PA. “ By the time Drake arrived, thanks to the efforts of the local postmaster, trying find him, the whole town was buzzing about the mysterious “Colonel Drake” and his new enterprise. Though Drake had never served a day in the military, Townsend figured the title and the publicity would help him command respect, make contacts and attract employees for this unusual and highly speculative venture.

When Drake arrived he leased an island in Oil Creek, hired laborers and began digging his well. He did not get far before it became obvious that a hand dug well was impractical, as it quickly filled with groundwater from the Oil Creek valley. Drake went to Tarentum to recruit salt well drillers. Salt well drillers, however, had a reputation for being rowdy and heavy drinkers. The first drillers Drake hired failed to show up for work. A second crew showed up drunk and showed little enthusiasm for the crazy idea of drilling for a “worthless commodity” like rock oil. Finally Drake approached a blacksmith familiar with making equipment for the salt well industry, William A.“Uncle Billy” Smith, and his son. The pair could do the work, knew the technology and could make any modifications Drake might need for oil well drilling. Drake's crew brought in a steam engine, built a drilling tower and set up for drilling. Drake began drilling, but again he was beset by the problem of ground water contamination and debris clogging the well, as he drilled toward bedrock. After being forced to suspend drilling, Drake came up with a solution. As he drilled, he would drive down an iron pipe which would encase the well and the top of the drill bit.²

Drilling proceeded slowly. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. The Seneca Oil Company ran out of money. For several weeks James Townsend kept the operation going by advancing Drake monies from his own account. Finally, Thompson sent Drake a last bank draft with instructions to shut down the operation, pay off his creditors and come home. Luckily, Townsend's letter took several days to arrive. On August 27, 1859, at 69.5 feet, the drill bit at the well suddenly dropped into a subterranean crevasse. “Uncle Billy” decided to shut down for the day while he went home and pondered what this meant, and what he should do next. The following morning the blacksmith returned to find the well flooded with a rich mixture of oil and water. When Townsend's letter arrived later that day Drake could telegraph Townsend back with the news he had struck oil! and with the money he sent him, he would begin buying up whiskey barrels all over the county to store it in. With a well producing twenty barrels a day, he would soon exhaust his existing supply of barrels.

What had seemed like a crazy idea and had been called by the local residents “Drake's Folly” began to attract competition after only a few short months of successful operation. Up and down the flood plain of Oil Creek competitors derricks began springing up, copying innovations Drake and Smith had adapted from salt well drilling operations or pioneered themselves. Then disaster struck. On October 6, 1859 “Uncle Billy” was checking on a storage tank, while carrying a lantern. Volatile fumes from the open tank ignited, setting the tank on fire. Smith escaped with his life but the derrick, the pump house with its expensive steam engine, several vats of oil and Smith's cabin were destroyed in the fierce oil fed fire. It took several more months to get back in production, but by then the world's first oil boom was in full swing³and over-production was starting to collapse the price for oil. Soon competitors' wells were out-producing Drake's well and with falling oil prices the Seneca Oil Company was in trouble. Drake was let go and a year later became Justice of the Peace in Titusville, while supplementing his salary by buying and selling oil leases.  

In 1863,  Drake returned to New York City intending to continue the business of buying and selling oil leases. Within a year a combination of bad luck, bad business decisions, and failing health left Drake destitute. He returned to his kinfolk in Vermont, but the cold and dampness of the northeast aggravated his condition. In 1869, while looking for work in New York City, he happened to run into an old associate from Titusville who was shocked and saddened by his condition. His friend returned home and helped raise $4000 from towns people who had benefited and even made fortunes from Drake's discovery in their home town. With the money he was able to resettle in Bethlehem, PA, near a famous “hydropathic institute” where Drake was able to find some relief from his illness. In 1873 the State of Pennsylvania awarded him a $1500 a year annuity for himself and his wife, for his perseverance in discovering a resource in their state that had created large amounts of tax dollars for the state and made wealth for many of their citizens.

1New York laws at that time made investors liable for all debts their companies incurred while in Connecticut, investors were liable only for the amount of their investment, and no one knew if this enterprise would be a fantastic success or an expensive boondoggle.

2Drake's innovation became standard in the industry. If he had patented and protected his patent, this idea alone might have made him a wealthy man but unfortunately he did not and wealth would elude him.

3The oil boom greatly changed northwestern Pennsylvania. Titusville had been a small community that owed its existence to the lumber industry. Many believed after the big trees had been lumbered off Titusville would disappear. But oil changed that

Marker of the Week -- Marker for Melon

Charles Bender must have been something of a perfectionist. In 1900, after seventeen years of "persistent experimentation" he traveled to New York city to market his "Golden Queen" muskmelons.  Starting with a melon variety introduced in 1876 by a local Albany seed company,  year after year Bender saved and planted the the seeds of his "best" melons, gradually improving their sweetness, aroma, flavor and size.  The melons he sold to the Waldorf Astoria's Restaurant, the Savoy, the Lambs and other top restaurants averaged over 7 lbs., with thin rinds whose flesh could be eaten right down to the rind.  For the restauranteurs an important feature was their durability. "Benders," as they came to be known, didn't reach peak sweetness until three days after they had been picked, and if picked before fully ripe could last a week or more. In one month the Belmont Hotel would buy $2,200 of melons.  Before the Saratoga Hand Melon farm became a traditional favorite with the Saratoga summer racing crowd, Bender was selling his melons to them to be shipped all over the country.  In 1917 the Joseph Harris Seed Company began selling "Bender Supreme" melon seeds but Bender's seeds were only part of his success. William Taylor who learned the business from Bender, eventually buying him out, explained his secret. He "babied them in every way possible."  In dry weather he hauled to the fields a 300 gallon skid tank of rainwater collected from the eaves of his barns and other buildings, ladling water over each and every plant.  In damp weather the thousands of maturing fruit were raised upon wooden plates or trios of cobblestone that littered the stony fields.  "Bender had no kids. The melons were like his kids."

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog. 

It Happened Here -- Knox: the Pillbox Capital

Co. Rte. 156, Knox

Marker of the Week*

The Town of Knox, one of the "Helderberg Hilltowns" was populated after the Revolution with  tenants leasing lands held by Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer. (See last week's post.) It appears to have been named for either for John Knox (1514-1572) a Scots Protestant Reformer or Henry Knox   (1750-1806),  Washington's General of artillery (see post of 4/21/13). 
 

Nathan Crary, a resident of Knox, or Knoxville, as it was known then, began first producing wooden pillboxes in 1806 out of basswood, an abundant fine grained wood that was resistant to splitting.

The boxes, resembling miniature Shaker boxes were usually oval in shape with the sides made from a single shaving or "winding" with the ends glued together to form a hoop.  The bottoms and were made from a slightly thicker  basswood shaving, cut or stamped  out in an oval shape. Occasionally, customers might request a round profile. The pillbox covers were made in a similar fashion but slightly larger--designed to slip over the tops of the boxes. 

Before the American Revolution, most commercially produced medicines were imported from Great Britain.  The term "Patent Medicine" does not refer to these medicines being patented but rather to the practice that doctors  who treated members of the nobility or other famous personages with them, would attempt to get for their compounds an endorsement or "patent" from their famous patients to help market their "cures" to the general public.

It was after the Civil War that large numbers of returning veterans, many injured,  created a large market for patent medicines. The increase in demand was spurred on by extensive marketing.  Patent medicine manufactures spent as much as a third of their revenues on advertising.  Newspapers, which had become commonplace in the lives of both urban and rural Americans were filled with patent medicine advertising. ¹Colorful advertising cards (the forerunners of today's sports cards) were given away by medicine manufacturers, and  by the 1880's the Ayer's Company even published its own almanac as an advertising media.  Crary's family business was joined by others in Knox, becoming a major local cottage industry with six shops in Knox manufacturing pill boxes.  Such medicines as Sherman's Cathartic Lozenges, Doctor Ingoldsby's Vegetable Extract, James Compound Vegetable Pills, Doctor Newton's Jaundice Bitters, and Ayer's Cathartic Pills were sold in Knox pill boxes.  J.C. Ayers and Co.  of Lowell Massachusetts bought 1,000,000 pill boxes in a single year from Knox!

Though Crary's son John F. Crary, in 1870 had a long term contract to supply Benjamin Brandreith's company that produced the Vegetable Universal Pill, one of the most successful patent medicines, most of the pill boxes were sold through jobbers. Packed in 10-12,000 count "tierces" they were transported by wagon to the port of Rensselaer to be shipped to down the Hudson.  A full "tierce" might wholesale for $3.50.

Despite the increased demand,  the manufacture of pill boxes remained a cottage, family based, industry. Typically, the men of the family would harvest the basswood trees, hand sawing them into short logs, and splitting them into blocks, to be stored away and dried. When seasoned, the blocks would be cut by the men into the proper thickness "shavings" with a draw knife, on a shaving horse. A boy might be in charge of stamping out the tops and bottoms.  He might produce 30,000 a day. The only significant mechanization came with the use of a horse-powered rotary plane that made uniform shavings. The assembly of boxes was done mostly by women and girls. The precut “windings” were tightly wound around a roller and the ends glued together with a hot glue made from horse hoof trimmings, obtained from one of the two local blacksmiths in town. Heated in a double-boiler pot on the shop's stove the glue set quickly after it was applied. The ends were held in place by “gripes” – wooden blocks, with channels cut in them. After the glue set, the rollers were removed and bottoms or tops were glued on. In this way a worker might make 1,600 to 1,800 boxes per day for which they might receive $.03--.07 per 100 boxes.  While the patent medicine makers made millions, the farmers and their families of Knox worked incredibly long and tedious hours to make a pittance.  At the patent medicine factories a dozen or so pills were placed in the boxes and the boxes were sealed with labels.

For a century the tiny town of Knox produced most of the pill boxes made in America. Only after the stocks of local basswood trees were depleted , and new methods of mass producing glass pill vials and tin pill boxes were developed did production end.

 

1Newspapers became so dependent on patent medicine advertising dollars that when reformers in the 1890's began pushing for disclosure of patent medicine ingredients and restrictions on unsubstantiated claims, the advertisers negotiated so-called “red clauses” that voided advertising contracts if the newspapers' states passed any law restricting them. Subsequently, many newspapers avoided editorials supporting reform.

 

*This week's marker of the week deserves some explanation, so we will forgo a longer article that normally precedes it.