Oriskany, New York

Oriskany is my Mother’s hometown, and it’s where she and her siblings graduated from high school. My younger brother and I also graduated from the high school as we moved back to New York when my Dad retired from the military.

The National Parks Service has a lesson plan for the Oriskany Battlefield, because it was an important battle during the Revolution, and members from different branches of my family participated.

The aircraft carrier, USS Oriskany was named for the battle, and the village houses the museum and hosts the crew reunions for the ship, which is now under the Gulf becoming a reef in my “backyard”.

Those are some of my connections to Oriskany, but most Americans have a connection to the village that they aren’t aware of – you have a piece of Oriskany in your wallet.

Among the many things that started in Oriskany was that great tradition of retired military officers working in the military-industrial complex.

The village was founded by Colonel Gerrit Lansing, who served with Washington during the Revolution. He had conducted the official survey the area of the Mohawk Valley that he returned to after the war.

In 1811 Colonel Lansing and a group of investors formed the Oriskany Manufacturing Company and built what is believed to be the first woolen mill in the United States to produce finished cloth from raw wool. If you note the date you will see that this was just in time for them to provide woolen cloth for the uniforms worn in the War of 1812.

It was, of course, sheer luck that the initial section of the Erie Canal ran between Rome and Utica, New York via Oriskany.

The next piece in the village’s history was indeed true luck.

Henry Waterbury, who owned several woolen mills, became interested in manufacturing paper felts, which in the mid-19th century were all imported from Europe. In the paper making process you make a slurry of fibers and then pour them over a felt to dry. The exact process is dependent on the type of paper you are making, i.e. some papers are pressed between two felts, some are rolled like dough, etc., but you need felts to soak up the water.

Having figured out how to make the felts, Henry had the extraordinary good fortune to have married Mary Stephens Waterbury, who helped him make the major breakthrough in paper production – the endless belt without an obvious seam, which made it possible to produce paper by machine.

Henry bought the Oriskany Manufacturing Company property in the mid 1800’s and moved the paper felt production to the village, where it remains.

Why do you care?

The Waterbury Felt Company periodically has a special day off that locals call “money day”. That’s the day when the Department of the Treasury takes over the facility to make the paper felts used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to make the paper that will become US currency.

The day before everything is cleaned, and when workers return the whole place is spotless. The Treasury shows up with all of its own materials, and makes sure there is nothing left behind when they leave. Only Treasury employees are allowed near mill on money days.