Seventy Years Ago
Reminiscences of Early Days in Norwich, Chenango Co., NY
Related by George W. Denslow, Who Was Ninety Years Old on Sept. 19, 1906
Compiled for the Union by Leonard W. Cogswell
Chenango Union, November 8, 1906
I remember the founding of the Norwich foundry and machine shop owned by Samuel Chubbuck, Judah Bement, David Griffing, Hiram Haynes and Hiram Weller. I knew all those men well, and did business with them. Their shop was near the present one on the west bank of the canal and near the East Main st. bridge.
On West Main street, about where Guernsey street now is, there was a brook flowed down through the north side of High school lot, and where the little house now stands in the corner of the library park property where the trout pond was, there was what was called in those days an "ashery" where potash and soda were made from wood ashes. Water was run through wood ashes, the resulting liqud evaporated, and from the dry residue rough potash was refined. Then by another process soda was obtained, and quite a business was done. The leached ashes were used for fertilizer.
Opposite the stone mill on West Main st., across the creek, was a sawmill owned by Wm. Guernsey, where logs and timber were cut up. The old canal which conveyed water to the wheel and cellar walls of the mill is still visible [in 1906]. Sometime in the 50's I cut down a tree in the rear of my lot and took it up there to be sawed. I didn't think it would make much, but it made a grand good timber, and I got a lot of money out of it. That was the last log ever sawed in that mill.
Down by Austin Taylor's there was a wool carding mill which enclosed what is now Locust street. The farmers took their wool there where it was carded, and then taken home where the women of the house made it into yarn which was spun into stockings, or else woven into cloth which was afterwards sent away to be fulled, then brought back home to be cut into clothes. When I was a boy all my stockings and clothes were made by hand that way, instead of machinery.
I remember when David Maydole started in making his adze-eye hammer, and have seen that business grow from a small beginning to the enormous industry it now is [in 1906]. I knew Mr. Maydole very well, and talked frequently with him.
I knew Harvey Hubbard, John F. Hubbard and John F. Hubbard Jr. It would be hard to find three better, more vigorous and independent thinkers and influential men in any community than those three. They were all at some time identified with newspapers in this town, and their writings possessed a vigorous personality of their own. They did their own thinking, and I wish we had more democrats nowadays like them.
When I came here in 1937 I was a carriage maker by trade, and I went to work for John Dodge where Will Coe's house is on East Main st. Then, after two years, I worked for Snow & Warner, and in 1840 formed the partnership of Dodge & Denslow. The business proving unsuccessful, I soon went to work for Coddington Brown, and remained with him until the panic of '57 swept the country, carrying down so many business houses. Then I embarked in the carriage business on my own hook, and was burned out three times,--in 1858, 1863 and 1867. But each time it burned up my own property, for I owed no man a dollar, but I had no insurance. I remained in business until September, 1902, when I retired from work, having worked continuously for 70 long years. But work is good for a man. "It is better to wear out than to rust out" is an old saying, and I am not very much worn out or rusty yet!
The stage house stood where the Joe Latham house is, and was kept by George l. Rider. There all the stages which ran between Utica and Binghamton stopped. On the great thoroughfares the old fashioned stage coaches, called "thoroughbreds" were pretty good vehicles. They would accommodate 9 persons on the inside, and 5 or 6 on the outside. A seat with the driver was a great treat, because he knew everybody on the road and could talk entertainingly. He carried all the news and gossip from town to town, and there was more news to be obtained from a stage driver in those days than from a newspaper. Nowadays newspapers sometimes print things before they happen! On the back of the stage was the baggage covered with a heavy boot. When approaching the town the driver would crack his long whip at his four horses, blow his horn, and they would dash through the street to the stage house on a gallop, suddenly pulling the horses up on their haunches in a cloud of dust!
There was the stone mill on West Main st., and an oil mill a little ways down the street where they made flaxseed oil. Then there was a candle mill on Lock st., where tallow candles were made, for all lights were from tallow dips or molds. I remember when a freshet tore down one end of the mill and let a lot of oil and flax into the brook.
To be continued
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