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.