Main Street, St. Johnsville, NY
Part 2: Audio Excerpts | Current Photo | Historic Picture

Interview with: Wilfred Y. Kraft and Alice Jean Thompson
Interviewed by: Dawn Capece

Transcript of audio excerpt:

What do you think has changed the most over the years?
Well industry has gone caput.
Industry has changed.
Industry has gone out of St. Johnsville and retail businesses.

Really, when you come right down to it, I would say the whole Mohawk Valley is that way.

The whole valley has gone that way really.
Yeah, right from Rome and Utica on down to Schenectady. Even Schenectady, I mean, compared to what it was thirty or forty years ago.

See St. Johnsville back up until, even up until after World War II had alot of men, which were family heads that worked on the railroad. You remember the big railroad gangs.
Oh yes.

You had at least 300 men that worked on the railroad. Some of those gangs had 40 or 50 men. It took, I think it was, 30 men to pick up a rail.

 

 

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