Tilly Foster Mine
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Two miles West of the village of Brewster along Route 6, New York.
The Tilly Foster Mine had a big hand in helping to bring immigrants to Southeast, New York.
The Tilly Foster Mine was named after Tillingham Foster. Tillingham Foster bought the land that the mine was on from George Beale. However, he was not interested in the mine. When he died in 1842, the property passed through through the hands of a bunch of different landowners. Finally the mine was settled in Harvey Iron and Steel Company. It opened in 1853. Immigrants that didn't have jobs came to work in it. Examples of immigrants were Irish and Italian. Since most of the workers were immigrants, they were given numbers because their names were too hard to pronounce. In the 1870's the business was better than ever. The mine was at peak production. It was 600 feet (180 meters) deep! There were 300 miners employed and they were producing 7,000 tons (14,000 pounds) of ore per month! The main minerals were magnetite and chondrodite. The iron ore was loaded up on a train to New York City. In 1879, the Lakawanna Iron and Coal Company owned the mine. In 1980 the mine was made an open pit and at the time was the largest man-made pit. In 1895 there was a major collapse that killed 13 miners. The owners felt bad about the people who were killed, but they didn't want to close the mine. The family members of the miners were sad and were mad at the owners of the mine. The miners that remained were scared but didn't have any other job. Finally the mine closed because it was proven unsafe. After the collapse it was flooded by a reservoir nearby. After that it was used by soldiers in World War II to test their diving equipment. Now it is full of cars and other metal objects that people threw in. A collection of minerals from it and a piece of the sign can be found at the Southeast museum, New York.
Even that there is not much to remind us of the Tilly Foster Mine; we will always remember how it heleped to bring immigrants to Southeast.
