Volume 6 • Number 2

FALL 2006

Making Better

West Point Cadets Trounced by Unknown “Westerners”

Scandal Topples First Woman To Hold Statewide Office

The Yiddish Press in America

Teacher’s Diary Details Life in Rural $4.95 16

when Preserving central New York’s few remaining hop houses, architectural relics of the nineteenth- century “golden age” of were hop-growing, does more than generate nostalgia: it maintains a historical link to the region’s rich agricultural history. KingBY G. WILLIAM BEARDSLEE

The distinctive pyramidal design of these hop houses in Middleburgh, New York (ca. 1911) had a purpose: rising hot air could move rapidly through the hops to dry them to a straw-like texture.

NEW YORK archives • FALL 2006 17

n the nineteenth century, hop houses were so common it was said that “every other farm and farmer had one.” So there is no small irony in the Picking hops was urgency to preserve central hard work, but New York’s surviving hop also a “good time” I for young people houses. Alternately called hop kilns or hop barns, they to get together. were the specialized structures One man’s light- used to dry, bleach, cure, heartedness is package, and store the hop reflected in the hops decorating flower, or cone, used in the

NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES NEW YORK STATE his hat. of beer. Hops add stabilizing and preservative vation and drying of hops, brewers (mostly monks) added qualities to beer: not only is distinctive pyramid-shaped hops to the beer-making beer improved by the hops’ kilns were constructed. In time, formula. Hopped beer slowly distinctive aroma and bitter- multiple-pyramid hop house gained popularity for its aroma ness, but hops allow beer to complexes were common. and bitter taste––and for its be stored and preserved for ability to stabilize and preserve longer periods. Fruit of the Vine the wort/mash. Hops helped A further irony is that The hop (Humulus lupulus), clarify the beer, provided a today it is the hop houses first grown by the Greeks and good head, and dramatically themselves that need preser- Romans, is a twining, climbing improved its keeping power. vation. Once numbering in vine, closely related to hemp Thus beer no longer required the hundreds, only a few and marijuana, that grows a high alcohol content to score remain today as relics of prodigiously during the summer a once-dominant agricultural months. But hops have not activity in central New York. always been part of the beer- On the eve of the Civil War, most of Constructed between the making recipe. Historically, early 1800s and 1900 in New beer was made from barley, the hop crop in the York’s “hop belt” (Otsego, water, and yeast, and Chenango, Madison, Oneida, flavored—perhaps to disguise was raised in New York; over Montgomery, and Schoharie its taste—with a variety of one-third of New York’s production Counties), the hop houses’ spices and , including unique architectural styles , thyme, spruce bark, came from Otsego County. remain distinctive despite the sassafras, honey, bog myrtle, passage of time. During yarrow, alecost, and many these decades, the traditional others. Herbs were chosen not appearance of central New only for their flavor, but also prevent spoilage, which meant York’s family farms changed for their reputed medicinal that the brewers needed as hundreds of hop houses properties. In this early form, less grain, which translated were built. The earliest designs beer was called “gruit.” Unless to higher profits. were usually low barns with greater quantities of grain Beer and hops were among

NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES some ventilation. Later they were used to increase the the first products of New evolved into narrower and alcohol content and thereby . A journal kept by taller structures, topped with reduce spoilage, however, one of the Mayflower Pilgrims a cupola directly above the gruit had a relatively short indicated that one of the rea- drying kiln area. As farmers shelf life. sons their voyage terminated focused on the efficient culti- In the later Middle Ages, in Massachusetts instead

www.nysarchives.org 18 NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES NEW YORK STATE

two tons of hops for $1,000 most of the hop crop in the in 1815. Within a decade, a United States was raised in hops industry developed. At New York; over one-third of first the harvests were modest, New York’s production came but after a series of English from Otsego County. By 1879, crop failures in the early 1820s central New York’s hop fields the increased demand for covered over forty thousand

AL AND SANDY BULLARD HOP HOUSE DOCUMENT COLLECTION hops, combined with the acres and produced over construction of the Great twenty million pounds of hops. Western Turnpikes and the new At its peak in the last quarter The owners of the Ommegang of Virginia was a shortage of Erie Canal (which allowed for of the nineteenth century, the Brewery in Cooperstown, New York beer. At that time, most hops cheaper east–west transporta- American brewing industry bought this hop house and disman- tled it. They plan to restore the were imported from England, tion), made hop cultivation consumed more than thirty building and use it as an entrance where a significant hops explode. By 1840, forty-three million pounds of dried hops to their newly expanded brewery industry had developed as early New York State counties each year––the majority and visitors center. as the fourteenth century. reported having at least one grown domestically, and most The English conical-pyramidal hop yard. of it in central New York. hop-drying houses, made of By mid-century, due to stone and called “oasts,” are excellent yields and good Summer’s Work and Play still commonly seen in south- market prices, central New In late summer, the hop-picking ern England, particularly in York hop production assumed season began. In an era in the traditional hop-growing major proportions. By 1849, which women and children region of Sussex–Kent. New York had attained were traditionally protected, national leadership in the it was considered appropriate production of hops, and by for young women and men In an era in which women and 1855 the region was raising to go hop-picking together. million of pounds annually. In the region’s hop yards, children were traditionally On the eve of the Civil War, thousands of men, women, protected, it was considered appropriate for young women and men to go hop-picking together.

Cash Crop In New England, the commer- cial growing of hops began in Massachusetts in the late 1700s. Until 1850, cultivated significant quantities, but it was the transplanted Yankees of central New York who perfected large-scale hop Right: The area near Cooperstown cultivation. In 1808, Madison was dubbed “Hop City.” Many County’s John Cooledge young men and women looked established a “hop yard,” forward to meeting someone special but most farmers ignored the at a “hop.” crop until Solomon Root sold

NEW YORK archives • FALL 2006 Hop pickers pile into a wagon to go 19 to dinner, which was provided by the hop yard owner and prepared by his wife. Pickers were typically given room and board during the season––and a dance was held for them almost every night.

the twentieth century, but a combination of events caused the industry’s demise: compe- tition from more efficient hop producers in , , and Washington; the appearance of crop-specific insects and a “blue mold” and children were hired for oily resin whose complicated that attacked and destroyed the the various field jobs: pickers, chemistry is found in no other hop flower; the emergence of box tenders, kiln workers. plant. Its volatile oils flavor the the more reliable dairy industry; Although many pickers were beer, and its resins contain alpha and the growing intolerance local residents, many others acids that confer bitterness of many Americans toward were transported in from and natural preservatives. alcohol. Prohibition in the nearby urban centers, and as After picking, the hops 1920s and 30s resulted in the part of their wages they were were packed, taken to the final collapse of what had provided room and board for hop house, and placed on a been central New York’s most the season. Women and young cloth-covered, slatted drying successful crop.

adults were assigned the floor directly above the kiln BEARDSLEE DOCUMENT ARCHIVES, TOWN OF PITTSFIELD, NEW YORK “particular work” of picking room’s large furnace. Over a the hop flowers/cones from the period of about eighteen vines, while men performed hours, the kiln master—usually the heavier tasks of pole lift- the owner of the hop yard–– ing, box tending, and carting. circulated a steady current of Hop-picking was considered hot air (160 F) through the pleasant work and was often hops; this lowered their mois- described as a “good time.” ture content to a straw-like For a few weeks each summer, twelve percent. At a critical mostly young men and women moment in the process, sulfur NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES worked closely together in was ignited, which bleached the fresh air, ate good country the hops to the desired color. food, and attended nightly Once dried and bleached, dinners and “hops”––informal the hops were moved to the social occasions where partici- adjacent cooling room where, pants would dance to music. after a few hours of “sweat- Correspondence from the time ing,” they were dropped indicates that many hop pickers down a chute into the pressing thought an important part room’s hopsacking-lined of their experience was the press, compacted into bales, chance of meeting “someone and stored. Like many agricul- special” at a “hop.” tural commodities, hops were Equally as important as the bought and sold by middlemen cultivation and picking of hops and brokers as futures or as was their drying and storage. a spot commodity. The best Preserving History An 1860 hop house in the Town of When picked from the vine prices usually occurred around Today, aside from a few Pittsfield, Otsego County undergoes in late summer, the hop’s Christmas. stalwart farmers trying to restoration. Today’s builders repro- flower-like petals contain But by 1900, central New reintroduce the crop and a duced the original beam structure lupulin, which resembles large York’s golden age of hops was demonstration plot at the that is a testament to the high-quality yellow pollen grains. Sticky over. A few hardy growers Farmer’s Museum in construction and craftsmanship of to the touch, lupulin is a stiff, survived into the middle of Cooperstown, hop growing is the nineteenth-century hop house.

www.nysarchives.org 20 BEARDSLEE DOCUMENT ARCHIVES, TOWN OF PITTSFIELD, NEW YORK

THE ARCHIVES CONNECTION

he records of New York’s The New York State Tfarming history can Archives has records of the be found on local tax rolls, Department of Agriculture county atlases and maps, and Markets and other state and Grange membership agencies related to farming. lists, as well as in soil and Historical societies, libraries, water conservation districts, museums, and other organi- county Cooperative Extension zations document New York’s agencies, and the unique agricultural past via oral “cattle earmark” books that histories, business records, registered the local brand- private papers, scrapbooks, Master carpenters Bill Turnbull like marks farmers cut in and local history collections. nearly non-existent in central and Tom Van Brink of Edmeston the ears of their livestock to For example, the Colgate New York. What remain are and West Edmeston, New York, prove ownership. Federal University Library has financial the few extant hop houses, respectively, restored this hop house and state censuses also offer records, circulars, sales records, although each year a few in the Town of Pittsfield and received a tremendous amount of and ephemera of William P. more disappear. Many are in an award from the Preservation information. Federal agricul- Locke and Co., hop growers in a state of serious neglect League of New York State. tural schedules appended Oneida County ca. 1875–1900. and in danger of imminent to the censuses detail the The Waterville (Oneida County) collapse. The need to preserve size and value of property, Historical Society has photo- these remnants of the area’s number of people employed, graph albums that include agricultural history is obvious, the crops grown, and the hop harvest scenes. The New and some individuals, groups, livestock raised; the 1880 York State Library holds and institutions have risen to Hop growing census is especially rich in letters written from 1876 to the challenge. detail. New York State 1883 to Nettie and Sarah For example, in Otsego is nearly conducted its own census Hammond of Scriba, Oswego County, the Farmer’s Museum every ten years from 1825 County; some were written non-existent in Cooperstown has restored to 1925; the 1855–75 state to one of the girls who was an 1840 hop barn once owned in central censuses include special away picking hops. by Samuel Pierce Pope. In the agricultural schedules similar Town of Pittsfield, not far New York. to those of the federal –– Robert W. Arnold III, from New Berlin, a classic census. New York State Archives What remain pyramid-shaped hop barn has are the few been privately restored to its 1860 appearance. Madison extant hop County’s local historians, agencies to work together… with the assistance of the to identify, document, stabilize houses. Preservation League of New and preserve our remaining York State, have succeeded in hop kilns…The work of the adding seven local hop houses Madison County Historical to the league’s yearly list of Society and the New York State threatened historic resources Legislature provides important as “Seven To Save in 2006.” resources for encouraging an But the league’s president, Jay appreciation of hop resources. DiLorenzo, summarized the But more must be done to need for immediate action: ensure that the tangible legacy “The…League calls on local of New York’s proud agricul- and state organizations and tural history can endure.” 

NEW YORK archives • FALL 2006