Tanner Mill

Tanner Mill
By Karen Cuccinello 4-2019

The Tanner Mill was on Railroad Avenue in Stamford and owned by John Westover Tanner. I believe he started operations of his plaster, grist and saw mills in the very early 1870’s and sold out in the early 1890’s.
John was born to Josiah and Elizabeth Tanner 1836 in Schoharie County. He and his siblings: twins Julia and Job and James (of Civil War fame) lived in Cobleskill in the 1850’s and Seward in the 1860’s (both towns are in Schoharie County). In the 1870 Harpersfield census he is a farmer living with the Oscar Hildreth family which would be how he came to meet his wife Edith who was Oscar’s oldest daughter. John and Edith had one daughter Edna May who became Mrs. Edward Manley (1886-1965).
The first mention I found of John’s mill in the newspapers was the October 9, 1873 Windham Journal- John W. Tanner is rebuilding the dam of his feed and plaster mill. In 1876 he constructed a saw mill near his other mills. An 1877 advertisement states he is selling fresh quarried and fresh ground Nova Scotia plaster for $10 per ton. There was also a pond by the mill known as Tanner’s Pond and later known as Hager’s Pond, that people often ice skated on.
In 1882 John jumped upon a rotten plank in descending into the wheel pit at his grist mill. The plank gave way and he fell a distance of 17 feet and broke some ribs on his right side.
The Ulster & Delaware Railroad paid people for right-of-ways, in 1884, so that they could complete the Hobart Branch; John was paid $175.
Down the road from his mills John built a boarding house, “Tanner House”, that opened in 1886. He had a large addition built in 1890 and in August 1894 it all burned down. It was partially insured.
Joseph Rowland foreclosed a mortgage of $2,876.80 against J. W. Tanner’s mill property in 1892 and bought the property in 1895. The Tanner Mill property, situated approximately at 24 Railroad Ave. was then sold a number of times to: Charles L. Andrus in 1897, Fred Cook in 1898, George H. Hager in 1899 and K. Simmons and L. J. Merwin in 1911. Simmons & Merwin had machinery for all kinds of wood working, a saw and grist mill, feed grinding and cider making machinery.
John died tragically August 4, 1902 when he was struck by the Rip Van Winkle flyer on the U.& D. railroad in Stamford village. He had just finished milking his cow in the pasture back of Milo Wood’s and just as he stepped on the track he was struck by the engine and thrown several feet, breaking bones and bruising his body. Mr. Tanner was very deaf and did not hear the train or see it. He had been repeatedly warned to keep off the track, and the engineer of this train said that his engine had thrown him off the track twice before, once injuring him somewhat. He was 66 years of age and a respected resident of Stamford where he formerly conducted Tanner’s Mills. He was a brother of the famous Corporal James Tanner, ex-commissioner of pensions, of Washington, D. C. His nearest neighbor was Justin Loomis, who was also deaf, and about two months previously was killed by the cars in a similar way and very near the same place.
His wife Edith died January 1919 at her daughter’s in NYC. Both are buried in Richmondville, NY Cemetery.