It Happened Here--Knifetown, N.Y., U.S.A

In the United States many towns and cities got their identities from the predominate products manufactured in them.  In New York State there are many examples of this.  Schenectady became the "electric city" because of the electrical generation and distribution equipment, not to mention early electrical appliances manufactured there. For Corning it was glass; For Glens Falls it was paper;  For Amsterdam it was carpets;  For Gloversville, well....    (Cooperstown doesn't fit--It was founded by William Cooper and had no special connection to barrel production.)

In Orange County, New York,  little Walden became known as "Knifetown".  Walden began as so many other towns in the Northeast began, as a textile mill town with its founder,  Jacob T. Walden being attracted to the area by power of the Wallkill river as it surged through the Wallkill gorge.  By the early 1820's Walden had dammed the Wallkill and several woolen and cotton mills were in business.  But, by the end of the 1840's the mills were struggling and closing.  Leaders in the community, however, had heard of a group of cutlers, originally from Sheffield England, who were dissatisfied with their situation  in Mattaewan, (Beacon) New York and looking to relocate.  The skilled knife makers had been recruited with the promise of higher wages to form the core of the workforce of the Waterville (Connecticut) Knife Factory but when told they would have to buy/maintain their own tools sixteen of them revolted, each chipping in $200 of their own money and moving to Mattaewan to form the New York Cooperative Knife Company in 1852.  The Walden community leaders were able to offer them a modern factory with ample water power to run belts and pulleys to power saws, turn grinders and polishers, operate trip hammers and lathes--turning what for centuries had been a handicraft operation into a machine shop business. To seal the deal, the leaders, themselves, offered to transport the business across the Hudson  to Walden in1856.  

The business thrived. After a few years, in order to meet demand and expand, the partners decided to turn the company into a joint stock company.  New York Knife Company became the major cutler for the Union Army, making forks as well as table knives. Their pocket knife/jack knife business burgeoned.  In the 19th century, every man (not just craftsmen, tradesmen, and farmers) carried a pocket knife.  Even middle class businessmen, merchants, lawyers, teachers carried pocket knives.  It probably started when quill pens needed to be routinely trimmed to write legibly, before they were replaced by steel pens; and  continued as fingernails needed to be trimmed, packages and letters opened, pencils sharpened and twisted cigar ends cut off so they could be smoked.  Starting in 1911 New York Knife became the official supplier of scout knives for the Boy Scouts of America, a contract they held for over a decade. [1]   At the peak of their production  by 1900  they occupied twenty eight buildings, employed 400 people and produced  1 1/2 million   knives in a year.  One of their buildings, built up from the Wallkill gorge was seven floors tall, and had its main entrance at street level, on the seventh floor!

The Walden Knife Company was said to  have been initiated by a dispute over a baseball game!  For several years knife-makers at New York Knife held baseball games between workers from different floors during lunchtime.  At one game, an argument between players turned into a general row.  The new plant manager, Thomas Bradley Jr. stepped in to breakup the fight declaring anyone playing baseball henceforth at lunch would be fired!  Several workers walked off the job, declaring they would start their own company.  Beneath the surface of the dispute, of course, were underlying strains. Bradley was trying to turn a machine assisted craft business into an assembly plant where lower skilled workers , responsible for only one or two operations,  worked together to assemble  a completed product, employing more complex machines to take over more of the production.  In 1874 the  Walden Cooperative Knife Company would open, a short distance from New York Knife.

In 1892 George Shrade patented a pocket knife, the blade of which could be conveniently opened with one hand by pressing a button. Shrade went to the New York Knife Company to manufacture his knives (known today as the somewhat infamous "switch blade") before making improvements to its mechanism,  and striking out on his own in 1904, in Walden.

The growth of the American market for pocket knives attracted the attention of European manufactures who began to make serious inroads in the American market.  Thomas Bradley, Jr., a Congressman at the time and friend of President McKinley convinced him to include protections from imported knives in the 1897 Dingley Tariff Act.  The people of Walden erected a statue of McKinley in 1924 with money donated by Bradley. 

 By 1913, 19% of Walden's entire population worked in one of Walden's knife factories.

World War I saw a further increase in sales but after the war,  sales slumped as Winchester and Remington Arms entered the cutlery business in desperate attempts to augment their declining ammunition sales.  Walden Knife closed in 1926. The stock market crash in 1929 followed by the Depression, led to New York Knife's closure in 1931

Shrade Cutlery managed to hang on until it moved to Ellenville in 1952.

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  --William Floyd ?

William Floyd, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris, John Hart, Abraham Clark, John Morton, George Clymer, William Paca, Thomas M'kean, Jason Smith, George Taylor, George Ross, Thomas Stone, Josiah Bartlett, Mathew Thornton, Thomas Nelson,Jr., George Wythe, William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch, Jr.,  Arthur Middleton, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.   These are exactly half of the people who signed one of America's most important documents.  Can you guess which one?  Let me give you some additional names to jog your  memory.

      John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson.

Oh! That Document!  As we celebrate another Independence Day and remember our Founding Fathers and the genius of our democracy, that was given its philosophical rationale in the Declaration of Independence, and its structure  in the U.S. Constitution, perhaps, we should pause to remember the common politicians;  the men who put aside  their generally successful personal and business lives to come together to represent the hopes and prejudices, grievances, shared fears and aspirations of their communities and their sections of their states, to provide  input and the momentum for the  documents that would become the frameworks of our Democracy.  (In the stories we tell ourselves about our military history we have done a pretty good job of upholding the stories of our common soldiers, perhaps we should do the same for our common politicians-qua-public servants!)

NYS Rte 64, Floyd, Oneida County

William Floyd had a prosperous farm he ran in Brookhaven, later established as Mastic on Long Island. He abandoned a formal classical education to take on a practical education when his father died at an early age and he had to manage the extensive farm. Socially and politically Floyd was tied more closely to his Yankee friends and relatives across Long Island Sound, in Connecticut  than to the more loyalist leaning inhabitants of New York City.  He served three times as a trustee of the Town before being elected to the Provincial Council and then in 1774 to the first Continental Congress.  With the rest of the New York delegation he refused to sign the first draft of the Declaration of Independence until he heard the sentiments of his constituents, signing the final document.  Soon afterwards,  Washington and army were forced from New York.  Floyd and his family sought refuge  with relatives in Middletown, Ct., his farm taken over by a regiment of British cavalry. During the war,  Floyd was given the rank of Major General of New York Militia but served in administrative posts seeing that local militias were properly provisioned, and coordinated with the Continental Army while also serving as a delegate in the Continental Congress.. Seven years later Floyd returned to his house and farm, finding both in ruins.  In 1794 he bought a large tract of land outside of Rome, New York and built a house closely resembling his house in Mastic.  A collegue once described Floyd as "one of the good men who never quit their chairs ", in other words, not a speech-maker, not a public orator but one through private conversations made their  positions known, representing their constituents and doing the hard work of democracy.   

 

[1]  The Scout knife was a part of the Boy Scout official uniform, not carried in a pocket but hung prominently via a snap hook from the belt of the uniform, earned after showing proficiency in its proper care and safe use. (Boys might carry toys, but a (young) man carried  tools. --a minor but meaningful symbolic step on the path to manhood.)

--Beside the usual "Internet Suspects" rounded up I found these particularly informative: the summary and analysis sections of  Joseph Sepko. New York Knife Company , Cultural Resources Site Examination of New York State Museum Site 10935 .  2002

--Fred W. Pyne Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence,. " William Floyd"

  dsd1776.com/signer/swilliam-floyd/