It was the first business of the new Town of Saugerties to re-survey the Woodstock road from the river to “where the aforesaid road intersects the Ulster and Delaware first branch turnpike-road”. That concern would define the growth of Saugerties’ political boundaries, its influence as a major industrial and mercantile center and its identity as a separate community from Kingston.

The Woodstock valley presented the most direct route between the turnpike over Pine Hill and the Hudson River through the broad Zena flats and traditional pathways to Dutch Settlement. The original 1811 border between Saugerties and Kingston was the northern Second Class division line of the Commons extended to the division line between the lots sixteen and seventeen of the Southwest Class. This left the Glasco Turnpike in Kingston but the port of Glasco in Saugerties.

The Glasco branch of the Ulster and Delaware Turnpike Company was owned by Kingston and New York City investors. Its wharves were in direct competition with those of the north. The hamlet of Glasco’s main street to the river wharves is named Delaware Street in recognition of this relationship to the company. The sign on a wharf at the end of Delaware Street for a glass company in Woodstock is the origin of the name of the hamlet and turnpike.

Just as the political map of 18th century Saugerties was guided by the actions of the Corporation of Kingston, the physical map of 19th century Saugerties would be profoundly influenced by the actions of four individuals: Asa Bigelow; Jeremiah Russell; Robert L. Livingston; Henry Barclay.

Asa Bigelow arrived in Saugerties in 1807 and initially tried to do business on the river at Glasco but finding this too restrictive leased the store of Edward Livingston in the village area of Saugerties and ran his shipping business from the dock below the falls. The next year he purchased the deWolven patent lands and in 1812 incorporated the Village of Bristol on the northern end of this tract on the Hudson shore and moved all of his business there. He began construction of a road to the Kaaterskill clove from Bristol in 1814 after purchasing the land bordering to the north. He was the second supervisor of the new Town of Saugerties and its first Postmaster.

Jeremiah Russell was born at West Camp and was running a business in Trumpbours Corners by 1804. In 1814 he moved his operations to the store vacated by Asa Bigelow in the village of Saugerties.

Robert L. Livingston was the son-in-law of Robert R. Livingston and his secretary during the Louisiana Purchase. When Robert R. died in 1813 he became heir and owner of all the Livingston lands in the village area of Saugerties. His wife, Margaret, also inherited all the Hardenburg patent lands in the vacinity of Woodstock.

Henry Barclay, in 1825 at the age of 47 sold his half of a mercantile financing business in New York City and bought all the land at the falls of the Esopus to build a dam for industrial development of water power there where he had planned this as the base for making a “model” industrial community at Saugerties.

Within the first quarter century of Saugerties existence as a Town, and through the direct enterprise of these four individuals, all of the major physical features of the town took form. Turnpikes were run to the mountains. Dams and mills were built. Quarries were cut into the hillsides. Stone wharfs stretched into the Hudson. A lighthouse was built and the streets of a village were laid out and populated with houses and commercial buildings.

What bound its enterprise and industry together was transportation. Over the decades between the revolution and when Saugerties became a town Robert R. Livingston, the Chancellor, had been acquiring frontage along the Hudson River's extensive Esopus and Hudson shorelines. By 1800 all of the wharfs were Livingston businesses. Their main function was to tranship the continuous flow of products that came down the roads of Saugerties from the Livingston lands of the Hardenburg patent.

The Chancellor had placed all future hopes for profiting from Livingston land holdings on transportation and centered these hopes on Saugerties. Following the success of his Steamboat enterprise with Robert Fulton and the freighting monopoly this created, Robert R. Livingston applied his influence with the legislature to separate his center of operations in Saugerties from the politics of the Corporation of Kingston and the Town of Kingston. A Town of Saugerties between his Town of Woodstock tenancies and his Saugerties wharfs would put the Livingston family in control over all production of the Catskill Mountains that reached market by way of the Hudson. By 1813 when he died Robert R. Livingston had successfully created a steam transportation industry and secured the political positions necessary to retain all the profit benefits he envisioned that this industry would bring.

Robert R. Livingston, the Chancellor, was an extraordinary mind with an astute understanding of the political, scientific and industrial concepts of his time. He wrote extensively on these and communicated with those at the forefront of the same ideas. Had he lived to continue what he started with his innovative steamboat enterprises and related businesses the “landlord” image the Livingston family is most recognized for would have been changed and the early course of the state of New York would also have been changed. As it turned out Saugerties would struggle from his loss for nearly three decades trying to put into action the vision his presence had made the town's founding purpose.

Robert L. Livingston who has assumed responsibility for his father-in-law’s vision by 1814, had been the Chancellor’s personal secretary and fully involved in all of his political plans and business relations. “Robert L.” continued in these footsteps to develop what the Chancellor had planned for his properties throughout the Town of Saugerties, particularly the franchising of the road to Woodstock as the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike.

By the mid 1820’s the 20 year steamboat monopoly had come to an end and the Chancellor’s vision of the supremacy of the Saugerties ports had been overshadowed by the Erie Canal's recentering shipping to the north at Albany. The only thing left of the Chancellor’s broad vision for his holdings in Saugerties was water power and Industry.

The Chancellor’s initial involvement had served to attract speculative businesses along Saugerties’ inland roads and the leader of these, Jeremiah Russell’s mercantile business in the village area, was positioned to organize them into one common goal; to become subscribers partnering with Jeremiah Russell to financially back Robert L. Livingston's state charter for improving his Woodstock road into the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike. This major road would be the main land support for the mills and the population Henry Barclay was, after 1825, bringing into the growing village area.

Earlier, in 1812 Asa Bigalow had begun to improve a road from his deep water wharves at Bristol and was granted for this a turnpike charter. This was the Bristol Turnpike. It was the second chartered turnpike in Saugerties but the first in Saugerties as a town. The principal commercial function of both the Glasco and the Bristol turnpikes after 1817 was hide transport for the large commercial tanneries in the Catskill Mountains. They had previously connected the many smaller tanneries to market but after an act of the legislature permitted large corporations to develop tanneries in Greene County they experienced greatly expanded traffic.

The tanbark tree and water resources of the Catskill Mountains made tanning a major industry there. The ports of Saugerties were the closest these mountain industries came to the Hudson River. The relationship of its ports and turnpikes to tanning became a major source of wealth for Bristol and Glasco as their merchants received shipments of raw hides from as far away as South America at their wharves and transported these along their related turnpikes into the mountains. They then received the finished hides back for shipping and quickly became brokers between the tanners and makers of leather goods. With their profits they positioned themselves to be the bankers for the industry, advancing funds back to support the operations of the tanners and the needs of the communities that grew up around them.

This relationship was well known to the merchants that capitalized the Woodstock and Saugerties turnpike. They expected to play a similar role relative to the new industries arriving in Saugerties. With Henry Barclay’s investments there, attention was squarely placed on the Esopus falls on the Hudson River where the village was growing rapidly in population. Jeremiah Russell already controlled most of the commerce in this community and the banking relationship that he and his son William would build made them the wealthiest and most influential citizens of Saugerties over the entire nineteenth century.

On September 21st, 1825 Saugerties entered the Industrial Age. On that date Henry Barclay purchased all the land that included the south side of the Esopus Creek from where it flowed east to the Hudson River. In June of the following year he purchased from Robert L. Livingston all the lands of the creek’s north shore to the river. Written into the Livingston deed were the words “to be used for manufacturing purposes only and not for the purposes of building dwelling houses or to farm as part of the village that may be laid out or built on the lands north of said creek it being understood that said lands may be used for the establishment of every kind of Mills Manufacturing or workshops necessary or convenient for the said party of the second part and for no other purpose.”

Henry Barclay’s entrance into Saugerties brought with it business interests that spanned the Atlantic and involved manufacturing processes that would see their first application in America. He was capable of executing a vision that he shared with Robert L. Livingston but that Robert L. could not achieve himself. They were both part of an intellectual movement that saw industrialization as an opportunity to construct ideal communities of workers. Robert L. and the Chancellor became steeped in this idealism in France and in industrial Belgium and the spark of the idea that ignited Saugerties came with the visit of the marquis de Lafayette to Clermont in September of 1824. It was following the conversations over this dinner with Lafayette that Robert L. and Henry made their tour across the river and began the first discussions toward a plan for an Ideal Village there.

Henry Barclay was from a business and family with the connections needed for acquiring protected technologies restricted from being used outside of Great Britain. His business with his brother dealt with the owners of these properties and his father was the government official of Britain responsible for arranging their entry into this country. Before the summer of the next year he had made all the preparations necessary to industrialize Saugerties.

By 1826 Henry Barclay had confined the Esopus with a dam that directed its water power through a series of canals feeding multiple mill wheel sites for building factories. The first to be built was an iron works but when its developer and iron master drowned that site was sold to the owners of the West Point Foundary for John Simmons, an expert in the process of purifying iron, to begin first use of the “double puddling process” in America.

Barclay's first successful operation functionally employed machinery brought to America for the first time for making continuous roll paper by the Fourdranier process.

With the iron and paper mills in production an immediate demand for over 200 skilled workmen increased the population of the village with immigrants from England, Scotland and Ireland. They were attracted with the promise of life in Henry Barclay’s ideal community. Robert L. and Henry had a map created that diviided the land for the village between them and subdivided it into streets and lots. As the workmen arrived they were first housed in a connected row of stone tenements near the factories that looked very much like those they had come from, but they soon lease lots and build their own private houses. This difference from the British company housing is what they expected of America.

More than just the mill workers were required to make the specialized industrial products. Before the iron mill went into production Robert L. had his tenants in the Catskill Mountains begin the time consuming task of producing the vast amounts of charcoal needed for the iron purification process. Enormous amounts of chord wood needed for the furnaces was supplied in a continuous flow from the woodlots of Saugerties and Woodstock. Docks became congested with sloops continually unloading cargos of cotton lint and fibers from the mills of New England and the plantations of the South that was the raw material for making the paper. They competed with the barges carrying the ore arriving to be processed into iron material that would later be called steel. More orderly shipments left the factories from their special docks on a regular basis.

All of this traffic to and from the mountains and in and out of the Esopus’ narrow channel into the river soon left little room for ordinary business on the waterfront and the turnpike road between Saugerties and Shandaken through the Woodstock valley increased the traffic through the fledgling village many fold. By 1831 Henry Barclay had built a toll bridge to carry traffic from the mills and docks on the south shore to the business center of the growing village on the north and from there along the turnpike making his wharves the main supply point for the entire town and beyond.

All of the docks and the facilities to handle the workers were on the south side and this is where products arrived and left. Most of the mill workers were beginning to live on the north side. All the merchants lived on the old farms spreading north from their stores on Main Street. Within six short years the area that was envisioned as a village had grown from less than a dozen houses around Main Street to begin to fill the hundreds of lots that spread left and right off Partition Street down to the new bridge. The demands of a growing population and the needs of the factories had wildly succeeded in making Saugerties a major center of transportation and business.

For these first half dozen years Henry Barclay managed the growth of his Ideal Village nearly singlehandedly, arranging for municipal services out of mill profits and even donating land for and supporting the building of just about every denomination of church that his workers needed. He even conducted his own temperance meetings. The community of Saugerties was so organized, the businesses so cooperative and the society so civil that Robert L. had a large and comfortable house built there for his daughter and her husband, William Bayard Clarkson. A gated cobblestone carriage drive overlooking Barclay’s pond and bridge led to this house where enthusiasts for this model industrialization venture were entertained with this view of the future.

However, in this same year, 1831, a pivotal event was beginning to shake the focus of this Model Village. A Connecticut stone mason and sculptor by the name of Silas Brainard, employed to structure the supports of the Barclay bridge, discovered a material for this purpose on the route of the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike at the farm of William VanValkenberg at what is now Veteran. The quarrying he started there for this project developed into an industry that was to dwarf the manufacturing that Henry Barclay had based his plans upon. Within a decade Bluestone quarrying would grab the attention of all of Saugerties, particularly Jeremiah Russell and Asa Bigelow.

A new value was being placed on the old Kingston Commons lots that could never have been imagined by the Dutch herders and planters that reluctantly took ownership of them just twenty years before. And an influx of workers not skilled in the new sciences of industrial manufacturing but in the age-old art of hard rock quarrying would place its own demands on the new Town and Village, its ideals, the society it had begun to personify and the already threatened culture of those that had called Saugerties home for generations.

Michael Sullivan Smith