John Warren (yours truly) has written the first history
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Rensselear County Historical Society Talk Thursday
Monday, September 28, 2009
Other Early Settlements Along The Upper Hudson
Between the more formidable island of Papscanee (previously spelled Papsickene, now a peninsula nature preserve) and where the Hoosac River meets the Hudson, more than a dozen streams flow into the Hudson. Only at the Poesten Kill was there enough farmland, room to grow, and sufficient water-power for the earliest industries.
An early outlying farm built across the Hudson River from Fort Orange was built by 1632 on the south side of Mill Creek at de Laetsburgh, later known as t’greynen bosch (Greenbush, the pine woods) and now within the Rensselaer city limits. Like the Poesten Kill it also had mills, homes, a brewery and tavern, and even a Dutch Reformed church and parsonage. A ferry was established there and later colonial soldiers were often mustered under the protective eye of the fort across the river. The ferry continued to be controlled by the Van Rensselaer family until the nineteenth century providing easy and regular transportation between the Greenbush and Albany.
South of Fort Orange, on the Hudson's west side, flooding and terrain restricted development of farms and the Normanskill was insufficient as a source of power.
Four miles north of Fort Orange on the Hudson’s west side the Patroon established a farm once called de Vlackte (the Flatts, home of the Patroon’s agent Arent van Curler), later known as West Troy and today Watervliet. The farm was considerably closer to the fort than those on the Poesten Kill and much more connected to life there, but lacked water power.
Photo: The Hudson River Valley c 1635
Monday, September 14, 2009
Early Warfare: King William and Queen Anne's Wars
In the 1680s and 1690s the latest in a long string of European wars broke out. The War of the Grand Alliance, also known as King Williams War (1688-1697), pitted France against England, the Netherlands, and Austria and quickly and naturally spilled over to a bitter conflict of raids and counter-raids which mostly took place between New France and frontier settlements of eastern New York and western Massachusetts. Each employed their Indian allies to fight on their behalf and to guide their small armies to their respective enemies. In 1689 the Count Louis de Baude Frontenac, who had been governor of Canada during 1672-82, arrived in New France with orders from Louis XIV to attack the Iroquois and their allies in eastern New York and New England. The French launched a number of raids attacking the large outposts and surrounding settlers at Schenectady, Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, Fort Loyal (now Portland, Maine) and the villages of the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Mohawks. In 1690, Poesten Kill landholder Sweer Theunissen van Velson and his wife Maritie Myndertse (Jan Wemp’s widow) were killed in the attack on Schenectady, as was Jan Wemp’s son Myndert.
European conflict in the northern frontier of New York was renewed with the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War, 1701-1713) that pitted England, the Netherlands, Austria, and this time also the Holy Roman Empire, against the French. Once again the paths leading to the upper Hudson (notably along the Hoosic) saw raiding parties moving back and forth between New France, New York, and New England. One notable raid that was widely reported at this time was the February 1704 attack on Deerfield in nearby western Massachusetts. Another was the attack on the Kittle family of Schaghticoke in 1711.
Photo: Len Tantillo's Depiction of Schenectady in about 1690.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Settler Fears of Indian Conflict on The Upper Hudson
Noted local historical archeologist David R. Starbuck has said that the interconnected routes from the Richelieu River at the north end of Lake Champlain to Albany has the highest density of military sites in North America in the 1700s. The large military encampments that attended the big campaigns of that era were among the largest cities in America, albeit for short intervals. Considering the conflicts between the colonial Dutch, French, and British subjects and various Indian communities who utilized the same route, we might also extend that idea. It’s likely that the great northern route, the great warpath, the great northern war trail, and its connected communities and strategic sites have the highest density of military conflict sites in North America in the 1600s as well. It was along this route that scattered attacks by the French and their Indian allies (mostly Algonquin, Abenaki, Huron, and Christianized Iroquois) were made on the settlers along the Hudson and tributaries like the Poesten Kill.
No palisade is known to have built at Troy, however, and according to Janny Venema, a wall around Beverwijck (outside Fort Orange) served to allay the fears of the village’s residents, but also restricted their movement outside its gates. Villagers were prohibited from leaving the palisade to meet with the Indians outside in 1660, and in 1662 posts were set up outside the community beyond which no Bevewijck residents was allowed to go. “Waiting at the post for Indians coming from the west had become a way to take a chance on luck and speculation,” Venema writes, “the defense separated the worlds of settlers and Indians, but the west [and we might add here the north at the Poesten Kill] remained an area of attraction for the colonists… a way to circumvent the rules.” Settlers used the trail to Schenectady (established in 1661, the year before Wemp secured his patent there) for illegal trade. “Despite the prohibition on trade with the Indians” Venema writes “settlers carried goods and merchandise on wagons and horseback six or seven miles inland in order to barter with the Indians… but this journey would become increasingly dangerous; and by the summer of 1664, few people dared to travel the [Mohawk] trail anymore.” Those on the Hudson’s east side at the Poesten Kill were freer to come and go as they pleased. Out of sight of local officials they could more easily participate in the trade, but also were more exposed when depredations did occur.
Monday, August 31, 2009
The English Takeover and New Settlers
Farmer-trader-craftsmen dominated the people who settled along the Poesten Kill, and later, the poorer soils and cooler climate on the plateau above. After 1640 the company monopoly on the fur trade was reduced and settlers were allowed to participate provided they gave about half their profits to the Patroon. The settlement and trade increased so by 1641 the patroon thought it necessary to authorize his officers to take action against farmers who were hiring carpenters and other craftsman who were not the estate’s employees. By then the lines were blurred between tenet farmer, trader, and the increasing number of craftspeople setting up outside Fort Orange.
By the time of the English takeover of New Netherland Sweer Theunissen van Velson was in a sense an absentee landlord of the Poesten Bowery (farm) which then included both sides of the Poesten Kill south to the Wynants Kill; it ranged from the Poesten Mill near the base of the plateau on the bowery’s east side (today, Hill Street) to the Hudson River. Van Velson secured his leased rights by getting a patent from Richard Nicolls, the English Governor of the Province of New York. About the same time, van Velson leased the section to the south of the Poesten Kill, known then as Lubberde’s landt, from Johanna de Laet Ebbingh. She was Johan de Laet’s daughter, who had inherited a tenth of the Rensselaerswyck estate - “excepting the lord’s right” - in 1674 and only recently married Jeronimus Ebbingh.
In 1707 the Van Woggelum bowery was conveyed to Dirck Van der Heyden, who was then taking over the best lands along the Hudson (he bought Schuyler’s farm in 1720). Van der Heyden speculated on land leases throughout the area, notably in 1717 when he pulled from the hat of Albany’s mayor one of eight farms that were leased at Schaghticoke. Before it took the name Troy, the community along the Poesten Kill bottom lands was known as Vanderheyden and stretched from the Poesten Kill north to the Piscawan Kill.
The Van der Heyden family in Rensselaerswyck was born of the marriage of Jacob Tyssen and Anna Hals who settled in Beverwyck outside the walls of the Fort Orange, while the community was still in Dutch hands. Their son was Dirck Van der Heyden.
The land from Division Street to Grand, known to history as the “middle farm,” was held by Jacob D. Van der Heyden. Jacob D. lived in a wooden house at the southeast corner of Ferry and River streets (at what is now a Russell Sage dorm). Later, he built a new brick mansion at southwest corner of Grand Division Street (now Grand Street) and Eighth Street; it was destroyed by the great fire of May 10, 1862. From Grand Division to the Piscawan Kill was the “upper farm” owned by Jacob I. Van der Heyden. His farm house, a small brick building built in 1756, stood at what would now be 548 River Street, north of Hoosick Street on the east side at what is now Vanderhyden Street. It was latter connected to the Seton Day Home and in the 1970s was torn down – it’s now paved over and the only part of a hand wrought iron fence stands on River Street.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Early Dutch Farms on The Poesten Kill
What the earliest farms on the Poesten Kill looked like is only conjecture at this point as there has been virtually no archeology aimed at the Dutch period along the kill. Two similar farms in the East Manor have been found and excavated however, but neither may reflect the kind of buildings that the English carpenter Thomas Chambers built on the Poesten Kill.
The Van Buren Site was discovered in 1973 by Art Johnson in what was once Greenbush. It was located where Indian people had also lived and was a large site that including several buildings over the years. More recently Shirley Dunn has suggested that the farm was occupied by Symon Walichsen in 1637 and later by Edward Pels and Juriaen Bestval who arrived there in 1649. A second farm found in Greenbush was that of Teunis Dirckse van Vechten who lived there from 1639 until his death in 1685. His farm suggests the kinds of activities that might have also occurred on the Poesten Kill. Van Vechten was a farmer, trader, part owner of a brewery (he grew a lot of oats), and he owned half of the yacht Het Zeepaert (The Seahorse) in 1651.
Chambers and Wemp owned the land only in the sense that they had the rights to it – these agreements would today be considered leases although they were in many ways treated as sales. It makes for a somewhat confusing history of local land transfers, especially considering that what is now Troy was the northern border of Van Renssealer’s manor, and that the English took over New Netherland in 1664.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Poesten Kill, Now Available For Purchase
The first detailed history of the Poesten Kill from the Petersburg Mountains to the Hudson River is now available at Amazon.,com
Monday, August 3, 2009
Thomas Chambers, First To Settle The Poesten Kill
The earliest settler on the Poesten Kill was Thomas Chambers. The Chambers farm was positioned for commercial success in part because it was ideally situated to serve as an intercept point for the furs of Mohican traders as they made their way from the eastern and northern woodlands toward the river and along the Hudson to Albany. Also, with no streams capable of supplying enough water for sawing wood and milling grain in Albany, these operations were mostly located on the east side of the Hudson. Chambers was given the right to build a saw mill on the Poesten Kill if there was opportunity and he desired to; he apparently did not. Eventually however, a number of dams were built all along the Poesten Kill to divert water along open sluices to turn water wheels and drive millstones and early lumber saws. For a sense of the long history of life along the Poesten Kill, consider that large scale industrial harnessing of the Poesten Kill didn’t begin until the late 1790s – nearly 150 years later.
Chambers ran into conflict with his Mohican neighbors. Regardless of the cause of the conflict, the Mohican challenge to Thomas Chambers’ farm had the desired effect, and in January 1651 the officers of the colony made the effort to purchase the Wynants Kill from the Indians. It was described as a “certain creek situated south of the farm of Thomas Chambers and north of Monamin’s Castle [which by then had moved north of Greenbush], with the surrounding wood and adjoining land and the jurisdiction thereof, to the castle, obliquely opposite the house of Broer Cornelis.” This was the farm between the Poesten and Wynants kills and it secured the farm Chambers was running while extending European land opportunities south.
Image: Thomas Chambers moved to the Espous where he built the Manor of Foxhall and is commonly understood to be Kingston’s first settler. Chambers died childless in 1694 and left the manor to his stepson, Abraham Van Gaasbeek, later Abraham Gaasbeek Chambers.
Monday, July 27, 2009
In The 1620s The Poesten Kill Was Already Settled
In the 1620s, Albany was known as Gastanek; Green Island was Nehanenesick; Van Schaick Island, Quahemesicos; Cohoes was called Nachawinasick. The Minuit map, produced about 1630, showed five Mohican villages near Fort Orange. One substantial community was located at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson and was known as Monemin’s Castle, after the Mohican chief killed in battle with the Mohawk in 1626. This village was the northern limit of Killian van Rensselaer’s lands on the Hudson’s west side. It was once located on the north shore of the Mohawk, later on an island at the river’s mouth, and by 1651, Monemin’s people had moved to the north of Greenbush.
Early native people lived on the Poesten Kill’s prime farm land, rich bottom lands that the Mohican had been farming for at least six hundred years. In addition to practicing horticulture, they also fished, hunted, and gathered all types of foods, practiced skilled crafts and participated in wide ranging trade network that stretched to the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes. The difference between the Hudson bottom lands and the plateau above are striking. Above there is in fact little level land; the soil is rocky and the climate cool. There are sometimes as many as twenty fewer frost-free days on the plateau than along the Hudson and fewer still in the mountains to the east. Except for the fertile areas along the Hudson and the section from the village of Poestenkill to the village of Eagle Mills, the banks of the Poesten Kill are relatively ill-suited for agriculture.
Image: Hudson River Valley c 1635 (north is to the right)
Monday, July 20, 2009
Mount Ida's Early Rival, Mount Olympus
Sterling Goodenow noted the presence of “Mount Ida Falls” in his 1822 Topographical and Statistical Manual of the State of New-York. Horatio Gates Spafford’s 1824 Pocket Guide for Tourist and Traveler however, acknowledged Mount Olympus on the north side of Troy but of the Poesten Kill only noted that it was home to “Mills & c.” Mount Olympus became a regional attraction that was exploited at an early date. In 1823, W.D. Vanderheyden (by then most of the family had accepted the shortened spelling) built a large octagonal building on the highest point to accommodate sightseers and a walkway was built from the roadway below. The building included a concession that was staffed day and night and markers were installed to direct visitors to the views. The building was destroyed by fire in 1830.
Already however, some visitors were bemoaning the development on Mount Ida and beyond. A writer to the New York Commercial Advertiser in 1835 wrote that the “delightful situation” of Mount Ida had “been invaded” by houses and businesses over and below.
Monday, July 13, 2009
de Laetsburgh, Later Known as t’Greynen Bosch (Greenbush)
Culturally, the Poesten Kill might seem to be just one of the many westward-flowing streams that drain Rensselaer County, a county dominated by waterways that divide rolling hills. On close examination however, the Poesten Kill holds a special place.
Consider the earlier outlying farm built across from Fort Orange by 1632 on the south side of Mill Creek at de Laetsburgh, later known as t’greynen bosch (Greenbush, the pine woods) and is now within the Rensselaer city limits. Like the Poesten Kill it also had mills, homes, a brewery and tavern, and a Dutch Reformed church and parsonage.
A ferry was established there and later colonial soldiers were often mustered under the protective eye of the fort across the river. The ferry continued to be controlled by the Van Rensselaer family until the nineteenth century providing easy and regular transportation between the Greenbush and Albany.
So it was that Greenbush was settled before the Poesten Kill, but with its close association to Albany by ferry, it could hardly be described as frontier; The City of Rensselaer was once known as East Albany.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Rensselaer Co. Historical Society Interim Director Resigns
The Albany Times Union is reporting today that the beleaguered Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) is losing the interim executive director, Rachel Tooker, less then six months after she took the post. Members of the organization, including Renssealer County Historian Kathy Sheehan, (who also serves as the society's Registrar) touted her as the leadership necessary to steer the non-profit back to solvency. She will be moving to California where her partner has taken a museum job.
In March, RCHS sent an e-mail warning of dire consequences for the society: "What may have seemed - even ten years ago - a reasonable endowment with sustainable cash reserves has now dwindled to the point where we are no longer able to pay our bills. Without an immediate and substantial infusion of funds (upwards of $150,000), it appears that we will be required to close our doors while we work to implement a prudent fiscal strategy." No communication with members, supporters, or the press suggested Tooker would be leaving before the Times Union's report today.
According to the Times Union, "Tooker said the historical society has charted a new course that will help it correct its financial difficulties. The New York Council of Nonprofits will provide managerial leadership for the historical society."
Monday, July 6, 2009
Hudson River Dinner Cruise with Len Tantillo
The Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) will host the Times Union's 2009 Best Local Artist and Historian Len Tantillo for a dinner cruise on board the Captain JP II, leaving from Troy and sailing south to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse. The event will take place on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 from 3 to 9PM; the cost is $85.00 per person for RCHS Members, $95.00 per person for non-menbers.
Tantillo, a noted Hudson River artist and historian, will narrate the often complex relationship that Henry Hudson had with his crew and the various Indian tribes that they encountered on their trips ashore. Scenic highlights and historic landmarks will be pointed out on the west and east side of the river including Papskanee Island in the Town of Schodack, the reputed place that Hudson dropped anchor and traded with the Mahican Indians. Guests will also be treated to a dinner buffet of salmon, roast turkey and prime rib along with a array of vegetables and desserts.
Guests will board at 3PM at the foot of State Street in Troy. Free parking is available dockside. The boat will leave promptly at 3:30 and return to the Troy dock at approximately 9PM.
To purchase tickets for the trip, please visit www.rchsonline.org/tickets.htmlor call (518) 272-7232, extension 12.
Photo: "A View of Troy, New York, 1847" by Len Tantillo - "This painting of Troy, New York, depicts the Hudson River city as it might have appeared in the mid 19th century. The image was based on a number of period drawings, photographs and maps from the collection of the Rensselaer County Historical Society"
Monday, June 29, 2009
The First History of The Poesten Kill Due Soon
The first detailed history of the Poesten Kill from the Petersburg Mountains to the Hudson River is due out in July. At the head of Hudson River navigation the mouth of the Poesten Kill was located at the eastern end of the Erie Canal, the southern end of the Champlain canal, and an important center of the very early Rensselaer & Saratoga and later Troy & Greenbush and New York Central railroads. The Poesten Kill was home to the first paper factory in Northern New York and for many years Troy rivaled Pittsburgh in iron and steel production. What really made life along the Poesten Kill so unique, however, was the diversity of products made there. Unlike other eastern urban areas, the Poesten Kill was home to producers of agriculture and forest products along with feed, flour, paper, plaster, paint, textiles, iron and steel products like stoves, valves, and wire – a substantial variety of consumer goods used along the kill and in the world beyond.
The Poesten Kill, will be published by The History Press. I'll be posting plenty of additional material here each week that didn't make the book, along with images, maps, and more. You can sign up to get the RSS Feed or get the posts by e-mail by entering your email address at right.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Help Out The Rensselaer County Historical Society
Since the news broke in early March that the Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) was in serious financial trouble, there has been an outpouring of support from the community. RCHS board and staff have been working hard to make the most of many offers and come up with a plan to "Keep the Lights On and the History Alive."
For the first public event of this campaign, ticket proceeds from the Saturday, April 25, 2009 preview of the New York State Theatre Institute's production of Philip Barry's timeless comedy, "The Philadelphia Story" will be donated to RCHS to help our 82-year-old organization in the fight to stay open.
Patricia Di Benedetto Snyder, the theater's producing artistic director, made this generous offer to the organization shortly after RCHS announced that without significant and immediate support it will need to close its doors or greatly reduce public access. The celebrated comedy will play in an 8:00 pm performance on Saturday, April 25 at the Schacht Fine Arts Center of Russell Sage College in Troy.
Tickets benefiting RCHS are available for $30 (Friends of the Family), $50 (Wedding Party), and $100 (Honored Guests) levels. Ticket cost is tax-deductible, and additional donations are welcomed. Tickets may be purchased online or by calling (518) 272-7232, ext.12. All tickets will be held at the box office for pickup the night of the performance.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Rensselaer County Historical Society May Close
The Rensselaer County Historical Society has announced that they may be forced to close due to economic hardship. I will reprint here the message they sent:
We Need Your Help!
Keep the lights on and history alive!
To our members and friends,
As you may have read in [yesterday's] Times Union, RCHS is currently experiencing severe financial difficulty. The organization been running annual deficits for several years, and despite special efforts, the situation has now become critical. In a matter of weeks RCHS will no longer have funds available to meet its basic operating needs. What may have seemed - even ten years ago - a reasonable endowment with sustainable cash reserves has now dwindled to the point where we are no longer able to pay our bills. Without an immediate and substantial infusion of funds (upwards of $150,000), it appears that we will be required to close our doors while we work to implement a prudent fiscal strategy.
If we must close,
· our loyal and hardworking staff will be furloughed. Together these professionals have over 74 years of service to our community.
· exciting new educational initiatives, popular public programs, and long-planned exhibits would cease or be cancelled. The loss to our community - both economically and psychologically - would be incalculable. RCHS collections hold over 60,000 items of decorative arts, furniture, paintings, and sculpture. None of these items would remain available to the public. More importantly, an even greater number of documents relating to our past would be completely inaccessible. The utility bills alone for maintaining these collections are almost $6,000 a month.
· RCHS efforts as a major catalyst in highly visible efforts to use the historic fabric of our county to stimulate economic development will be curtailed. We hope to be able to continue serving - in fact inspiring - our community through these efforts.
We are beginning a public campaign to "keep the lights on and history alive!" As in the past, we are grateful for your active interest and suggestions regarding strategies to ensure RCHS's survival. We also urgently need your personal assistance in providing immediate financial support during this financial crisis.
Our plan is to take the next three to four months to develop - in partnership with our supporters - a new business plan for RCHS, designed to ensure its long-term sustainability. We are fortunate to have Rachel Tooker, a very experienced and energizing Transitional Executive leading this effort. The dedicated members of the RCHS board are prepared to join Rachel to discuss our finances and future plans in detail. Please give us a call if you have questions or suggestions for us.
In the meantime, here are some things you can do to help RCHS:
Help us to spread the word about RCHS and its positive impact on the community.
Distribute RCHS membership and program brochures to your clubs and community organizations.
Hold a brunch or get-together and make a group donation to RCHS.
Give an RCHS membership as a birthday present or gift to a new neighbor.
Volunteer to help with an RCHS program or project.
Send us your ideas for making RCHS sustainable and an even more valuable part of the community.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Threatened Churches of Troy
Here is an announcement from the Rensselaer County Historical Society about an upcoming event looking at the threatened churches of Troy:
Many of our downtown churches are threatened by declining attendance and the demands of maintaining historic structures.In Troy, the Roman Catholic Church plans to close six of the fourteen churches in Troy; two of the five Episcopal Churches are for sale, and others are also threatened. Unfortunately, many of the most threatened churches seem to be the oldest and most historic.
Architectural historian Ned Pratt will survey the important architecture and stained glass of these churches, and examine several examples of the adaptive reuse of historic Churches, including four in Troy itself.
Ned Pratt is a preservation consultant and President of the local chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. He has an interest in the stained glass and architecture of area churches, and has given talks and tours of area churches and stained glass for the Hudson Mohawk Gateway, Hudson Valley Community College, the Sage colleges, Historic Albany, and for Oakwood Cemetery - to mention just a few.
Please note - due to the public interest in this talk, it has been moved from RCHS to the Bush Memorial Center at Russell Sage College. The Bush Center is an adaptive reuse of the former First Presbyterian Church and provides the perfect setting for this topic.
The event will be held Thursday, February 19, 2009, 5:30 - 7:30 pm at the Bush Memorial Center, Russell Sage College, First & Congress Streets, Troy.
Although there was an area of intensive social services centered on St. Mary’s Church that had grown at the base of Mount Ida north of the Poesten Kill, in the late 1800s there were few churches serving the area around the lower Poesten Kill. Between Washington Park and the Poesten Kill there was just two: Saint Jean Baptiste (St. John the Baptist) and St. Laurence; south of the Poesten Kill there was only St. Joseph’s. Saint Jeane Baptiste was a French speaking church that was organized in 1850 on Ferry Street; their church on Second Street, south of Adams was dedicated in 1869. St. Laurence’s Church was a German speaking Roman Catholic congregation. It was first organized at meetings at St. Mary’s Church and then for a year at Alexander Lutzelberger’s Billiard Hall on River Street; they met at the French church in 1869 and the following year began building their church on the southeast corner of Third and Jefferson streets.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A New Book About The Poesten Kill
On the Hudson River along upstate New York’s eastern border within the natural boundaries of river and mountains lies the rough rectangle of Rensselaer County. It is literally cut in half by the Poesten Kill, a powerful stream that scours its way downhill from 1,600 feet in the Petersburg Mountains to the sea level flats of the Hudson River. The Poesten Kill splits the county across the middle into two pieces of roughly equal size, north and south. It tumbles off the mountains and meanders across a ten-mile wide plateau and then falls abruptly through a series of steep gorges to settle into the Hudson River floodplain.
Although frequently hidden now behind modern development and historic ruins, the Poesten Kill’s geologic wonders are impressive. As it descends, the kill cuts through layers of rocks, shales, and silts and emerges from forested mountains, winds through rolling farmland, falls over steep cliffs and slides into the tidal Hudson. There are five major natural waterfalls on the Poesten Kill. They include Poesten Kill High Falls (Mount Ida Falls) in Troy, Barberville Falls in east of Poestenkill Village, and three falls in the Town of Brunswick: the falls at Eagle Mills, Fred's Falls in Cropseyville (on the Poesten Kill’s largest tributary, the Quacken Kill), and Buttermilk Falls.
The Poesten Kill has been home to American Indians who hunted, gathered, fished and farmed along its shores, frontier Dutch farmers and traders, colonial tradesmen, merchants, millers, and lumbermen, and nineteenth century iron, steel, textile, and paper workers. Dutch, English, Irish, German, French, Italian, immigrants and others have lived along its length. Its mouth at the Hudson was the first truly European frontier settlement beyond the walls of Fort Orange (what is now Albany).
So the Poesten Kill was a frontier outpost that seemingly had it all: a large flat farmable flood plain, a potent source of water power, and it also had room to grow. From the mouth of the Poesten Kill, Manhattan Island, the Atlantic seaboard, Lake Champlain, Montreal, the St. Lawrence River, the Mohawk River, the Great Lakes, the Hoosac River and New England were all within reach – even in prehistoric times. The markets at Albany, New York, and later Troy in particular, are crucial to understanding the development along the Poesten Kill.
The force of the water in the Poesten Kill helped drive the early development of Troy, once one of America’s most important nineteenth century industrial cities. The Poesten Kill’s waters were harnessed for the American industrial revolution that built the golden age of American industry, trade, and commerce; its banks afterward stood witness to industrial abandonment and urban decline.
Mills established along the Poesten and Quacken kills sent their goods, mostly grain, farm produce, wool, cotton, and iron products, but also a variety of other consumer goods, to the markets at Troy and beyond. For instance, in the 1870s Poestenkill Village was home to saw and grist mills, a cotton batten factory, a flax mill, and a shirt factory. At the same time mills along the Quacken Kill produced twine and carpet warp, paper, brush handles, cotton batten, carded and fulled wool, including cashmere, flannel, and yarn. At Eagle Mills there were saw and grist mills, two iron foundries producing hoes and other farm tools, and nearby, three shirt factories.
At the head of Hudson River navigation the mouth of the Poesten Kill was located at the eastern end of the Erie Canal, the southern end of the Champlain canal, and an important center of the very early Rensselaer & Saratoga and later Troy & Greenbush and New York Central railroads. The Poesten Kill was home to the first paper factory in Northern New York and for many years Troy rivaled Pittsburgh in iron and steel production. What really made life along the Poesten Kill so unique, however, was the diversity of products made there. Unlike other eastern urban areas, the Poesten Kill was home to producers of agriculture and forest products along with feed, flour, paper, plaster, paint, textiles, iron and steel products like stoves, valves, and wire – a substantial variety of consumer goods used along the kill and in the world beyond.
The Poesten Kill, will be published by The History Press this Spring. I'll be posting plenty of additional material here that didn't make the book, along with images, maps, and more. You can sign up to get the RSS Feed or get the posts by e-mail by entering your email address at right.
Until The Poesten Kill is available, pick up a copy of Don Rittner's new book Remembering Troy: Heritage on the Hudson
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