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2 Voorheesville's History — special Section The Altamont Enterprise—Thursday, May 27, 1999 Cider, juice company Duffy-Mott plant gave jobs to 300 By Bryce Butler VOORHEESVILLE — What later became the Duffy-Mott plant began life in June, 1890, according to Dennis Sullivan's history of the village. Charles H. Burton and A. Elmer Cory of Al- bany bought three acres north of the Delaware & Hudson Tracks from Conrad Fryer to open a cider mill. Both partners were from Albany, where Burton had owned a cider and vinegar manufacturing plant on Green Street. Cory and Burton had a rail- road spur in place in July, a 100- by-40-foot building erected in August, and a dance for the vil- lage on the third week of Sep- tember to celebrate their opening They advertised in The Enter- prise of the same week for farm - ers to bring their apples to Alta- mont, Quaker Street, and Fullers Station to be picked up. Their 60-horse-power engine pulverized 9,000 pounds of ap- ples a day in its first week, and the successful operation ex- panded the next year. Cory started a stock corporation to buy Burton's share, and before the 1891 season began, the Em- pire Cider and Vinegar Co. had leveled new ground for several 1,000-gallon tanks. In 1899, Cory's corporation added grape juice to its line of products. By the next year, it was grinding 3,000 bushels of apples a day, throughout a 70- day season. Duffy-Mott Shortly after the turn of the century, the mill passed from its founders into the hands of a combination known as Duffy- Mott, which would own it until the Voorheesville operation was closed, in 1955, and its work moved to Pennsylvania. Duffy-Mott combined two companies from western New York, according to a history at the Mott company web site. Samuel R. Mott of Bouckville (Madison Co.) and Edward Duffy of Rochester both opened their businesses in 1842, accord- ing to the Mott history. It must have been a busy time for apple products: Sullivan's history says the cider mill Burton had owned in Albany was started in 1939, and was the oldest in the state. Mott \made cider with the help of hitched horses that plod- ded in a circle, crushing apples between two large stone drums at the center of a 'sweep,' \ the corporate history says. \The crushed apples were shoveled into a crib with slatted sides, packed in straw, and crushed by three men leaning on a lengthy level that operated a jack screw.\ Water power and then steam replaced the horses, and demand grew; Mott's vinegar rounded Cape Horn to California in the holds of clipper ships. At his plant, open fermentation of cider into hard cider, thence into vine- gar, was replaced by controlled oxidation in closed tanks — a process Mott introduced to this country. The Duffy company contri- buted a way of preserving apple cider in wood, \a discovery that vastly increased its market,\ ac- Bu fly's Grape 4,uice was one of many products produced at the Duffy-Mott plant in Voorheesville, built on three acres of land north of the D&H tracks, near the end of Grove Street. 'Thirteen hour days were the norm in the fall, on weekdays, and nine on Saturdays and Sundays.' — Ernie Jacobson cording to the Mott history. Duffy, an immigrant from Ireland by way of British Guina and Canada, moved to Roch- ester in 1841, and opened a busi- ness wholesaling whiskey, cider, and vinegar. \He was the origi- nator of Duffy's malt whiskey, long sold for medicinal and household use,\ according to a biography in The National Cyclopaedia. His son, Walter Bernard Duffy, bought out his father's business in 1868, when he was 28. This was the Duffy who gave his name to the plant in Voorheesville. The history says that Duffy and Mott merged in 1900, but according to Sullivan it was Duffy, \of the American Fruit and Produce Company,\ who bought the Voorheesville plant a few years later. Note that Duffy's name appears alone on CONGRATULATIONS ON 100 YEARS FROM THE CARL FAMILY with over 50 year's -, . of doing business in / the Village of Voorheesville and surrounding areas. the end of the building in the pic- ture: \Drink Duffy's Grape Juice.\ Duffy visited the Voorhees- ville plant, one of 20 he owned, in 1903. \While he and the over- seer of the plant, Mr. Bigelow, were walking through in De- cember, two of the plant's 500- gallon tanks toppled over and sent 1,000 gallons of cider flush- ing every which way,\ Sullivan wrote. The company diversified: Champagne cider (an alcoholic product not recorded for Voor- heesville) was eliminated by Prohibition. But other products were added, including apple sauce in 1930 and jams, marma- lades and jellies later in the decade. However, the business was still seasonal. Then, in 1933, the Duffy-Mott company arranged with the California Prune and Apricot Growers Association (now Sunsweet Growers Inc.), to bottle prune juice. The Voorhees- ville plant put up the first prune juice bottled east of the Rockies. Mott's Apple Juice was added in 1938 as another way to expand business from the three- month apple season to a longer year. Working for Duffy-Mott The Empire Cider and Vinegar Works, as the building on Grove Street was called, employed as many as 300 people. \A majority of them came from the Helderbergs,\ said Kenneth Darpino, who worked at the plant both before and after World War II. \A lot came from Westerlo. A lot of them were farmers. They would plan on it.\ They pay the planned on was 60 to 65 cents an hour, according to Darpino. Little as it was, this was twice as much as Ernie Ja- cobson got when he started with Duffy-Mott in 1936. At that time, he earned 30 cents an hour. \It didn't pay too well, but it was long hours,\ Jacobson said. Like Darpino, he worked at the plant until it closed. \Thirteen hour days were the norm in the fall, on weekdays, and nine on Saturdays and Sun- day,\ Jacobson said. The rest of the year it was nine hours a day. \During the war, they took school kids,\ said Michael Ricci, a life-long village resident and retired grocer. \They were a pretty good outfit; they had good production. They claimed they made 10,000 bottles of prune juice or apple juice a day. That was when they were working 24 hours a day. After the war, they went back to an eight-hour day.\ Darpino, who worked for Duffy-Mott for only three months before he went off to war in 1942, says the company paid time-and-a-half over eight hours a day, and for Saturdays. \I'm not sure if Sundays was double time or not,\ he said. But another former employee, an as- sistant foreman, who preferred not to give his name, said dou- ble-time came in \near the end.\ The company was good to the village. \If there was a fire, most of the firemen were from there, and they would let them go, and pay them besides,\ Darpino said. Firemen weren't all that left the building. \They had those large vats they put the cider in,\ Darpino said. \It would turn to hard cider, and then it would be- come vinegar. \They had some guys who would drink it,\ he said. \They would make their own, and make a barrel. They would hide it under stairways or somewhere where no one knew where it was. I heard that they used to let it freeze in the barrel, and what was in the center was applejack. \They took the stuff home,\ Darpino said. \They were pretty (Continued on Page 8) v\rrrwMMMW»TArAiAr\r^wwvH' ^ on your 1OO\ 1 Anniversary! Michael A. Kieserman, M.D Serving children in our area for the past 18 years! 17 Maple Rd., Voorheesville OKH HOUSE HAY 28.29.J0! 18 DRYWALl LANE, VOORHEESVILLE, NY 12186 4INIO \ininBxocisraDQOJ3
