Samsonville is a
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
in the southwestern part of the town of
Olive
The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ...
in
Ulster County
Ulster County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. It is situated along the Hudson River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 181,851. The county seat is Kingston. The county is named after the Irish province of Ulster.
History
...
, New York, United States. Bordered to the north by
Mombaccus Mountain
Mombaccus Mountain is located in the Catskill Mountains of New York. To the south, it looms over the hamlet of Samsonville in the town of Olive. Together with Little Rocky and South Mountain, Mombaccus Mountain is part of a massif dominated by ...
and
Ashokan High Point
Ashokan High Point is a summit in the Catskill Mountains of New York. High Point is the loftiest part of a massif that includes the adjacent Mombaccus Mountain, Little Rocky and South Mountain. The summit can be accessed via the Kanape Brook Tr ...
, it is within the
Catskill Park
The Catskill Park is in the Catskill Mountains in New York in the United States. It consists of of land inside a Blue Line in four counties: Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, and Ulster. As of 2005, or 41 percent of the land within, is owned by ...
on the southeastern slopes of the high
Catskills
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas cl ...
.
Early History
Native American hunters made use of a natural rock shelter beneath a cliff in the area now called Samsonville as early as 2000 BC and possibly as late as 1600 AD. Excavations at the site yielded stone blades, potsherds, arrowheads and spear points. The area that includes Samsonville was once known as Subbeatty land (Mombaccus Mountain was called Subbeatty Mountain). It was included in the
Marbletown Commons portion of the Marbletown Patent granted to three trustees by
Queen Anne of England in 1703 through her agent,
Viscount Cornbury. When
Olive
The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ...
was founded in 1823, this section of Marbletown was transferred to the new town.
Samsonville developed around a
tannery
Tanning may refer to:
*Tanning (leather), treating animal skins to produce leather
*Sun tanning, using the sun to darken pale skin
**Indoor tanning, the use of artificial light in place of the sun
**Sunless tanning, application of a stain or dye t ...
established by Stoddard Hammond and the Palen family of tanners in 1831 below a falls on Mettacahonts Creek.
Town historian Vera Van Steenburgh Sickler wrote: "In 1831, Palen and Hammond built a large tannery in (Palentown) Samsonville. In 1850, after passing through other hands, the tannery became the property of Pratt and Samson." The anonymous author of a 1964 note on Samsonville history in the ''Kingston Daily Freeman'' wrote that the tannery had been built in 1831 but gave the names of the original owners as "Hammond and Edson" (Stoddard Hammond was a major tannery owner elsewhere in New York and in Pennsylvania).
In 1848, the tannery was sold to
Zadock Pratt
Zadock Pratt Jr. (October 30, 1790 – April 5, 1871) was a tanner, banker, soldier, and member of the United States House of Representatives. Pratt served in the New York militia from 1819–1826, and was Colonel of the 116th regiment ...
, with Henry Samson as operating partner. The area around the tannery had been known as "Palentown" but acquired the name of Samsonville, leaving
Palentown as the name of the adjacent area of
Rochester, Ulster County, New York
Rochester is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 7,272 at the 2020 census.US census, 2020 report, Rochester, Ulster County, New York https://www.census.gov/search-results.html?searchType=web&cssp=SERP&q=Rocheste ...
.
Henry A. Samson
Henry Almanzo Samson, for whom the hamlet was named, was born April 4, 1818 in
Woodstock, Connecticut
Woodstock is a town in Windham County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,221 at the 2020 census.
History
17th century
In the mid-17th century, John Eliot, a Puritan missionary to the Native Americans, established "praying town ...
, where he learned the tanning trade. In 1853, having established himself as a wealthy local businessman, he was named a Lieutenant Colonel in the 20th Regiment, New York State Militia and the following year was commissioned Brigadier General, 8th Brigade. In 1853, Zadock Pratt gifted his share of the Samsonville tannery to his son George Watson Pratt. Samson became the sole owner in 1856 and also had an interest in four other tanneries. In 1857, he built a grand Italianate villa at 32 West Chestnut Street in
Rondout, New York
Rondout (pronounced "ron doubt"), is situated in Ulster County, New York on the Hudson River at the mouth of Rondout Creek. Originally a maritime village, the arrival of the Delaware and Hudson Canal helped create a city that dwarfed nearby Kingsto ...
. General Samson performed his Civil War service in New York state, but raised local troops for the Union: "Employees of the big tannery at Samsonville responded well to the patriotic activities of its owner, General Samson of Rondout. 43 of these sturdy men from the back country enlisted in the old 20th and 27 more entered the 120th the following summer." In addition to his tannery interests, Samson was a member of the Board of Directors of the First National Bank of Rondout and the First National Bank of Kingston, one of the original trustees of the Rondout Savings Bank, a founding officer of the Rondout and Oswego Rail Road Company and president of the Washington Ice Company. He died on February 9, 1869 and is interred in Montrepose Cemetery in Rondout, now a district of
Kingston.
The name of
Samson Mountain
Samson Mountain is a mountain located in Sundown Wild Forest in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It stands above the Peekamoose Road (Ulster County Route 42) and the upper course of Rondout Creek
Rondout Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. Na ...
, which stands above the upper reaches of
Rondout Creek
Rondout Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 tributary of the Hudson River in Ulster and Sullivan counties, New York, United States. It rises on Rock ...
, commemorates Samson the tanner. The peak now known as
Ashokan High Point
Ashokan High Point is a summit in the Catskill Mountains of New York. High Point is the loftiest part of a massif that includes the adjacent Mombaccus Mountain, Little Rocky and South Mountain. The summit can be accessed via the Kanape Brook Tr ...
, which looms over Samsonville, was also called Samson by older residents, and is so named on a 1942
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (abbreviated USC&GS), known from 1807 to 1836 as the Survey of the Coast and from 1836 until 1878 as the United States Coast Survey, was the first scientific agency of the United States Government. It ...
benchmark at the summit. "Little Ashokan" (also known as "Round Mountain" or "Ashokan Cobble"), a lesser summit below High Point, was known locally as "Samson's Nose."
"The Most Important Town in the Entire Catskill Mountains"
Historian Harry Albert Haring wrote that, in its heyday, "Samsonville was the most important town in the entire Catskill Mountains, - its population was the largest, its payroll the greatest." The Civil War created a high demand for the hemlock-tanned sole leather that was the Samsonville tannery's main product. After the war, demand declined, as did the supply of hemlock bark. As bark cutters wiped out the local hemlocks, all the Catskill tanneries eventually closed. Historian David Stradling wrote: “In many locations...when the tanneries closed, the settlements around them closed too. Samsonville, the site of General Henry A. Samson’s large tannery, was once an important town. In 1854, the Samson Tannery employed seventy men, processing a remarkable 31,000 hides a year. By 1930, Haring declared Samsonville nearly a ghost town; it had never found a replacement of the jobs lost when the tannery closed.”
In 1871, an Ulster County directory noted that Samsonville "contains a church, a hotel, three stores, a grist mill, a saw mill, a tannery and about 100 inhabitants." At that time, tanning was still being done in Samsonville by William V.N. Boice & Sons. In 1873, however, the tannery burned down (not for the first time) and was not rebuilt. In 1880, historian Nathaniel Bartlett Sylvester still identified Samsonville as a "thickly-settled neighborhood" but added: "Since the abandonment of the tannery business the importance of the place has declined." Not all was gone: "There are two stores, one by Pratt Shurter and one by Peter Barringer, – Mr. Shurter is also postmaster, – a grist mill, owned by Anthony Shurter. There is also a saw-mill at this place, and a blacksmith."
The Shurter Mills
The first known resident of Samsonville was 1812 War veteran John "Captain Jack" Shurter, who served as one of the original Town Officers when Olive was founded in 1823 and as Justice of the Peace. The mills he and his descendants operated for six generations at the top of the Samsonville Falls on Mettacahonts ("Markham") Creek preceded Samson's tanning business and long survived it. The Shurter grist mill ground local buckwheat, wheat and corn, as well as clover for animal feed, until a flood knocked it off its foundation in 1928. That mill ("where the grain is ground, with a rumbling sound, that feeds all Samsonville") was celebrated in "The Tall Pine Tree" ("The Samsonville Song") collected in the 1950s from local residents Celia Krom Kelder and Mary Avery.
The Shurters also operated saw mills that produced
excelsior
Excelsior, a Latin comparative word often translated as "ever upward" or "even higher", may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature and poetry
* "Excelsior" (Longfellow), an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
* ''Excelsior'' (Macedo ...
and, later, headings (barrel tops) and shingles, and that side of the business continued after the loss of the grist mill, with a gasoline-powered engine supplementing the sometimes unreliable water power. A turbine installed between the mills provided electric power to Samsonville well before it was available in other remote Catskills communities.
Post-Tannery Years
After the tannery era,
bluestone
Bluestone is a cultural or commercial name for a number of dimension or building stone varieties, including:
* basalt in Victoria, Australia, and in New Zealand
* dolerites in Tasmania, Australia; and in Britain (including Stonehenge)
* felds ...
quarrying, timber harvesting and shaving hoops from saplings ("hoop poles") to bind the barrels that held
Rosendale cement
Rosendale cement is a natural hydraulic cement that was produced in and around Rosendale, New York, beginning in 1825. From 1818 to 1970 natural cements were produced in over 70 locations in the United States and Canada. More than half of the 35 mi ...
, as well as growing oats and hay, provided employment and income for a reduced population. In 1895, a Rand McNally Atlas gave Samsonville's population as 111. The 1940 census records counted 115 persons in Samsonville.
The tannery, mills, stores, hotel and schoolhouse that once stood in Samsonville are gone, as is Abey Kelder's saloon, celebrated in the local folk song "Kintey Coy at Samsonville" The post office, opened in 1849 with Henry Samson as the first postmaster, closed in 1965, when there were only 50 postal patrons left in the town. A handful of older buildings remain, most notably the Samsonville
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...
, built in 1873. That same year, the
Reformed Church
Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Cal ...
of Samsonville, founded in 1851, was taken down and relocated to nearby
Krumville. Tetta's Market, a gas station, convenience store, pizzeria and former tire store operated since 1952 by four generations of an Italian-American family, is the hamlet's major commercial business.
Public school students in Samsonville are in the
Onteora Central School District
Onteora Central School District is a school district
A school district is a special-purpose district that operates local public primary and secondary schools in various nations.
North America United States
In the U.S, most K–12 publi ...
and attend Bennett Elementary, Onteora Middle and Onteora High School in the Olive hamlet of
Boiceville.
Since 1954, Samsonville has had its own volunteer fire company, Olive Fire Department Company No. 4.
References
External links
*
*
* {{Cite web, url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Wicked_Ulster_County/izJ_CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Samsonville, title=Peter B. Markle, the "Rip Van Winkle" of Samsonville
Notable people
*
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens ( ; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released nine solo studio albums and multiple collaborative albums with other artists. Stevens has received Grammy and Academy Award nomi ...
, singer-songwriter
*
Vernon Chatman
Vernon Chatman (born October 31, 1972) is an American television producer, writer, voice actor, stand-up comedian, musician and a member of PFFR, an art collective based in Brooklyn, New York City. He created the television series ''Wonder Showz ...
, television producer, writer, voice actor, comedian, and musician
*
Sara Lee
Sara may refer to:
Arts, media and entertainment Film and television
* Sara (1992 film), ''Sara'' (1992 film), 1992 Iranian film by Dariush Merhjui
* Sara (1997 film), ''Sara'' (1997 film), 1997 Polish film starring Bogusław Linda
* Sara (2010 ...
, bass player, singer, and songwriter
Hamlets in Ulster County, New York