Cobleskill, New York

The village of Cobleskill takes its name from a German miller named Jacob Kobel, who built a mill on Cobleskill Creek in the colonial era. The Dutch word for creek is kill, giving you Kobel's creek, shortened over time to Cobleskill. German-speaking settlers arrived here in the early to middle eighteenth century, building a farming community that was devastated in the seventeen seventy-eight raid led by Joseph Brant.

The village slowly rebuilt, and when the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad arrived in the eighteen sixties, Cobleskill grew quickly enough to incorporate as a village in eighteen sixty-eight. New York State established an agricultural school here in the early twentieth century that eventually became SUNY Cobleskill, and the Schoharie County Sunshine Fair has drawn visitors every summer since eighteen seventy-six.