Interesting Facts…

Granville, New York – Did you know?

•The Slate Valley extends approximately twenty-four miles along the New York/Vermont border from Granville, NY and Rupert, VT north to Fair Haven, VT. The area is about six miles wide.

• Slate deposits were discovered near Middle Granville in 1850 and the first quarry was opened by William R. Williams, who leased property from George Porter in 1852.

•The Granville area has the only working red slate quarries in the world, a very high quality slate with a life expectancy of 200 years.

• The red in Granville unfading red slate resulted from the erosion of iron-rich soils that were exposed to an oxygen-rich environment.

• Harvard’s premier slate-roofed structure, Memorial Hall (1878), displays rock from the two most important slate-producing regions of New England. The red shingles came from quarries near Granville, New York, the green shingles from nearby Fair Haven, Vermont, and the black from Monson, Maine.

• Telescope Folding Furniture Co. Inc. (now known as Telescope Casual), moved to Granville in 1921 with financial assistance from the Granville Community Association. During World War II Telescope Folding Furniture produced up to 2,500 army cots per day.

• The Slate Valley Museum in the Village of Granville, offers visitors an extensive collection of photographs and artifacts revealing the people and traditions of over a Century of slate quarrying. Exhibits and programs focus on genealogy, tools and technology, local history and immigration.

• In 1850, the St. Francis Indians came to Granville; it was the tradition among his people that their ancestors had for ages fished and hunted in this town, fining here their best beavers.

• In 1902 Franklin Tanner Pember and his wife, Ellen Wood Pember built the Pember Opera House; the Pember Library & Museum in 1908; and in the 1920 & 8217’s willed property to assist in financing a Village sewer system.

• Susan B. Anthony visited the Corners in the Village of Granville in 1875 to give a lecture, the population was about 1,000 at that time.

• Lemuel Haynes – Minister, poet, abolitionist and soldier. In 1776 Haynes wrote the first known appeal for the Revolutionary War’s freedom cause to extend to enslaved Americans.

• One of the Victorian Homes Previewed in the book “America’s Painted Ladies : The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians” by Elizabeth Pomada, is located on Main Street in Granville NY.

• Hick’s Orchard, located in Granville NY, is the oldest pick your own apple orchard in New York State, they have been in existence since 1895 , selling their first pick your own cherries in 1905.

• The South Granville Congregational Church has sustained an active congregation continuously since 1790.

• At the corner of Maple and Main, there stands an architect-designed Romanesque building built for Eugene R. Norton, president of the Norton Brothers Slate Co. in the glory days of 1890 to 1910.

• The Village Streets of Granville were lit with electricity for the first time on Thursday evening, January 23, 1896 with three Arc lights of 2,000 candle power and 100 incandescent lamps of 25 candle power for the price of $1,500.00 annually.