HILLSDALE VILLAGES,

COLUMBIA COUNTY,

NEW YORK

By

Captain Franklin Ellis

From

The History of Columbia County

Everts & Ensign

Philadelphia

1878

Pages 371 to 372

HILLSDALE VILLAGE

is situated on the south line of the town, three miles from the State line; it is a station on the New York and Harlem railroad, and the most important in the county south of Chatham.  It is pleasantly located, and possesses a very good class of buildings.  There are about sixty dwellings three stores, two hotels, a marble yard, two churches (Presbyterian and Methodist), a tin-shop, blacksmith and wagon-shop, cabinet-shop, and job-printing establishment; and a population of about three hundred.

HARLEMVILLE

is a little village in the extreme northwest corner of the town, and contains about twenty dwellings, with a population of about one hundred.  It has a hotel, two stores, wagon-shop, shoe-shop, two blacksmith-shops, and a Methodist Episcopal church.

GREEN RIVER

is a hamlet in the valley of the Green river, in the northeast corner of the town.  It was formerly known as Green River Hollow.  It contains a Christian church, a hotel, a school-house, a shoe-shop, a blacksmith-shop, and about a dozen houses, with a population of about fifty.

MURRAY'S CORNERS

is a small collection of houses, a mile and a quarter east of Hillsdale, and contains, among other buildings, a foundry, wagon-shop, blacksmith-shop, and a store.

NORTH HILLSDALE, OR HILLSDALE CENTRE,

is a straggling settlement in the east centre of the town, and has a store and two churches, Baptist and Methodist.  Here is also located the North Hillsdale iron mine, which is the only one now being worked in Hillsdale.  This bed of hematite ore was first discovered in the spring of 1864.  While drawing stone across the field at the foot of the high hill back of the present shaft, the wheels cut deeply into the soft ground, and turned up a curious, brownish-colored earth, which, upon examination, proved to be an excellent quality of iron ore.  The owner, Rutsen Hunt, sold a mineral lease of the premises to some parties in New York, who worked it to some extent.  In 1867, the lease was transferred to the present proprietor, Edward T. Haight, of New York.  At first the mine was worked from the surface by the mode known as "open-cut mining," but this was soon changed for the method of shaft and gallery mining.  The mine is apparently inexhaustible, and, though not worked to its full capacity, has already furnished many thousand tons of ore that have been shipped to Albany and other points.

     Recently a very fine and various-colored kind of mineral paint has been discovered in close contact with the veins of iron ore, and promises to be a valuable discovery.  At present the mine furnishes employment to a force of eight miners.

     Iron ore has also been mined at two other points in the southeastern part of the town.  These deposits of ore were discovered by Calvin Prescott about forty-five years ago.  The northernmost bed is on the farm of George Brady.  It was worked for a time by the Hillsdale Iron Ming Company.  Since 1874 it has lain idle.  It is now owned by J. B. Ireland, of New York.

     The second and southernmost bed is on the lands of Samuel and Stephen Mitchell.  It was first opened about 1800, but has not been worked for several years.

These terrific images have been designed by: