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PEASLEE'S PAPER MILL ANCRAM, COLUMBIA COUNTY NEW YORK By Capt. Franklin Ellis245 1878 It was not built all at once, but the different buildings were put up from time to time during the four years succeeding the sale. In 1864 they rebuilt the dam in a very durable manner. The present proprietor, George H. Peaslee, succeeded this firm in 1868, and continues the business. This mill is the largest one in Columbia county. The main building, which is fifty-four by ninety feet and two stories high, stands east and west, and is flanked by two wings one and a half stories high, the southern one being the machine-room, sixty by ninety-five feet, and the northern one the bleach-room, fifty-seven by seventy-six feet. The buildings are built of heavy cut stone and covered with slate roofs. They cost about $50,000. The machines (one seventy-two-inch, and one sixty-eight-inch cylinder) are set upon iron beams, supported by iron columns, and turn out an aggregate of from twenty to twenty-five tons of wrapping-paper each week, The materials used are about thirty tons of straw, five or six tons of lime, and twenty tons of coal each week, and employment is afforded for forty-five or fifty hands. The water is carried from the dam in a trunk three hundred feet long, and furnishes power to run three turbine-wheels,--one of seventy-five horse-power and two of twenty horse-power each. The fall in the stream is thirty feet at this point. In the bleach-room are eight boiling-tubs or vats, each having a capacity of four tons of straw, and the straw, after bleaching and washing is ground to pulp in six engines, the roll-bars of which are thirty-six inches in length. The total cost of the buildings and machinery was about $100,000. The real estate connected with the mill consists of about fifty acres, exclusive of the dam and water-privilege, and Mr. Peaslee owns about a dozen dwelling-houses, occupied mostly by his employees.
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