United States or Uzbekistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In these meetings they took an intense and a very human pleasure. Their solitary, outdoor labor was performed in an intense atmosphere of communal interaction. He who raised hogs was to sell them, not to a distant market, but to Daniel Merritt, or John Toffey, the storekeepers. He who made shoes went from house to house, full of news, always talking, always hearing.
In 1824 Toffey imported, for Costuming, shawls, crepe at $1 per yard, silk, skein-silk, twist, ribbon, velvet at 90c. per yard, drab-cloth, flannel, braid, handkerchiefs, buttons and button-moulds, gloves, suspenders, calico, vest patterns, pins, chrome-yellow, "bearskin" at 82c. per yard, dress handkerchiefs, beads, buckles, silk flags and morocco skins.
"'Very well, miss, says I, 'your mamma shall soon have something fresh to talk about, and I hope she'll find it a pleasant change. "There was some of them knew what I meant at once, for after they'd scampered off I heard shouts up and down the stairs from one to the other, 'Cook's going! 'We shall have a new cook soon! 'What a lark we'll have with the toffey and the pies!
There is extant one bill of merchandise purchased by them of Edward and William Laight, merchants of New York, the amount being £200 and the date Feb. 25, 1785. The Akin stores at Sites 47 and 46, were kept by Daniel and Albro Akin, and the store at Site 53, by John Toffey.
It is assumed that John Toffey kept a representative store, and that the growth in his trade corresponded to the growth in the commercial interchange in the community. The list is brief, and its proportion to the other commodities sold in the store evidences the simplicity of a community dependent chiefly upon itself, and living a life of rudeness and content.
The respect paid by the community to leadership is shown in the place assigned to Admiral John L. Worden, commander of the "Monitor," who married a Quaker Hill woman, Olive Toffey, spent the summers of his life on the Hill, and is buried in the Pawling Cemetery. There was universal pride in his charming personality, interest in his sayings, and no pious condemnation of his warlike deeds.
William Taber had a gristmill and also a cloth mill, consisting of carding machine, fulling mill, and apparatus for pressing, coloring and dressing cloth. John Toffey, at Site 53, and Joseph Seeley, at Site 15, and some of the Arnolds, near Site 12, were hatters. Jephtha Sabin, at Site 74, and Joseph Hungerford were saddlers and harnessmakers.
Mullock, in her little shop, where toffey, toys, and penny books for young people were sold, together with baskets, tea-cups, straw-mats, and other adult ware; and he was so friendly and talked so beautifully, and although, as he admitted in his lofty way, 'there might be differences in fortune and position, yet were we not all members of one body?
He is buried under the trees outside the "Toffey Burying Ground," beside the brook, in the very heart of Quaker Hill, into which he had intruded because in that peaceful neighborhood he had for a time a safe asylum. With his death it is believed that his band dispersed, and their depredations ceased.
Word Of The Day