With the introduction of the mountain water into the village, it was hoped that with the fine freighting facilities, manufacturers might be induced to settle here, but such has not been the case. Several applications have been received from outsiders, but when negotiations reached a certain point, they have been quietly withdrawn, and it has been surmised that some of the wealthier neighbors object to the class such work would bring among them. The stream known as Murderer's Creek, and later on as the Moodna, at one time had several factories along its banks. The late John Orr's flour mill is still in business, and abogh"> mile from Canterbury is a settlement known as Firthcliff. In 1869 Mr. Broadhead had a large woolen mill there which after a few years, passed into the hands of an English carpet company. These brought many of their skilled employees with them, and they in turn induced friends and neighbors to come out, so that one corner of the town is an English village. The home works are in England, but the proprietors frequently cross the Atlantic to visit their factory here. Still farther down the stream are the mills of John Orr, at a railroad station that bears his name. A piano factory, owned by John E. Ryder has disappeared, and as the brook nears the Hudson, it passes through a valley which was once filled with homes of the work people employed in the Valley Forge paper mill, owned by Carson & Ide, and the Leonard linen mill. The latter stopped during the war, but the former under different owners produced some material, until a freshet tore away bridge, dam and race and forced the stream into another channel that left the building practically without water.
VOLUNTEERS.
Mr. Ruttenber gives a list of 172 volunteers who went from here during the Civil War, but he has omitted three names, Frederick Lamb, Wm. Couser and George Chatfield. Emslie Post contains the names of some of the surviving on its roster, and on Memorial Day they decorate eighty graves of comrades who have passed over to the great majority. But there are others who sleep on Southern battlefields, and still others who passed from the weary anguish of the hospitals to the "low green tent, whose curtain never outward swings." Captain Thomas Taft is probably the youngest surviving veteran; and among the revered names of those "who came not back" stand Captain Silliman, Major Cromwell and William Emslie, who died in Andersonville. Through the efforts of Mr. Charles Curie, of Idlewild, a soldiers' monument has been erected in the village.
NEW YORK MILITARY ACADEMY.
One of the institutions of Cornwall is the New York Military Academy. In the '70s it was a large boarding house, capable of accommodating two hundred guests. The grounds cover a large plateau, skirting a ravine, and was called Glen Ridge. It was owned by Mr. James G. Roe, brother of the novelist, who when the boarding business failed in Cornwall, sold to Colonel Wright, who opened a boys' school. He was succeeded by Mr. Jones, who has enlarged the already capacious buildings. There are always over 100 young men and boys in the institution, and a large corps of capable teachers. The discipline is secured more by rewards than punishments. The pupils, when visiting the village, are always quiet and gentlemanly. Officers from West Point train them in military tactics, and it is marvelous what a proficiency they attain in a few months.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
TOWN OF CRAWFORD.
By J. Erskine Ward.
This triangular township, some eighteen or twenty miles west of the Hudson River, is in the northwest corner of Orange County, bordering upon the counties of Sullivan and Ulster. It carries a point of Orange County land well up into old Ulster County and contains the northernmost soil of the county.
It is bounded on the north by Sullivan and Ulster, on the east by Ulster and the town of Montgomery, south by Montgomery and Wallkill, and on the west by the town of Wallkill and Sullivan County.