Farming and other industries have shaped Upper Saddle River
The huge barn on the Andrew Hennion farm on Pleasant Avenue still exists, as does the 18th century stone house. Andrew Hennion, who purchased the farm in 1857 from Abraham Van Riper, had a dairy herd and sold the milk to Eckerson’s Dairy in Saddle River on West Saddle River Road. On the left, note the continued use of the 18th century Dutch hay barrack in the background. The roof slid up and down on poles to accommodate storage.
Industry
Industry and Upper Saddle River are terms that do not seem comfortable together, at least not today. But there was a surprising amount of industry here. In the 18th and 19th centuries, farms spread out through the valley and mills worked on the banks of the Saddle River.
Chickens on the Weiss family farm on Weiss Road.
Farms
In the early 1700s, the first grants to settlers were usually 300 or more acres. The settlers cleared enough land to grow crops and raise livestock to feed themselves. They put up vegetables and fruit for the winter, smoked and salted meat so that it would not spoil, and stored potatoes and other root vegetables in cold cellars. And it remained that way for over 200 years.
As they cleared land and their farms produced more, farmers concentrated on berries, oats, rye and corn, and other crops they could sell. The land provided wide open vistas that are long gone today with new growth filling in the former fields.
Sam Kanreck loading peaches on a market wagon at the Eckerson farm on Carlough Road, where he worked from 1912-1915. The Eckerson barn is no longer standing, but the farmhouse and stone well still are.
The Paterson Market
Above is Sam Kanreck on the Carlough apple farm loading a market wagon, perhaps made by Packer in Saddle River, as many local market wagons were. Sam worked for the Carlough family from 1915 until his retirement.
“It was a two-hour trip to Paterson by horse and wagon, straight down the West Saddle River Road, through Ridgewood, across where Route 208 goes today, over the First Avenue bridge and on into Paterson. The farmers would leave at 3 a.m. in order to get to market when it opened at dawn, and they would often be through and home for the noon meal. There would not be much traffic on the roads that early. One wagon seldom met another, but they did light the wagons by attaching a kerosene lamp to a clamp beneath the wagon.”
John Kroner, USR Historical Society Newsletter, May 1982
Prior to 1905, the Paterson market was on Main Street, between Broadway and Market Streets. Wagons would pull up alongside the wooden sidewalk and produce would be sold from the wagons. About 1905, Paterson built the Hamilton market that had sheds for the wagons on Washington Street, the first of several modern markets.
Strawberries
John Kroner’s family sold their bakery in New York City in 1905 and bought a farm on West Saddle River Road just north of the little Methodist Church on the hill. They began farming strawberries, a profession John, shown above, followed until the 1980s. It was the last strawberry farm in Upper Saddle River.
Strawberry growing hit its peak in the 1840s and lasted into the 1970s. Crops were shipped by wagon and by train to markets in Paterson and New York City. In the mid-nineteenth century, this area of New Jersey was the strawberry growing center of the U.S. Farm families spent evenings fashioning the little baskets (seen in the logo of the Historical Society) to transport berries. The berries were much smaller than what we are used to today, but as they mixed different varietals and tended to the crops over the decades the berries grew larger and the containers needed to transport them grew as well.
Strawberry basket
This is an example of one of the home-made strawberry baskets assembled by the thousands by farmers and their families in the evenings. This one is from the Terhune-Hopper farm and was found in the house in the 1990s.
APPLES
Loading apples onto a truck at the Carlough farm in 1918. Sam Kanreck is in the center. Nettie Carlough is on the right.
Apple crate label
This is one of few remaining labels from a shipping crate from the Carlough farm. Apples were shipped to 14 countries.
Apples were also a major crop. By the 1960s the Carloughs, who had been raising apples for nearly a hundred years, were farming 525 acres, raising 375,000 to 400,000 bushels a year and exporting them to 14 countries. They ran advertisements for farm labor in local newspapers. The Carlough orchards were eventually converted into Apple Ridge Country Club, and more recently a development of luxury homes. Times have certainly changed, but the rural look of the town has remained.
Apple packers ad
David J. Carlough ran ads for help on their extensive farm