[J. Thomas Scharf (1886)] 401 building, forty by ninety feet, was erected for their accommodation. The children in the Home in 1884 numbered over four hundred. The buildings are situated in a tract of about fourteen acres. The property is valued at one hundred thousand dollars. MANUFACTORIES OF PEEKSKILL. The manufacture and working of iron has from early days been the chief industry of Peekskill, and more than any other thing has caused the growth and importance of the place. Chief among the articles of manufacture produced are stoves, furnaces and ranges. In 1884 eight stove-works were in operation in the village, employing over seven hundred men, and there were in addition the machine-shop of An-derson Brothers, the works of the old Peekskill Man-ufacturing Co., an emory manufactory, two shirt-fac-tories and a manufactory of lamp fixtures. The iron business in Peekskill was begun in the year 1820 by Stephen Gregory, a man of very considerable mechanical ability. He commenced the manufacture of plowshares in a little shop about fifteen by eigh-teen feet in extent, located opposite the point where Kipp's livery stable now stands, on Main Street, and about one hundred feet north of the street. From there he moved across to the south side of Main Street into a new and somewhat larger foundry which he built on the lot where the Reformed Dutch Church afterwards stood. At first the manufacture was carried on in an exceedingly primitive style.