FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 243 



built his home at New Amsterdam, three sawmills were erected there by the Dutch 

 West India Company, and with their erection begins the history of lumbering 

 operations in the State of New York. 



The machinery of these mills, which were shipped from Holland, was constructed 

 so that the saws could be run either by windmill or water power. One of them was 

 built on Avhat is now known as Governor's Island, and was probably operated by 

 wind power; another one, which stood on Sawmill Creek, a tributary of the East 

 River, may have used a water wheel. In 1639 the mill on Governor's Island was 

 leased at an annual rental of 500 merchantable boards, half oak and half pine. 



About this same time, perhaps a little earlier, some saw^mills were built at Fort 

 Orange (Albany) or its immediate vicinity. Andries Corstiaensen, a master mill- 

 wright, with two sawyers, were sent there from Holland in 1630. Among the 

 settlers at Rensselaerwyck (Troy) in 1630 were Lawrens Lawrenssen and Barent 

 Tomassen, sawyers.* In 1636, Barent Pieterse Koeymans joined the colony, and 

 in the fall of 1645 took charge of the Patroon's sawmills, being allowed 150 guilders 

 a year for board, and three " stuyvers " for every plank he sawed. In two years this 

 mill cut over 4,000 boards. In 1673 Koeymans bought a large tract of land on the 

 Hudson River, twelve miles south of Albany — the location of the present town 

 of Coeymans — on which there were some desirable mill sites, and where Cruyn 

 Cornelissen and Hans Jansen had erected sawmills as early as 165 1. 



The colonists soon made other settlements in the Hudson Valley, and in 1661 

 Frans Pieters Clavers built a sawmill on the little stream which runs into the river 

 two miles north of Stuyvesant Landing, in what is now the town of Kinderhook, 

 Columbia County. This stream has been known as the SaAV Kill ever since Clavers 

 built his little mill there. 



In 1663 a sawmill was built by Jan Barentson Wemp on the Poesten Kill, a 

 stream which empties into the Hudson at Troy. As the falls of the Poesten Kill 

 [puffing or foaming creek) furnished a strong water power it may be assumed that 

 this mill was driven by a water wheel. 



In a letter dated January 2, 1701, Avritten by the Earl of Bellomont to the 

 Lords of Trade, England, he says :t " They have got about 40 sawmills up in this 

 province (the Province of New York), which I hear rids more woods or destroys 

 more timber than all the sawmills in New Hampshire. Four saws are the most in 

 New Hampshire that work in one mill, and here is a Dutchman lately come over 

 who is an extraordinary artist at those mills. Mr. Livingston told me this last 



* History of Albany County, by George R. Howell. New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., 1886. 

 ■f Colonial Documents. Vol. Ill, p. 825. 



