The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties Michael Sullivan Smith
From the river
From the south
From the north
You can’t be what you can’t see.
Continuing... Pages 8 to 16
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
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.
Barclay's second interest after this was in iron components for the shipbuilding he'd planned to do along his extensive shoreline of the Esopus shoals into the Hudson River. When his iron master was killed in an accident he sold the iron works he'd built to investors in the West Point Foundry who had hired John Simmons as their iron master. Saugerties then became famous for its iron production when Simmons established the first application in America of the double puddling process, revolutionizing that industry by producing the first purified iron in America. The strength of the iron produced by the Ulster Iron Works was the standard of the navy for chain and armor plate for the rest of the century. The legendary quality of the product of this mill kept it relevant for over 50 years. Watercolor sketch and toned engraving of William Guy Wall - Edward Clark’s lead works at the Glenerie falls showing his metal wire suspension bridge; Henry Barclay’s iron works and the Ripley lead works at the Barclay dam, Saugerties; early 1830s - some of the earliest representations of industrial settings in the Hudson River School of painting
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After the iron works closed down its buildings made way for those of the Barclay Fibre
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
The Ulster Lead Works in an engravers proof of a painting by Jasper Cropsey from 1845
Company, which in 1887 was developing the new Sulphide Process that used wood to make pulp for paper. This transformation was happening in the midst of Saugerties' second wind as a place of innovative development just when the Industrial Revolution was racing full steam across America.
The Ulster Lead Works in a detail from an engraved Bank of Ulster bank note
Observe that though Henry was long dead, the name of this company bears his name as an homage! Henry Barclay had become a legend mainly associated with the paper making industry and the developer of this process, William Henry Parsons, was the president of the American Pulp and Paper Association. After Henry Barclay's death, the management and then ownership of the Barclay family paper mill went to Joseph Sheffield. When the original Barclay paper mill burned in 1872, William R. Sheffield, of that new generation, began a course for the mills that continued Saugerties as a beacon of industrial entrepreneurship for the rest of the century.
The derelict Ripley and Jewett lead mill below Barclay’s dam after it lost its water rights when the dam was rebuilt in 1858. From a photo by Edward Jernegan, The Pearl, volume 1, number 3; page 17
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The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
For the rest of this survey the paper mills will be the Sheffield mills and Henry Barclay will be left as a patriarch personality related to Saugerties as a whole. The Sheffield paper mill had other operators over time. It was called J. B. Sheffield & Co. Inc., the Pennsylvania and New York Paper Company, the Sheffield Paper Company, Diamond Mills Paper Company, Fabricon Products, the Ulster County Paper Mills, Ulster Paper Mills, and finally the Empire State Paper Company. But until its demolition after 1968 the mills were essentially the same look and feel, and had the same purpose, as William Sheffield had created as a 25 year old in 1872 - so they are the Sheffield mill. Here we'll center the more recent history on the photographic evidence from the 1950's and the only structure that remains of the Sheffield mill complex, The Bindery. “The Saugerties
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The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
The bindery which was built at the same time as Martin Cantine’s mill and the Barclay Fibre Company pulp mill on the iron works land.
Manufacturing Company” is the name under which, in 1892, partners did business in this building. This building was completed in 1888 as a blank book and envelope factory and as the Saugerties Manufacturing Company had a storied history all by itself, with its Sterling composition books, original snap open three ring binders and first spiral bound note books. The Saugerties Manufacturing Company name was used right up to and through the Depression and then in 1941 was changed to the F. L. Russell Corporation. Since this building always had a paper products function separate from paper making it has always been referred to locally as “The Bindery”. After This Bindery no longer made paper products it was occupied by Knaust Bros. for laboratory operations from 1936 until, during the WWII, it was converted to a manufacturing facility for RCA. After the war GE planned to use it but Sprague ended up with the lease for its Ferroxcube subsidiary and they were there throughout the 1950's until the early 1960's when they built their building near the thruway.
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Records are vague from the late 1960's on when it is assumed to have been vacant until being rehabilitated for senior housing as The Mill at the turn of this century. The Bindery is the sole vestige of the 19th century mills in Saugerties. Its building, though, was actually the first move away from mills to factories and after this every new industrial structure in Saugerties housed a factory operation. The Bindery was built to house the factory component of an innovative manufacturing plan. The plan was to take raw wood in at the old iron mill site, convert it to paper pulp, use this in the paper making lines of the paper mill, and then make this freshly made paper into blank books, or ledgers. Along with a partner that was the largest distributor of stationery in the United States, William Sheffield planned to use the advantages of water power and this self contained manufacturing plan to corner the stationery market, a common way of thinking for the time.
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
The Pearl, volume 1, Number 7; page 52
The Ulster Iron Works in the post-Civil War era as viewed from “Dublin” in photograph from the estate of John Simmons that has hung on the wall of the Rosenblum and Lamb law office for a half century.
The location of the iron works photographed by Lionel de Lesser published in the 1905 “Picturesque Ulster” picturing William Parson’s pulp mill that replaced the iron works in 1888
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Meanwhile, a young employee of the Sheffield mill, Martin Cantine, who had started there at the age of 16, was setting the stage for entering the twentieth century by founding the second of the second generation of paper related businesses in Saugerties. He established a paper coating factory on the north side of Barclay's dam in 1888 that at first used steam to generate electricity to power its machinery, just as any other factory of the time. But in 1902 he partnered with his cousin by marriage, the financier Edwin Gould, who bought the old iron works property with its first right to the water of the Esopus Creek, to make hydroelectric power. William Sheffield's plan to leverage water power to increase profits was realized by Martin Cantine and the Cantine mill rapidly expanded to fill the entire lower Partition Street area of the village, and overshadow the vast complex of the Sheffield Mills below it. By the early 'teens, as Martin Cantine ran out of space, he looked to expand onto the old iron works property, but the capture of the waters of the Esopus Creek at the Ashokan Reservoir had taken away the advantage of a steady supply of water flow in the Esopus Creek for power. Instead he made his expansion on land along the
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
West Shore Rail Road tracks. His 1914 “Tissue Factory” was the last of the great Saugerties industrial structures to be built and was the first to have a location unrelated to river transportation and water power. The building of the “Tissue Factory” signaled the end of Saugerties identity with innovative products and businesses. Its reputation since the earliest days of the early Industrial Revolution as a perfect environment for encouraging entrepreneurial thinking was lost. Without the relationship to water Saugerties was just another industrial town along the railroad. From that point onward trucks and highways and the electric grid all ironically passing through this perfect geographic location, passing it by to make what began here possible anywhere.
The Ulster Iron Works in rare post-Civil War era photograph and again the same view after the turn of the century from a post card showing the remains of the Barclay Fibre Company pulp mill buildings.
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The mills of Saugerties ran until their machinery wore out. As less and less were employed in them these mills seemed to just take up space. Very, very few remember the day when the wrecking ball and dynamite took down the Sheffield mills though more remember the fire
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
1950
The Martin Cantine Company owned the Ulster Iron Works water rights and used them to generate hydroelectric power after the turn of the century. The iron works property became known as Cantine Island.
that destroyed the Cantine mill in 1978. The Sheffield mill is tucked away down on tide water, out of sight, but the Cantine mill, right at the bridge, left a big empty overgrown space right on a highway route, a blatant reminder that the past needed to be replaced. 1905
1911
In the late 1990's trees that grew up through the fallen brick of the demolished Sheffield buildings were surrounded by a layer of topsoil, seeded into lawn and made into a pretty waterfront park. As the derelict bindery became rehabilitated into apartments a sense of gentrification set in. The bones of Henry Barclay's first mill, hidden beside the park in a wooded corner of the creek are still visible within the massive foundations left by the 1872 replacement. Besides The Bindery this is all that remains of the mills of Saugerties. The Cantine Mill was tellingly made the Diamond Mill, named for what was thought to be the name of Barclay's dam after it was rebuilt by a partnership of the Martin Cantine and the Diamond Mill Paper companies. This is a small hint that more confusion is sure to come.
1950
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You can feel the lament in the tone of this presentation. Nothing remains to preserve and there is so much that we've lost. This present
The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
generation I fear will not read or be read to or taught this story, and Saugerties will slip away from the awareness of why it is special. Politicians and educators seem so wary and cautious; afraid to acknowledge anything, much less this noble heritage; almost having a death wish for this history. I hope what you've seen here will give you cause to be bold the next time something uncaring of preservation is suggested as the “will� of our community. Remember, of all beings we alone are aware of our past so we can imagine how our today will be known to the future.
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The Forgotten Mills of Saugerties
A photograph by Lionel de Lesser published in the 1905 “Picturesque Ulster� showing the Esopus harbor and mills pictured in the view chosen by Henry Barclay for his residence in 1825
A copy from pages in a Google Books scan of a report to the New York State legislature in 1835 of economic output by counties
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