The Montgomery Worsted Mills, known today as Montgomery Mills, is along the Wallkill River at the end of Factory Street in the Orange County village of Montgomery, New York. It was one of the earliest efforts to harness the river for industrial purposes.
Founders Arthur Patchett and William Crabtree became prosperous and upstanding citizens who left their mark on the community they lived in. Many of the homes on the nearby stretch of Factory Street were built by them for their family, and their descendants still live in the Montgomery area. The mills are still in operation too, but are no longer property of the family or used to mill textiles. While they sell yarn, today the mill is primarily an electric power generation station. A deal is in the works to make it a City Winery.
The mills today consist of a main brick building, running north-south along the river. An east-west wing built partly over the adjacent dam and its flume is three stories high and houses the Hydroelectric turbines. Another east-west wing holds the main office and store. A second brick building slightly uphill is today leased out to an architectural moldings business. One barn, the second one built, is slightly downriver in some adjacent woods.
Factory Street becomes a gravel loop at the mill. Historically there were two large tenements for mill employees at the uphill edge of the property, but they were demolished several decades ago.
The river had been dammed at the mill location since at least the 18th century, and a grist mill had long existed opposite the mill site on the west bank of the river when Johannes Miller began seeking investors for what was to be at first a cotton mill in 1813. It would be one of the earliest attempts to harness the Wallkill for industry. At that time wool came straight from locally farmed sheep and was completely processed at the mill.
The cotton mill failed before it could even begin production and nothing happened with the site until about 1870, when an English immigrant, Edmund Ackroyd, bought the property and added a three-story addition.
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