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 Photo of the Month

January 2003

Object ID:  1992.094

Photographer:  Unknown

Date:  Unknown

Workers of Liberty Wall Paper Company, Schuylerville, with printing machines.

Just north of Schuylerville, on the banks of the Hudson River, the Liberty Wall Paper Company built a plant in 1898.  This mill was called "The handsomest and most substantial wall paper factory in America . . . 100 by 400 feet, three stories high."  In 1900 it employed 200 hundred people who ran 122 great machines, turning out 50,000-60,000 rolls of medium and high grade wallpaper.

An oral history project undertaken by the Saratoga County Historical Society in 1989 provides a glimpse into life in Schuylerville around 1920.  Joe Gamache remembered his father working at the Liberty Mill, "He went to work there when he was fourteen years old.  Worked a ten hour day.  He was what they called a 'stick boy.'  When the big loops of wallpaper used to come down from the printing end, and they used to go into these bit dryers, when they (the paper) got down to this conveyor belt, the paper used to feed down into these machines that rolled it up into rolls, and those sticks would drop off into a box.  Well, it was their job to take those sticks and bring 'em back to the other end where it was picking the loops up.  Yup.  Ten hours a day."

Sources Conusulted:

Todd DeGarmo, Life in a Mill Town:  Schuylerville and Her Hamlets in the 1920s (Ballston Spa, NY:  Saratoga County Historical Society, 1990), pp.5-9.

Gift of Chris Morley

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