Cheap and easy water transportation, the cheap labor of the day and the proximity of thriving New York made the production of metal work most lucrative. The Van Cortlandts had mills and furnaces not only on the Croton River but on Furnace Brook in the Oscawanna section. The flour mill on the old Phelps estate was built during the Revolution and operated until 1875. Before the Revolution, an English company operated a blast furnace on Jamawissa Creek (the beautiful Indian name afterwards became Furnace Brook), and employed Germans to run and smelt the iron. But the ore had too much sulphur in it and the furnace fell into disuse. A large section north of Croton village is known to this day as Furnace Woods, the road to it being known as Furnace Woods Road. Then the brick industry became popular, and the broad, deep veins of clay that covered the plateaus back of the shore lines were exploited during the nineteenth century. Croton face brick and Croton front brick commanded fancy prices and for many years the very door yards of Croton were in danger as the clay pits were enlarged and the kilns extended. Small fortunes were made and the clay beds were excavated until all pay clay was moulded into brick. Then the industry centered in Haverstraw and upper river points. Croton Point, the beautiful peninsula reaching far into the Hudson, embracing with its curved shoreline on the side toward Croton village the charming sheet of water known to the Indians as "Mother's Lap," has a history all its own. The same year in which Stephanus Van Cortlandt was married to Gertrude Schuyler, 1671, his sister Sophia married Andreas Teller.