In 1845 cigar tobacco was first introduced in Onondaga County and elsewhere in New York, including Colchester. Almost every man smoked cigars, the Chemung County Historical Society Museum’s The Golden Age of the Cigar and the Cigar Box, 1880-1920, states “In the forty years encompassing the Golden Age, American men smoked three hundred billion cigars.” According to the Cigar History Museum, “the United States was home to a quarter million cigar factories and produced approximately 2,000,000 different brands of cigars, more factories and more brands than any other branded product in history.”
After the 1842 fire in the cigar factory district in Hamburg and the 1848 German “March Revolution “large numbers of experienced owners, managers and cigar rollers moved to New York and established cigar factories. One of the German immigrant cigar makers that moved to Colchester around 1850 was Adam Heckroth. He is listed in W.W. Munsell’s, “A History of Delaware County,” 1860, as a Downsville cigar maker and he is listed as a cigar maker in the 1880 U.S. Census. He was a small manufacturer of cigars; his brand was called North End. He moved his company to Middletown in 1890 and continued making cigars under the North End brand but introduced a new Ontario brand. This brand was named after Heckroth’s Middletown Ontario Hose Company where he was a volunteer fireman. He had a picture of the Ontario Hose Company’s fire truck placed on his cigar box label.
Another Colchester cigar maker was William Stamm. Stamm, the son of a German immigrant, was born in New York City and came to Downsville in 1875 and opened a cigar factory. This factory operated until the factory was expanded and moved to Middletown in 1890.
The most prominent cigar maker in Colchester was David Rothensies. Rothensies emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1855 and settled first in Meredith where he had a travelling dry goods mercantile business for eight years. In 1864 he opened a dry and fancy goods store in Downsville including a cigar shop. He operated this store until 1875 when he sold the dry goods stock and opened a cigar factory. He grew tobacco for that factory on the Cable Flats on Back River Road. He had several drying barns at that location and across the road on the Purdy property. The Downsville News, May 17, 1883, reported “Rothensies & Meinhold, cigar manufacturers, turn out from 800,000 to 1,000,000 cigars per year. They raise considerable tobacco and are making preparations for a larger amount this year than usual. They have one large house for curing purposes and will put up another on the Purdy place.” His brand Way Up became very popular and he was the first of the Downsville cigar manufactures to expand his business into Orange County, moving to Middletown in 1889. Middletown gave the factory access to a greater number of skilled workers and rapid railroad shipping to quickly move his cigars to dealers. His expansion was very successful, but after two years his physicians advised him to move to a higher altitude to improve his health. In 1891 he moved his business to Walton where he opened a cigar factory on the corner of Delaware and Liberty Streets.
Colchester Historical Society 