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BROUGHT
TO YOU FROM
ROBERT
UZZILIA
TOWN HISTORIAN
Robert
has put together a scrap book of Cairo and it is available for viewing
at the town clerks office daily.
He has
also started a local history group which will meet on the last Friday of
the month, at the Town Hall
Interested
in our area ???
Come sit in on a meeting!!!!
OLD
POSTCARDS
For centuries, native American
peoples have sporadically fished & hunted the waters of Shinglekill
but never settled there because of the rocky soil & severe terrain.
During the 17th & 18th centuries, Europeans and their advancing technologies
would discover these lands and make claims it large portions, called "patents".
Several of these tracts of land would later become "Greene County" (1800)
and specifically our subject, Forge, (later Purling ).
By the Post Revolution period
many hearty New Englanders were populating areas West to take advantage
of the inexpensive and useful lands. Enoch Hyde & Benjamin Hall were
two such Yankees, from Litchfiels, Conn. , who in 1788 set up an Iron Forge
above Shinglekill Falls. High quality charcoal iron, shipped all the way
from Ancram, Columbia County, was forged into bars and used by local blacksmiths
to make horseshoes, wheel tires and other useful objects for the fast growing
community.
The Susquehanna Turnpike ( now
Rte 23B ) would be finished by 1801 and create a conduit for goods &
people from New England To NYS interior and beyond.
Rufus Byington established a
tavern near the Forge by 1813 to meet the social needs of the settlers.
While records are scant
on the early manufacturing of the Forge, one amusing anecdote survives,
relating to Enoch Hyde.
Entering the store, Hyde asked
how much a jug of New England Rum would cost. The merchant replied innocently,
"one dollar". Hyde promptly left and returned with a massive 4-5 gallon
jug and asked to have it filled for the agreed upon price. Stone reluctantly
filled the jug and told of its planned fate. Mr. Hyde proceeded to bury
the jug in the cellar of his newly completed dwelling under a rock with
this inscription:
"Beneath this stone a brown jug
lies filled with New England rum
To treat Hydes friends when
ere he dies God grant the time may quickly come"
He lived to be a ripe old age,
despite his melancholy and the jug was later retrieved and the contents
enjoyed in his memory
A second forge was built upstream
of the Falls, which would later become the site if the sawmill. It was
carried away by a freshet and rebuilt in 1857 by Jonathan Webster. Destroyed
by a fire the following year & rebuilt by John Galatian.
The water power of the falls
would provide for a multitude of small industries in the coming decades.
A grist mill has been located just adjacent to the falls since early on.
The present mill was built around 1894 to replace the previous one that
was destroyed by fire, an ever present danger at that time. The falls were
dammed and a spillway directed the water to a deep pit below the massive
wheel. The water filled scoops in the wheel, turning in which in turn activating
a gear which turned the grinding wheel inside. A pulley driven apparatus
enabled the miller to raise the stone for sharpening and changing.
Many other short lived but important
industries developed in the glen downstream from the falls.
This picturesque ravine, carved
by thousands of years of erosion would eventually become a haven for visitors,
but not before a stretch of busy industry.
A Captain Byington established
a clock factory in the Glen sometime around 1818. Joel & Isaac Curtis
made the clocks, producing simple but attractive Grandfather clocks of
pine with wooden works, hand painted dials & pewter hands. This operation
ceased sometime before 1854. Also established in the Glen by Alpheus
Wright and later run by his son, Anson, was a wood turning mill . Before
the Civil War broke out, it was said that this mill would produce wooden
farm implements for local farmers. Originally called "Shinglekill Novelty
Works" it was supposedly the first of it's kind in the area. Another such
mill would later be run by Wright near what is now the Cairo- Purling Roller
Rink.
Other productions in the Glen
would come to include cut nails. self closing well buckets, grain cradles,
scythes and spinning wheels among others.
Technologies developed during
the Civil War would soon make it feasible for The Catskill Mountain railway
to establish a station in Cairo. Guests could then be brought by
livery in greater numbers right to their boarding houses in the peaceful
hamlet now called Purling ( called so supposedly because of the
sounds of the waters of the "purling brook") They could walk
along the Forge Road, enjoy countless hours of sight-seeing & take
a swim in the Glen, the perfect relief for a sultry summer day.
The Falls & The Glen became
a focal point for recreation now as it had been for manufacturing.
Farming slowly became less attractive
to the locals as income from taking in guests far exceeded the crops
worth. Enough was grown to feed the family with just enough extra to provide
visitors with fresh produce.
The turn of the century would
see combustion engines revolutionize travel, allowing people to move about
at their own pace to The Catskills or wherever their budget would allow.
Improving photographic methods
would also have a direct impact on tourism, allowing less bulky personal
cameras to be made available thereby allowing vacations to be chronicled
at will by the tourists.
Many fields relating to tourism
prospered. The products of Anson Wright were now being sold from a store
right on the Main Road ( in the former repair shop of Tom Plank & Earl
Whitcomb) . Wrights sing read
" Souvenir Bazaar Items made
To Order. Largest & Finest In The Catskills. Competition defied.
Low prices & large sales our motto"
Besides producing interesting
items such as hiking staffs, mugs, wishing wells and such , he was stocking
jewelry, post cards, drug sundries & toiletries. Health & Recreation
were the rage. One could even visit the mineral springs in The Glen.
This desire for the sublime
& beautiful has had a rebirth in the last decade and The Falls &
The Glen are once again a focal point of activity for both visitors &
locals alike.
BITS
FROM HERE AND THERE:
Cairo, formed from Catskill,
Coxsackie and Freehold, or Durham,
March 26, 1803, lies
at the foot
of the Catskills, the
mountains forming the west boundary. Patents had been issued for all of
the
lands of this
town before the Revolution, but it is doubtful whether any of these had
been occupied
by actual settlers
before James Barker, who came in 1772. With the end migration to
this district, principally by those who were after hemlock bark for tanneries.
Curiously out of the
destruction of so many trees for their bark, grew a new industry, which
has left its name forever on one of the streams of the neighborhood— shingle
making. (Shinglekill)
The only sizable settlement
in the town is the village of Cairo.
Cairo has a history
of drawing visitors going back to the 1800's.
A history filled
with colorful tales and folklore;
Rip Van Winkle, "Legs"
Diamond, Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra
and thousands
of others have been a part of Cairo's history.
As with many communities,
name changes happen. We have been known as Cairo since 1809.
Cairo is a township
consisting of
Acra, Cairo, South
Cairo, Purling, Roundtop and Gayhead.
Cairo is the largest
hamlet boasting a Main Street shopping district, the Town Hall and
the library.
Tourism has been
our largest " industry" for the entire township since the 1800's.
Cairo was one of the
first towns in the area to develop ski slopes and trails.
Many of the visitors
to our beautiful area have returned as seasonal or permanent residents.
Safe, quiet streets,
friendly neighbors, beautiful scenery, easy access to larger cities and
a great school district school have a lot of appeal to families wanting
a place to call home.
Quaint churches dating
back to the 1800's still remain active today.
Cairo is the
heartland of Greene county which was named after General Nathaniel
Greene.
Gen. Greene was second
in command of the American revolution under George Washington, who became
the First President of The U.S.A.
Historic paths such
as the Mohican Trail and the Schoarie Turnpike travel through our area.
The Cairo Railroad
represented the incursion by the young Catskill Mountain Railroad into
the freight business when the branch was chartered on April 10, 1884. The
directors of the CMRR saw the Cairo extension as a means of tapping business
in bluestone, hay and fruit. While the line opened for business in June,
1885, sustaining business did not arrive until 1894 with the formation
of the Catskill Shale Brick Company. The shale rock would come from sidings
in Cairo and represent a major portion of the CMRR's freight revenue until
the shale brick plant closed in 1914.
Mounting financial
losses, brought about by improved roads, forced the termination of service
on the Cairo Railroad following the end of the 1918 tourist season.
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