Apple growing in Pultneyville dated back to 1804, when white settlers first settled there and began propagating the apple tree they found there. By 1850, commercial culture was beginning. Apples were stored in cellars or hand peeled and sliced, then dried in the sun or on racks over the kitchen stove. John Warner, son of Alanson Warner, was a master carpenter who built his own house on Furnace Road near his father's farm, and he was also a farmer with many fruit trees. Needing a way to store fruit and keep it from rotting, he invented a dry house. The Warner Dry House proved so successful that John was asked to build Warner Dry Houses all over upstate NY. He was said to be slow and meticulous, with his hands always busy working on something. Besides building dry houses, he also built winding staircases. Apples were dried after they were shaken from the trees and taken to a dry house. The dried apple slices were bagged or packed in wooden boxes for shipment by rail or on the Erie Canal or Lake Ontario, and many of these buildings are still evident about in Ontario though no longer used for their original purpose.