FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 269 



did not need to run their mills by steam. Water power was cheaper ; and many 

 of the largest gang mills in New York use it to-day. 



The large mills have not changed materially in the last forty years. In i860 

 there were several in this State that ran five or six gates; say, three gangs, a 

 slabbing gang, and two English mills.* Some used a Yankee gang instead of a 

 slabber; and in the large mills, where two or more stock gangs were in use, one of 

 them would contain about thirty-six saws, set for inch boards, while another would 

 be hung with a smaller number, set for plank. Such a mill — six gates — would cut 

 about fifteen million feet per year, running night and day, with an occasional shut 

 down for low water. 



Steam mills as a class used a large circular saw, although there are now mills 

 in New York, as elsewhere, which run both circulars and gangs, and of late years 

 band saws, also. It is difificult to find any records showing when the first steam 

 sawmill was built in this State. A sawmill driven by steam power was built in 

 1830, in the town of Newark Valley, Tioga County, by Chester Patterson and 

 Jonathan Day, which employed about thirty men. The engine had a walking 

 beam, such as is used on steamboats. 



In 1833 George Kirby erected a steam sawmill in the town of Nichols, Tioga 

 County. In 1842 Dexter and Daniel Davis built one in the town of Caton, Steuben 

 County; in 1844 a steam sawmill was erected in the town of Hammond, St. Law- 

 rence County, by James E. Lyon ; the first steam mill in Erie County was built 

 at Tonawanda, in 1847, by Col. L. S. Payne ; and in 1849 '^^^ '^^^ started by Kitts & 

 Broadway in the town of Denmark, Lewis County. 



Tanneries. 



Although the lumberman has little in common with the tanner, yet the demands 

 of the latter had a material r'nfluence on that part of the lumber industry which 

 included the hemlock trade. To-day hemlock lumber finds a ready market, and 

 at a price equal to that paid for spruce not many years ago. But a large portion of 

 the hemlock in this State was cut by lumbermen to supply the demand for bark 

 only, the logs being left in the woods to decay and waste. This was particularly 

 the case in the Catskill counties, where this species was more abundant than else- 

 where in the State ; only the most accessible of the timber was hauled to the mills. 



Bark peeling in the Catskills ceased prior to 1870, and the great tanneries at 

 Phoenicia, Woodland, Shandaken, Big Indian, and Prattsville had to abandon their 



* The English mill is an ordinary square gate or frame containing one or two upright saws, with a 

 sixteen-foot carriage that gigs back. 



