[Correspondence of the Lockport Journal.]
LANSINGBURGH, March 25, 1869.
Adjoining the city of Troy on the north is the village of Lansingburgh, containing some seven thousand inhabitants. The people are largely engaged in brush and oil cloth manufacture. Enter almost any house and you will find the women and children engaged in “drawing” brushes. More than one-half of all the people who labor work upon brushes, and the factories, both large and small, are numerous. The place contains eight churches, two banks, two printing offices, a female seminary and academy. The village was founded by Abraham Jacob Lansing about 1770. The brush factory of “John Ames & Co.” is probably the largest in our country. All kind of brushes are manufactured, except tooth (none being made in the United States.) About 150 men find steady employment, besides a great number of persons who have work by the piece at their homes. Some perfected machinery of their own manufacture is worthy of notice. One bores at one time sixteen brushes, and by a small indicata gauges the distance, continuing boring until all the required holes are made in each brush, completing the sixteen as soon as ordinary machines do one. A buzz shaping machine cuts the curves in the brushes with great rapidity. Another turns and evens the bristle with one movement. George Scott at his shop gets up some fine work in “hair brushes,” using bristles from Russia and Germany as well as from our Western States.
Cracker making is quite a business Joseph Fox has a large establishment turning out all kinds of crackers by the quantity. He has one machine of his own invention, of running fifty barrels oyster crackers per day. The baking is done on revolving sheet iron shelves, within a brick oven, over a hot coal fire. His crackers and biscuits are noted, the “Excelsiors,” being “first proof.” Samples can be found in many of the Lockport groceries.
The “Powers Floor Cloth Factory” is the most extensive of the two in the village, and makes only wide heavy cloths; they employ many men in their large work shops summer and winter. The “Lansingburgh Gazette,” under the management of S. B. Kirkpatrick [d. 1905], son of the proprietor [Alexander Kirkpatrick], is a live weekly paper, enjoying a large circulation. The Job Office connected is one of the neatest and most convenient we have ever seen. Mr. K., having purchased the “Troy Whig,” offers this weekly paper and office for sale at a bargain.
The exterior of the village is very attractive, the streets being lean, the houses tasty—some elegant. It seems to contain very few poor people, none needy, by reason, probably, of a plentitude of easy work. Besides the foregoing, Edward Tracy has a large malting establishment in the village, using about 300,000 bushels of grain yearly. A bill for the annexation of this stirring village to the city of Troy is now before the Legislature. The “burghers” generally do not favor the bill. OCCASIONAL.
Lansingburgh Gazette. April 1, 1869