The Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company - Morris District Telephone Directory 1938-1939, 1958-59, 1964-65, 2019

Land lines mean wires and in the old days before compact cables with multiple wires inside, a lot of phone lines meant a lot of wires as you can see in the photos above that were taken in 1964 by Cliff Costello's father.

As of March 1, 1914 there were 615 telephone and telegraph companies in New York state according to the following source:

Final Report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly on Telephone and Telegraph Companies (Google eBook)

New York (State). Legislature. Joint Committee to Investigate Telephone and Telegraph Companies, James A. Foley

J.B. Lyon, printers, 1915 - Telephone - 754 pages

Looking for information about The Dimmock Hollow Phone Company, I came upon the following note in a reply to an article written by Christopher Orlet for The American Spectator magazine

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/26/i-technophobe

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Kitty| 5.26.11 @ 7:05AM

I grew up in a village where there was no Ma Bell, just the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company. The switchboard operator worked out of her living room in the home across the street from us. Our phone didn't even have a rotary dial. You just lifted the receiver and told Mrs. Goodyear who you wanted to call. There are now whole generations of young people who have no idea what a switchboard operator was. I used to say, "Like Ernestine on Laugh In -- 'one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy.'" But that was at least a generation ago.

With all this reach-out-and-touch-y'all technology, we seem to communicate less.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fran Klindt, Pauline Greene, and Judy Knapp Reed shared this info about phone numbers -- and ring patterns:

Fran Klindt
My home phone number was 67. Dad’s garage 27. Both were private lines. Party lines used letters before the numbers to denote the ringing sequence. For example: 67Y22 would receive 2 short rings followed by 2 longs. 67F12 would have been 1 long ring followed by 2 shorts.

Pauline Greene
Fran Klindt never knew that Fran, also never knew you could have a private number,ours on the farm had about 20 people hooked up together,everyone could pick up their phones and listen to what you were talking about! Nothing private ( like Facebook)

Judy Knapp Reed
Our phone number was 6Y4. It was four short rings.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Asking around the village of Morris I was even more fortunate in that Deb Newell was willing to loan me two old phone directories to scan in. She also shared newspaper articles from the Otsego - Chenango - BEE - JOURNAL - CHRONICLE published in Gilbertsville, NY on Thursday, February 16, 1967, about a move made by The Dimmock Hollow Phone Company into new offices in 1967. Photos from the article are shown above. You can read the whole article by clicking on the link below.

Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page to read a poem about the changing world of telephones in 1967.

To look through either phone directory, please click on the cover photos below. The file are searchable PDFs. It may take a few moments to download so please be patient.

You can go straight to the Morris listings in the 1938 directory by clicking on the link below.
http://ourtownnews.info/morris-ny/sites/default/files/1938-Telephone-Dir...

Use the link at the bottom of the page to see the listings in the 1940-41 telephone directory

Click here to see just the Morris pages from the 58-59 book.

2008 Photo of the new telephone office in Morris built by the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company with help from a grant from the Rural Electrification Agency.

A 1962 newspaper article gave the following information:

Nov. 6, 1962

MORRIS — The Rural Electrification Administration, a division of the Department of Agriculture, approved a loan application amounting to $565,000 to the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company of Morris, Congressman Samuel S. Stratton announced Saturday.

The loan will cover the construction of a commercial office building in Morris; a new dial central office in South New Berlin, 16 miles of new lines and the rebuilding of 132 miles of existing lines.

Leon Johnson, president-manager of the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company, said that the requirements for the loan were: wide distribution of stock; extensive survey of the area, including customers, population, community growth in the past 5 and 10 years; economics of the community change in the past five years and the future prospects of the community.

Mr. Johnson said that the telephone company in Morris has a total of 118 shareholders all of which are local residents.

Some notable workers and/or officers of the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company

Louis Claud Card, aged fifty-six, for more than twenty years central operator of the Dimmock Hollow telephone company
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92155750

Stella Eldred Wallace, secretary and treasurer of the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company for 18 years
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=93605315

Edwin G. Peet, Mr. Peet was president of the Dimmock Hollow Telephone company. He also was president of the Morris Local of the Dairymen's League
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92120247

In 1967 the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Co became part of the Chenango and Unadilla Telephone Co. - as reported in the Feb 23, 1967 edition of the Otsego Farmer and Republican, Cooperstown, NY, see attached PDF to view the whole page:

Morris
What has been known as The Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company, of Morris-South New Berlin,
now owned by the Chenango and Unadilla Telephone Company of Norwich, cut over at 12:01 a. m. Sunday, February 19, 1967 to the Dial System. Morris still has free exchange into South New Berlin and Gilbertsville, and the new Telephone Office will be in the new building on West Main Street.

New Lisbon
New Lisbon had a telephone company, too. You can see two the stock certificates from that company below.

I got hold of a 1928 New Lisbon Farm Telephone Company Directory recently and scanned it. Use the last link on this page to access it.

Lots of neat phone system history at this link.
http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/bell.htm