It Happened Here -- Pioneers and Potash

 

 

In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries settlers of the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys, and the Helderberg hinterlands of Rensselaerwyck faced the gargantuan task of converting dense hardwood forests into farmlands. Once they had harvested the timber they needed for homes and barns, fences and furnishings, they were left with the task of disposing of all the rest of their unwanted wood. Fortunately the first Dutch settlers brought with them the knowledge of how to convert their surplus wood into a useable, transportable commodity they called “potaschen”.

Grant & Eadies Store, Rte 143 Westerlo

Hardwood wood ashes contained potassium salts that were essential compounds in a variety of chemical processes. Soap making, glass production, fabric bleaching, and the removal of fatty oils from raw wool, all relied on a commodity colonial New Yorkers knew as potash, or in its processed form,“pearl ash”. As land was cleared, great quantities of wood were seasoned and gathered into piles and burned in the open air. The clearing of land was accompanied not only by the sound of axes but by the presence of great fires that burned day and night. Among the most abundant trees in these forests were elms which were one of the best plant sources of potassium salts. The ashes from these fires were collected in wooden barrels and water was added to leech the potassium salts out. The wood bottoms of the barrels were replaced with a flagstone bottom with a channel cut in it to direct the liquid off to a container. Then the water was boiled off in large pots, leaving a hard black crystalline residue known as “black salts”, a mixture of potassium salts and carbon particles. One large elm might yield as much as 200 pounds of black salts. Finally, the carbon particles were burned off in high temperature brick ovens, or kilns leaving a bluish white powder, “pearl ash”.
 

NEAR THIS SITE IN 1764
PETER HASENCLEVER BUILT AN
ASHERY WHICH WAS THE FIRST
FRAME BUILDING ERECTED IN
THE TOWN OF SCHUYLER.

COL. MARINUS WILLETT, CHAPTER D.A.R.

1976

                                                                          (Frankfort)

This refined potash became a valuable commodity domestically, and shipped to Britain where the wool industry was thriving.  Though never profitable enough to sustain itself as a business, the profits of  cottage potash production might be enough to pay the wages of an axeman/laborer to help clear the land, or enable a settler to buy extra acreage, or help sustain a family until the first crops could be planted and harvested. Of course, a large landowner or tenant farmer, clearing a large amount of land might realize a substantial income from potash. The account books of Frederick Crounse, for example, show his income from potash in 1794-1795. Crounse leased 600 acres in “Hellenbergh”, an area beneath the Helderberg Escarpment in an area known as Altamont, today.   

                                                                                                                                                                        During the American revolution Crounse and nine other tenant farmers had responded to an urgent call for food for the American army at Saratoga, providing barrels of salt pork, and herding their cattle and hogs to the army encamped at Bemis Heights. In return, the Patroon, Stephen Rensselaer forgave Crounse the annual quit-rent due on Crounse's farm for life. In the early 1790's Crounse must have undertaken a sizable conversion of his forested land to farmland. In 1794 his records show he produced 40 barrels of potash (ashes?), sold for a profit of 67£. Over the winter he bought two potash kettles, valued at 16£ each and apparently with them that year produced 27 barrels of potash (black ash or pearl ash?) valued at 87£.

One source described potash kettles as 1/2 an egg shaped with the bottom cast thick to withstand the heat of evaporating the potash down to "cake".

Large Kettle (potash?) at the Jacob Crounse House, Altamont

Warner's Lake

In a frontier economy, where cash was in short supply, enterprising country store proprietors could barter their merchandise for farmer's raw ashes or black salts. In 1823 in Schoharie County good quality hearth ashes sold for 8¢ a bushel (store credit). By mid century 100 lbs. of black salts brought $3.00. Some store owners encouraged the trade in black salts by renting to farmers the large kettles used to boil down the ash slurry. Some, increased their profits by maintaining their own ovens at their stores to refine black salts into pearl ash. Similarly, they could take the raw hides of the livestock farmers butchered, for store credit, and tan them themselves, taking the leather to trade for store merchandise from their city suppliers. A few, like Major Willis, took local manufacturing even further, turning farmer's products (grain and hides) into consumer goods (“ardent spirits”, shoes) that he could sell directly back to farmers.

South Westerlo

By 1845 there were 738 "asheries" in New York State producing $909,194 of potash. The state's new canal system was a major boon to the potash industry with the Erie and Champlain canals connecting much of New York with Montreal, the major potash exporting port. During the early years of the canal system, potash, wheat and whiskey were the three biggest commodities shipped by barge.

In the 1850's mineral potash began to be mined in Germany.  Canada followed suit and the international market for organic potash collapsed. By 1865 there were only 54 asheries left in New York and many of these may have been inactive, by then.



 Marker  of the Week -- Oops!

Columbia Co. Rte. 19, Elizaville

Sometimes you think you have the makings of an interesting story but it just doesn't turn out the way you anticipate. Calendar houses are an architectural oddity that first appeared in England around the time of Queen Elizabeth I.  Architectural features would be built into a house/palace mimicking the numbers found in the calendar (365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 7 days, 4 seasons etc.) Large houses might be built with 365 panes of glass, 52 steps on all the staircases, 12 doorways, and 7 gables and 4 chimneys, for example. The form had a re- surgence in popularity during the Enlightenment and again during the Victorian period,  and there are approximately a dozen houses across Britain that can be called Calendar houses.  Other examples appeared in other parts of the British empire -- Ireland, Jamaica,  and Australia.  It seemed reasonable there should be some in  
the United States.  When I discovered the listing for the "Calendar House" in the State Museum NYSHM list I resolved I had to see it on my next trip into Columbia County.  Finding the marker I started up the long driveway, preparing myself for the task of count chimney bricks, window panes,  outhouses -- whatever. About halfway up the driveway I met the property manager coming out.  ( The 1773 Calendar House is rented out for weddings and for large family vacations, etc.)  He explained the original Callendar House, (two L's) in central Scotland was the ancestral home of the Livingstons and this home was named for that one. (and I didn't need to go to the trouble of counting window panes, chimneys, outhouses, etc., but I was welcome to go and take a picture of it anyway.) After some research at the Columbia County Historical Society I had more of the story.

Callendar House (also spelled Callender House) in central Scotland dates back to 1345.  The Scottish Livingstons had lost this house after they supported the Jacobin rebellion in 1715 and again in 1745,  when Lady Anne Livingston's husband, the Earl of Kilmarnoc, was beheaded for high treason.  In America, Robert Livingston (3d Lord of the Manor, grandson of the 1st Lord, Robert Livingston, the elder) had wanted to rename the Livingston Manor house on the Roeliff Jansen Kill "Callendar" after he made improvements to the house, but he was dissuaded by other members of the family.  Ostensibly this was because the American manor house, even with its improvements, was quite modest compared to the Scottish "Great House" but also, unstated, may have been the desire not to remind the British authorities so soon after the abortive rebellions of the connection between the American Livingstons and their traitorous Scottish cousins.

Generations and politics change over time.  One of the early acts of the legislature of the State of New York would be the outlawing of primogeniture and entail. When Robert, the 3d Lord died in 1790;  no 4th Lord of the manor would inherit the bulk of his estate. Instead his lands would be divided up more or less equally between his four sons. Each would inherit a paltry 28,000 acres and
(General) Harry Livingston, his third son, would move into a substantial (if not palatial) farmhouse built by Samuel TenBroek in 1773. He would name it Callendar House, and not care what His Majesties' Government thought about it. Sometime between Harry's purchase of the house, and the State's creation of the NYSHM,  "Callendar" became  "Calendar" and though I did not get to count bricks, window panes, doorways or outhouses, I did get a peek at an old and very handsome house.

 

It Happened Here -- The Town that Made a Name for Itself

Co. Rte. 24, Red Rock

 Marker of the Week  (Last week's post featured no Marker of the Week, so this week we will devote our whole post to this one marker.)

New York State Historical Markers have a fascination for me, in part, because they often call attention to an historic person or event but usually don't explain the event or the importance of that person, "begging the question..." or enticing the reader to want to find out more.  (Perhaps this is why I find the large Thruway rest stop type of State Historical Markers signs less interesting because they usually do a nice job of succinctly explaining the history and relevance of  their subject matters.)  In contrast, a marker like this gives the reader very little and might have very well escaped my attention, except for the curious name "Pilfershire".

About 1750, as the sign says, the first settlers arrived in this area. They settled along the Indian Creek, so named because it served as a summer encampment for groups of Stockbridge Indians who would continue for many years to camp in the vicinity and sell the settlers reed baskets they made.

Like many of the isolated settlements in the colonial northeast it was visited occasionally by travelling peddlers. A year or two after the first settlers had arrived a peddler by the name of Silvanius Cunningham came to town. Something spooked his horse.  The horse bolted, upsetting his cart and scattering his merchandise which included tinware, jewelry, dry goods, papers containing needles, spools of thread and wooden spoons over a wide area.  The residents turned out to rein in and sooth his frightened horse and help the peddler recover his scattered inventory.  At first, the peddler was grateful for the help but when he took stock of his goods he realized a lot of it was missing. Angrily he declared the settlement was a town of "meddlers and thieves" and denounced the town wherever he travelled, calling it "Pilfershire."  The name stuck, much to the chagrin of the townspeople, and the continuing amusement of residents of Canaan and Austerlitz.

For some 75 years the residents of the hamlet harbored resentment against the name until a general store was built and residents found a forum to express their dissatisfaction. In 1825 storekeeper Ezra Park led the movement to change the community's name.  For several Fridays members of the  community met at the local schoolhouse to discuss names. Residents agreed that the name should reflect some prominent natural feature of the community, and one natural feature stood out,  a large glacial boulder deposited from the Green Mountains that lay between the creek and the road to Austerlitz and Canaan. Several names were proposed, including Gray Rock, Spring Rock and Fern Cliff.  Someone proposed the name Red Rock, noting that some parts of the rock had a slight reddish hue.

Red Rock or Red Paint?

People agreed they liked the name, but there was that one problem--the rock wasn't all that red!  Park suggested an obvious solution.  Within the year, the community gathered at the rock with buckets of dark red (barn?) paint and a wooden column was erected on top of it declaring this was the community of Red Rock. The storekeeper supplied belts for the girls and hats for the boys proclaiming the town's new name.

Every dozen years or so the community would gather for a "painting day",  a picnic and community games. This tradition continued until at least 1899.  It would be many years until the community received official recognition when a Red Rock Post Office was established.

Co. Rte 24, about 1 Mile East of NYSHM

In 1860, Elias Bostwick, a resident, headed up a movement to replace the wooden column with a marble one.  Advertisements were printed up in local papers;  A local congressman, Charles L. Beale was invited as an orator; a local band was hired; volunteer fire companies from nearby communities paraded; and the community was invited to an ox roast.

In 1953 some "newcomers" suggested perhaps the hamlet should revert to it old name. A flurry of letters to the editor in the Chatham Courier ensued. When the dust settled the town that made a name for itself was still Red Rock.¹

                                      

1The Chatham Courier has published stories on Red Rock and its origins every dozen years or so. Recently a clipping on the naming of Red Rock written in 1901 by Mary Y. Patterson was sold on Ebay. Though the source was not listed, it appears, from the context of the article, to have been from a Massachusetts Berkshire paper, probably the Berkshire Eagle.

It Happened Here -- The Christian Sisters in Canaan and

the Greenwich Village Poet of Austerlitz

Last week's Marker of the Week, about the location of fictional events near James Fenimore Cooper's house on Lake Otsego have led me to think about two other "literary" markers in northern Columbia County. Though only a few miles apart, the world-views and lifestyles of the subjects of these markers -- a pair of 19th century women novelists, and an early 20th century feminist poet -- could hardly be any more distant from each other.

Off NY 295, Vandenberg Rd., Queechy

                                                                                                                                                           Susan Bogert Warner, writing as "Elizabeth Wetherell" in the 1850's was extremely popular in her time, writing what has been called the "first best seller," second in popularity at mid-century only to Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Wide Wide World,  published in 1850 relates the story of Ellen, a young girl who is sent to her aunt to live when her father must take her mother to Europe for medical treatment. Traveling in the company of strangers who are mean to her, she runs away. She meets a man who sees her crying. He reminds her of her mother's lessons of Christianity and giving herself over to Jesus to find strength and consolation in prayer. Ellen decides to become a "true Christian." Continuing  on to her Aunt's                                            

house she discovers her father neglected to tell her Aunt she was coming to live there!  The Aunt resents her presence and is unkind to her. Throughout the rest of the novel Ellen meets a succession of people who are unkind or adversarial,  and others (Christians) that encourage her and help her grow in her faith. One, a good friend dies, and Ellen learns a lesson of acceptance of God's will. Another, the friend's brother supports her and helps to grow in spiritual maturity. One day, while doing her chores in the household she discovers a letter to her from her mother expressing the desire to have her come live with relatives in Scotland.  Knowing this is her mother's will, she persists and eventually gets herself shipped off to Scotland. There, her Scots relatives fall in love with her, become possessive and insist she act like their own daughter, but they see her religious fervor as obsessive and they discourage her in her religious devotions. She learns to balance being a dutiful child while maintaining her religious faith.  Eventually, her friend's brother finds her, and though the family try to keep them apart, they get together. John encourages her to keep her faith, reminding her that she will soon be old enough to chose where she wants to live. Then she can return to America and they will be together forever. (There the novel ends.)

The novel struck a chord with Victorian Americans and within two years it had gone through fourteen editions.  Twentieth century critics, however, panned it, dismissing it as "didactic" and "sentimentalist", dealing mainly with Ellen's emotional reactions to events that overtake her.  (One critic counted five outbursts of tears in four pages.)   But, curiously, in recent years this and other works of Susan Warner have found a following.  Among fundamentalist  Christians, especially in the "home school movement" Warner has regained popularity and even sets of  teaching materials on Wide, Wide World have appeared for use with pre-teen, early-teen home-schoolers.

Often collaborating with her sister, Susan Warner wrote some fifty novels.  Her sister Anna wrote thirty one, but she is more remembered for her children's hymns, including "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, (for the Bible tells me so.)" Both sisters,  living at their father's home on Constitution Island, in the Hudson River, off of West Point taught bible classes to cadets at the military academy for  some forty years. They were buried in the West Point cemetery, the only civilians (not members of military families) to be buried there.                                                    

NY22, corner of East Hill Rd., Austerlitz

"My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
    It gives a lovely light!"

This quatrain from " First Fig" (1920) would epitomize the sensual carpe diem spirit of the young poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Raised by a struggling single mother in Camden Maine, "Vincent", as she was called by her family, would write a luminous prize-winning poem at age of 20 (Rennascence) , go on to attend  Vassar College, courtesy of a wealthy patron awed by her poetic gifts, and make her way to Greenwich village, where she would write and publish, and have affairs with well over a score of lovers, male and female. In the course of her early life she would become the most widely read poet of her, (" Jazz Age") generation.  

Steepletop,  E. Hill Rd., Austerlitz

 
By 1923 she was becoming chronically ill with intestinal disorders.  At a party she met a successful Dutch coffee importer, Eugen Boissevain.  They fell in love  and "Vincent" who had rejected proposals from more than a couple other suitors accepted his. They were married and were whisked off to ... the hospital, where after a successful appendectomy and bowel re-sectioning Vincent was returned to convalesce in the care of her new husband.  The awarding of the Pulitizer Prize to Vincent later that year for a volume of her collected verses passed almost without notice. (Millay was the first woman so honored.)

Two years later the couple bought an old blueberry farm in northern Columbia County where Vincent could work, free of the distractions of the City, but still near enough the City so Vincent and Eugen could have city friends up for parties.  They named it "Steepletop" for the stalky pale pink wildflowers that grew everywhere in the un-worked fields.  Eugen sold his import business,  and took up farming and the care and nurturing of Vincent and her career full time.

Other collections of poetry and literary projects followed over the years. The Boissevains settled into an "open" marriage in which both partners from time-to-time had affairs. In 1925 Vincent's affair with  poet George Dillon inspired some of her best sonnets. Though a pacifist during World War I, Vincent recognized the evil threat fascism posed and wrote poetry to support the U.S. war effort in World War II.  Though most of this work was not critically well received, "Lidicie" a poem about the Nazi extermination of a Czech village was praised.

In 1936 a car accident left Millay with serious chronic back pain which led to a dependence on morphine. The stress of the war, Eugen's loss of his investments overseas, and the pressures to write to meet deadlines led Vincent to a nervous breakdown in 1944 that prevented her from writing for two years. In 1949 the years of smoking, heavy drinking and caring for Vincent took their toll on Eugen as well. He contracted lung cancer, underwent radical surgery and died from a stroke.

Vincent was devastated but doggedly worked on, alone, at Steepletop to write another collection of poems. She died just a year later from a heart attack.

To some extent, like the Warner sisters, the popularity and acclaim of Millay's work has ebbed and surged.  By the 1960's her lyric, romantic poetry had fallen out of fashion, replaced by the new Modernism of such poets as T. S. Elliot and W. H. Auden but a decade later with the rise of the feminist movement her work was receiving new attention.  Steepletop was opened as a museum and the Millay Colony for the Arts was established to encourage and inspire young artists.

It Happened Here -- New York's Revolutionary Militias

One of the enduring myths of the American revolution is that the war was primarily fought and won by American militiamen, the "minute men", the citizen-soldiers that responded to the war when it came to their doorsteps or villages and laid down their plows to pick up their muskets, then resumed their place behind their plow horses when the threat was over. While certainly local militias played a significant part in virtually every revolutionary battle it was the regular "line" regiments that did most of the fighting and it was they that Washington and his generals relied upon to successfully pursue the war. On the other hand, militia regiments played all sorts of critical support roles, not the least being the enforcement arm of "committees of safety" that took over from local governments when local governments  lost the authority they had as agents of the crown.

NY Rte. 20, Duanesburg

The 2nd Regiment (Schenectady) of the Albany County Militia is not typical. It fought in both battles at Saratoga, as part of Gen. John Glover's brigade along side of Continental Army regiments from Massachusetts. Wemple led some 119 of his command to investigate the Cobleskill massacre and in 1780 participated in the battle of Klock's field. The next year it would fight at the battle of Johnstown and in one of the last skirmishes of the war, two weeks after Yorktown, engage Tory and Indian raiders, killing their leader Walter Butler.

Co. Rte 156, Altamont

Co.Rte 156, Altamont

The 3d (Rennselaerwyck) Regiment's service is more typical. Called up as part of Col. Ten Broeck's Militia brigade, before the second battle of Saratoga, the 3d helped supply the rapidly growing army that would engulf Burgoyne's army. Ten Broeck division of some 3000 militiamen was held in reserve until the British lines broke and the militias surged forward causing a rout of the British/German forces.

Captain Van Aernam, of the 3d regiment was selected as captain to"direct rangers in apprehending dangerous persons" (ie rounding up Tories for questioning.) The Helderbergs was an area where defections to loyalist recruiters was a concern.

Thatcher Park, Berne

Hunting for Salisbury would have been one of the duties of Captain Van Aernam's militia "rangers" though the historic record is unclear who captured Salisbury or what was his fate.

Co. Rte 50, Ballston

Lt. Col. Asa Waterman served in the 17th Albany Co. Militia and like Col. Wemple, fought in Glover's Brigade, at Saratoga, but most of his service was that he "captured Tories"









In the early years of the war, determining who was a friend of the new revolutionary governments and who was not, was a critical job. Militias often had the task of administering the "Articles of Association" a document outlining the objectives of the Second Continental Congress that served as something of a loyalty oath, and delivering the names of those who refused to the local Committees of Safety who would decide who needed to be watched, and who needed to be apprehended for further questioning.  Arresting, disarming, escorting Tory suspects and prisoners became major functions of militias. In Albany County, alone, in 1776-1777,  one thousand five hundred and twelve accused Tory sympathizers were brought in for questioning. Inevitably, as Americans searched their consciences, some, even those who had risen quite high in the rebel government or military would decide to support the Loyalists.  Col. Hans Yost Herkimer, commander of the 4th Tron County Militia and brother of General Nicholas Herkimer who would lead the patriot militia at Oriskany, defected to the British, escaping to Canada.  Dirk Gardiner, himself a member of the Kinderhook Committee of Safety, and Captain of the 4th Company, 7th (Kinderhook) Regiment of the Albany County Militia was accused of circulating Tory propaganda. His own militia was  ordered to disarm him and escort him to the enemy lines above New York City.  Martin Van Buren, uncle and namesake of the future   8th President of the United States refused to sign the Articles of Association and suffered the same fate of banishment to the British lines, as did the father of Van Buren's wife.

Facilities for holding suspected Tories were largely non existent and often improvised.  Asa Douglas used his attic. Jeptha Root Simms, an early historian of the colonial and revolutionary periods relates how a group of Schoharie militiamen escorting a collection of alleged Tories to Albany as darkness approached used a large, high-roofed Georgian style farm house to secure their prisoners. Forcing them up on the roof at bayonet point, they then removed the ladder!

Co. Rte 5, Canaan

   
                                                                                                                                                              
Operations against Tories could be fairly sizable. The "battle of the Normanskill" was essentially an
operation to prevent a large group of Tories from coming together and joining Burgoyne's army. Part of the 2nd (Schnectady) Albany County Militia, held in reserve from Ten Broeck's Division at Saratoga was joined by 40 Rhode Island Continental troops in a nighttime operation which surrounded a farm where some 100 Tories were assembling. Their leader, David Springer was killed; thirteen Tories who sought to hide out in a barn were captured and the rest scattered.

Co.Rte 146 Guilderland Ctr.

Marker  of the Week -- An Historic Marker for the scene of a  
                                    Fictitious (Literary) Event

NYS 80, Cooperstown

One of the odder markers created in the great 1932 proliferation of State Markers is this one. Along the shore of Otsego Lake this marker points to the location of an island where in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer  the character Tom Hutter and his two daughters supposedly lived. Several other markers identifying other Cooper scenes were created when this marker was made.  In Tarrytown other markers identified scenes from Washington Irving's works.