Columbiaville

Stockport,

Columbia County,

New York

Capt. Franklin Ellis³⁹⁵

1878   

     Columbiaville is a manufacturing place, on Stockport creek, about one mile east from Stockport Station.  Saw and grist-mills were operated here at an early day by Marks Barker and others.  The creek was navigable for sloops to this point, and as the location was convenient to the Hudson, and central for the surrounding country, considerable business was done.  In 1809 "The Columbia Manufacturing Society" was formed at Hudson, with the following officers:  President, Thomas Lawrence; Secretary, John F. Jenkins; Treasurer, Seth Jenkins.  The above mill-seat was purchased the following year, and a contract made with James Wild, an English machinist, for the erection of a building and supplying it with machinery for the manufacture of cotton goods.  In 1812 the building on the north side of the creek was erected, and two years later most of the workingmen's houses.  The project was successful, large quantities of goods being manufactured, with were sold in New York by Lawrence & Van Buren.  In 1815 an inventory of the property showed assets amounting to $85,520.  For a long term of years John G. Coster was president of the society, which exercised all the privileges of a corporate body, including the functions and powers usually bestowed upon incorporated villages.  Columbiaville was vested with these powers until after the erection of Stockport, but the original society disbanded about 1824.  That year the factory on the south side of the creek was erected, and was operated by James Wild, while the Jenkins brothers carried on the old mill.  Subsequently both mills were operated by the Wild family, who owned them until 1877, when J. A. Hover became the proprietor.  The two mills are supplementary to each other, have six thousand spindles, on hundred and forty-eight looms, and produce thirty thousand yards of plain cotton cloth per week.  The operatives employed number eighty.

     North of the village are Smith's super-phosphate factory and fruit-preserving works, which have become quite important industries  An establishment for the manufacture of pressed brick was put up near Columbiaville, but did not prove successful, and the works are now idle.

     James Wild was one of the first merchants of the place, keeping a store in a yellow house near the forks of the roads, which was largely patronized.  C. W. Bentley, James Van Alen, and others have since been in trade.  The public-house on the main road north has been kept by NcNulty, Clary, and Hoes.

     A lodge of Odd Fellows--Good Intent, No. 6--was instituted Nov. 28, 1828.  The first meetings were held in Wardley's tavern.  About 1855 the lodge was transferred to Stuyvesant Falls.

     Stockport Station is a simple station on the Hudson River railroad, and Judson's Landing is a place on the river where boats sometimes touch; there being no villages at either place.