The Greatest Highway in the World / Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country Passed Through Between New York and Chicago Via the New York Central Lines. Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

by New York Central Railroad Company

159 M. SCHENECTADY, Pop. 88,723.

(Train 51 passes 11:57; No. 3, 12:47; No. 41, 4:57; No. 25, 6:12; No. 19, 9:32. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 5:24; No. 26, 5:56; No. 16, 11:35; No. 22, 1:24.)

At this point we first enter the historic Mohawk Valley, and on this site, according to tradition, once stood the chief village of the Mohawk Indians.

The Mohawk River rises in Lewis County (northwestern N.Y.), flows south to Rome, then east to the Hudson River which it enters at Cohoes. It is 160 miles long. There are rapids and falls at Little Falls and Oriskany which have been utilized to develop electric power. The Mohawk valley is noted for its beauty and the fertility of its soil. The name Mohawk is probably derived from an Indian word meaning "man-eaters"; but the Mohawks' own name for their tribe was Kaniengehaga, "people of the flint." They lived in the region bounded on the north by the Lake of Corlear, on the east by the Falls of Cohoes, on the south by the sources of the Susquehanna, and on the west by the country of the Oneidas. The dividing line between the Mohawk and Oneida tribes passed through the present town of Utica. The Mohawks had the reputation of being the bravest of the Iroquois; they furnished the war chief for the Six Nations and exercised the right to collect tribute in the form of wampum from the Long Island tribes and to extend their conquests along the sea coast. The tribes, along both banks of the Hudson River, it is said, shrank before their war cry. In the War of Independence they fought with the English, and finally took refuge in Canada, where most of them have remained.

The first settlement at Schenectady was made in 1642 by Arendt Van Corlear and a band of immigrants who had become dissatisfied with conditions on the Manor of Rennselaerwyck where Corlear was manager of the estates of his cousin, Killiaen van Rennselaer.

Van Corlear had emigrated to America about 1630 and while manager of Rennselaerwyck he earned the confidence of the Indians, among whom "Corlear" became a generic term for the English governors and especially the governors of N.Y. The name Kora, derived from the same source, is said to be used even today by surviving Iroquois in Canada to designate the English king.

To each of the 15 original proprietors, except Van Corlear who was to receive a double portion, was assigned a village lot of 200 sq. ft., a tract of bottom land for farming purposes, a strip of woodland, and common pasture rights. Many of the early settlers were well-to-do and brought their slaves with them, and for many years the settlement, originally known as Dorp, was reputed the richest in the colony.

Schenectady was spelled in a great variety of ways in the early records. Its Indian equivalent signified "Back Door" of the Long House—the territory occupied by the Six Nations.

In an early map (1655) the name appears as Scanacthade. As late as 1700 the spelling was still uncertain, as the following minutes from the record of the common council of September 3, of that year show: "The Church wardens of Shinnechtady doe make application that two persons be appointed to go around among the inhabitants of the City to see if they can obtain any Contributions to make up ye Sellary due their minister." Other ways of spelling the name were Schanechtade and Schoneghterdie.

In 1690 the young village received a setback which very nearly brought its early history to an end; on Feb. 9 of that year, the French and Indians surprised and burned the village, massacred 60 of the inhabitants and carried 30 into captivity.

An old tradition says that an Indian squaw had been sent to warn the inhabitants, under cover of selling brooms. In the afternoon of Feb. 8, 1690, Dominic Tassomacher was being entertained with chocolate at the home of a charming widow of his parish when the squaw entered to deliver her message. The widow became indignant at the sight of snow on her newly scrubbed floor, and rebuked her unexpected guest. The Indian woman replied angrily, "It shall be soiled enough before to-morrow," and left the house. The massacre occurred that night.

Schenectady was rebuilt in the following years, but an outlying settlement was again the scene of a murderous French and Indian attack in 1748. In the land along the river, the old part of the town, Indian skulls and arrow heads are still found.

English settlers arrived in considerable numbers about 1700. About 1774 a number of Shaker settlements were made in the lower Mohawk valley.

The Shakers, a celibate and communistic sect—officially the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance—received their common name from the fact that originally they writhed and trembled in seeking to free "the soul from the power of sin and a worldly life." They had trances and visions, and there was much jumping and dancing. The founder of the sect was Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784) of Manchester, England, who came to N.Y. with a number of relatives in 1774 and bought land in the lower Mohawk Valley. The first Shaker settlement was at Watervliet, not far from Troy. The settlers established a communistic organization with branches in Mass., and Conn. As a matter of practice they do not forbid marriage, but refuse to recognize it; they consider there are four virtues: virgin purity, Christian communism, confession of sin, and separation from the world. The women wear uniform costumes and the men have long hair. The sect is diminishing. There are now less than 1,000 members in 17 societies in Mass., N.H., Maine, Conn., and Ohio, though at its most flourishing period it had nearly 5,000.

Schenectady was chartered as a borough in 1765 and as a city in 1798, and from that period date many quaint examples of colonial architecture. In Scotia, a suburb to the northwest of the city, still stands the Glen-Sanders mansion (built 1713) described as "a veritable museum of antiquity, furnished from cellar to garret with strongly built, elegant furniture, two centuries old." Descendants of the original owners are still living there. A fine specimen of Dutch architecture is the so-called Abraham Yates house (1710) at No. 109 Union Street. The Christopher Yates house at No. 26 Front Street was the birth place of Joseph C. Yates, first mayor of Utica (1788) and governor of the state in 1823. Governor Yates afterwards lived, until his death, in the large colonial house at No. 17 Front Street. The old "depot" of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, the first steam passenger railway in America now incorporated with the New York Central, is still standing in Crane Street.

Schenectady is the seat of Union College, which grew out of the Schenectady Academy (established in 1784) and many of the buildings dating back to the early 19th century are still in excellent preservation. They were designed by a French architect, Jacques Ramé, and the original plans are still in the Louvre, in Paris. At one of the entrances to the college on Union Street is the Payne Gate, built as a memorial to John Howard Payne (1791-1852), author of "Home, Sweet Home," who was at one time a student at Union College The college comprises the academic and engineering departments of Union University. The other departments of the university—medicine, law, and pharmacy, as well as the Dudley observatory—are at Albany.

Up to the time of the building of the Erie Canal, Schenectady had been an important depot of the Mohawk River boat trade to the westward, but after the completion of the canal it suffered a decline. The modern manufacturing era, beginning about 1880, brought Schenectady growth and prosperity. To-day the city can boast that its products "light and haul the world." As we enter the town we pass on the left the main establishment of the General Electric Co., the largest electrical manufacturing plant in the world, with 200 buildings and 26,000 employees.

“Dr. Watson's Electrical Machine”

In 1768, when this picture, reproduced here from the First Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, was published, only the most elementary principles of electricity had been discovered. Benjamin Franklin's discovery, made with the aid of a kite, that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, was the greatest advance in electrical science up to that time. "Electrical machines," such as that shown, were, designed to produce frictional or "static" electricity, of which the quantity is usually small, and is therefore now produced chiefly for laboratory experiments. When the wheel at the left was turned sufficient electricity was generated to cause a spark to jump between the two hands at the right. This machine paved the way for the invention of the dynamo electric machines for which Schenectady is world famous.

In the years before 1886 Schenectady had been suffering from a long period of stagnation. In that year an official of the Edison Machine Works of N.Y.C. happened to pass through Schenectady and noticed two empty factories, the former Jones Car Works. The Edison Company had been established in N.Y.C. about 1882 by Thomas A. Edison, and it was now looking for an opportunity to remove elsewhere. Accordingly Schenectady was chosen, and in 1892 the Edison Co.—which had been renamed the Edison General Electric Co.—and the Thompson Houston Electric Co. of Lynn, Mass., were consolidated and formed the General Electric Co. The main plant was at Schenectady, but other plants were retained at Lynn, Mass., and Harrison, N.J. The early electrical apparatus was crude and the output of the factory was small, but this consolidation marked the beginning of a world-wide business. In 1893, the book value of the General Electric Co. factory was less than $4,000,000. Since then the company has spent more than $150,000,000 improving and enlarging its plant. Branch factories are now maintained at Lynn, Pittsville, and East Boston, Mass.; Harrison and Newark, N.J.; Erie, Pa.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. At Schenectady one may see the latest development in practically every variety of electrical apparatus. There are in the General Electric plant individual factories devoted to generators, motors, turbines, transformers, switchboards, rheostats, wire and cable, and searchlights, as well as pattern shops, machine shops, brass and iron foundries, and testing, shipping and power stations. The company pays considerable attention to welfare work among its employees and free instruction in electrical engineering is given on a large scale.

The American Locomotive Co., which likewise has a factory here, with 5,000 employees, turns out some of the largest and fastest locomotives produced in America or abroad. During the last 35 years Schenectady has become one of the greatest industrial centers in the United States; its total annual output has a value of nearly $100,000,000, the output of the General Electric Co, alone being about $75,000,000.

We now cross the Mohawk River, and Erie Canal, and our route ascends the valley of the Mohawk as far as Rome. To the south the Catskill Mts. are visible in the distance, and the outline of the Adirondack Mts. can be faintly seen to the north.

This beautiful group of mountains was once covered, all but the highest peaks, by the Laurentian glacier, whose erosion, while perhaps having little effect on the large features of the region, has greatly modified it in detail, producing lakes and ponds to the number of more than 1,300 and causing many falls and rapids in the streams. In the Adirondacks are some of the best hunting and fishing grounds in the United States, which are so carefully preserved that there are quantities of deer and small game in the woods, and black bass and trout in the lakes. Some 3,000,000 acres are preserved. The scenery is wonderfully fine and the air so clear that many sanatoriums have been established for tuberculosis patients.