The Village of Saugerties in 1881. The iron and paper mill complex below the large mill pond dam had been in operation for 50 years.
Cantine Island: An argument for knowing local history by Michael Sullivan Smith
H
enry Barclay owned all the rights to the Esopus Creek from where the high tide mark of Hudson River waters belong to the people of New York State to the 46 ft.+ flood line his dam of his mill pond raised the water of the creek to above this tide. Every drop of it was for driving the water powered industry he introduced to Saugerties in 1825.
An 1832 lithograph of the iron mill built by Henry Barclay in 1826.
For nearly two centuries deeds that originated from Henry Barclay's time have carried in them rights for using this water. They memorialize a running tally of the ways this power was used in the earliest decades of the Early Industrial Revolution in America. The engineering requirements, the manufacturing processes, and every equipment specification for water power in these deeds traces a historic standard for this most valuable asset of a nineteenth century industrial site. These earliest
documents of Saugerties are icons of an era. The importance of Barclay's mill pond's bedrock base as it continued through the rock cut and canal #1 was explicit in every level of deed, contract, agreement and in every record of professional discourse. The canal taped the bottom of the pond and every bit of that water pressure was calculated in the energy it produced. Property values were based on those water rights and not only the calculations of the amount of water but the horsepower rating of the mill wheels it drove were the measure of value for these early industrial sites. By the last years of the Cantine Island: An argument for knowing local history by Michael Sullivan Smith 2014, Page 1 of 17
nineteenth century this measure had reached a state of science where calculations of the ecology of the entire Catskill Mountains' eastern front was broken down into the equations of these legal instruments. By this time, by the end of the nineteenth century, water power was entering a new era of use. The great asset in the deed to the land now called Cantine's Island; its right to first use of the water power; was no longer used since the iron works and its successor, the pulp mill had not operated for a decade. In a 1903 agreement that right was transferred to the north side of Barclay's dam which was formerly excluded from the earlier rights to use the water. This extinguished the rights this property had been famous for since 1826. The symbols on this bank draft are of the industrial base of the Saugerties economy in 1863.
***
T
he year is 1825, in early fall. Men are clearing trees down to the stumps and earth down to bedrock behind the cliff seen today from the bridge. The workers are nameless but the guess is they are the same Scots-Irish that had most recently worked on the Erie Canal. In a surviving ledger book of Henry Barclay are listed the accounts of names like Bolton and Wurts and others associated with the management of that work. The same names will be found a year later constructing the Delaware and Hudson canal. The job Henry Barclay has planned is to cut blocks of stone the size of steamer trunks from this wall of solid rock to take it down seventy feet in a twenty foot wide slice, hundreds of feet long, and form a level extension of the bedrock base of the Esopus Creek through the base of a canal, continuing to cut more blocks of stone at this lowest level of the canal base for a large flat shelf twenty feet above sea level, creating a bed of a reservoir. These blocks of stone are finished into the material to build two massive stone dams. The first is for containing the reservoir on the leveled shelf area cut into the back side of the ridge. The second will dam the Esopus Creek and divert its water through the canal into the reservoir. Henry Barclay's plan is to put all the water pressure of the Esopus Creek into the reservoir and use it to power the huge water wheels of an iron mill's hammers and rollers and also a paper mill's machinery. He is engineering a generator to power a mill complex. This is a new idea in 1825. Maps from the early 1850s show the layout of this power system. Contracts and deeds describe the water power, and the waterwheels
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and buildings that are being installed and constructed at the same time as these waterworks. That system is to work as soon as the water is harnessed. This is a grand experiment in production development. Of that early system detailed on those early maps there is today only the rock cut seen from the bridge and the corner of the reservoir wall at the parking lot of The Mill. These are the only clues to a story of an experienced Cantine Island is defined by the flowing canal in this detail from an aerial photo taken by Morris Rosenblum in December of 1955. foreman from the Erie canal that measured the (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection) height of the land and calculated all the earth that had to be moved; of over the winter the rock cut being sliced by men down to the bed level of the Esopus above its rapids; of after the first flood that passed water through this cut in the spring this nascent engineer able to measure up the new work year by calculating what the reservoir could hold; of the blocks sliced from the rock cut used to build up the corner where the two arms of the reservoir meet capping this lowest point in the direction of those first spring floods to ever touch that side of the great rock formation that for eons had diverted the flow of the Esopus but 1850 where now they are allowed to seep incessantly through to this very day. Those walls that began to be built out from this corner eventually reached a height of twenty feet. When this was done everything quarried from the reservoir's bed was carried through the rock cut to build the twenty foot high stone wall across the Esopus. By the time both stone walls were complete it would have been fall of 1826 and the calculated volume of an average fourteen foot deep pond in the Esopus and at this reservoir held back by these dams was ready to supply power at an elevation of twenty feet above two mill sites already constructed and equipped with machines. 1853
1875
All that incredible amount of planning and labor that went into filling this reservoir is today lost in the landscape changes it made, now overgrown by trees. But in 1826 it was a powerful, shinny new attraction for everyone wanting see what the industrial future looked like. The word got out and spectators arrived to watch every advance of the workers right up to that first filling with the Esopus Creek's waters. This was the beginning of Saugerties. Shortly after water first flowed through the rock cut a population of hundreds began busily building the walls, roofs and docks of more mills and then an entire village. The builders of the waterworks moved on but factory workers, their families and all the merchants of a village to feed, outfit and entertain rapidly replaced them. For the next hundred years the story of these first builders was such a part of the life of this new village that
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they remained in its common memory. There was an appreciation of the Herculean work that created a power source that became all the work done by every generation in Saugerties over that century. ***
B
arclay's original 1825 stone dam across the Esopus was destroyed in 1858 and a wooden one replaced it. This was built under an agreement between Sheffield and White who then owned the paper mill and the Tuckerman brothers who owned the iron works. For that agreement the canals were re-channeled to give the Tuckerman's iron works the direct flow of the water and the reservoir was filled in. Sheffield and White's use was throttled through a small outlet called Canal #3. Henry Cantine Island in overlay of Virtual Earth image made for 2009 Barclay's plan of using a large Lighthouse TV broadcast video “The Mills of Saugerties�. reservoir to extend the water of the pond that passed through the rock cut to power many smaller mill sites twenty feet below the reservoir on tide water through many flumes and races had been eclipsed by the success of the Ulster Iron Works and the power demands of its early rolling mill technology. Henry Barclay's family's retention of the pond itself was found to have passed to the Sheffield family trust in an 1894 legal decision. That is what set up the 1903 agreement that transferred the old Tuckerman first rights to the water power to Cantine. In recognizing the Sheffield claim that the bedrock base of the pond extended into the canal's bedrock base a precise calculation of the volume tapped by canal #1 to the old iron mill site was made. So in 1902, when the Martin Cantine Company wanted to generate electricity for manufacturing on the north side of the dam using the first rights to the water that came with the ownership of the old Ulster Iron Works property it intended to purchase, the demands of the generator created a controversy over the use of the canals. Cantine's original plan was to partner with Edwin Gould who owned the iron works property and use the canal #2 flow to run a generator at the pulp mill turbine and feed electricity to his plant on the north side of the creek across transmission lines. The land south of Dock Street had been purchased for running these lines to the plant and into the village. However, the amount of water that could be brought through the rock cut was proven to be insufficient to drive the generating capacity Edwin Gould, the son of Jay Gould and early
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developer of hydro electric generation, needed to profit from his side of the deal. Electric generation's full use of the water through the rock cut left none to supply the needs of the Sheffield paper mills.
OP S E
CREEK S U 50
Spillway Forebay 50
40
30
Surge Relief
Dive rter/C onta inm
ent
Da m
80 70 60
Head Pond Surge Relief Head Gate
50 Dam
Waste water Outlet
90 80
Surge Relief
Water Power Canal 70 60
Earthwork Dam
Stre et
Theodore Place
50
East Bridg e
40
30
20
10
Stree t
In the 1903 agreement there were four parties: The Martin Cantine Company; Edwin Gould; Sheffield Paper Company; and, Agnes R. L. Sheffield representing the bondholders of the family trust. The distinct property divisions created to make the agreement practical were brokered by Judge Charles Davis. Agnes R. L. Sheffield and Edwin Gould were representing contractual agreements they had made to sell to Diamond Paper Mills and the Martin Cantine Company respectively. In the agreement all the parties reserved their water rights and only land transfers were resolved.
Mill Street
eet d S tr
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
40
100
90
80
110
120
130
Str ee t
140
Bu rt
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ley ck Be
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Ann
What was resolved, in essence, was the dam was divided between electric generation for primary use on the north and for manufacturing as secondary use on et tre the south side. That was done by deeding S h ac Be for the first time the stream bed between t Fe the tide water and the dam and dividing the ee r ry Str y Str respective north and south sides of the la le ee V t dam. A division of the iron works property Barclay’s Canal on typographical base from the History Atlas of Saugerties and paper mills property down the middle used for defining the present remains of the canals for the Lighthouse TV broadcast video “The Mills of Saugerties”. of the canals made in 1858 was moved in favor of the paper mills ownership of all canal beds. Canal #2 was capped, filled and totally removed from the map leaving no water power access to the old iron works site. Finally, respective access to the dam from both the north and south sides was deeded as a ten foot strip along the south edge of Canal #1 and the shoreline of the pond between the bridge and the dam. Right to use these accesses for repair of the dam was granted to each owner. To this day the four parties of this agreement retain these rights, as near as can be figured. The power generation right was shared between Cantine and Gould and the water rights never left the Sheffield trust who, even though the paper mill was in the process of being sold to the Diamond Paper Mills as these negotiations were taking place, always kept some interest in the form of a mortgage or lease to them and each successor, right up to the current era. These negotiations were under the expert guidance of Judge Charles Davis, arguably the all-time master when it comes to knowledge of
Cantine Island: An argument for knowing local history by Michael Sullivan Smith 2014, Page 5 of 17
legal title to the soil of the Village of Saugerties. Sadly, the level of knowledge during the rest of the twentieth century hasn't proven anywhere near as masterful. It's hardly any wonder since it appears banks were adroitly played by investors in a long series of clever mortgage deals that left so many foreclosures and referee deeds on the record, all ending in the same Sheffield involvements, that ownership has been an elaborate shell game since the 1880's. Indeed, there are so many corporate names used in the transfers of the same soil since then that there is no wonder that this confusion about ownership and responsibility had allowed this iconic historic setting to languish in ruin for so long.
Photo of the Iron Mill in the collection of Daniel N. Lamb, Jr.. The date is prior to 1873 since the old Barclay paper mill that burned that year is pictured. The Ulster Iron Works was operated by Tuckerman and Mulligan at this time.
Photo of the Iron Mill in the collection of Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. The date is prior to 1875 since Barclay’s Burr Arch bridge that was replaced that year is pictured. The Ulster Iron Works was operated by Tuckerman and Mulligan at this time. These two pictures in this collection are presumed from the John Simmons household and are rare for their size at nearly 2 feet across.
The way Judge Davis "drew the line" in this new era when water flow was in demand for electricity generation, was to separate water used for factory processes from that used for driving machinery. Placing the first right to the water at the dam itself, where it was unconstrained, and then further constraining the flow at the canal, thereby limiting the secondary rights to not enough water for both power and the water intensive paper making processes, had the effect of endorsing electric or steam powered machines for factory operations from then on. The fourteen feet of water in the canal above its bed specified in this 1903 agreement left little the ancient mill sites on the south side of the dam could do to expand since the paper making easily used up canal #1's full allotment. ***
F
rom 1825 until this agreement of 1903 the waterworks had been the focus of a waterfront community. Detailed in the first deeds for this land were the preferences for manufacturing and exclusions of rights to residential uses but a residential community incidental to the mills was created by the mill
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owners anyway, which was customary for the period. This was done on the high land of the iron works at the reservoir and it's nineteenth century form is well documented in photographs and insurance and sales literature that have survived. In light of the agreement of 1903, however, there was no longer an interested landlord and this community was quickly deserted. By the late teens the row of seven double occupancy two story stone tenement buildings that gave this community an English, Scot or Welsh mill city streetscape appearance was gone and an identity unique to the earliest industrial presence in America passed from memory. In the census of 1915 the occupations for heads of households residing on all the streets leading down to the waterfront paper mills were mostly related to paper making skills at the Cantine mill, the Diamond mill, The Saugerties Manufacturing Company and the Tissue Company. This anchored the pre-W. W. II A map of the Cantine Island in an 1899 brochure selling it for its “first right� to the water rights of the Esopus Creek. The property is called the Barclay Fibre Company for the last manufacturer employment base in Saugerties. By 1970 to occupy the site. (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection) the Cantine Mill and the last successor to the Diamond Mill were shut down. Only the successor to the Saugerties Manufacturing Company, the F. L. Russell Corporation and a small plant left over from the Tissue Factory were creating paper-related products ten years later. But their plants had moved far away physically and functionally from any need for the Esopus Creek's water rights. If this water powered manufacturing heritage had been taken more seriously at the beginning of the twentieth century there may have been more impetus for preservation. A brief three paragraphs in a 1962 paper announced that John Ballotti of the Empire State Paper Company had given a talk to the Monday Club on the paper making process done in his factory since 1827. That shows that this last owner of Barclay and Sheffield and the Diamond Paper Mills tradition knew this all began with Henry Barclay's water works and that the product currently made there; disposable bags for vacuum cleaners; had beginnings the whole community could take pride in. There is an image it is important to have as part one's imagination of historic Saugerties. It is of gypsy-like camp grounds with makeshift stock pens and awning-covered tables that will become the merchants of the next decade covering the flats where the business district of the
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village is now. These were the enterprises that fed and clothed the booming population the mill building and first years of mill production created. Until they profited from these new circumstances there was not one new building placed there. In contrast to that image is the environment of those mills. Nestled in the water works landscape was a little model village made up of a row of stone houses, a columned stone mansion and streetlined residences arranged along a high crest for enjoyment of a view just beginning to be appreciated by the artists of the Hudson River School of painting. Beginning its spread to the south over Barclay Heights, enjoying a yet higher view, the country grounds of the industrial development enthusiasts were taking shape with their white mansions and tidy little country church.
1927 Sanborn insurance map of the mills on the south side of the Esopus Creek showing Cantine Island mill sites completely cut off from water power following the 1903 agreement. (Saugerties Public Library)
This is an accurate view of the first half decade of industrial Saugerties, before the waterfront was dredged, when the port of Malden and the overland roads filled those camps from Market Street over to Partition Street, and where a steep rutted wagon path ending at a ferry separated these crude camps from the sophisticated architecture of the mills. In those days the mill sites were the place of skilled craftsmen and gentleman investors and academics and ideas people discussing what they would naturally discuss, after they had observed things nobody else had seen before, in a tea house that may have been set into the stone row houses of that model village with its cobblestone streets. Today we can celebrate the essence of that atmosphere in the old photographs and maps and in just recognizing the stories contained in the remains of those stone row houses and the parts of that industrial landscape that were so attractive in those early years when the idea of technological development was so fresh and new. ***
1892 Sanborn insurance map of the mills on the south side of the Esopus Creek showing the supply of “first rights� of the water power to the Ulster Iron Works in use by the Sheffield lease to the Barclay Fibre Co. (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection)
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A
erial photographs taken by Morris Rosenblum in 1955; just as IBM was about to open and its suburbanization of Saugerties was about to double the population; show a neighborhood around the mills incomprehensible to what the last quarter of the twentieth century derogatorily referred to as "the gut". Actually, the land of the mills was always called "the gat" which is Dutch for valley, cut or ravine. The farmers; even the Natives Americans with their plantations; all favored the level land. The mills' new use of the nature's assets was down in the valley that was never fully accepted as having any value by the general population. When Henry Barclay bought the farm of Tjerck Schoonmaker there was a farm house and a large barn near the top of the hill where 9W runs down to the bridge. These structures hugged the edge of the bank there not for the fine view out over the river and mountains but just to not take up any of the precious level land that provided for the farming livelihood. The land Henry Barclay was interested in down in the gat was of no good for anything but sheep. Even the stone there was too hard to quarry for building a decent stone house. This whole side of the Esopus from its basin down past Glasco was held on to by the Natives longer then anywhere else along the river. They called it Tendeyachmeck which translated to flat bush, an indicator of the deep clay that only the hardiest of scrub rooted in. The first Europeans to settle in Saugerties hugged the "gat" for their homestead because that didn't interfere with the Natives who also had no use for it. From what is reported of the meeting between these Natives from their village in the vicinity of Glasco and Henry Hudson in late September of 1609 they were eating fairly well from the planting grounds of this flat bush, looking impressively healthy to these first European visitors.
Virtual Earth image used for overlay in 2009 Lighthouse TV broadcast video “The Mills of Saugerties�.
That first settler, John Wood, set up a mill at the Esopus bend and cut wood. This was before 1687, the year George Meales and Richard Hayes claimed the land for a patent. They sold the part of that patent John had settled on to him making his presence here the first to be recorded. He is plainly here before this deed because of all his improvements that this record itemizes. The Natives had their Tendeyachmeck lands taken away in the Andros Treaty ten
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years earlier then this deed and John and his wife Hannah may well have been here as early as that. The Natives from this area stayed on, however, and are recorded as coming downriver to trade at Kingston as late as the mid 1700s making early farmers and the Natives living side by side here for a longer time then elsewhere else in the region. John Persen had a mill in the first quarter of the sixteenth century where Martin Cantine, in the first years of the twentieth century, placed his hydro electric generator under the north shore side of the Barclay dam. The "old lead mill" pictured in ruins in the 1875 "Pearl" was just downstream 1825 plan naming Main, Market and Livingston streets in the center of a commercial district divided into lots by Robert L. Livingston. from this spot but had not been in use since the 1840's. When (Collection of Daniel L. Lamb, Jr.) Henry Barclay created the mill pond it effectively flooded out the mill sites of the second falls upstream. A map made by John Kiersted, before Barclay's dam, in 1825, shows only two mills, both on the north side of the Esopus and both grist mills. Saugerties was originally a community to support farming. The stories of but a dozen households in the village area before the arrival of Henry Barclay are deceptive. The first assessment roll for the town on which Henry Barclay appears is for 1827. There are 412 property owners with 104 structures for a total valuation of $300,000. When the minutes of the first decade of the Village of Ulster trustees was transcribed many of the names of officials and residents in the 1830's were those that appeared on this 1827 record. From this it may be assumed that Henry Barclay's industrialization reinforced a population that was here far before his arrival and had its own economic development 1828 plan naming James, Jane and Partition streets in an expansion of the commercial district divided into lots on lands of Capt. Tjerck Schoonmaker. agenda. (Collection of Daniel L. Lamb, Jr.) The belief that there were overwhelming changes imposed by Henry Barclay that are felt up to today is unfounded. This idea is projected upon an ancient event by those wishing to anchor common sentiments where they will bear no responsibility. The facts show that Saugerties had a plan based on its natural situation as a hub of transportation and retained that plan and a self sufficiency related to it throughout the entire early industrial development. That, and the resources of the countryside, is what it clung to for its identity. The agrarian population continued reaping the benefits of that identity well into the pre-WWII years' resort, boarding house and seasonal colony era. What is thought of as an ancient time when life was less imposing, before the intrusion of industry, is in reality the Saugerties that had never changed from well before the time of Henry Barclay to the time of the Thruway. Saugerties, and every other community its size, has always had
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those that anticipate better times or long for a return to the better times they feel they were born too late to have enjoyed. Saugerties had this popular notion when Henry Barclay arrived and everything achieved because of his legacy; all the innovative ideas his example began attracting here over nearly two centuries; has nothing to do with what affected the broader population's base identity. Their attitude is only unique to Saugerties in that Saugerties, as a place, has an above standard history of development successes and Saugerties, as a population, has a sub-standard history of history appreciation. It may be time to change this. The land of Saugerties has a history of attracting thinkers and recently their thoughts have focused on history. At this moment in time history is what water power was nearly two centuries ago: to the common population land is the prime asset but to the innovators that asset is history. As history here makes clear, Saugerties is not a place but a presence. It is not a presence of buildings as much as it is one of a singular sculpture. It is an Opus 40 where every form its earth takes tells an historical tale. An ideal figure to follow when it comes to recognizing these urges to resolve historical questions recently re-surfaced through the legacy Morris Rosenblum left. Morris asked every question and had the intelligence, education and experience required to seek enjoyment in finding answers. There is much in the range of topics in Saugerties history to challenge even the most attentive mind and Morris carried a perspective to this that few could fathom before or probably, now, after him. As a young lawyer in New York at the heights of the depression Morris dealt with the complexities of industries as they struggled with bankruptcy. In that light he knew Saugerties' long industrial history well before setting up a practice here in 1935. So when he brought a love for aerial photography back from his time in military intelligence in the war a great curiosity about this view of the land initiated his extensive collection of period surveys and land transfer documents. He was still trying to completely understand all this well into his 90's when he died in 2004.
Sheffield Paper Mill at turn of the century from photo taken of exhibit item at the Saugerties Historical Society
Augmenting Morris were others also of this complexion, who also bridged the old Saugerties with what came with the new population after the war. Jean Wrolsen in her newspaper column writings and Harvey Fite in his quarryman's museum at Opus 40 are two of the most influential. Together
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Detail of an aerial photo taken by Morris Rosenblum in 1955 showing Cantine Island from the west. (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection)
with Morris Rosenblum these three form the pantheon of those whose interests represent what crosses the mind of every thinking person with any level of real interest in Saugerties today. The way they related their personal and professional interests to the historical context surrounding them; Fite in his sculpture, Wrolsen in her poetry and Rosenblum in his land law; is of particular importance to history's relationship to the economy today. They, and surly others like them, with their experience in academics, the law and intelligence activities, would be expected to be inspired by the research, detective work and pure romance the understanding of history requires. Today there is an environment to satisfy that passion that half a century ago could only have been dreamed possible by them. Today uncovering historical contexts no longer needs the specialized environments of their backgrounds but is available in nearly every popular Internet media resource. Morris' interest would be exhausted by Virtual Earth. Jean's curiosity about the facts behind intimate tales would have her lost forever in the online period newspapers. Harvey's insatiable curiosity about the elevation of work of hands to skill would be intrigued forever in the variety of interpretive presentations found in every form on the Internet. Despite all of these resources, nothing can compete with the intellectual experience of the collections left from these early years. They stand out as our common ground for a conversation on reaching a consensus on a single history. Where there is a broad yearning for this consensus, history becomes
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an identity. And when everyone has equal access to that this elevates a heritage destination to a pilgrimage site. When that level of historic identity is known and shared it becomes part of the economy. ***
T
he environment for research of all types is limitless today. So the ability to know the details of what happened where we live, back through all periods of time, is open to everyone. One detail is all that is needed to create the conversation that sends us toward the next detail that leads toward that community narrative that is the center of an identity. This is not just real on the part of the homeowner but on the part of those seeking closure for memories of places dimly haunting their long ago pasts or family histories. To some this is troublesome. Knowledge of local history can arouse some defensive responses. The most common is a suspicion that history is hiding things and those out to uncover them are busy bodies using historic records as leverage. This conspiracy perception is more common in local history probably because it was justifiable at one time in the past. The comfort level with lore as opposed to knowledge of verifiable facts shows how strong ambivalence to what knowledge of history may mean is as an argument for those with such fears. All these privacy concerns, along with questioning motives for being curious, became irrelevant with the advent of the Internet. None of these common concerns should have ever related to Saugerties anyway. The history in Saugerties transcends that of the normal small town monoculture. In the ebb and flow of a high stakes industrial community like historic Saugerties there will always be things Aerial photo by Morris Rosenblum from 1955 and enlargement showing Cantine Island from the east. (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection)
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happening that the common mind hasn't a prayer of grasping. In such a community, under every salacious story, lies the energy and action that attract energy and action. When that is all stacked up it makes for the dramas that populate a real history; not gossip. There should not be the fear of finding the philanderer, embezzler, adulterer, drunkard and town idiot in the story of Saugerties because the high school athlete made good, the war hero, the lottery winner and the beauty that became an actress are not to Saugerties what they are to communities with less on their identity plate. Saugerties needs its newly invested to bring out its history... even if that threatens the image many around them have come to believe. None are more aware of history then new arrivals. Nothing is more important than knowing your neighborhood. The old saying "familiarity breeds contempt" describes more often than not the born and bred approach to what is obvious. The charm of the old to a newcomer is the embarrassment of decline to those who have allowed only that to define their lifetime. Chances are a question asked of a life-long local about something obviously historical has already brought a kind of dismissive response designed to discourage further interest. You're assumed response is if those with a lifetime of awareness don't have this knowledge, is it of any value?
Aerial photos by Morris Rosenblum from 1949 showing details of relationship of Cantine Island to Barclay Heights before decline of the mills and suburbanization of the 1950s began. (Digital montage of contact prints in Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection)
The answer is that the locals are not what you think they are. There were 9,000 people in Saugerties in 1955 and by 1975 there were 20,000. Most of Saugerties' population today is the product of three generations that come from a different heritage than this local history. They came with IBM, the Thruway and the way of life that gave their parents and grandparents. They had been subjected for half a century to a different standard for identifying with history compared to the many, many generations that they overshadowed.
That comfortable feeling the promise of IBM brought is today mythical, and so less real than the promise water power kept ages before. Both the newly arrived and those most recent generations of local residents must heighten their awareness about where their present
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beliefs about their patch of soil here come from. A process of combining that special awareness of history with a neighbor's can take a mechanical turk, grass-roots approach to a conversation about the history of a neighborhood and grow into an indisputable history of all of Saugerties that once again conveys an identity that the imagination can find some comfortable in. Everyone thinks we had something special here once. They just need a neighborhood history, just like in the old days, to know where that feeling comes from. History should not be a transaction between a single writer and a single reader. It should be on the scale of communities. Regardless of if your home is in the uptown Village or the South Side or Barclay Heights or Glasco or West Camp or Daisy or West Saugerties or the Saxton Flats or Flatbush or Kaatsbaan, the history of that singular place dates back to well before the Revolution and experienced events marked by every period of American history from then right up to that event that brought you to live 1955 aerial black and white photo of Morris Rosenblum taken from over Barclay Heights digitally enhanced for adding color and developed as a poster. here. Information on all of this is (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection) available and in need of your attention. This is not just an identity possessed by those possessing property! The identity of an Historic Saugerties is that of a network. In the 1890's there was such an attraction to travel Europe to experience the land of ancestors that some cities that we assume today are centuries old were created then new just to attract these heritage tourists. Today we are not building castles along the Hudson to prove our heritage. The imagination has turned so to the virtual that this doesn't matter anymore. Today it is enough to sense a spiritual connection to a presence to become attached to a place. People long for an actual connection to a spirit that they feel visiting a poet's grave or the scenic overlook captured by a painter. Being Historic Saugerties means knowing where the camps on the west side of the Hudson were if you possess property in West Camp. There are millions of people that can trace their ancestor’s first arrival
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on American soil to the Palatine immigration. Being Historic Saugerties gives all the Kaatsbaan property owners a special connection to the estate property owners along the Hudson in the story they share of the Revolution. Saratoga and the burning of Kingston should be just as much a Saugerties experience for any of the millions of Revolutionary War site enthusiast. Being Historic Saugerties means communicating with the potential millions that Opus 40's visitors would grow to if every aspect of blue stone were understood by every property owner that had a quarry. Equally, knowing a property's relationship to the building of the Thruway or to the creation of the Barclay Heights developments or to the brick making or ice houses on the Hudson or any number of topics Historic Saugerties encompasses that multitudes of history enthusiasts are interested in is something that identifies one with the community.
An assembly of columns discovered in a Google search copied from a Google Books page to demonstrate never-before available information on extremely local history topics from 1836, such as geology and natural history studies, descriptions of manufacturies, and discussions with historic figures
Knowing history and knowing how to tie up its loose ends is a way that every property owner can contribute to an economic development process and at the same time recognize how that effects them personally. Every visitor brings income into the community in the form of businesses created and wages paid. The realization that comes from knowing history is this is not new. Saugerties has been attracting visitors since the first boatloads of early industrial development enthusiasts used it as a campus to study new technologies. Then these were followed by those they spread the word to that came just to hike in the mountains. Knowing the facts of history opens one to be able to realize how much credit others are taking, and profit they've made on, what was indeed done here the longest and is our historical past.
Saugerties suffers nothing by retaining and building on its history as a destination. The artificial successes that have been grasped on with their outside ideas totally alien to Saugerties' historic assets have had Saugerties competing for businesses and jobs. As a destination, businesses and jobs would compete to be in Saugerties. ***
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n summary, the transactions that have taken place in the years since the mills suffered their final catastrophic declines over three decades ago, splitting the basic lands of the early mills,
Page 16 of 17, Cantine Island: An argument for knowing local history by Michael Sullivan Smith 2014
leave issues still to be resolved. The preservation required of the small parts of these lands that yet retain their historic identity has been shown in earlier presentations. An interest that can be sustained in the neighborhood that lives among these relics is what is needed to keep the rest of Saugerties and the world aware of their importance and existence. The Cantine Island land's historic bounds have not included any of the waterworks for well over a century. Title to the lands in need of preservation falls completely within the jurisdiction of projects under the authority of federal and state programs. The dam is a FERC area of control. The canals fall under an HFA mortgage as part of a subsidized HUD program for a National Register Eligible site and the remains of the Sheffield Paper Mill site are involved in grant programs under the Environmental Quality Bond Act. This makes it a responsibility of their owners to consider the cultural impact of not maintaining the sites as historic landmarks. This account of the mills of Saugerties hopefully will initiate a more thorough study by the residents of this part of the village of Saugerties. The concept of local interest refining the history of neighborhoods gives purpose to this writing. This essay along with a presentation are offered on the occasion of the Cantine Island community's day for discussion of the history of their common lands. *** Michael Sullivan Smith, May 14, 2014
The last survey made to the property descriptions imposed in the 1903 agreement between Sheffield, Gould, Cantine and the Sheffield Paper Company on the water rights to the Esopus Creek at Saugerties. The “letter of the law” of the 1903 “second right” water use is followed as the gate house restricts the flow and the fore bay maintains the 14 foot depth of the “canal #2” to the pressure and turbine horse power specifications. (Daniel N. Lamb, Jr. Collection)
Cantine Island: An argument for knowing local history by Michael Sullivan Smith 2014, Page 17 of 17