Saugerties High School - Sawyer Yearbook (Saugerties, NY)

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RICHARD L. FEIN Eclitorflnfchief

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Our Theme Streamr Is the Theme of This 1952 SAWYER. What more fitting theme? The Algonquin In- dians who preceded the white man here, lived along our streams. When the Dutch, and later the English, came to Saugerties, they settled by these same water- ways-the Hudson, the Esopus, the Sawyer's Creek, the Beaverkill. At that time these streams provided avenues of transportation, power for mills, fish for food. Today they serve the same purposes though in modified ways. Today the Hudson is a channel for sea going ships and for pleasure yachts. The Esopus provides waterpowerg all of our streams teem with fish. Trout abound in the mountain streams. In the Hudson the most commonly found fish is the shad. Three streams claim most of the attention of Saugerties historians: the Esopus, the Sawyer's Creek, and the Beaverkill. We find in talking to present-day residents that, while all of them know of the Esopus, few are fully aware of the existence of the Sawyer Creek, or of the Beaverkill. To the first and early settlers here these two latter streams were as important as the Esopus. Perhaps this is because, being small, they could be more easily used for power with the primi- tive machinery that was then available. Benjamin Myer Brink, author of the EARLY HISTORY OF SAUGERTIES, devotes an entire chapter to the Beaver Creek fthe Beaverkillj. This stream rises in the foothills of the Catskills just south and west of the village of Saugerties and flows north, emptying into the Kaaterskill at the Green County line. Brink says, It is worthy of note that the indus- tries of the town, aside from grist and sawmills, began along the Beaver Creek . . . As we pass in review the incipient industries of the town we will follow the stream toward its mouth. The first claim- ing our attention, if not the earliest erected, was the mill at Unionville which was built by Adam Mont- ross in the earliest years of the last century for a grist mi1l. Farther north on the Beaverkill was a hat factory fnear the house of Russel Wynkoopjg next, on the farm of Addison Sax was a brick yard, a little farther north, on the north side of the Walden Turn- pike was the tannery of Cornelius Fiero. Another grist mill was erected on a branch of the Beaver where was once the residence of C. P. Finger, and on that-. same branch, on the farm of William H. Hommel, was a sawmill, and on the farm of Abram E. Hommel was another brickyard. Today there i.s not a single mill in operation along the Beaverkill. Farms instead line its banks. If you will check the names of the people who live in its proximity, you will find them to be much the same as in earlier days: Sax, Fiero, Dederick, Trumpbour, Smith, Relyca, Finger, Hommel, Mower, Wynkoop, Snyder. Without our streams, life in Saugerties would not be the same: for one thing, we should miss their beauty, without our Hudson there would be no local transportation by water, though our local shippers use it very little. Some of our local mills would miss the waters of the Esopus in their papermaking pro- cess. Perhaps their greatest current value is that they serve as channels of water drainage fSaugerties has never experienced a flood, and is in little danger of onel. Certainly the young and old alike would miss them as delightful places from which to catch fish, and in which to go swimming.

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DR. GRANT D. MORSE Superintendent of Schools