A lot of things could be said about John Brotherson, but those who knew him well were unlikely to include “he would be late to his own funeral.” Yet in the middle of the day on October 17, 1887, a group of people waited patiently on a little knoll in Ballston Spa’s Village Cemetery, and he was nowhere to be found. 

John had passed away two days earlier at the home of Dr. Charles Inslee Pardee, a relative with whom he spent the winter months in his later years. His death was an unfortunate accident by asphyxiation, caused by John inadvertently leaving a gas valve on when he retired for the night.

At his passing at eighty-seven, John Brotherson was the senior member of the Saratoga County Bar and a practicing attorney for over fifty years. Brotherson’s career in law began in the city of Schenectady in 1821, and he practiced there until he ended his partnership with John Cochran in 1841 and relocated to Ballston Spa. During his years in Schenectady, he participated in that city’s debating club and served as the secretary of the Schenectady County Temperance Society. It was during his time in Schenectady that he published a book of interest to other attorneys, the Executors’ and Administrators’ Instructor, which contained the law and necessary forms related to the topics noted in its title. 

When he found time, John enjoyed the sport of fox and raccoon hunting. Considered an expert at the pursuit of fox, after old age prevented him from following the sport, the residents of Ballston Center noted a dramatic increase in intrusions into their hen houses by these predators. His knowledge of the sport even carried into his law cases, as in one where he represented a party whose hunting dog had been shot by a farmer when it entered a sheep yard while following a fox trail. Brotherson won the case with a judgment of fifty dollars for damages plus court costs against the defendant. 

Known to be tenacious when pressing his cause in the courthouse, his summations could sometimes be so abusive as to elicit an attack from his opponents. In one instance during a Schenectady court case in 1841, Lewis Peck, said to have been “goaded into madness,” threw off his overcoat and landed two or three blows on Brotherson. 

This willingness to win at all costs resulted in his pursuing cases that stretched over decades, the most notable being a lawsuit against Emmanuel Consalus to recover costs from several litigations. This suit, continued even after the death of Consalus in 1872, was noted in some obituaries as having been the sole focus of Brotherson’s legal work for the last fifteen years of his life. 

John Brotherson was born in Charlton in 1806. A lifelong bachelor, beyond his law career and fox hunting, one of his main interests was spiritualism. During his lifetime, spiritualism had found a considerable following in the village, with John as the leader in the local society. Other prominent members of the village who were involved in the society included mill owner Benjamin J. Barber and Samuel Hides of the Hides-Franklin Spring. 

Only this humorous story about John Brotherson’s personal involvement in spiritualism was ever recorded, published by the Weekly Saratogian on June 23, 1881:

Mr. B. is a firm believer in the Spiritualistic faith. While boarding with Mr. Brown on the hill, he was sitting one night at a basement window, which was even with the ground. Suddenly, he heard three or four thumps on the glass. John told the other inmates of the room to keep quiet, as he wished to converse with the spirits outside. He went into a trance and remained so for twenty minutes, and said he had a talk with a most beautiful creature. Upon going outside, Mr. Brown found two large sized toads flopping against the window in their efforts to catch flies that had been attracted there by the light inside. 

The most well-known account of spiritualism connected to Ballston Spa is that of Samuel Hides and the discovery of his famous spring. It was during a séance that the spirit of Benjamin Franklin was said to have told Hides that he would find an abundant mineral spring if he would only dig down 715 feet at a certain spot on his property. When the hole reached the predicted depth, a huge geyser shot high into the air and continued to provide a source of mineral water for years afterward as the Hides-Franklin Spring. 

The spiritualist society in Ballston Spa, which boasted at one time as many as eighty members, gained a prominent presence in the village in 1876 when society member Benjamin J. Barber erected a 200-seat meeting place on Bath Street that was named “Centennial Hall.” By Brotherson’s death in 1887, the building had fallen into disuse and became a storehouse for the American Hide and Leather Company.                                                                                                                                        

The remains of John Brotherson finally arrived in Ballston Spa on the six p.m. train and were met by his relatives and a large group of friends. His interment was held the same evening in the Ballston Spa Village Cemetery by the aid of lamps and lanterns, which presented a “weird and impressive scene,” according to the October 18th Albany Argus. Members of the Saratoga County Bar at Ballston were the pallbearers at the funeral. The services were conducted by Rev. Brooke Gwathmey White, a Protestant Episcopal minister from Jacksonville, Florida, who was in the area visiting friends.  

Two weeks later, on the evening of October 30, 1887, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy held a “conversation” with John Brotherson open to the public at the Saratoga Springs town hall. The results of this conversation with John’s spirit were never revealed.                                                                                                   

In 1903, John Brotherson’s stepsister, Mrs. Anna Attocha, erected a 25-foot-tall monument on the Ballston Spa Village Cemetery Brotherson Plot in memory of her brother. Also buried in the 

Brotherson Plot is John’s sister Eliza, his stepmother Alice Odell Brotherson, and his stepsisters Aleta & Sarah. Anna would be laid to rest in this plot the year after the monument was erected.

A genuine “Gold Rush” occurred in Saratoga Springs in the summer of 1932, outside of the seasonal dash to the race track and roadhouses. During the construction of Saratoga Spa State Park gold and silver were discovered, however not in the form of bulk bullion, but in minted coins.

Architectural work for the development of the Saratoga Spa at the geysers was spread among three different architects in an effort to complete the entire project within two years. Dwight Baum of New York City was awarded the work on the recreation group of golf clubhouse and Victoria swimming pool along with the bottling plant, with Marcus T. Reynolds of Albany designing the Gideon Putnam Hotel. Joseph H. Freedlander of New York planned the administration building, bath houses, laboratory and the Hall of Springs. 

These construction jobs provided much needed work during the Great Depression, which held the nation in economic grips, and would also return the flow to the mineral springs which had been depleted by commercial exploitation.

The site selected for the Hall of Springs had earlier belonged to Lyman F. Pettee, who was the president of the Geysers Natural Carbonic Acid Gas Company, one of the operations utilizing the springs for profitmaking marketability. Lyman and his wife Mary had a large 12-room summer home in this vicinity and their son, Harry E. Pettee, would become the Mayor of Saratoga Springs (1918-1919), and president of the successor corporation, General Carbonic Gas Company. Mary Pettee was remembered as someone who engendered old world notions and sensibilities and did not trust financial institutions, preferring to hide her savings in various vessels in the basement of their geyser area home. New York State acquired the Pettee Cottage, from General Carbonic Gas in April 1912 for reservation purposes.

During July 1932 major events had taken place nationally and globally. In Germany, discontent and hardship, fostered by the punishing conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, led to the Nazi Party gaining a voting majority in the Reichstag. In Chicago, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated by his party as their candidate for President. Governor Roosevelt, who had been instrumental in constructing Spa State Park, promised a “New Deal” for citizens, and abolition of the laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol. The nominating convention had concluded to the strains of the song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” a spirited and hopeful tune.

Locally during high-July, a five dollar gold piece was found at the construction site, and the windfall created a sensation. A few days later three workmen employed by the Lowe Construction company of Schenectady, which had the contract for the excavation and foundation work for the Hall of Springs, ran across a number of $20 gold pieces. This ignited a passionate excitement, with the prospect of striking rapid wealth, and word spread quickly and contagiously.

The July 26, 1932 Saratogian reported,

“A genuine gold rush of truly amazing proportions overwhelmed Saratoga Springs last night and today. Early this morning hundreds of amateur, but none the less earnest, prospectors, armed with pickaxes, shovels and improvised sieves, had taken upwards of a thousand dollars in gold and silver coin from a mound of loosely piled earth a few feet south of the foundation site of the new Hall of Springs in Geyser Park. The rush of the modern Forty-Niners started late yesterday afternoon.” The article continued, “Richard O’Brien, state engineer in charge of the construction work at The Geysers, said today that the earth which bore the pay lode had already been turned over four times when the rush started. It was originally removed from the site of the Hall of Springs in excavating, dumped in a mound a few feet south of the location, brought back to the original site for filling and finally returned to the spot where prospectors were still feverishly digging and sifting this afternoon.”

It was mentioned that the money was found in milk bottles, canning jars, and tin cans in the soil, and that prospectors worked through the night, aided by lanterns and flashlights, many humming the newly popular tune “Happy Days Are Here Again.” 

The gold and silver coins were in varied denominations ranging up to twenty dollar pieces, and most of the durable legal tender was minted in the early 1880’s, the newest coin bearing the date of 1890. The Saratogian reporter continued,

“The sweat poured from their fevered brows in the heat of the merciless sun. But at noon today it appeared that the lode was almost exhausted although workers continued to pick up dimes, quarters and an occasional half or silver dollar. Many, however, kept on grimly, hopeful that another large strike might be unearthed. Some even expressed the opinion that the pay lode had hardly been touched as yet, and that much larger amounts would be found eventually. The “gold fever” was strong upon every man, woman and child who sought the money. “There is no fooling about this Klondike fever,” one of the searchers said, “when you are pawing over that dirt, and something shines, you start to tremble all over. It’s worse than buck fever ever was.” It was well-nigh impossible to secure the names of the lucky finders or to get them to divulge the amounts they had taken out of the earth. For it became immediately apparent that the question of legal ownership of the buried sums might prove disastrous to the interests of the prospectors.”

Indeed that proved to be the case as Attorney General John J. Bennett, when the matter was brought to his attention in Albany, directed that the state police put a stop to the mining operations on the grounds, as treasure found on state property belongs either to the state, or to the owner of the property prior to its acquisition, thus suspending succeeding searches seeking sovereigns.

On June 2, 2025, excavators rolled onto a quiet stretch of Fish Creek to begin dismantling the remains of Victory Mill, the five-story concrete giant that has towered over the Village of Victory since 1918. The demolition comes just days after a devastating fire on May 31, which gutted the long-dormant factory and ended the physical presence of a structure that once defined the rhythm of life here.

But as brick crumbles and beams fall, the story of the mill—and the people who built their lives around it—remains firmly intact.

Victory owes its name to the American triumph in the Battles of Saratoga, culminating in the complete surrender of British General John Burgoyne’s army on October 17, 1777. It was a moment that shifted the trajectory of the Revolutionary War and gave the young nation a new hope. The land along Fish Creek, where Victory Mill would later rise, had already been partly industrialized by General Philip Schuyler, who built an upper sawmill and dam on Lot No. 5 as early as 1768.

After the war, Schuyler’s descendants developed and sold parcels along the creek. By 1828, his grandson, Philip Schuyler II, opened the Horicon Mill—a water-powered cotton factory that began Victory’s industrial identity. The Panic of 1837 eventually forced the sale of the property, opening the door for corporate investment.

In 1846, work began on the first Victory Mill: a three-story brick textile plant designed to take full advantage of Fish Creek’s nearly 100-foot drop. That same year, company housing began to rise, and the village’s population surged. Victory was incorporated in 1849.

By 1850, the Victory Manufacturing Company employed 369 workers—160 men and 209 women—and operated 309 looms. By the 1870s, the workforce had expanded to 550, producing over two million yards of fabric annually. The factory consumed more than 2,000 bales of cotton each year, and Victory’s fate became bound to the rhythms of the industry: whistle blows, shift changes, and rail deliveries tied it to national markets.

Yet the mill was more than a workplace. It was the heart of a company town. A four-room schoolhouse opened in 1872 and served local children for over 80 years. The company supported churches, built a community house, and created a tight-knit village shaped by labor and mutual reliance. Workers, many of them Irish immigrants, built families and traditions rooted in shared work and faith.

The late 19th century brought upheaval. Labor unrest—including strikes in 1876 and 1879—coincided with national downturns like the Panic of 1873. By the 1880s, poor management and leadership instability led to inconsistent operations. A brief resurgence came in 1910 when the American Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn acquired the site and redirected it toward rope and cordage production. With that shift came a monumental physical transformation: the five-story concrete mill and hydroelectric plant construction completed in 1918. A new community house and casino followed, offering recreation and support to workers.

Still, global forces intervened. In 1921, bag-making operations moved to India. By 1928, facing pressure from rising costs and Southern competition, the company began relocating machinery to Alabama. That fall, 328 carloads of equipment left Victory. Local production halved, and by September 1929, all spinning, carding, and weaving had ceased.

A new chapter began in 1937 when United Board and Carton repurposed the site for cardboard manufacturing. Through changing ownerships—Wheelabrator-Frye, Clevepak, and finally Victory Specialty Packaging—the mill operated into the 1980s. It closed in 2000, ending over 150 years of continuous industry on Fish Creek.

The concrete shell stood for the next two decades—weathered but resolute. In 2008, the site was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its architectural presence and economic impact. Redevelopment plans emerged but never secured funding. And then, on May 31, the fire.

Smoke rolled across the creek as more than 100 firefighters from Schuylerville, Greenwich, Easton, Quaker Springs, Middle Falls, and beyond battled the flames. Residents brought food. Some watched silently, others in tears. The mill was a ruin, but for many, it was also a relative—a place where grandparents worked, where birthdays were celebrated in the community house, where lives were stitched together over generations.

As demolition crews began their work, the sounds of machinery were less jarring than expected. They seemed almost like an echo—one last call from the mill whistle that once shaped daily life in the village—a final signal, not of labor beginning or ending, but of an era passing.

Yes, Victory Mill was just a building. But it raised families. It gave people their first paychecks, homes, and a sense of pride. And that doesn’t burn away.

The Village of Victory may now face an open space where a factory once stood. However, it still holds something more critical: memory, continuity, and a legacy woven into the soul of Saratoga County.

History doesn’t disappear with demolition. It endures in archives, family stories, the deep curve of Fish Creek, and the firehouses and homes that still carry the name Victory.

Throughout Saratoga County’s long history, many religious and spiritual communities have called our home their home, with the land even being sacred to some. This article will highlight the founding of several of Saratoga County’s religious communities through the 19th century, with a focus on Saratoga Springs.

Today, diverse people of faith have joined those long established denominations to call Saratoga home, including Jewish communities, several Indigenous Cultural Revival Movements, and a Mosque, Masjid Al-Arqam in Halfmoon. All of them play important roles in the Saratoga Community. 

We must begin with the first religions in what is now Saratoga County. The Mohawk branch of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy maintains a long-lasting presence here, and they primarily follow The Great Law of Peace (Gayanashagowa). The Great Law functions as a sort of constitution. According to legend, it stems from the Great Peacemaker Tekanawí:ta, who traveled among six warring nations and preached a message of cooperation. This eventually led to their coalescing into one Confederacy, with a unique system of government which mirrors representative democracy. This has led some scholars to point to it as a possible influence on the U.S. Constitution, which was later acknowledged by Congress in 1988. There are some supernatural elements in Tekanawí:ta’s story: he was born to a virgin mother, and sailed from the far north on a canoe made of white stone. It is important to remember that religion comes in many forms. This one served as the foundation for an enduring political system.

The earliest Europeans in the region were French Catholic missionaries and traders on their way to and from Quebec, marking the beginning of a Christian presence here. Their attempts to convert the native Mohawks were unsuccessful and often violent. An exception would be St. Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman who secretly studied and converted to Catholicism. She is the first indigenous woman of North America to be canonized by the Catholic Church and has become a symbol for both regional Catholics and Indigenous ones across the continent. Despite limited success in converting the natives, a few French missionaries settled on the foothills of the Adirondacks, becoming the region’s first permanent Catholic residents.

Before the American Revolution, Dutch families settled along the Hudson River, bringing the Dutch Reformed Church with them. Today several of these congregations still exist along the eastern and southern borders of the county from Bacon Hill to Vischer Ferry.

As more settlers migrated from New England to Saratoga County (which was considered part of Albany County at the time) they brought their religion with them. In 1769, Eliphalet Ball, a Presbyterian preacher from Bedford, New York on the Connecticut border arrived with members of his congregation. He was an advocate of the New Light movement inspired by the First Great Awakening, which emphasized personal relationships with God and rejected established church power structures. Its less centralized spiritual message heavily resonated with frontier communities. Ball founded the first Presbyterian church in the southwest corner of his farm in 1775, and the town of Ballston came to be named after him.

With the onset of the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century, upstate New York became known as “the Burned-over District” because of the sheer emotion and energy of Protestant religious activity. This religious fervor along with population growth inspired by the construction of the Erie Canal and railroads lead to a steady rise in Church membership. In 1805, Saratoga County saw its first Anglican Church in Ballston. In 1816, a new Presbyterian Church was founded in Saratoga Springs. Abijah Blanchard was its first ordained deacon, and Darius Oliver Griswold became Reverend in 1822. Although Presbyterians were not newcomers, they gained many converts and formed new congregations. Other Christian denominations which put down local roots during the Second Great Awakening included Baptists, using land gifted by Gideon Putnam, and the Quakers, who would invite Frederick Douglass to speak in 1849.

Starting in 1815, the fledgling Catholic community was bolstered by a wave of French and Irish immigrants. Most were seeking jobs during the summer season, as Saratoga Springs became a popular tourist destination for wealthy Americans and Europeans. At first, they met in town under the leadership of traveling priests, but not long after the Saratoga and Schenectady railroad opened, the Church of St. Peter was founded in 1839, a permanent Parish for a growing congregation. With the arrival of more Catholics, primarily Italian and Irish immigrants, another parish became necessary. St. Clement’s opened in 1917 after the Albany Diocese approved its establishment.

The Saratoga Racetrack opened in 1863, drawing additional ethnic groups into the city. As the African American community grew in mid-century seeking employment in the large hotels, the Dyer-Phelps Memorial AME Zion congregation was founded in 1862. Since then, it has been joined by the Mt. Olivet Baptist church and the Soul Saving Station Church of Saratoga Springs.

Sadly, these new arrivals were not always welcomed in the community. In 1853, a woman who local newspapers dubbed “Miss Lamb” was attempting to convert to Catholicism. In an effort to prevent this, three Episcopal priests kidnapped her. Eventually she escaped and fled to Albany, where she finished her conversion.

Jewish newcomers began arriving in the early 20th century, as Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to the U.S. en masse. A particularly egregious example of discrimination was the Seligman Affair. In 1877, Jewish banker and founder of J. & W. Seligman & Co. Joseph Seliman was denied a stay in Saratoga Springs’ Grand Union Hotel because he was Jewish. This social antisemitism may have faded by the 1960s, but at that time it was very real.

Saratoga County is home to many faiths, and there will no doubt be more religious choices available as time goes on. While tensions will sometimes arise, if we respect our differences and work together to build a better community, we will be stronger for it.