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Glassworks Site
Ellenville Glass Company 1836-96
Produced bottles, demijohns,
fruit jars & insulators on
a large scale employing up
to four hundred hands.
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The company was organized in 1836 by a group of glass makers from Coventry and Willington, Connecticut, headed by Jasper Gilbert. The site was on Sandbergh Creek, where the New York, Ontario & Western station now stands, and in October, 1837, they began to make bottles, carboys and demijohns, using as fuel as much as ten thousand cords of hardwood a year from nearby forest land owned by the company.
Ellenville glass came to be in common use throughout the country; business flourished until the Civil War affected them adversely, so that in 1866 a new company was organized and incorporated, the Ellenville Glass Works, which took over the lands and factories of the old concern. This was said to be the largest establishment of its kind in the United States in 1869, employing about 540 persons, including many women and children, who covered the bottles with a basketwork of willow twigs raised on the company's "Willow Lot."
In 1871 the glass works occupied twelve acres of land and had an outlet store in New York City, but was knocked out by the depression of 1873, foreclosed, and, in 1882, its property was finally sold to Charles A. Edwards. A new company, the Ellenville Glass Factory, was organized, in which many of the glassblowers bought shares. They made green and amber glassware, flasks, wine and beer bottles and one and five-gallon demijohns. In 1886 they started making white glass for insulators and fruit jars, with silica ground from Shawangunk Creek. A huge stone bowl used for grinding the rock now forms the base of a fountain set up by the railroad company.
On November 20, 1886, a strike promoted by the Knights of Labor for higher wages and the elimination of apprentices was partially successful and on December 24 the strikers resumed their work. However, business declined and in spite of heroic efforts by the trustees, ended in 1896 by foreclosure.
Although the chief product of the various factories was bottles, paper weights and ornamental objects were also made.