File:Annual report of the Forest, Fish and Game Commission of the State of New York (1899) (14568976937).jpg

Identifier: annualreportof6189919newy (find matches)
Title: Annual report of the Forest, Fish and Game Commission of the State of New York
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: New York (State). Forest, Fish and Game Commission
Subjects: Forests and forestry Fisheries Game and game-birds
Publisher: (Albany, N.Y. : The Commission)
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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short, was the generalcharacter of the forest which covered the territory of New Amsterdam when Hen-drick Hudson cast anchor off the island of the Manhattoes. Until recent years lumbermen paid no attention to the hardwoods, and butlittle of this kind of timber was cut, beyond what was needed for cooperage,furniture or pyroligneous acid, industries which until the present time were neverprominent in this State. As fast as the lumbermen took out the pine and hemlockthe great hardwood forests that remained soon fell beneath the axes of the advanc-ing farmers and disappeared in fire and smoke. Tl)e First Sawmills. John Verrazzano and Hendrick Hudson made their famous discoveries andsailed away without leaving a man behind to occupy the newly found territory.No settlement was made by white men, no house erected until 1614. Just whenthe industrious labor of the first settlers took the form which we now call lum-bering it is impossible to say. But in 1623. nine years after the first colonist
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J. Y. MC CLINTOCK, PHOTO. OLDEST SAWMILL IN NEW YORK. BUILT IN 1805, IN ULSTER COUNTY. FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 243 built his home at New Amsterdam, three sawmills were erected there by the DutchWest India Company, and with their erection begins the history of lumberingoperations in the State of New York. The machinery of these mills, which were shipped from Holland, was constructedso that the saws could be run either by windmill or water power. One of them wasbuilt on what is now known as Governors Island, and was probably operated bywind power; another one, which stood on Sawmill Creek, a tributary of the EastRiver, may have used a water wheel. In 1639 the mill on Governors Island wasleased at an annual rental of 500 merchantable boards, half oak and half pine. About this same time, perhaps a little earlier, some sawmills were built at FortOrange (Albany) or its immediate vicinity. Andries Corstiaensen, a master mill-wright, with two sawyers, were sent there from Holland in

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