Quaker Hill: A Sociological StudyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
Quaker Hill: A Sociological Study
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Quaker Hill (N.Y.)
Other trades were of increasing variety as the century of isolation
proceeded. Shoemakers went from house to house to make shoes for the
family, of the leather from the backs of the farmer's own cattle, tanned
on the farm or not far away. Reed Ferris was a shoemaker, in whose
residence at Site 99 Washington was entertained in September, 1778,
until he took up Headquarters at John Kane's. Stephen Riggs was a
shoemaker. Three tanneries were maintained on the Hill in the bloom of
the Quaker community by Ransom Aldrich about Site 13; Amos Asborn, at
Site x21, who also made pottery there; and Isaac Ingersoll, at Site 134.
Albro Akin had a sawmill in the Glen, and a gristmill was also located
there in an early period. William Taber had a gristmill and also a cloth
mill, consisting of carding machine, fulling mill, and apparatus for
pressing, coloring and dressing cloth. John Toffey, at Site 53, and
Joseph Seeley, at Site 15, and some of the Arnolds, near Site 12, were
hatters. Jephtha Sabin, at Site 74, and Joseph Hungerford were saddlers
and harnessmakers.
Every farmer and indeed every householder raised hogs. Pork was salted,
as it is to-day, for winter use, in barrels of brine. Hogs also were
extensively raised and butchered for market, at a year and a half old,
the meat being taken to Poughkeepsie by wagon, and thence to New York.
Many who raised more pork than their own use demanded exchanged it at
the stores. Fields of peas were raised to feed the hogs.
Sheep also were raised for their wool; their meat afforded an acceptable
variety in farmer's fare and their hides had many uses. David Irish,
Daniel and David Merritt, Jonathan A. Taber and George P. Taber were
farmers whose product of wool was notably fine and abundant. Jonathan
Akin Taber "kept about eleven hundred sheep, some merino and some
saxony."
Butter and cheese making were an important part of the business and
income of the farmer's family, the butter being packed and sent weekly
to the Hudson River boats for New York markets, or to Bridgeport or New
Haven--a two-days' journey in either case. The cheese was ripened, or
cured, being rubbed and turned every day, and kept until the dealers
came around to inspect and purchase. On every farm was kept a flock of
geese, which were picked once in six weeks to keep up the supply of
feather beds and to furnish the requisite number for the outfit of each
daughter of the family.
In the year 1767, Oblong Meeting took action which resulted, after seven
years of agitation, in the clear declaration by the Yearly Meeting of
New York, earliest of such acts, in favor of the freeing of slaves. This
was one hundred years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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