It Happened Here--Z. Pratt, (Part 2) Farmer, Banker, Soldier, Monument Maker

 

By 1844 the inevitable was coming to pass. The Hemlock forests around Prattsville were almost all gone. Pratt had begun investing in tanneries near large stands of hemlocks in other locations, in the Catskills and the Alleghenys in Pennsylvania. But Pratt was not about to abandon his town. High meadows had replaced the dense forest, around Prattville. But in this too Pratt saw an opportunity. Within a parcel of 365 acres Pratt built a model dairy farm, to produce high quality butter, a commodity that could be shipped relatively far distances, like the New York City market. The rest of his life he became a promoter of agriculture in his corner of the Catskills.

In 1843 he opened the Prattsville bank to put his money to work for individuals and businesses in his community. In an era long before personal credit reports and statements of financial solvency, bankers relied much more on their gut instincts about would-be borrowers. Pratt became famous for his “hand and face test”. If a customer approached him for a loan, he would follow his interview with the customer by studying the customer’s face and examining the customer’s hands. If his face appeared honest and his hands were warn and calloused from hard work, the customer was more likely to receive his loan. Never one to ignore a financial opportunity, once while on a walk, Pratt met a man who asked him for a small loan. Impressed with the man’s need and sincerity, Pratt would have given him a loan, out of pocket, but he had no money with him. Pratt took a flat stone and a rusty nail found along the road and wrote the man out a signed “bank draft” on the stone. The man took it to Pratt’s bank and promptly received his money.

  

Stories about the personable and frankly eccentric Zadock Pratt abound. Pratt, missed the opportunity for military glory in the war of 1812 so in later years sought out a commission in the local militia. With his political connections he secured a cannon used in the 1814 battle of Plattsburgh. Not content with the usual annual militia musters; Col. Pratt often turned them into a kind of military extravaganza. Once he staged a re-creation of Napoleon’s Battle of Lodi over the bridge in Windham, complete with fireworks, with, no doubt, “Emperor” Zadock commanding Le Grande Armee. On other occasions he bought dilapidated barns from their owners, paying them handsomely, then blowing them up with his artillery company’s cannon. 
 

The owner of the “world’s largest tannery” had never been shy about promoting himself or his accomplishments but in middle age he began to think about preserving his legacy. Pratt had a chance encounter with an unemployed stonecutter who asked for a “loan”. In return for the money Pratt gave him, he supposedly put the stone cutter to work on a large boulder, carving a bust of Pratt. Unfortunately, the rock was on a piece of land owned by a neighbor who didn’t think much of the idea of Mr. Pratt’s visage gracing his property, so the project had to be abandoned. But Pratt also owned a large rock outcropping south of town which, over the years he adorned with a variety of images, that showed the workmanship of probably a number of artisans.

A profile of Pratt and a memorial to the strong horses and giant hemlocks that were the foundation of his tanning business, were followed by his self-styled coat of arms inscribed “do well and doubt not”, a picture of his 

tannery, and a muscular arm holding a hammer and a hand containing a scroll citing his work in congress in founding the bureau of statistics.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 A wreath honoring his two children,                                                                                     George W. and Julia H. was carved with the verse, “Let virtue be your greatest care, and study your delights, so will your days be ever fair and peaceable  your nights.”* Also chiseled into the rock face were the words “One Million sides of Sole Leather Tanned with Hemlock Bark in Twenty Years by Zadock Pratt”.

 

Pratt turned the area into a town park. At the base of the rocks he had a memorial carved to his favorite dogs and horses, where several of them were buried.

 

Pratt had begun a tomb for himself cut in to the Pratt Rocks Park he had created, but it was not to be. His stonemason complained the rock was too hard to carve, and the partially carved sepulcher leaked. He was further frustrated when a large Hemlock coffin (what else!) being prepared for him by a local craftsman was washed away when spring floods on the Schoharie destroyed the cabinetmaker’s shop. When death did overtake the redoubtable Z. Pratt, following a short illness in 1871, he would be buried in the customary way in the village cemetery beneath a large obelisk befitting any successful industrialist/entrepreneur of the era—a rather mundane end for such a remarkable man.

An unusual NYSHM commemorating 

the 200th anniversary of Pratt's Birth

at the Prattsville cemetery

His obelisk is just visible on the right.

*Pratt's only son, George was wounded at the second battle of Manassas in1862 and died a few weeks later. Pratt, heartbroken at his loss had the optimistic verse struck from his children's carving.

Marker of the Week -- Who? What?

First the who--William Watts Folwell was a  bright young man who was born in the tiny town of Romulus, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He graduated from Hobart College, served in the Civil War as an engineer, and like many native New Yorkers found his calling outside of New York State. At age 36 he would become President of the University of Minnesota, which was then comprised of one building,with less than one hundred students and had a library containing a single sixteen volume encyclopedia. For fifteen years he served as President turning the institution into a university, and fighting off the challenges of traditionalists who wanted to turn back to a classical curriculum emphasizing Latin and Greek. For the next twenty three years he taught political science and then retired to write a four volume history of the state.  

Second, the what--At age 96, in the year he died, Folwell wrote his autobiography, in which he described himself as a "pioneer of culture."  Today we would be more comfortable with the phrase "a pioneer in higher education," with all the cultural enrichment that is entailed in a liberal arts education.

It Happened Here --Veterans Laid to Rest

Cemetery on Turnpike Rd., Cambridge

                

                                                                 

Across New York there 

are many NYSHMs

marking the graves 

of veterans

 

Encampment outside the walls of Ft. Ticonderoga

Very often on Colonial, Revolutionary or War of 1812, battlefields or encampments these are the only markers; the individual graves are unmarked.

Ft. Pike, Pike Rd., Sackets Harbor

The Graves of some 200 War of 1812 American Soldiers were lost to history until accidentally rediscovered in 1988!

Riceville Cemetery, Riceville Rd. Mayfield

Others are remembered in
cemeteries far from where
they were buried.

                                                                                               

Salem Cemetery, Archibald St., Salem

 Many veterans who survived their battles, and returned to live in their communities and live out their natural lives are remembered in community cemeteries, or in single family plots     

Two Albany Co. Militiamen who
may have served at the battle of
Saratoga lie buried in a plot off
of Creble Rd. near Rte. 9W,                     South Bethlehem

Up until WWI recruits from an area/community
 often served together in one unit. If that unit
came under heavy attack or saw repeated heavy
action it might be decimated.  The result
could be catastrophic for the communities from
which they came, for years to come.  In the Civil War tiny Hartford, NY, in northern Washington County contributed 65 of 134 men enlisted in Company E of the 123 Regiment, New York Volunteers, in one day. Fourteen Hartford men from that company died. If the casualty averages hold for that unit, 2x that number would have suffered wounds and half of them would have resulted in amputations!

With nine others who died in five other units, the men of Hartford might have suffered some 69 casualties, dead and wounded!

It may come as a surprise that New York is also home to one of the larger northern Civil War cemeteries of Confederate veterans. In 1864 Elmira's Camp Rathbun, built to train Union army inductees from central New York, was converted into a prisoner of war camp. Before long, the prison was grossly overcrowded and with appropriations falling behind increased
need, prisoners were reduced to starvation rations. With inadequate housing (some 2000 remained housed in tents well into the New York winter) alarming numbers succumbed to disease. By war's end only the infamous Confederate prison camp,  Andersonville, would see a higher death rate*.

Confederate Graves At Woodlawn National Cemetery

Confederate Monument

Perhaps a single bright spot in this rather dismal episode was the work of one man,  John W. Jones, a former escaped slave charged with burying the 2973 Confederate dead from Elmira Prison.  Jones meticulously buried each veteran, recording the location of each grave and preserving each soldier's identity, so that in later years individual monuments could be erected to the veterans. 

Union graves at
Woodlawn National
Cemetery, Elmira

Church St., Valatie

Throughout New York 
State there are NYSHMs
attesting to the sacrifice
of New York's veterans
and the communities 
they came from.





*A future post will be devoted to "Hellmira".



Next Week--Z. Pratt (Part 2) Farmer, Banker, Soldier, Monument Maker

It Happened Here--Zadock Pratt and

the Town He Built (Part 1)

He must have looked like a young Rip Van Winkle, before his long sleep, hiking up the heavily forested mountains and down into the deep cloves of the Catskills with his dog at his side. But the young Zadock Pratt was no henpecked husband escaping a shrewish wife by going hunting for small game in the mountains. Zadock Pratt was hunting for trees, specifically Eastern Hemlocks – lots of them. And quite unlike the laid-back and lazy Rip, Zadock reflected much more the image presented in another book, published fifteen years after Washington Irving’s 1819 tale.

  

In 1830 Alexis de Toqueville visited America. In 1834,1835 he would publish Democracy in America, vol. 1 and 2. Among the things that impressed the young French aristocrat was the spirit he saw in many Americans. Unlike his countrymen, divided into the wealthy nobility who disdained the pursuit of wealth as vulgar and crass, and the masses who largely despaired of ever becoming wealthy, many Americans, Toqueville observed, actively – even fervently pursued their dreams of fortune, through their own efforts. A second trait Toqueville observed and admired was the tendency for many Americans to embrace public service. Both of these traits Zadock Pratt would exhibit in abundance.

 

Zadock Pratt was born in 1790, in Stephentown in Rensselaer County New York. He learned from his father the craft of tanning hides to produce leather.  After an apprenticeship, Zaddock worked for his father and brothers as a journeyman saddler at their tannery before going into business on his own operating a general store, and selling his saddles and leather goods. Zadock worked sixteen hours a day and slept under the store counter to save money. Often bartering his goods for produce from his neighbors he, in turn, sold their produce in New York City. 

Zadock returned to the tannery business forming a partnership with two of his older brothers. For several years the business grew. In 1819, Pratt, after buying out one of his brothers, embarked on a trading venture to sell leather goods and harnesses in rural Canada, however, when he returned to the United States a major setback greeted him. In his absence, his tannery had burned.  Over the next four years Zadock and his older brother Ezra rebuilt their business. In the course of this time Zadock's ambitions out grew those of his brother. The younger Pratt dreamed of building a tanning factory.  In 1824 Zadock ended the partnership, and began a search for hemlock forests that would span four counties.  Zadock selected a site in the little hamlet of Schohariekill.

 Encountering skepticism and hostility from some of the inhabitants, Pratt declared his intention to “live with (the residents) not on them.” The tanning business had a rather checkered reputation in the Catskills. Tanning was hard on the environment. Large tanneries stank for miles around; the acid effluent from their vats killed fish and degraded streams and tanners clear cut hemlock forests for their bark, leaving stacks of downed timber--an ecological catastrophe and a dangerous fire hazard. (see NYSHMS:It Happened Here on11/19/13.)
 

Tannery-based communities in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the Northeast had some similarities to mining communities in the West in the second half of the nineteenth century. Entrepreneurs would come into an area and set up their operations. Workers with little other resources than strong backs and a desire to make a living wage would be attracted to the area. Shanty towns would spring up, and when the ore/hemlocks were all extracted, or if the bottom fell out of the market for the commodity produced, the operators would shut down their operations and leave with their profits (or losses). Left behind would be the wreckage of a community, destined to struggle on for decades or become a ghost town.

  

Pratt Museum, Rte 23 Prattsville

Having declared his intention to make this community his home, Zadock launched into his tannery project.  Zadock’s tremendous enthusiasm, boundless energy and willingness to work along side of his workers gradually won over all but his most skeptical critics. He developed a reputation of being a boss who would never ask a worker to do anything he would not or could not do himself – this, in an industry which routinely required workers to handle 100 pound skins, clean fetid vats and scrape hides with scraps of putrefying hair and fat attached.  Pratt bought a large parcel of meadow straddling the Schoharie creek. He  immediately started damming the creek to build a large millpond, declaring his intention to be able to swim the length of it before the year was out. On November 1, 1824, breaking a skim of ice before him, he made his swim.  The next spring he began his mill. At 550 feet by 43 feet with 350 vats it was the largest tanning operation in the world.

Kiosk at Pratt Rocks, Rte 23, Prattsville

Soon after beginning his tannery, Pratt began building a large boarding house for his workers. He would follow this, over time, with the construction of 100 homes, built for workers and sold to them on reasonable terms. Unlike most other tannery operations, many debarked hemlock logs would find their way to the Pratt sawmill and into the homes built for Pratt workers and buildings of other Pratt enterprises.  The Tanner partnered with other businessmen and entrepreneurs to open a variety of businesses. An indefatigable businessman, Pratt seemed virtually unable to turn his back on any enterprise that seemed likely to be able to turn a profit. A grist mill, a cabinet shop, a machine shop, a hat factory, an oil cloth factory, 3 cotton mills, a match factory, an iron foundry, a chair factory, an India rubber factory, several general stores and a printing plant which produced the town’s newspaper all came into existence, the result of Pratt’s partnerships and money. 

Pratt Home/Museum, Rte 23, Prattsville

 Though not particularly religious, Zadock Pratt appreciated the salutatory influence that religion could have on a community and the steadying influence it might have on its workforce.To both the Dutch Reformed and the Methodists he supplied 1/3 the costs of their new buildings and to a Baptist printing company that produced bible tracts he gave a $4000 no interest loan and provided them with an office and two houses, rent free.
 

The Prattsville Tanner’s education was limited¹ to what his mother was able to teach him when he was a child, and whatever business training he would learn from the saddle-maker with whom he apprenticed and his father and brothers. Pratt developed a respect, even a veneration of the written word and for education that some people denied an education come to hold. Over the course of his life with the help of editors and ghostwriters, he would write an autobiography, and numerous articles about his tannery, his dairy farm and tanning and agriculture in general. In an age when tanning methods were closely guarded secrets, he shared his tanning methods with all. He reveled in his son’s academic achievements and in 1842 promoted the Prattsville Academy, a secondary school for the sciences and classics, offering to pay for half of its construction. 

Prattsville Cemetery, Rte 23A, Prattsville

From Zadock’s early days in the Catskills, Pratt held various town offices. From Prattsville he was twice elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Prattsville tanner took these responsibilities very seriously participating in every role call vote during his first term and refusing to leave Washington, to return to his business even when spring floods washed out his mill dam and caused major damage to his tannery one year. During his tenure he promoted the first survey for a continental railroad, the creation of the Bureau of Statistics and the construction of the Washington monument. He was most proud of his sponsorship of a successful bill to roll back the price of U.S. postage, and the bill to finance a survey of the continental railroad--accomplishments he had inscribed on his cemetery monument!

 

1 This would become an issue in one of his political campaigns when an opponent, a member of the Greene County Bar Association would accuse him of being “practically illiterate”.

Marker of the Week--Jacacks' Landing! Well, maybe.

Rte 89, East Varick

Let us hope I misread this sign at first, and it was not a misreading of the map/documents of the committee who ordered the sign or the foundryman who produced it.


 Next Week--Veterans Laid to Rest

In Two Weeks--Z. Pratt (Part 2) Farmer, Banker, Monument Maker