The Amsterdam Free Library is encouraging area residents to read the classic time travel novel “Time and Again” by Jack Finney as part of a program called Amsterdam Reads 2007.  The time traveler in that book goes back to New York City in 1882 and much of the book’s appeal comes from learning how people lived then as New York City began to evolve into a metropolis.

            The late nineteenth century was also a period of growth in the Mohawk Valley.  The Amsterdam carpet mills headed by Stephen Sanford were almost 40 years when the decade of the 1880s dawned.  Former Sanford employees William McCleary, Samuel Wallin and David Crouse founded the so-called Upper Mill during the decade.  The Shuttleworth brothers had come to Amsterdam from England two years before the decade began to weave carpets at a mill in the East End near the Mohawk River.  Years later, the Shuttleworths merged with the owners of the Upper Mill to form Mohawk Carpets.

            Amsterdam had many knitting mills during the 1880s, despite ongoing labor problems including what the Morning Sentinel newspaper called “the big lockout of 1886” that put thousands out of work.  The progressive Sentinel competed with the Recorder and Daily Democrat, which were allied with Republican causes.  George H. Loadwick, described as a keen wit, had edited the Recorder for four years when he bought the Sentinel in 1882 and set out on his own.

In August of 1886, Reverend John McIncrow of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church chided his parishioners for attending a riotous picnic for knitting mill workers, committing what McIncrow called a great number of sins.  Earlier that decade, McIncrow founded St. Mary’s Institute.

Leonora Barry joined the Knights of Labor in Amsterdam in the 1880s. She worked in a mill sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen. Barry went on to head the “women’s department” in the national union, resigning in 1889 amid criticism of her “high moral tone.”  Barry lived until 1930 and was popular on the lecture circuit as an advocate for temperance, suffrage and the rights of women. 

Kelloggs & Miller’s linseed oil plant on Church Street employed 500 people in the 1880s.  Fitzgerald’s Bottling Works was founded at 465 East Main Street Extension in the town of Amsterdam. 

An 1882 fire at the former World Newspaper building in New York City figures prominently in the novel “Time and Again.”  The Mohawk Valley had its share of fires, too, such as the 1881 blaze that destroyed the county jail in Fonda. 

The fire was started at 3 a.m. by inmate Patrick Claffey, described in a newspaper account as a “desperate character,” jailed for breaking into a store in St. Johnsville.  Sheriff William Scharff was awakened and found it impossible to put out the blaze. The 22 prisoners were removed to the courthouse where they were “strongly guarded” until they could be taken to the jail in Johnstown.

Later in the decade, the rotund and powerful Jacob “Boss” Snell of Fonda was elected Sheriff.  John Sanford of the Amsterdam carpet mill family was elected to Congress.  Both were Republicans and Snell was one of the best-known politicians in the state.

Amsterdam’s Opera House opened on East Main Street in 1882.  “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was seen there, featuring a street parade with real bloodhounds. John Philip Sousa’s band played the house, as did presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and boxer John L. Sullivan.

In 1885, the business-boosting Board of Trade convinced state officials to grant the village of Amsterdam a city charter.  In 1888, Amsterdam annexed the Erie Canal settlement of Port Jackson south of the Mohawk River. 

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