METAMORPHIC ROCKS. 
445 
The only marble quarries which are extensively wrought in this range of limestone in 
Dutchess county, are in Dover. The principal quarries are those of Ebenezer Stevens, Elder 
Foss, John Ketehum, and Nailor Wing. These quarries average about eight thousand feet 
of white marble slabs per annum. Hess’s quarry is three-quarters of a mile north of Stephens’s ; 
Ketehum and Wing’s one mile east of Stephens’s. It is estimated that from twenty thousand 
to forty thousand feet of marble slabs are sent from the town of Dover in a year, and yield an 
income of from fifteen thousand to thirty thousand dollars per annum. In the marble mills, 
a frame of sixteen saws will saw out about two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet per 
week. The Dover marble is almost a pure white, fine-grained, dolomitic limestone. It works 
easily, and takes a medium polish. It is nearly all used for grave-stones, and sent to most 
parts of the United States. Quarries might undoubtedly be opened on the west side of the Dover 
valley, of as good marble as those on the east. Near Kline corners and Hitchcock’s corners 
are extensive beds of limestone which do not crumble by the action of the weather, and which 
would make a good marble. In Hillsdale, on Mr. Palmer’s land, is a white and clouded 
marble. It exists abundantly along the base of the mountain. 
In Beekman, near Doughty’s mills, fine marble, in beds of a few feet in thickness, were 
observed; as also in several places in Fishkill, near Stormville and Hopewell. 
Clouded marbles were observed by Mr. Merrick, on the lands of Mr. Worster Wheeler and 
E. Merritt in Northeast. The locality on the land of Mr. M. was worked as a marble quarry 
twenty or thirty years ago, but has been abandoned. It is a beautiful clouded grey marble. 
Other quarries have been worked in several places to a small extent, but the demand for 
the particular kinds was not sufficient to make them profitable. 
Marble was sent to the New-York market some years ago from New-Lebanon, which sold 
for one dollar per square foot. Six quarries were opened in that township, and from one of 
them slabs fourteen feet in length were obtained.* The limestone beds of New-Lebanon and 
Hillsdale are interstratified with talcose and talco-argillaceous slates, and seem to pitch under 
the mountains on the east, which are talcose, mica and chloritic slates. The Stockbridge 
and Egremont beds, which have many points of resemblance, seem to overlay these same 
rocks. 
The value of the marble quarries in Egremont, Stockbridge, &c. is well known. They 
are almost as important to our citizens as if they were located within our own boundaries. 
Their products are entirely sent into our territory and shipped from our ports; and these, 
together with those of Dutchess county, are supposed to yield about one hundred thousand 
dollars per annum. 
Beds of marble, as good as those of Stockbridge and Egremont, undoubtedly exist in Hills¬ 
dale and Copake in Columbia county, west of the mountains ; and in Northeast, Amenia, 
Dover, Pawlings, Beekman and Fishkill, in Dutchess county. The occurrence of beds suita¬ 
ble for marble west of the mountains, is important, in consequence of the diminished expense 
Silliman’s Juomal, Vol. 5, p. 10. 
