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So– came back out to the farm. Got in last night in time to see my mother’s talk at the Troy Public Library. She’s the town historian of Schaghticoke, which is one of the early powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution in the New World. Really? Yes really! The first mill north of Albany in the colonies was in the Hoosic River gorge, which is the nexus of the current village of Schaghticoke, by the 1790s, and by the 1810s the gorge was literally full of mills– the vast majority of which were textile mills. (There were saw and grist mills as well, but mostly because you need those.)
Apparently the area was very dangerous and unstable up through the Revolution (you don’t learn this in school really, but there was a lot of lawlessness and Indian raids and so on and upheaval before the US was firmly established), but in the last decade of the 1700s it calmed down enough that a lot of immigrants came from New England, and they were looking for rivers with waterfalls. The Hoosic drops 100 feet right by Schaghticoke Point; there were a few Dutch families living there, farming, but no one had put in a mill yet.
What I knew as a kid, growing up in that town, was that the Hoosic had been dammed by General Electric for hydro power like a hundred years ago, and mostly the gorge is pretty dry but down there somewhere is a swimming hole called The Star that I never went to because the kids who did weren’t my friends. I always assumed it was called that because it looked like a star, or there was a star-shaped natural feature or maybe somebody carved one or something.
Nope! The mill was called the Star Mill because the Star family owned it. The swimming hole is the hollow where the water wheel sat. So, it’s the Star Hole. One of my sisters had known that, but the other hadn’t, so it’s a draw as to whether I’m dumb and oblivious or not. But in the midst of Mom’s speech I was the one that said right out loud “ohhhhhhhhhhhh that’s why it’s called the Star!” to the amusement of the others in attendance.
Anyway, she gave a really great overview on how water powered mills work, and the processes of textile manufacturing and the order in which they were mechanized and what that meant for the mills and their business, and the way that changed the community, and I learned a lot more than I’d assumed I would about things I sort of assumed I knew.
Then the next morning I went to my sister’s house and she showed me the waterfall that forms one of the boundaries of her newly-acquired farm. On the other side of the stream is an old mill, and the mill-race is still visible carved into the channel of the stream, so we looked at that.
Also there’s a shot straight up from the waterfall of a house that’s for sale, overlooking the waterfall, so I included that for amusement value. We looked it up on Zillow, $180,000.
So– came back out to the farm. Got in last night in time to see my mother’s talk at the Troy Public Library. She’s the town historian of Schaghticoke, which is one of the early powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution in the New World. Really? Yes really! The first mill north of Albany in the colonies was in the Hoosic River gorge, which is the nexus of the current village of Schaghticoke, by the 1790s, and by the 1810s the gorge was literally full of mills– the vast majority of which were textile mills. (There were saw and grist mills as well, but mostly because you need those.)
Apparently the area was very dangerous and unstable up through the Revolution (you don’t learn this in school really, but there was a lot of lawlessness and Indian raids and so on and upheaval before the US was firmly established), but in the last decade of the 1700s it calmed down enough that a lot of immigrants came from New England, and they were looking for rivers with waterfalls. The Hoosic drops 100 feet right by Schaghticoke Point; there were a few Dutch families living there, farming, but no one had put in a mill yet.
What I knew as a kid, growing up in that town, was that the Hoosic had been dammed by General Electric for hydro power like a hundred years ago, and mostly the gorge is pretty dry but down there somewhere is a swimming hole called The Star that I never went to because the kids who did weren’t my friends. I always assumed it was called that because it looked like a star, or there was a star-shaped natural feature or maybe somebody carved one or something.
Nope! The mill was called the Star Mill because the Star family owned it. The swimming hole is the hollow where the water wheel sat. So, it’s the Star Hole. One of my sisters had known that, but the other hadn’t, so it’s a draw as to whether I’m dumb and oblivious or not. But in the midst of Mom’s speech I was the one that said right out loud “ohhhhhhhhhhhh that’s why it’s called the Star!” to the amusement of the others in attendance.
Anyway, she gave a really great overview on how water powered mills work, and the processes of textile manufacturing and the order in which they were mechanized and what that meant for the mills and their business, and the way that changed the community, and I learned a lot more than I’d assumed I would about things I sort of assumed I knew.
Then the next morning I went to my sister’s house and she showed me the waterfall that forms one of the boundaries of her newly-acquired farm. On the other side of the stream is an old mill, and the mill-race is still visible carved into the channel of the stream, so we looked at that.
Also there’s a shot straight up from the waterfall of a house that’s for sale, overlooking the waterfall, so I included that for amusement value. We looked it up on Zillow, $180,000.
