A Treatise on the Art of Reading
Since the age of the Internet reading has become an art cultivated and practiced only by the accomplished and discerning.
Just as art was declared "dead" when the concept of "media" became common, writing with the rise of the Internet has lost its value as a primary source of information.
When you can find just when "a picture is worth a thousand words" was first written instantly with a single search on the Internet there is little need to read all the books that may have been written to explain that adage.
Understanding Media was one of these. But to the discerning reader that doesn't even have to be searched; it's obvious just by the context.
Here, if this fit the normal pattern of writing for the topic, would be a formula for the algorithm that resolved this pattern of thought. That in itself explains why reading has become an art.
Writing is controlled by focus; reading is a scattered process subject to the whims of the imagination.
Writing is simply the task of distilling thought down to communication. Ninety-nine percent of those thoughts are "selfies" and the other one percent are only read fully by an extremely small circle of interest.
Only the discriminating reader can glean from all this information what is important. That is art.
"Old Saugerties" is to be the touchstone; the reference key; for a delving into the essence of the art of reading. It is to be a medium that explains what the art of reading is through examples that use Old Saugerties as the central topic for involvement in this process.
For example:
THE POWDER MILL EXPLOSION.—Mr. Laflin,
one of the owners of the Saugerties mill,
was sitting in his house, seven miles from the
scene of disaster, at the time of the melancholy
occurrence, but, even at that distance the
shock was so terrific, that many farmers supposed
a cannon had been discharged in their
respective dwellings, while others imagined
that a thunderbolt had struck in their immediate
vicinity: the earth appeared to give one
great convulsive heave, shaking the houses,
jarring the furniture, and creating a widespread
consternation. The instant Mr. L.
experienced the shock, he was conscious of
its cause—he ran to his stable, harnessed his
team, drove to the nearest physician's, and in
a few minutes the Dr. and Mr. L. were at the
mills. The sight there was appalling beyond
conception: the mills were entirely gone,
even to their foundation. Deep circular grooves
were made in the ground around, as though it
had been violently ploughed up. Of the six
persons blown up, the half of an arm was the
largest piece found. Portions of the bodies
were picked up in every direction—even the
very fingers were disjointed: bones of the
legs and arms, ribs, pieces of skull, and other
small portions of the unfortunate men, were
found in every direction, some to the distance
of a quarter of a mile around the works.—
[N. Y. Sun] - Jamaica NY Long Island Farmer
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 1843
This example is a cut and paste clipping from a newspaper page pdf image where the optical character reader has allowed copying the text to a word processor. The only edits have been from where blemishes in the paper make obvious misreads. Otherwise, the formating is as in the original newspaper column.
this is a random find from a keyword search of a microfilm archive that has been digitized to make it searchable on the Internet.
To one accomplished in the art of reading a find such as this is akin to the sensation of intimacy felt by a painter panning and zooming over the brush strokes of a rare masterwork digitally captured in a museum and set free on the Internet.
This simile is not far afield since the contemporary cosmopolitanism of the Internet encourages a painter's acquired sensitivity to words as honed as a reader's must be to the content in images.
This report from 1843 reads like a beginning of a mystery novel, and it should. The source is the N.Y. Sun and it was know for sensational stories and for being the honing ground for writers that would go on to be the recognized literary names of the period.
The owner of the Sun, Moses Yale Beach, would have known Mr. Laflin and Saugerties well. Beach was in Saugerties from 1828 until 1836 when he left to take over the Sun from his brother-in-law, Benjamin Day. From these days in Saugerties he is recognized as one of the founders of the paper mill and is down in the history of paper making as setting up the first fordrinier machine in America. He had arrived as the inventor of a paper pulp preparation machine. It may be this connection to this first efficient machine manufacture of paper that made it possible for his Sun to be famous as the first “penny” paper.
Mr. Laflin was Matthew Laflin who came to Saugerties in 1829 to set up a water powered ax manufacturing factory. Along with his brothers and in-laws he set up a gun powder manufacturing operation at a site on the Plattekill Creek, fortunately far from the population center of the village where he was in his home when this story takes place.
The Laflin mill would go up in explosions twice more as this business grew to be second only to DuPont in this field by the time of the Civil War, with operations in many states and into Canada. Their main office ended up in Chicago where H. Dwight Laflin, a son, had the honor of blasting off a cannon to announce the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president.
The Laflin family retained a presence in Saugerties in a number of mansions in the center of the village for over eighty years. They were still visiting the seat of their family lore into the 1990's. The residences were where the senior housing is on Main street, where the Bridge Street Family Practice is, and where the diner is. On Market street where the Sawyer Savings Bank is now is where Mr. Laflin had the house in 1843 that shook from the explosion of his powder mill seven miles away.
At the time of this story powder manufacture was mainly for home use. The development of this business paralleled the growth of bluestone quarrying. Blasting powder was used extensively for clearing the top burden from the bedrock for exploration and expansion.
All of these facts can be read into this short item picked up as a filler story by a country newspaper whose editor combed the big city newspapers to add the interest that would sell his product. The only reason it survives is luck. But it's not luck, but art, that has made it useful as something that exists on the Internet. Without the ability to “read into” the story these relationships it would only be a curiosity. In the art of reading it is a powder keg of potential.
From close to the dawn of this story is found a short clip with an even greater range of inference:
It appears from the Ulster Palladium, that
Mr. John Griffiths principal Engineer of the
Iron works of Henry Barclay, Esq. was plunged
by his horse into the Esopus Creek, and
drowned on Wednesday last.
(Catskill Recorder, June 11, 1828)
that creates a popular context for a more arcane area whose depths only the most dedicated to the art of reading have sounded: the unpublished handwritten document.
This brings up a critical measure of what can actually be advanced through the art of reading. A topic can only become universally known through machine-readable characters. Images, both of manuscripts and of documentary photographic representations, are not searchable unless they carry in their metadata transcription or description. That leaves everything that is not printed or that is from personal records made prior to the typewriter in need of future-proofing if there is to be any chance that their content is to be culturally significant.
It is only through the art of reading that previously lost, discriminated against or unrelated to content can add to or correct the contexts that previous media has populated the Internet with. The demands that just one discerning reader's interests bring to this art creates a web that involves all.
Though the precise events surrounding the unhappy demise of Mr. John Griffiths in early June, 1828 are not available, a recent transcription of the microfilmed pages of the ledger book and letters of Henry Barclay held by the New York Historical Society contains passages that this event may have initiated.
The back story that relates to this drama centers around Henry Barclay, Esq, who three years before improved the water resources of the Esopus Creek to standards that could attract industry and an industrial population to Saugerties.
He is referenced as a gentleman in deference to the relationship his father-in-law William Alexander, Lord Sterling, a hero if the Revolution, held as an early practitioner of scientific iron making pursuits. Saugerties held at this time a large contingent of the Alexander family as Lady Mary, Henry's mother-in-law and Jane, the sister of his wife Catherine, and her large family with brother-in-law John Watts Kearney, had set up primary residence there.
Henry had built two mills to prove the resources of the water power of the Esopus and by the time of this event most accounts would have us believe that the location of the iron works and its susceptibility to floods was the reason he sold this development to the owners of the West Point Foundry.
However, the use of the description “principle Engineer” indicates that this plan may have ended up dead in the water along with its prime motivator. It remains to be learned if Mr. Griffiths had connections to Lord Sterling's investments and family but if this is so his death may have brought about a loss of family interest in that enterprise.
Sometimes things are made as clear as day and not in a personal journal or diary but in an account placed in print speaking in such obvious terms on a well recognized topic that it stimulates even the most inarticulate reader. This advertisement from early 1826 is an example.
Valuable site for Manufactories at Saugerties
The Woodstock and Saugerties Ge-
neral Manufacturing and Mining Co. of-
fer for sale or lease, on highly advan-
tageous terms, Lots and Mill privileges of any
description, for manufacturing purposes, with
water power as may be wanted from 6 inches to
50 cubic feet: also, one thousand building lots,
handsomely situated, to accommodate actual set-
tlers, or persons who may purchase, or rent the
water lots. Saugerties is pleasantly situated in
Ulster country, 110 miles from the city of New-
York, in a high and healthy country, on the west
bank of the Hudson River, on the state road
from Albany to New York, commanding fine
views of the Catskill mountains and the Hudson
River. Its contiguity to the mountains, is fa-
vourable for supplies of timber and fuel. The
high state of cultivation of the lands in the neigh-
bourhood of Saugerties, and the populous settle-
ments of respectable and industrious farmers,
will insure a low price of labour and provisions.
The present price of boarding labourers is one
dollar fifty cents per week. The price of trans-
portation to and from New York is fifty cents per
ton. There are on and near the premises, excel-
lent stone quarries, clay, limestone and sand for
building. The creek water is pure and soft, being
supplied with springs on the mountains. There
are also several springs of the purest and softest
water, well calculated for cleaning woollen goods,
rags, &c. for Paper Mills—which may be conve-
niently fed to the upper stories of the manufac-
tories.
Several extensive Manufactories of Iron. Pa-
per. Calico Printing, &c. are far advanced and
will be put into full operation this year.
The contiguity to the city of New York, and
facility of passing by sloops or steam boats; the
quantity of water—healthiness of climate and
low price of transportation, are among the nu-
merous advantages of Saugerties, over any other
manufacturing town in the United States. The
price of tide water lots of convenient size, with
one cubic foot of water to be drawn with a head
of eighteen inches, and a fall of twenty-five feet
on tide water of sufficient depth for vessels draw
ing 10 feet water, will be $500 per annum. Lots
equally well situated 900 to 300 yards from tide
water, with the same head and fall, will be from
300 to 400 per cubic foot par annum. The fee
of the lots may be purchased at a reasonable rate,
if wanted for immediate improvement, liberal
inducements will be offered to companies, who
may wish to make extensive manufacturing es-
tablishments.
Inquire of HENRY BARCLAY. President of
said Company, at Saugerties, or of EZRA
WEEKS, New York. a3 tf
(New York Evening Post, February 2, 1826)
This is the first of several placements of the same text found in digitized microfilm archives of the New York Evening Post through June, 1826. After June, more specific wording advertises the advantages of shipbuilding sites on the waterways and also the precise calculations of the paper production with the innovative machine manufacturing process.
This series completes a record of the first fifteen months in the development of Henry Barclay's investments in Saugerties. In the art of reading these words are illuminating not by the details they share but because they project a fulfillment of Henry Barclay's intentions.
These are new insights. When these fifteen months were far enough in the past to be treated as history, in the 1870's, only directories, commercial almanacs and economic censuses marked the progress of Saugerties in its startup phase. Sometimes official records such as deeds, agreements and contracts augmented those published accounts and maybe even memory. But the purpose of describing this past was always to tell a story of economic and population growth and not the processes these advertisements record.
One immersed in the art of reading has already absorbed these popular commentaries and thus is prepared for their imagination to be influenced by that important consideration that breeds knowledge: conjecture.
Consider that Henry Barclay was nearly fifty years old when he set out on this venture. The language of this advertisement, as much it promotes that venture, also molds a quality of life statement about his retirement environment after an active life. This draws the inquiring mind toward his previous career and life and what may have brought him to this venture.
Most intriguing in this language is the headline that links Woodstock to Saugerties. Also, before the birth of quarrying, the anticipation of mining as a business interest. One may read into this the interests of others familiar with the local resources inland toward the Woodstock area and that perhaps these investors found manufacturing much more risky than resource development.
But consider also that there exists an engraving, picturing the calico mill and the iron works, produced in England and dated a few years later in 1831. This is by the Irish artist William Guy Wall who is recognized as the earliest influence on the beginnings of the Hudson River School of painting. His presence highlights the aesthetic, quality of life and romance of the wilderness; popular intellectual reasons for the time to have Woodstock in the title because settlers were also being attracted in the advertisement.
Actually, the first to settle represented a who's who in the society of the time. The Barclay family was married into the Livingstons and Henry was married into the Watts which covered the merchant elite of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Henry early attracted fringes of this extended family along with admirers and past business associates to this new lifestyle, and their families gave Saugerties of the late 1820's a cosmopolitan flair with Creole, Italian and Spanish spoken as much as English.
Henry Barclay was, not by choice but by circumstance, a citizen of the world. Born in British occupied New York City during the Revolution with his namesake grandfather the Rector of Trinity Church and a founder of Kings College, and his father a colonel in the British forces there, he ended up in Nova Scotia and then England with the Evacuation by the age of five, to return to New York when his father became the British Counsel to the port of New York in his late teens. He was in consignment business continually from his early twenties to represent the family's influence through his father's position in trade. He had connections to every merchant banker and assurance broker in the city and in the world.
Not a lick of this information is found in any one single resource. The art in reading the 458 words in this fuzzy piece of microfilm of an advertising page in an 1826 newspaper is in moving curiosity in what they imply in the direction of creating this information.
Creativity motivated by curiosity is an innate drive that defines the identity of every unique life, whether vegetable seeking light or animal reproduction opportunity. By the nature of its existence all information is a reproduction of past knowledge. The human condition senses this opportunity just as strongly as a sex drive. Curiosity about one's individual path to fulfillment and the process of awakening desires through heightened empathic acuity climaxes in an intimate relationship in the art of reading in a way no different from what it so obviously mimics.
Generations ago when creativity had to deal with a scarce and nonuniform medium; when books were the primary source of knowledge and they came in many languages; making inspired connections was the discretionary capability of an educated few. The effort taken to read in the original Latin or Greek or German or Arabic closed out those with the primal curiosity that drives original ideas and makes innovative things.
The way the Internet can lead a reader in many directions through many transcriptions and draw connections between many subjects and disciplines has not yet been experienced by one full generation. A discovery that the Library of Alexandria existed and the removal of the taboo by Rome on ancient manuscripts at the wane of Medieval Europe has now just happened both at once in a time of universal literacy. All that is needed is a general cultivation of an art of reading and the impact of this will empower a super Renaissance, primed.
Shinning light on the unexpected excites a kind of joy of discovery in anyone that dreams of the adventure of exploring. That is done all the time through sensational news feeds. And if it leads into the natural course of using the Internet and ranges deeper into the source of the information and information related to that, that is the way it should work. It's a path well traveled by everyone else led onto it by that same news feed and you're not finding anything groundbreaking or unique to you, but its a beginning. You've added to your knowledge base.
The idea of news feeds is well founded in the number of search topics contained in this extensive description of what Old Saugerties had evolved into after 60 years, in the height of the gilded age.
SAUGERTIES ON THE HUDSON
A Beautiful City in the Shadow of the Catskills - A Charming
Summer Resort - Handsome Houses - Home of Its Manufactures and
Industrial Advantages
Nowhere along the Hudson can there be found a town so picturesque in
situation or so rich in natural advantages as Saugerties, in Ulster
County. In describing it I shall not wade so deeply into its history as to
be tiresome, but shall present a few only of the facts connected with its
progress. Pages could be filled with tales of its early settlement by
Dutch colonists, who were little better then slaves and were cruelly
oppressed by their masters as they toiled there. It is the American
Saugerties, however, of which I write. It owes its organization to Henry
Barclay, whose name yet remains a household word in the
neighborhood. Practically he was the founder of the town, and to his
industry, energy and liberality its rapid progress during many years was
due. The ascendancy which Saugerties has attained over its sister
settlements in manufactures may also justly be ascribed to his genius.
He framed the municipal machinery by which the town is still
governed. The history of Saugerties without an account of his efforts in
its behalf would be worse than a Hamlet with the melancholy Dane left
out of the cast.
Henry Barclay was a grandson of the Rev. Dr. Barclay, who was the
second pastor of Trinity Church, this city. He inherited the benevolence
and ability of his distinguished forebear. For many years he was a
prominent citizen of the metropolis. In the course of a visit to
Saugerties he saw that it was an ideal site for a manufacturing city. His
keen business instinct made him recognize at once the great value of its
magnificent water power then going to waste. He was not long in
determining to build a model city there. How well he succeeded will
appear later.
He made his home at the junction of the Esopus Creek and the river,
reserving about two hundred acres of land for the purpose. He named
the place "Ury" after his old home in Scotland. This was afterwards
purchased by Blaise Lorillard, who built a stately residence on the site
of the old "Ury" home, and this was afterwards purchased by J. B.
Sheffield, who called it Brightbank. It is now owned by the Sheffield
estate. Mr. Barclay also acquired the water power. To make the most of
this he commenced the great work which yet remains a monument to
his ability and enterprise - the great dam across Esopus Creek and the
cutting through hundreds of yards of solid rock of a canal for the race.
Then a paper mill was built, which afforded employment to a score of
people. The present great new mill is built on its site. The clatter of its
machinery so stimulated the growth of Saugerties that now, after half a
century of industrial success, the town, or city, as it is in fact, has a
population over
EIGHT THOUSAND SOULS.
Although a stone tablet in Trinity Churchyard records the death of
Henry Barclay, his spirit lives on in the men of business who have
carried on his work and continued his ideas and plans in Saugerties, and
the needs of progress sown by him have fructified into many well developed
and prosperous industries, some of which will be described
further on.
Nature has adorned Saugerties with scenery of the most beautiful and
grand. Behind it, and throwing their shadows around it, rise the noble
Catskills. At its feet ripples the emerald tide of the Hudson. In a few
years the tourist will hesitate between Saugerties and Catskill, and the
former will secure a full share of the Summer travel. It has scenic
charmes as great or greater than Catskill, and is easier to access. Direct
steamer and railroad connection with New York should have it better
known, as it will be, to the pilgrims who seek strength and rest in the
contemplation of nature's loveliness. Already many of Gotham's
wealthy have erected summer homes for themselves here, and the
indications are that it will soon be a popular resort.
Saugerties might be named the Forest City. Trees with wide-spreading
branches shade the streets and lawns everywhere. Grand oaks at every
turn rustle a welcome to the sun-baked dweller in stone cities. The same
welcome is voiced in hearty fashion by the people who dwell beneath
the trees. They are proud of the town, but have no selfish wish to
confine the enjoyment of its beauties to themselves, and naturally they
are not above considerations of the profits to be made out of the travel
which may come their way. To increase the stream of this travel is a
strong desire for them, and they treat their summer visitors with a
consideration and attention rarely found elsewhere.
Scenery alone, however, cannot make a summer retreat popular. An
Eden to the eye may be malaria stricken, or by reason of careless
inattention to sanitary law a breeder of many diseases. The people of
this town have too much sense to allow it to labor under any such
disabilities. In healthfulness Saugerties is as well endowed as in beauty.
Statistics bear out its people's claim that it is one of the healthiest
places in the State. Nature has made drainage easy there, and as the
people have taken advantage of its facilities in this respect the sanitary
conditions of the town are perfect. Drinking water, clear and pure and
cold, is supplied to the town from mountain springs rising in the
uncontaminated wilderness. No epidemic has ever been known there.
Dr. Livingston, one of New York's best physicians, sends his patients to
Saugerties to regain their strength. Owing to its greater distance from
the sea the climate is less changeable than that of this city and the
temperature is less variable.
Wealthy New Yorkers who have built
PALATIAL SUMMER HOMES
in Saugerties have thus testified in the most practical way their opinion
of its attractions. From these homes they extend hospitality to large
circles of friends, and it was my good fortune to visit a few of these
open-doored mansions. Mrs. Ellen Vanderpoel, whose husband was
once so well known as Judge of the Supreme Court of this State and as
the intimate friend of Martin Van Buren, has a lovely dwelling at
Saugerties and spends at least four months of each year there. People
who do not remember Judge Vanderpoel will recall the beautiful
memorial window made by Morris, of London, and placed in Trinity
Church by his widow. It is one of the glories of the church and is a
masterpiece of the glass-stainer's art. The window pictures prominent
scenes in the life of Christ. The chancel in Trinity Church, of which
Potter was the architect, is also the gift of this generous lady, whose
charities have endeared her to hundreds of the poor and afflicted.
The home of Mrs. E. L. Whiting, on Barclay Heights, is so
picturesquely located and beautifully surrounded that no picture by pen
or brush could do it justice. Its beauty can only be fully appreciated by
those who have seen it. It is built on a bluff overlooking the Hudson on
one side and Esopus Creek on the other. A short distance away the
Catskills loom up grandly. A sweep of lawn leads up to the gray-walled
house, which peeps through the branches of huge oaks surrounding and
shading it with a canopy of green leaves.
Chestnut Lodge is the summer house of John G. Steenken, President of
the Ulster Lead Company, whose works are situated at Glen Erie, two
miles from Saugerties. This is the oldest homestead on this part of the
Hudson, and round it cluster many historic reminiscences. Gen. Dias,
of Mexican war fame, built it over sixty years ago in the likeness of a
Mexican hacienda and lived peacefully within the walls until his death.
Afterwards it passed into the possession of its present owner, who is
naturally very proud of it.
A short distance from the hacienda is the home of John T. Washburn. It
has one of the finest outlooks on the Hudson. From its vuranda the view
stretches up the river for many miles. The accompanying illustrations
render unnecessary descriptions of the handsome residences of
Clovelea, owned by W. R. Sheffield, the President of the village, Stony
Point Villa, the property of George W. Washburn and the home of Col.
H. Dwight Laflin. All are gems in Saugerties's crown. Mr. Washburn is
building a conservatory which will be filled with the exotics of which
he is fond. H. Dwight Laflin is one of the leading men of Saugerties. He
was the man who became famous by firing from the Tremont House in
Chicago the first salute at the nomination of Lincoln. He is the sole
surviving officer of the original Chicago Zouaves, who under the
command of Col. E. E. Ellsworth, killed at Alexandria, were present
when first blood was shed in the civil war. He is also president of the
Laflin Powder Company, whose works are in Laflin, Pa., which is
named after him, and President of the New York and Saugerties
Transportation Company. Col. Laflin, as may be judged from his
success in life, is a wide-awake man, who is alive to every opportunity
to advance the interests of his adopted town of Saugerties.
I cannot begin to give descriptions of all the handsome houses I saw
there. There is a lovely house on every hilltop. Charles A. Spalding, of
St. Louis, has his summer residence here. Richard Washburn has just
completed a palace on one of the highest points of Barclay Heights, and
has moved thither from Jersey City. Howard C. Bogardus, Secretary
and Cashier of the Bigelow Bluestone works, is one of the enterprising
young business men of Saugerties. His villa is within the town, and in
its architecture and furnishings reflect great credit to his taste.
Socially Saugerties is greatly favored. That naturally flows from the
presence of so many people of property. Good churches and schools are
there equally as a matter of course. The business houses are of a
superior sort. There is a well-equipped fire department and the town is
well supplied with gas. Two National banks and a savings bank provide
sufficient facilities for business. The two former are the Saugerties
Bank, whose officers are Hon. W. F. Russell, President; A. Carnright,
Vice-President, and Thomas Kenny, Cashier, and the First National
Bank, officered by Hon. R. A. Snyder, President; C. Fiero, Vice-
President, and P. M. Gillespie, Cashier.
The Irving Club is the social club of the City. Its building is large and
perfectly appointed. There are two first class hotels. The Exchange,
managed by W. F. Cofferd, is airy and comfortable and affords pleasant
quarters for Summer guests. The same might be said for the Phoenix,
owned by Mr. Turck. Upon the
TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES
of a city depends its commercial greatness. Upon such a truism it would
be useless to enlarge. The wide-awake citizens of Saugerties, with a
realizing sense of this fact, have established two independent steamboat
lines between New York and their town. They also enjoy a very
satisfactory railway service.
Recently the navigation of the creek and harbor of Saugerties has been
greatly improved by the building of a dike 2,300 feet long on the south
side of the creek and by dredging, so that there is now room for vessels
of from 14 to 15 feet draught. Col. Greenfield, who is in charge of the
harbor improvements in this district, has given very much satisfaction
by his work. A dike about 800 feet long is now being built on the north
side of the creek, and a recommendation to Congress has been made for
an appropriation of $20,000 towards finishing the improvements now
under way.
The West Shore Road passes by Saugerties and the New York Central
Railway is connected with it by ferry. Three trains an hour are at the
service of the people to carry them either to Albany or New York. Those
who prefer the trip by water can avail themselves of the New York and
Saugerties Transportation Company's floating palace, the steamer
Astonia, which has recently been refurnished and refitted in most
elegant fashion. The officers of the Company are Col. H. Dwight
Laflin, President, and B. M. Freligh, Secretary and Captain. every
courtesy and accommodation is at the service of passengers on the boat.
Regular trips are made daily from New York to Saugerties and return,
stops being made at all intermediate points of prominence. To the
officers of this Company I am indepted for much courtesy and to Capt.
Freligh for a great part of the information in this article.
Another line with headquarters at this place is the Saugerties and New
York Steamboat Company. This is under the management of R. A.
Snyder, President, and H. L. Finger, Captain. Their boat, the Saugerties,
was built by the Old Dominion Steamship Company at a cost of
$95,000. She is a fast boat, heated by steam and handsomely equipped.
No convenience for passengers has been omitted in furnishing her.
These steamboats land at the dock adjoining the large manufacturing
establishments and each night carry to New York the products of the
mills at but little more than cost of cartage in New York.
The large water power of over three thousand horse-power, owned by J.
B. Sheffield & Son, is developed at the tidewater of the Hudson, and
coal is brought from the Pennsylvania coal fields directly to their mills.
With such advantages as these, combining water power at tidewater
with the best of transportation facilities, Saugerties should become one
of the largest manufacturing ceentres of the State.
Close to the Sheffield mills are the works of the Barclay Sulphite Fibre
Company, of which W. H. Parsons, of New York, is President. They
occupy buildings on the property of the old Ulster Iron Works, so well
known some years ago. The paper mills use a large quantity of the fibre
produced by the Company.
Another institution having a connection with the paper mill of Sheffield
& Son is the Saugerties Blank Book and Envelope Company. W. R.
Sheffield is the manager of this concern, and J. Q. Preble & Co., of
New York, are its selling agents. Its mills employ over one thousand
people, and over a million envelopes are turned out by it every day. The
total output amounts in value to over $125,000 per month, and the payroll
exceeds $5,000 per month.
Martin Cantine & Co. have a card factory here whose business, though
young, is growing rapidly owing to successful management. Loerzel's
Brewery is another enterprise which has had a remarkable growth since
it was located here. Surrounding Saugerties are
NUMEROUS HAMLETS
which are developing as centres of country trade.
At Malden, two miles away on the river side, are the works of the
Bigelow Blue-Stone Company. These works are the largest of the kind
in the country, and from their quarries is shipped stone to almost every
part of the United States, also a large quantity to Montreal, Canada,
Havana, Cuba, South America and Mexico. They now furnish from
their works stone for flagging, breast-heights for most of the
fortifications in the country, also trimmings for many public and
private buildings. This Company supplies the largest headers for
sidewalks that have ever been furnished. Among the largest is the one in
fromt of the residence of the late William H. Vanderbilt and one still
larger in front of the residence of R. L. Stewart, on Fifth Avenue, which
is 15 x 27 feet. This Company own their own telegraph works in
Malden and Glascoe, also their own transportation company. Among
the latest machins set up at their works are some for planing, sawing
and turning, which are the inventions of their own superintendent and
are used by the Company exclusively. H. T. Caswell is the President
and Treasurer and H. T. Bogardus Secretary and Cashier of the
Company.
Col. Caswell lives in Troy, but spends his summers at his beautiful
home near the works. He calls it Obercliffe, and it is one of the best
situated residences on the Hudson.
Glascoe, two miles from Saugerties in another direction, is noted for the
lava brick works of Washburn Brothers. The products of these works,
owing to their superior quality, find markets all over the country. It is of
these bricks and of stone from the Bigelow Company's works that the
handsome residence of W. R. Sheffield is constructed.
At Glen Erie, another near-by village, are the well known works of the
Ulster Lead Company. Mr. J. G. Steenken is President and Mr. Davidson
Manager of this Company.
With such a start on the way of industrial progress, with the enterprise
and shrewdness of its people and with the natural advantages of its
location, Saugerties should soon spring to great prominence as a
manufacturing centre. The day is not far off when Esopus Creek, which
now glides so quietly, though forcefully, between grassy, tree-clad
banks, will be bordered by factories only, and the ripple of its current
will be replaced by the whir of machinery. The natural resources of the
town have only slightly been taken advantage of as yet, and there is
room there for many more wealth-creating mills with plenty of the
cheapest power to drive them, and with every market that New York has
equally accessible to their products. Hitherto Saugerties has suffered
through not being sufficiently known. In part, at any rate, my modest
article should help to remove this disability.
(The New York World, Sunday, July 21, 1889)
The art of reading is enabled by the concept that every proper noun and surname written is related to a creation being composed in the imagination of the reader. A reader finding and realizing the context of a keyword search on the Internet is actually creating a new context for that word.
This is a totally new idea. Prior to the concept of Internet content, written compositions were considered integrated wholes. Now they are represented as assemblies of contextual keywords.
The role of the reader has always been to absorb content as it is presented by a writer and either accept the argument and have it create an impression, or be critical of the presented material and respond in the written form. All education is based on this interchange, as is journalism and literature.
The article just presented has the potential of satisfying hundreds of queries ranging from searches of family names to investigations of industry and social and transportation history. If it is well written a query directed to the middle of it will follow the context back to the beginning and forward to the end and the writing becomes the atmosphere for the query. Within this habitat of interest other discoveries will be cut and pasted into the search window and the reading continues. No two starts with the same search term will branch in the same direction and no two readers will end up with the same story.
This topical index way of reading was born with the encyclopedia three centuries ago in anticipation of what has just become practical over the past decade and a half. This means that on the intellectual level the mind has been long prepared to participate in an art of reading that is essentially creative in nature even if, in the case of encyclopedias, this was contained by the volume.
The world wide web that today has made discovery a creative process is aptly compared here to this article in a publication named The World. The implication, of course, is that the newspaper and the writer of the article are selecting from all the worlds offerings what they believe will be of interest to readers. In this gilded aged example of popular media there is decidedly a social impression intended that parallels the pre-selected material of social media that finds today such a use of the Internet.
The structure of this 1889 article is a very good example of nuances that are embedded in content that is presented through any channel like this.
It begins by saying it's not the whole story and proceeds to give a taste of the back story. After these few short paragraphs the remainder of this 3,000 word piece stays in 1889. The artful reader of 1889 would never have been able to satisfy the curiosity created by these introductory paragraphs just as the curious using social media often passes up the vast opportunities the broader medium offers.
We have seen where "Henry Barclay" and the surname "Laflin", search terms found in this article, can lead. Tidbits of the back story found on the Internet have been shown to fan out to supply a great deal of familiarity. This has left a taste for knowing more of that more adventurous time; less "resort" and more explosive and entrepreneurial; a time totally within the Dickens era world that Harry Potter imagines.
The art of reading can today leave that time traveler as deep in this era as the resources from it and about it have made available. Indeed, at the rate that content is added to the Internet it is likely that one, at the normal pace of reading, may never emerge from such a search.
That is what is happening here. From being only known to a select group of collectors and not even represented in the Library of Congress collection, the 1875 publication "The Pearl" was digitized and made selectively available for reading on the Internet just four years ago. Because it is not presented in searchable form it found through links that the art of reading would naturally lead to. This chronicling of the antebellum era has significantly broadened the amount of first hand witness information available and the range of searchable terms for going even deeper into that world.
Over that same four years hand written journals, such as the Henry Barclay letter book; the Edward Clark letter book; the first decade of minutes of the Village of Ulster; have had their pages digitized and those transcribed so they can be added as media available for searches. These important records of day to day activities and personal interactions captured and dated as they occurred, are also invaluable for extending a search even deeper into this period.
For one that feels a kinship, either actual in family ties to the participants, or empathic in feelings for the goals of the earliest of Early Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs, with the addition of this material and perhaps hundreds of others related in content that is also being found, digitized and put on the Internet from every point of the globe every day, just on this subject, this is a very purposeful reason for developing a mastery of the art of reading.
Each individual in the world has an opportunity to be a mile marker on the information super highway. Most are choosing to be in a traffic jam on one off ramp or another. Consider that the road between those off ramps is what makes them important and the mile markers are the real identities on the road. Even if it plays only a minor role in the structure of the whole super highway at least it's a help to all that traffic using it.
Writing about something you identify with nowadays inevitably is going to become one of those mile markers. People have been writing since recorded time began and people have been filtering out what is unimportant or is misconceived since language began to communicate ideas. That hasn't stopped almost everyone in the world from trying to identify their ideas. It's a social conditioning that happens at birth.
The art of reading offers everyone a shot at identifying with an absolutely unique discovery. Anyone that proceeds into a focused search of the Internet and lets their curiosity and imagination lead them is mathematically incapable of being on the same path as anyone else. Any discovery related to that path and posted in any searchable form has to add to the knowledge base of a general interest and be of use to someone else attracted into this more focused circle of interest that has been newly created.
Few efforts would benefit a broader circle of interest than Heritage. Though no subject is beyond the benefits of the art of reading, heritage fits the idea of a community involvement best. And in Old Saugerties what is most in need of bringing to the community is its origins.
The 1889 World article signals a transition from the height of a long industrial growth to an evolving resort and summer destination in a period that was about to become derision of the industrial to contrive a more idyllic identity.
William R. Sheffield, the President of the village and the largest employer in the entire region emboldened this sentiment with the embarrassment of an involvement with a business partner New York newspapers gave favored treatment in their stories. This is a more fact-based account.
THE SAUGERTIES FAILURES.
Total Liabilities of the Paper Firms
Established at $2,000,000
NKW YORK, Dec 24—A dispatch from
Kingston, N. Y., says; The total liabilities of
the Saugerites paper firms that have fast failed,
including the Chicago branch, known as the
Wabash Manufacturing Company, are estimated
at $3,000,000. The indebtedness is
mainly on promissory notes and acceptances,
of which about $100,000 is held by local banks
of the village and this city, and the balance
by the Third National, Ninth National, Mercantile
National, and Merchants' Exchange of
New York; the Merchants' National, Albany,
and the First National of Springfield, Mass.
About $20,000 is due to the employees. It is
believed the nominal assets of the four concerns
would nearly equal the liabilities if they
were directly available. But they consist
largely of the mill property and plant The
mill alone is valued at half a million, $263,000
of which is represented in mortgage bonds held
by the Sheffield family; $50,000 is in a mort-
gage upon the property rented to the Barclay
Fibre Company, held by John G. Meyers of
Albany. The raw and manufactured stock is
estimated between $300,000 and $400,000;
machinery and fixtures, $200,000. This is the
paper mill proper. The Blank Book company
have stock finished and unfinished to the value
of $300,000; machinery and fixtures, $100,000.
All this is in addition to open accounts with
customers. The loss of $125,000 by the Chicago
house, and the failure of Preble & Co. to meet
maturing obligations, are the immediate causes
of the failure. The papers in an application
for receivers in the case of J. B. Sheffield &
Son and the Saugerties Blank Book Company
were filed with the Attorney-General yesterday,
all the stockholders joining in the petition.
Howard Gillespie and Charles Wilson
were named as receivers. The men were
promised payment yesterday, but were not
paid. The Barclay Fibre Company is not involved
in the failure. The annual output of
the mills was valued at $1,250,000.
(THE BUFFALO COURIER WEDNESDAY. DECEMBER 25. 1889)
This is an example that presents an opportunity to look at a period of fifty years from the perspective of the outcomes a hundred years after that, with all the records available from the time. As a gage of a community's grasp of its heritage the events of this period are as comprehensively documented in Internet accessible prime source material as any, and these are as indictable in their resonance as totally unremembered events in the present as could possibly be found anywhere.
The statement that rings clear here is that when one documents one's path in a search this carries with it every right in the world to indict the cultural recalcitrance it brings to light. In this day and age there is no hiding any act from scrutiny, even those representing indifference.
Every topic has a natural place in time that is its pedigree of relevance. The art of reading is a subversive play in a field long defined by those often inveterate agendas of histories. Half of the joy of discovery in the art of reading is looking behind the curtain that these agendas have fashioned to define time.
That term "subversive" is used because the art of reading inevitably meets territorial boundaries. Facts without filters have the potential to change beliefs and not always in the direction desired by individuals that feel this violates their personal privacy rights.
Material is reaching the Internet from digitized public records of courts, government legislation proceedings, contracts, wills and deeds as well as academic studies of social and environment effects created by named institutions. These and even more arcane and previously unimportant documents now have their references to individuals, places, businesses and nameable practices as information available to an Internet search. The world is heading toward being one big source.
This story of Old Saugerties illustrates how the art of reading into and through newly available information brings realizations and change to present day understandings of the past.
This last clipping from the Buffalo Currier reports on events from the same year as the previous article in the New York World. That article of July, 1889 describes completely the ambiance of the community where the "failures" of the following December happened. William Sheffield and the industrial operations and the banks involved are all search terms common to both.
A simple association between the two stories would have one thousand out of the entire population of "eight thousand souls" affected. When this same story is read in the New York Times the responsibility of this Christmas Day bombshell is placed squarely on the over reach and extravagant ambitions of W. R. Sheffield. That image has stubbornly dogged Sheffield in the memory of the community ever since.
However, in the light of the ever broadening range of sources that return information on this topic, the whole matter can no longer be approached so simplistically. Indeed, what was extravagance then has now, instead, become an example of the earliest attempt in the history of complex business enterprise at innovative planning of what today is termed "vertical integration".
That plan was to take raw material into the Barclay Fibre company and make that into the material used by the Sheffield Paper company to make the material used for the products of the Saugerties Blank Book company, thus creating the efficiencies that would allow the Preble company to dominate the market for stationery in the United States. Two innovative industrialists, William Sheffield and William Parsons, had these plans tripped up by a transfer of the Preble company to a son who defaulted on that company's obligations as a partner in the blank book company's mortgages on the new factory building on East Bridge Street.
Reports show the operations back up by the second of January, with no loss in wages; but the impression of instability had been made in a community used to being self sustained for generations. The questioning of Sheffield's character shows up in editorials on the debt the village was placed in for the street improvements between the docks on the Hudson river and the West Shore railroad station while he was president. Letters purporting to have observed him making Mulligan drunk and taking the deed for the iron works for a pittance further questioned his honor. This continued until it affected his businesses, and he then turned over management to the first of a half a dozen companies that followed until the last closed in the 1960's.
It is ironic that this strong criticism that ended up affecting the future image of the mills was leveled by Edward Jurnegan, the co-producer of The Pearl in 1875, whose picturesque photographs of the mills in its pages were so attuned to the descriptions of their origins and function written by Leon Barritt. These images remain today our only solid connection with the depth of this history. But because of the attitude this negativism fostered the mills found no champion when they ceased operation, were demolished for the value of their brick, leaving his pictures among the few reminders today that they even existed.
Should only this saga of "failures" be found in a search for William R. Sheffield, or if the event here were, conversely, never ranked high on the search list, this entire period would remain an enigma. It would be a Greek tragedy the gods' whims had some unknowable bearing on. It would be a footnote in a study that was about something else.
The art of reading in the information age has no purpose for footnotes. Nothing that returns a link in a search exists without bringing with it a context for that find. As a person William R. Sheffield is as deep as there are "o's" in google.
So as a far too brief summary, this Sheffield is the J. B. Sheffield & Son Sheffield that was the son showing the ambition and drive that got him on the Company shingle instead of J. B. Jr. He was 21 when that happened, 25 when he oversaw the rebuilding after Henry Barclay's original mill burned to the ground in 1873, and 30 when his father died leaving him to direct the business' future. Every building lining the shoreline that is shown in post cards of this end of the century landmark of river travel he built. The most contemporary architect-designed residence in the entire mid-Hudson region he built as his Clovelea.
In encountering his character there is no question that he was everything that was written. He was of the generation that Jay Gould belonged to. Gould was a cousin by his sister's marriage into the Cantine family and he mentored that cousin by marriage to start the next generation of industrialists in Old Saugerties. Like Leon Barritt, the journalist, he had better things to do when he left Old Saugerties to its wiles, and those, like Barritt's are findable through the art of reading too.
Good, bad or indifferent, the legacy that enables the art of reading to travel through this complex web of discoveries is fulfilling the spirit of the Internet. What that does to the traveler is going to be profound. There are innumerable human truths that need to be learned for self awareness to be achieved and this has never before been possible from any individual authorship. The art of reading answers more questions than a mere book could ever have in its grasp.
To prove the point it is helpful to have reminders of how information was shepherded before the Internet.
Information had two levels of importance with the one that warranted most serious consideration being that of "current affairs". The other one, though, is often the gateway to far more interesting topics than what was frequently dismissed and forgotten as "Old News" with the publishing of the next current edition.
This find is from a date when the very occupation of the correspondent foreshadowed the soon to be overwhelming reality of ever present media. It's a stream of consciousness flow of three generation's worth of reminiscences in a pickle barrel load of country store talking points.
Received an interesting and
informative letter from Francis
C. Wolven, a radio and TV
technician from Saugerties. He
writes in part: "was interested
in your column of Feb. 10 regarding
the sale of the Jacob
Becker Hotel in Centerville.
The hostelry used to be a favorite
stop for lunch for teamsters
in the heyday of bluestone, cordwood,
(the brickyards also were
excellent customers) and piling
for the many docks."
Mr. Wolven goes on to say;
"The usual procedure was to put
the horses under the shed, at-
tach the feedbag and then retire
inside to refresh the driver. And,
as usual, there were chickens
underfoot to salvage the oats
spilled in feeding the horses. (A
good time was had by all.)
He asks "I have often wondered
if you have any information
regarding the hotel which
used to stand on top of Mt.
Marion hill? I have no idea who
owned or operated it and the
only information available, is
mostly contradictory. I first
heard of it from my mother's
cousin, Mrs. LeRoy Longendyke
(her husband owned and operated
the Broadway Garage).
She is a woman of about 75 and
had heard her mother tell of
being taken to dinner there on a
date as a girl in her teens. She
remembered George Washburn
coming to dinner there with his
large family."
He further writes: "I spent
quite a bit of time hiking over
the hill and finally located the
ruins of the old hotel. It had
burned down and was so completely
obliterated that a road
ran directly through it without
leaving evidence that a large
building had ever stood on that
spot."
Perhaps some old timers remember
this hotel that "faced
out over the ledge near the very
summit of the hill and, from the
looks of the foundation, had a
porch clear across the front for
those who wished to admire the
excellent view. Evidently, it
must have been impossible to
fight the fire and the building
had burned nearly unchecked.
The bluestone foundations were
completely shattered and discolored
and dishes and glass
were melted to an unusual extent.
Excavation showed very
little charcoal; the fire must
have burned itself nearly clean.
Bricks found in the ruins wore
rather rough and had no trademark
at all.
"The location was accessible
by a road up the side of the hill,
beginning at the old Lowther
(now Wood) place on the
Charles Ricks Road as well as
by the now Echo Hill road in
Fish Creek. This latter was the
former back road into Veteran
(or Toodleum) used to avoid the
toll-gate at what is now Burgemeister
place on Route 212, west
of Veteran. There was another
road, probably secondary, down
the hollow emerging near the old
Jerry Russell place on the Chas.
Ricks Road."
Perhaps other readers may
add to these details sent by Mr.
Wolven: "In the valley west of
the hotel between the shoulders
of the hill and very near the repeater
station on the telephone
cable line, there are still a
couple of rectangular ponds
which may have provided water
for the hotel. A sizable bluestone
foundation near the larger
pond may have been an icehouse
although looks heavier than
necessary for that. If it was a
pumping station, there is no evidence
of smokestack or support
for pumps and engines capable
of raising water to the level of
the hotel"
(THE KINGSTON DAILY FREEMAN. KINGSTON. N. Y.,
TUESDAY EVENING. MARCH 1, 1960)
Mr. Wolven here invokes a tradition early encountered in a dim, wallpapered parlor when, as a child, he would have been inducted into a pattern of socialization in the company of a bevy of elderly caregivers, cautioned to quietly listen to what he later as a parent could jokingly, in a world of wider influences, refer to as the "reciting of the litany". That ritual, usually accompanied by a family bible stuffed with remembrance cards and every blank space scrawled with data, spoke of those who passed, those who were just born, those whose deeds were vile and those who were certain for sainthood; delivered to the cadence of rocking chairs and, in the winter, the occasional crack of an expanding plate on a hot pot belly stove. This was the process of communicating memory that was impressed upon young minds back then and maybe for hundreds of generations before, and Mr. Wolven, or perhaps his children, would be the last generation to experience this in what fast became the technology obsessed society that changed everything.
There is a lot more, though, implied by both this newspaper column and those changes in learning patterns.
The Internet is an interactive medium not dissimilar to the parlor's environment in which the content of conversations was absorbed. The Internet's totally new interactive experience first encountered just half a generation ago falls within that same comfort zone. The only difference is the potential for learning in the Internet experience leaves behind this basic family heritage remembering and enters into the accumulated knowledge of the whole world's heritage.
The only reason the obviousness of this connection has to be even mentioned is because the rapidity of the transition between that parlor and the Internet still has everyone in shock. It is important to realize that Mr. Wolven, in 1960, was experiencing a world in which he was born before television, witnessed the first live transcontinental TV broadcast and was nearly a decade away from a live television image from the moon. More to the point, after these fantasies had become everyday realities of his world he was again jerked yet more abruptly into an age when personal video recorders were used to capture his memories as that elderly person in the parlor.
Mr. Wolven was gone before the ubiquity of the digital video that made captured memories as commonplace as junk mail. Even the generation he spawned was too dazed by it all to realize the impact it was having on their world. This left their offspring, those that began forming their identity as the Internet came into being, with the responsibility of all alone reinventing this parlor that they never knew existed.
So the art of reading addresses the bond this generation feels to accounts like this one of their great grandfather's memories on the memories of his grandmother who as a young girl on a date dined in the same room as Mr. Washburn and his young family atop the present day empty Mount Marion where once perched a grand hotel. In their age they can examine the "contradictory" hearsay that was all that was available to Mr. Wolven to confirm or offer some way toward resolving his observations.
Doing so would cover a lot of ground. This topic, like many others so well documented in the gilded age in Old Saugerties, falls generally under interest in land speculation with the arrival of the railroad and the attractions that created a boom in the building of resorts and transportation routes to them. The coverage on building and opening businesses, their economic successes and loses, and displacement after their close made good copy for newspapers. Census reports and in some cases period histories and memoirs like Mr. Wolven's also add to other resources that could solve this riddle from 1960.
