94 



Industrial and Material Progress 



valence reaching to the floor. It was so high that steps were necessary 

 to mount up to it. The bed was of live geese feathers, and had great 

 feather pillows, kept well aired and sunned. For covering she had her 

 beautiful fragrant linen sheets, spun and woven in her own house, and 

 quilts wondrously patched from her old silk gowns and remnants of 

 ribbon. Blankets also she had, home-spun and home-woven. Over 

 all she had, for cold weather, a down quilt, such as you still see in the 

 houses in Germany and Holland. 



The dinmg-room of the house we will suppose was in the rear exten- 

 sion, behind which were the kitchen, wood-sheds, etc. For winter the 

 dining-room was the principal living room of the family, where a great 

 wood fire was always kept blazing. 



At the time of which I write the fire-place, burning wood, was almost 

 the only mode of heating. Dr. Franklin had invented, in 1740, his 

 stove, which he called the Pennsylvania fire-place, but the difficulties of 

 manufacturing them at this time in America prevented their becoming 

 common. 



The first stove of which we hear in Albany, although it probably 

 was not the first, was one introduced into St. Peter's Church in 1796, 

 which was cast at Ancram, at the iron foundry on the Livingston 

 manor. The first stoves would only burn wood or bituminous coal. 

 Anthracite coal came into use about 1820, when 365 tons (!) were sent 

 to market. 



A new kind of stove was required for anthracite, in which the draft 

 of air should be much smaller. One of the earliest in this field of in- 

 vention was Dr. Eliphalet ISTott, who spent years in perfecting his 

 inventions for heating. In my day the chapel of Union College was 

 heated by one of Dr. Xott's stoves, in which the base-burning principle 

 was used. We had in our rooms, also, a marvelous kind of box stove, 

 which we attributed to the genius of Dr. Kott. The iron was about 

 an inch thick and could be neither broken nor bent. It served as 

 an anvil for all sorts of mechanical experiments, from the ci acking 

 of hickory nuts to the splitting of kindling wood. And even if in a 

 playful mood, as occasionally happened, one of them took a flying leap 

 from a fourth story window upon the pavement below, the only injury 

 was to the person who might be standing under it. As for the stove 

 itself it only needed to be carried back and put in its place again. 



I need not tell you that in stove manufacturing Albany, for almost 

 fifty years, has maintained a leading position, and to-day sends its 

 stoves to all j^arts of the world. The familiar name of Albany on my 

 stove in Japan contributed not a little to the comfort and home feeling 

 of our long residence there. 



