Author: Wlanglois

  • Social Life

    Social Life   As with religious life, social life occurred largely within the family. Unrelated people who lived next door to each other  for years, and who even knew some of the details of each others lives, might never enter each others houses.  Class barriers were not prevalent as such, but the extremes of wealth and…

  • Conservation/Reforestation

    Denuding the Forests:                When the Orville Reynolds and subsequently his four sons built their mill and logging  business in the latter half of the 19th Century, the concept of forest preservation and reforestation had not taken hold and it was only after so much of the forest canopy of the Adirondack and…

  • Brooklyn Cooperage Contract – 1908-18

    BROOKLYN COOPERAGE COMPANY   Reynolds Bros. Contract 1908-1918                  In 1900 the Brooklyn Cooperage Company made its first foray into Franklin County by building a stave mill in Tupper Lake and constructing a logging railroad to supply the mill   The company then gradually expanded operations northward, first to Santa Clara, where it took over the Hurd…

  • Life in Logging Camps

    Life in Logging Camps            The early Reynold’s logging camps were small, housing perhaps eight to ten men each.  Some of the loggers boarded with the Reynoldses, and not in the camps.  This changed after the Reynolds Bros. took over the mill operations after Orson Reynolds died in 1887.          The peak years for the camps…

  • Reynolds Bros. Logging & Camps

    Logging In Reynoldston   Early Settlers  Trees were the most abundant resource in the area and the community’s economy depended on the exploitation of this resource.  The first settlers to Reynoldston moved there to establish farms and as they cleared their lands, they used the forest wealth as a good source of cash income –…

  • Reynolds Land Holdings and Disposition

          Reynolds Land Holdings and Disposition    By 1920 the Reynolds family had been logging for about 50 years.  Its members found themselves with large tracts of land that had been timbered over, no Brooklyn Cooperage contract, and a declining business.  In the 1920s the family slowly began to divest itself of property. The…

  • Shinplaster and Reynoldston Song

                Scrip Money or Shinplasters               Shinplasters that the Reynolds Bros. used shortly  after 1887  to pay mill workers and loggers – instead of US currency in Reynoldston, N. Y.       During the late 1870’s and early 1880’s the Reynolds issued their own currency to pay workers called…

  • A Brief History of Malone, NY

    Main Street, Malone, Ny 1907 from postcard  A Brief History:  In 1807, New England settlers founded the First Congregational Church in what was to become the Village of Malone; this congregation was the first organized religious body in Franklin County.  The area around Malone had actually been first surveyed several years earlier, in 1801, by…

  • The Reynolds Telegraph and Telephone Company

    The Reynolds Telegraph and Telephone Company   Frank Reynolds was the oldest of the four Reynolds Bros.  demonstrated acute business acumen first with the creation of the Telegraph line that linked not only Reynoldston but many other communities in both Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties.   Similarly with the creation of the Telephone Line Reynoldston became…

  • The Blacksmith Shop

    The Blacksmith Shop * * For more details on being a blacksmith go to W. Orville Langlois who described being a blacksmith in detail:  Click Here   The Mill Blacksmith Shop A necessity for the mill and logging operations was the blacksmith’s shop, located at the corner of the mill road just before it turned to…