Fremont New York History page 13

(or one of them) who came here from his home in Colorado to visit the graves in the Mileses cemetery where the Miles family had built a vault to contain the bodies of their dead. This Miles descendant desired to enter the vault and to that end hired some local men to open the door of it. After several days of hard labor the door failed to yield, and the attempt was abandoned. The Miles of Colorado returned home without seeing his great-grandfather and the others in the family resting in the vault.

Mill Develops Dam Trouble

The Sipple family acquired the Miles holdings so far as the tannery site was concerned. It developed a saw mill and wood working plant on it, using the water power from the dam above the mill for power. This dam - the original dam - filled with sand and gravel carried down stream by the flood waters. This was remedied by building the dam higher. This line marking the line of the top of the original dam and the start of the additional masonry was clearly shown by a glance at the dam when facing it. The increased height of the dam soon filled, too, with gravel. However, the height of the dam above the power plant gave it a big head and plenty of power when there was enough water in the stream.
There was no mill race from this dam to the power plant. Instead the water was conveyed through a round, wooden conduit made of wooden staves held together by metal hoops. Some small holes in this conduit produced small streams of water forced high in the air. In the winter this produced a mist and a cone of ice.
A cooperage was developed in this plant that produced thousands and thousands of apple barrels used by apple packers all over Sullivan County in a day when Sullivan County was a great apple producing section in the country. J. M. Schmidt & Sons at North Branch were the big packers.

Apples By the Carload

So immense were the crops of apples produced in Sullivan County that Schmidt alone shipped 1700 carloads of barreled apples out of the county. A building was built by Schmidt as a warehouse to store apples. These apples were shipped all over the United States and into every state but Oregon and Washington. J. M. Schmidt & Sons had on file letters from dealers they supplied stating that the flavor of Sullivan County apples could not be matched by any other section. Today and for many years now all is left of the great industry of apple growing of this section are the old apple trees neglected over these many years or nearly dead - if not already dead.
Mileses supplied almost exclusively the barrels in which these apples were packed. Great loads of empty barrels piled on horse drawn lumber wagons were carried over the country roads - loads larger than any load of hay we see today. The apple barrel has passed out of use. The use of the basket followed. This has now been replaced by an apple box (called in the trade a lug), which lends itself better for storing.