Mechanicville Heritage - A Thumbnail Sketch
MECHANICVILLE’S HERITAGE: A THUMBNAIL SKETCH
Submitted by Dr. Paul Loatman, City Historian
May 29, 2006
Tradition holds that four families settled on the south shore of the Tenedehowa Creek in 1764, a quarter mile upstream from where it empties into the Hudson River from the west. These pioneers harnessed the rapidly-flowing stream, creating a mill race that would power grist and saw mills for well over a century. Such humble beginnings as these would lay the basis for the emergence of a classic “milltown” in the early 20th century.
Connecticut farmers, acquainting themselves with the region while soldiering in the French and Indian War, migrated here in the mid-1760s despite the prevailing opinion that the region was destined to remain “a howling wilderness.” Throughout most of the 17th and 18th centuries, “North Indians” from Canada swept through the Champlain-Hudson-Hoosick corridor to conduct assaults on western New England towns. Hoping to protect its vulnerable northern flank against these incursions, New York’s colonial governors encouraged friendly local Mahicans to expand their settlement at Schaghticoke, the western gateway of the Hoosick Valley. This policy was only partly successful in warding off attacks when it was inaugurated in 1676, and it had collapsed by 1754 when the last remnants of “the Schaghticokes” either fled or were taken as captives to Canada at the opening of the French and Indian War. Although venturesome Dutch farmers and their numerous African slaves may have benefited from the protection of their Amerindian neighbors in the early 1700s, few other settlers risked joining them on the western shores of the Hudson until the Anglo-French conflict reached its final resolution in 1763.
The 1779 “Tryon Map of His Majesty’s Possessions” lists the boundary separating the local land patents claimed by Philip Schuyler and Anthony VanSchaak as the “Anthonykill,” a name that has competed with “Tenedehowa” for the past couple of hundred years. Needless to say, this binomialism has caused endless confusion for local residents and mapmakers alike. Yet, whatever its name, by 1800, the creek was powering the Fairbanks and Bullen Woolen factory along with the original 1760s gristmills. These initiatives, portents of the impending “industrial revolution,” had attracted a large enough concentration of permanent settlers at the confluence of the Tenedehowa and Hudson waterways to motivate the U.S. Postal Service to open an office in “Mechanicville” in 1815. However, settling upon a name for the emerging factory settlement proved as problematical as naming the creek through which it flowed. An 1829 mapmaker reflected this confusion by juxtaposing “Mechanicville” and “a Borough of Halfmoon” as two distinct settlements sitting cheek by jowl. Travelers passing through the area used the names interchangeably in an apparent attempt to distinguish the hamlet from the township in which it was situated. Local residents, however, long had shown a clear-cut preference for “Mechanicville,” as evidenced by the addresses they used on their correspondence.
How did “Mechanicville” get its name? A popular misconception attributes it to the large number of railroad mechanics who settled here. However, this is anachronistic; the place-name was being used at least two decades before the building of railroads anywhere in the United States. A more intriguing and less speculative theory emerges from inferences contained in a letter to the editor of the MECHANICVILLE MERCURY in 1889 written by an elderly California woman. Responding to Farrington Mead’s recent editorial plaint that he and his readers were ignorant about the community’s origins, the writer recalled her childhood memories of prominent local landowners paying social calls, always in the company of their slaves. Such ostentation, she believed, was an expression of agrarian contempt for “the lowly mechanics” settled along the shores of the Tenendehowa. Turning the insult aside, the residents began to wear the label as a badge of honor. These inferences may provide as plausible an explanation as the faint historical record will warrant.
For a brief moment in the early 19th century, Mechanicville seemed destined to become the center of a budding, dynamic industry. Local entrepreneurs, Joll Farnham and Jehu Hatfield, had unlocked the secret of making friction-matches imported from France, commonly called “loco-focos.” Unfortunately, a faulty patent left their monopoly unprotected, and the match-making industry developed elsewhere. Indirectly however, these would-be tycoons left an indelible imprint on American political history. Faced with a challenge to their authority from “workingmen’s” advocates during a conclave held in New York City in 1835, Democratic party leaders attempted to squelch the insurrection by extinguishing the gas-lamps illuminating the meeting hall. But, undeterred and undiscouraged, the renegades continued the parlay without interruption, thanks to the power of match-light. Henceforth, the insurgent Democrats became known as advocates of “loco-focoism.”
Mechanicville earned further notoriety during this era when it introduced the first case of the dreaded cholera into the United States, triggering the great epidemic of 1832. The deadly disease spread to seaboard cities across the nation, taking tens of thousands lives, a process that would be repeated again in 1849 and 1866. But the local community apparently escaped its worst ravages. An English traveler passing through the area in 1835 on the Saratoga and Rensselaer Railway was favorably impressed to discover a “bustling thriving place with a considerable population” situated at the Tenedehowa-Hudson junction. A year later, fellow-countryman Tyrone Power recorded similar impressions, noting that Mechanicville was “a flourishing little manufacturing village” populated by neatly dressed female factory “operatives.”
From its earliest beginnings, there had never been any dispute regarding the proper spelling of “Mechanicville.” However, in 1846, without merit or warrant, the U. S. Post Office began muddying the waters by canceling local mail with a “Mechanicsville” [sic] postmark. This annoying practice continued until 1921, creating such a long trail of misinformation that a few elderly local residents believe that their forbearers, ancient mapmakers, and the State Legislature never correctly identified the community by its proper name. And, though Farrington Mead threatened to inflict bodily harm on anyone so bold as to utter the despised “s” during his four decades as the editor of the MECHANICVILLE MERCURY, his own four-year tenure as local postmaster seems to have influenced his superiors not one iota. Mead had tried earlier to spark a groundswell to rename the community, contending that the municipality’s inelegant moniker prevented investors and travelers alike from fully grasping the economic and aesthetic potential of this hamlet on the Hudson. He finally abandoned this campaign in the 1890s, but he never reconciled himself with those who insisted on pluralizing that which he regarded as singular, in more ways than one. The crusading editor’s disdain is reflected today by local residents who struggle to stifle grimaces when such profanity is uttered in their presence.
With or without the spurious “s,” Mechanicville’s role as a commercial entrepot had been assured when the Champlain Canal reached the settlement in 1823, and it was solidified further when the Saratoga and Rensselaer Railway laid track through the area in 1835. The hamlet of 959 residents, long referred to as a “village,” was not incorporated as such until 1859. Two years later, the community garnered national attention briefly when its native-son, Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, became the first Union army officer killed in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln had employed Ellsworth as a law clerk in the 1850s, and took note of the widespread recognition he gained while touring the nation with his famed Zouave drill-teams. The sudden death of the romantic young hero shocked citizens throughout the United States. Grief-stricken, the President ordered the twenty-four old officer’s remains to lie in state in the White House for three days before the body was taken to Mechanicville. Here, his gravesite in the Hudson View Cemetery is marked by a large monument erected in 1874 through the efforts of Zouave veterans of the Civil War.
Lesser noticed but more significant developments occurring in the last quarter of the 19th century would lay the foundation for Mechanicville to become a thriving industrial milltown. The Boston, Hoosac Tunnel, and Western Railway laid track through the village in 1878, providing it access to markets in New England, the Mohawk Valley and the Midwest. Five years later, the Hudson River Water Power and Paper Co. began construction of the then-largest dam on the Hudson River at Mechanicville. These initiatives would dictate the pace of economic growth and community development for the next century.
As Northeastern rail lines consolidated, Mechanicville trainmen assumed an increasingly important role in the regional transportation industry. The extensive car repair shops and transfer yards serving the Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine lines (successors of the original railroads formerly located here) came to employ over 1,000 workers during the first two decades of the 20th century. When the U.S. entered World War I, the local yards had become the third largest freight transfer hub in the nation. Similarly, when the West Virginia Pulp & Paper Company purchased the original Hudson River paper plant in 1904, it transformed the facility into the largest book-paper mill in the world. For more than half a century, Westvaco was the largest employer in the community. During peak operations, the plant kept over 1,300 men and women working “24/7” producing high-grade polymer pulp and paper products for the world’s largest book and magazine publishers. U.S. postage stamp paper was also produced here in the 1950s. Additionally, a thriving textile industry, extensive brickyard operations, and the continued expansion of local sash and blind manufacturing propelled Mechanicville on a path to becoming a thriving milltown of nearly 10,000 residents by the 1920s. Situated on a tiny parcel consisting of less than one-square mile, the rapid growth of the village now led local politicians to seek incorporation as a city. The State Legislature granted its approval in 1914, and the village was transformed into a city the following year after residents had endorsed the step in a voter referendum.
Only a few years later, civic groups and politicians urged their hometown legislator, State Senator George Whitney, to introduce a bill allowing New York’s smallest city to expand its corporate limits to include local rail yards, brickyards, and paper mill properties that were functionally, if not legally, part of the community of Mechanicville. This would enable the City to capture tax revenue from those who benefited from municipal fire and police protection, as well as its sewer and water systems, while often paying less for these services than the City’s taxpayers. These corporate subsidies had been consciously implemented to attract business in the 1890s, but as local businesses and railroads continued expanding, the growing public distaste for this arrangement fueled the annexation movement. However, when push came to shove, Senator Whitney suddenly withdrew his support for the legislation he himself had introduced. Despite the pro-business editorial posture he usually assumed, Farrington Mead was beside himself at this sudden turn of events, blasting Mechanicville’s own legislator for caving in to corporate minions.
This would not be the last time that the City found itself on the short end of the stick when it tried to broaden its tax base. Residents of Pruyn Hill in the adjacent Town of Halfmoon petitioned for annexation to the City in 1944, but Governor Thomas E. Dewey vetoed the proposed enabling legislation. Twenty-five years later, a State Supreme Court judge estopped Halfmoon residents from annexing themselves to the City when one property owner in the town protested. Local newspapers claimed that this was the first instance in state history that a municipality had been blocked by such a court order. More recently, the annexation saga took an ironic turn in 2005 when the Town of Halfmoon threatened to seize the old Champlain Canal right-of-way located in the Township that is owned by the City of Mechanicville. The Township had offered to purchase the property it needs to expand its water system, but the price it offered to pay for the parcel is significantly less than the value at which the Town itself has assessed it. A final resolution of this matter will probably wind up in court.
By the end of the 1960s, railroads throughout the Northeast were in a state of economic decline, brickmaking had migrated to other parts of the country, and the Korrell dress-making shop became the last textile mill operating in Mechanicville, a mere vestige of what had once been one of its vital industries. Then, in 1971, the community received an economic body-blow when Westvaco shut down its operations. Two bitter labor-management disputes had soured corporate-community relations in the late 1950s. But, well into the following decade, the papermaker still continued to employ over 1,000 hourly and professional employees. When news of the closing came in 1971, it came without warning, despite a growing sense of foreboding that had arisen over Westvaco’s hostile reaction to the increasingly stringent environmental regulations proposed by the State of New York to clean up the Hudson River. In short order, Mechanicville was transformed into a post-industrial city. What had only recently been a thriving self-contained milltown whose industries traded in national and world markets now suddenly became a bedroom community for residents working in Albany and Schenectady. This point became starkly apparent when the local Superintendent of Schools pointed out in 1976 that the largest employer in the School District was the District itself.
At the opening of the 21st century, Mechanicville found its population halved from what it had been at its peak in the 1920s. Numbering barely more than 5,000 inhabitants according to the 2000 Census, an ever-decreasing number of property owners found themselves footing the bill to sustain an increasingly fragile infrastructure. Serving as the urban core for many former residents dwelling just outside the municipality’s boundaries, suggestions have been made lately that the state’s smallest City should surrender its municipal charter and return to the status of a village. Yet, no one has explained satisfactorily how subordinating itself once again to the two Townships out of which it was carved (Stillwater and Halfmoon) will solve the fiscal problems confronting the community. There are still many residents who are confident that the resiliency the City has shown in overcoming past difficulties such as the tornado of 1998 will enable it to ride out the financial problems confronting it.
Originally settled by Dutch farmers and migrants from New England, industrial expansion in the late 19th century attracted large numbers of migrants from Lithuania, Ireland, and Italy to the community. Each of these ethnic groups established close-knit enclaves here, and long after restrictive legislation cut off the flow of emigrants to America, their progeny continue to maintain a strong sense of ethnicity. The Ancient Order of Hibernians and St. Patrick’s Day Parades that survived into the post World War II era reminded people that this settlement first established by Connecticut Congregationalists had the stamp of an Irish-American community written all over it during the 20th century. The Polish-speaking Lithuanian immigrants, the first close-knit ethnic group to be recruited by industry here, founded the St. John’s Society to promote group solidarity shortly after their arrival. When the “Spanish influenza” devastated Mechanicville and the rest of the United States in 1918, the Slavic ethnic group stepped forward and offered its facilities to the larger community for use as a temporary hospital during the pandemic.
Twenty years ago when the Junior Dante Society observed its fortieth anniversary, its chaplain rued the fact that the group appeared doomed to extinction as older members died out and new recruits were hard to find. Yet, twenty-five years after its death knell was sounded, the group (which limits its membership to women of Italian extraction, or to those married to Italian-Americans), maintains a waiting list of potential new members. The Society’s annual Mother-Daughter Dinner Banquet is now attracting grandchildren and great-grandchildren as honored guests who relish their Italian-American identity at the fete. The Societe Fratellenza Italiana, founded in 1899, no longer takes responsibility for organizing the annual triduum associated with the Feast of the Assumption on August 15th as it did when the celebration began in 1903. But volunteers have stepped forward from the ethnic community to continue the tradition, now in its 104th year. The Sons of Italy may have closed its doors in recent years, but the Italian-American War Veterans Post remains a vital group in Mechanicville. These veterans of World War II who meet weekly also conduct an annual get-together with their other neighbors to reminisce about growing up in their ethnic enclave.
Frontier outpost; manufacturing hamlet and canal town; booming milltown; post-industrial bedroom community: Mechanicville has experienced virtually every phase of our nation’s history, albeit in miniaturized fashion. Today, the vast farmlands that once surrounded this urban oasis are being transformed into suburban subdivisions, portending a time when the city may become dwarfed by its expanding neighbors. What the future holds for the municipality is uncertain. Each year, the biggest holiday on the community’s calendar, Family Day, attracts large crowds of former residents and family members as part of a three day celebration culminating on the Fourth of July weekend. Even if it is for only a few days each summer, Mechanicville then comes alive once more, and thousands celebrate the roots that have shaped their lives, recalling a rich past, while giving the lie to the old saw that “you can’t go home again.”