Quaker Hill: A Sociological StudyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
Quaker Hill: A Sociological Study
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Quaker Hill (N.Y.)
This list mentions six occupations: the farmer, blacksmith, tailor,
shoemaker, carpenter and laborer. With these six a frontier community
could live, for every man of them was a potential butcher, tanner,
trader. There is record of others in later years, when the communal life
had become differentiated. There were at various times in the Quaker
century stores at four places on the Hill. The Merritt store, at Site
28, descended to the sons of Daniel Merritt, and finally to James Craft.
There was a store in Deuell Hollow, kept by Benjamin and Silas Deuell
for several years. There is extant one bill of merchandise purchased by
them of Edward and William Laight, merchants of New York, the amount
being £200 and the date Feb. 25, 1785. The Akin stores at Sites 47 and
46, were kept by Daniel and Albro Akin, and the store at Site 53, by
John Toffey. These stores during the period of the Quaker community were
in trade largely by barter, taking all the commodities the farmer had
beyond his immediate use, and selling sugar, coffee, cloth and other
commodities which after 1815, as will be shown later, rapidly increased
in number and in quantity. The use of money increased at the same
period. The phrase still lingers in Quaker Hill speech: "I am going to
the store to do some trading," though the milk farmer has engaged in no
barter for fifty years.
In the culminating period of the Quaker Community, which followed the
Revolutionary War, the following were some of the occupations practiced
on the Hill, the record or remembrance of which is preserved:[8]
Abram Thomas was a blacksmith, at Site 14,[9] and is said to have made
the nails used in building the Meeting House. George Kirby, at Site
99-1/2, had a blacksmith shop; there was another at Site x100, now
abandoned on Burch Hill, kept by Joel Winter Church, where Washington's
charger was shod, and the bill was paid at the close of the war.
But the most notable smithy was at Site 41, where now stands one of the
oldest houses on the Hill. Here Davis Marsh wrought in iron, and the
sound of his trip-hammer audible for miles smote its own remembered
impression upon the ears of those ancient generations. Doubtless the
favored location of Marsh's shop in the neighborhood most central, as is
shown in Chapter III, Part III, gave it greater use. There was at one
time a forge in the Glen at Site 66, to which magnetic ore was hauled
from Brewster to be worked.
A "smith shop" is also noted on Erskine's map for Washington in 1778 at
Site x111. The most important manufacturing business of the community,
however, was the wagon-worker's shop at Site 45, kept by Hiram Sherman.
Under the general title of wagon maker he manufactured all movables in
wood and iron, from fancy wagons to coffins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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