Jack Kelly writer
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DOWN ALONG THE RIVER
(Dutchess Magazine, Spring 2006)
Zadock Pratt was a man after my own heart. The nineteenth-
century tanner ”had a passion for pyrotechnics, which he
satisfied by executing full-scale assaults on the barns of
obliging farmers.”
Pratt so loved hemlocks trees that he asked each tree’s
forgiveness before having at it with his axe. As the owner of
the largest tannery in the country, he was responsible
denuding hundreds of square miles of Catskill hillsides for
the tannin-laden bark. In the 1820s, hides arrived at his
works from as far away as California and Uruguay.
The eccentric Pratt served in Congress, celebrated the
Fourth of July by riding around town in a sleigh, and
published an embellished version of his life in the Shoe and
Leather Reporter.
His story is only one of the many fascinating anecdotes that
enlivens Tom Lewis’s admirable new book The Hudson, A
History (Yale University Press, $30). This excellent volume
will remind local readers of the unique natural and cultural
richness of the Hudson Valley.
Lewis starts his narrative as close to the beginning as
anyone could ask, about 1.3 billion years ago, when the
ancestral Adirondacks “rose perhaps fifteen miles from their
base, three times the height of Mount Everest.” Erosion over
650 million years reduced these colossal peaks to a flat
plain. Various head-on collisions between continents shaped
a local geology that is nothing if not complex. Lewis points
out that because sea level was once much lower, the Hudson
River actually carved a valley in what is now the ocean floor.
This “underwater Grand Canyon” filled with exotic fish
stretches halfway to Bermuda.
To encompass the vast history of the Hudson, Lewis makes
the occasional survey-type sprint that knocks off decades in
a few paragraphs, but he is at his best when he slows to a
walk and makes use of his deft storytelling ability.
For example, the Livingston family naturally figures large in
the book. Lewis humanizes clan founder Robert and his
energetic wife Alida by recounting their effort to employ
Palatine German refugees to make tar, pitch, and turpentine
for the British navy in 1710. “The scheme quickly turned into
a fiasco,” he writes. The local pine trees did not in fact yield
tar -- somebody goofed. Alida, who was to earn money
providing victuals for the workers, couldn’t get supplies. The
Germans, naturally disgruntled, raided the stores of the
manor.
“I wish the Palatines had never come here,” Alida complained
to her husband. The project collapsed in 1712, with bad
blood on all sides. A number of German families drifted
south to settle in Dutchess County. “The bitterness of the
Palatines,” Lewis notes, “survives to this day in the hearts of
some of their descendants who still make their homes in
towns and hamlets along the Hudson.”
Lewis gives an interesting account of the establishment of
Sing Sing prison, a Hudson River landmark. Europeans
translated the Indian name as “stone on stone,” and the
phrase gave them ideas. In 1825 state authorities
transported prisoners from the lock-up at Auburn down the
new Erie Canal and along the river to the spot then known as
Mount Pleasant. The convicts were put to work cutting and
dressing marble from nearby hills in order to build
themselves a new prison. The cosy cells were 7 feet long by
3 feet 3 inches wide. Prisoners were not allowed to talk, but
went about their work -- they continued to quarry stone after
the building was completed -- in silence. Today, the
institution still stares grimly from the water’s edge and felons
continue to be sent “up the river.”
The Hudson River ice trade became a flourishing business in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Lewis relates how,
during the coldest weeks of January and February,
thousands of workers, many of them farmers who depended
on the ice harvest to make ends meet, frantically cut ice into
300-pound blocks and moved it into the 145 huge
whitewashed ice houses that lined the river. They packed
the blocks in sawdust or straw to keep them from freezing
together and to provide insulation. During the rest of the
year, barges carried three million pounds of frigid cargo to
the city to be deposited in home ice boxes.
Gilded Age “Ice King” Charles W. Morse cornered the market
on what had become an indispensable commodity. In 1900,
Morse colluded with New York City mayor Robert A. Van
Wyck to push the price of ice from 25 to 60 cents a pound.
His dirty dealing exposed, Van Wyck met a typical politician’s
end -- he “packed a trunk with three and a half million
dollars” and sailed off to a luxurious retirement.
The twentieth century brought increased challenges to the
Hudson’s environment. Industrial waste and sewage were
poured into the river with abandon. Lewis gives a succinct
account of the skullduggery of General Electric in its long
battle to avoid paying the cost of cleaning up the PCB
pollution it had caused. While much has been done to
preserve the ecosystem, Lewis mentions the threats that
remain, including “an electrical generating plant at Athens,”
and “new housing developments on the western shore.”
Robert Juet, Henry Hudson’s first mate, expressed his
admiration when he arrived at the mouth of the great river in
1609. “This is a very good Land to fall with,” he wrote, “and
a very pleasant Land to see.” Lewis has done us a favor by
writing a concise and highly readable history of this very
pleasant land.
# # #
(Dutchess Magazine, Spring 2006)
Zadock Pratt was a man after my own heart. The nineteenth-
century tanner ”had a passion for pyrotechnics, which he
satisfied by executing full-scale assaults on the barns of
obliging farmers.”
Pratt so loved hemlocks trees that he asked each tree’s
forgiveness before having at it with his axe. As the owner of
the largest tannery in the country, he was responsible
denuding hundreds of square miles of Catskill hillsides for
the tannin-laden bark. In the 1820s, hides arrived at his
works from as far away as California and Uruguay.
The eccentric Pratt served in Congress, celebrated the
Fourth of July by riding around town in a sleigh, and
published an embellished version of his life in the Shoe and
Leather Reporter.
His story is only one of the many fascinating anecdotes that
enlivens Tom Lewis’s admirable new book The Hudson, A
History (Yale University Press, $30). This excellent volume
will remind local readers of the unique natural and cultural
richness of the Hudson Valley.
Lewis starts his narrative as close to the beginning as
anyone could ask, about 1.3 billion years ago, when the
ancestral Adirondacks “rose perhaps fifteen miles from their
base, three times the height of Mount Everest.” Erosion over
650 million years reduced these colossal peaks to a flat
plain. Various head-on collisions between continents shaped
a local geology that is nothing if not complex. Lewis points
out that because sea level was once much lower, the Hudson
River actually carved a valley in what is now the ocean floor.
This “underwater Grand Canyon” filled with exotic fish
stretches halfway to Bermuda.
To encompass the vast history of the Hudson, Lewis makes
the occasional survey-type sprint that knocks off decades in
a few paragraphs, but he is at his best when he slows to a
walk and makes use of his deft storytelling ability.
For example, the Livingston family naturally figures large in
the book. Lewis humanizes clan founder Robert and his
energetic wife Alida by recounting their effort to employ
Palatine German refugees to make tar, pitch, and turpentine
for the British navy in 1710. “The scheme quickly turned into
a fiasco,” he writes. The local pine trees did not in fact yield
tar -- somebody goofed. Alida, who was to earn money
providing victuals for the workers, couldn’t get supplies. The
Germans, naturally disgruntled, raided the stores of the
manor.
“I wish the Palatines had never come here,” Alida complained
to her husband. The project collapsed in 1712, with bad
blood on all sides. A number of German families drifted
south to settle in Dutchess County. “The bitterness of the
Palatines,” Lewis notes, “survives to this day in the hearts of
some of their descendants who still make their homes in
towns and hamlets along the Hudson.”
Lewis gives an interesting account of the establishment of
Sing Sing prison, a Hudson River landmark. Europeans
translated the Indian name as “stone on stone,” and the
phrase gave them ideas. In 1825 state authorities
transported prisoners from the lock-up at Auburn down the
new Erie Canal and along the river to the spot then known as
Mount Pleasant. The convicts were put to work cutting and
dressing marble from nearby hills in order to build
themselves a new prison. The cosy cells were 7 feet long by
3 feet 3 inches wide. Prisoners were not allowed to talk, but
went about their work -- they continued to quarry stone after
the building was completed -- in silence. Today, the
institution still stares grimly from the water’s edge and felons
continue to be sent “up the river.”
The Hudson River ice trade became a flourishing business in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Lewis relates how,
during the coldest weeks of January and February,
thousands of workers, many of them farmers who depended
on the ice harvest to make ends meet, frantically cut ice into
300-pound blocks and moved it into the 145 huge
whitewashed ice houses that lined the river. They packed
the blocks in sawdust or straw to keep them from freezing
together and to provide insulation. During the rest of the
year, barges carried three million pounds of frigid cargo to
the city to be deposited in home ice boxes.
Gilded Age “Ice King” Charles W. Morse cornered the market
on what had become an indispensable commodity. In 1900,
Morse colluded with New York City mayor Robert A. Van
Wyck to push the price of ice from 25 to 60 cents a pound.
His dirty dealing exposed, Van Wyck met a typical politician’s
end -- he “packed a trunk with three and a half million
dollars” and sailed off to a luxurious retirement.
The twentieth century brought increased challenges to the
Hudson’s environment. Industrial waste and sewage were
poured into the river with abandon. Lewis gives a succinct
account of the skullduggery of General Electric in its long
battle to avoid paying the cost of cleaning up the PCB
pollution it had caused. While much has been done to
preserve the ecosystem, Lewis mentions the threats that
remain, including “an electrical generating plant at Athens,”
and “new housing developments on the western shore.”
Robert Juet, Henry Hudson’s first mate, expressed his
admiration when he arrived at the mouth of the great river in
1609. “This is a very good Land to fall with,” he wrote, “and
a very pleasant Land to see.” Lewis has done us a favor by
writing a concise and highly readable history of this very
pleasant land.
# # #