Early West Point, NY

This may well be the Buttermilk Falls that had exclusive rights to grind wheat into flour. It is represented by the wooden barrels on the official seal of New York. Wheat ground from the Hudson River valley was baked in the city into “hardtack” which was known around the world aboard ships. New York flour helped relieve famine in Europe, i.e. Italy and elsewhere, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Just below it was one of the proposed locations of a “Great Chain” to stop the large British Navy ships of the line from a “divide and conquer” of the colonies, north and south.

- graphics from a family genealogy blog on-line, info from "The Marine Society of the City of New York 1770-1995 A Concise History", by Gerald Barry, 1995.