About

It’s time to get back to the hats and the first hat shop run by Zadoc Benedict who turned out hats at the rate of 3 a day.

The Rosie Tomorrow’s sign directed me to downtown Danbury. There at the Town Hall I met the hatters monument.

If you were an old timer in Texas who bought a ten-gallon Stetsons hat, it was made in Danbury. By the end of the 19th century Danbury’s 30 hat manufacturers were turning out 5,000,000 hats a year. It is speculated that the automobile whose drivers wanted softer hats rather than stiff fur derby hats signaled the end of an era for “Hat City” as Danbury was known. GI’s returning from WWII decided to go hatless and Danbury’s hat manufacturing did not recover.

 Another icon sign of a long-ago business is across from Maple Grove Route 6 in Mahopac – the Knickerbocker Ice storing business

It all started when…

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During the winter, ice would be cut from lake Mahopac and taken into the ice house and packed with  straw or sawdust. It would remain frozen and then used as a source of ice during summer months when icemen delivered it to residences in ice-wagons, where it would be stored in an icebox, Also milk was packed in sawdust and ice for transportation on the railroad to NYC.

However, a way was found to transport milk without keeping it cold.

Condensed milk is pasteurized whole milk that has had 60% of the water removed and then canned.

Many have seen signs for old mills. Red Mills on route 6N and Long Pond Road. Grist mills used a large grinding wheel for grinding grain. A carding mill prepared wool for the home spinners. Carding machines took only 20 minutes to produce what required all day to card by hand!

Mills were important during the Revolutionary War. This sign in Dutchess County has General Washington commanding his men to get Brinckerhoff’s mill up and running for the war effort.

Brinckerhoff may have thought he was a shrewd business man raising the price of tea because of the English tax. But the town Ladies would have none of it. After 100 of the ladies who lunch with tea rioted for three days over the increase, Brinckerhoff relented and re-priced his English breakfast and Darjeeling to the ladies liking.

Workers in the mines probably wanted a stiffer drink when they finished work. There were a number of mines around Mahopac.

Thirteen miners were killed in a rockslide in 1897 at this iron ore mine. It was then shut down. It is now partly submerged under the Middle Branch Reservoir. For the geologists among you, this is the list of ores mined there: brucite, chondrodite, clinochlore, titanite, and magnetite crystals and antigorite or lizardite.

One hundred twenty years later there was another death at the Tilly Foster Mine. Robert Thomas, a technical diver who had dived the 600 ft mine shaft many times before. Failed to surface. Rather than wait for his buddies to dive with, he dove alone. At a depth of 171 feet, he got entangled in the wires and cables of old mining equipment and ran out of air. A tragedy that might have been avoided if he just waited for his friends to arrive

 From hats to ice to milk to mills to mines our road trip is over. If you would like to send in a photo and a story of a historical business in your part of the country, please send it to ontheroadtohistory@gmail.com