The research environment for tracing this responsibility had been so tainted by personal opinion by the time it was done in 1978 that key parts of history were ignored. With the information age the facts have become clear.

Henry Barclay's family's retention of the pond itself was found to have passed to the Sheffield family trust in an 1894 legal decision made by Benjamin Coon as referee. That decision in turn set up a 1903 agreement that resulted in the transfer of the old iron works first rights to the water of the Esopus Creek to the Martin Cantine Company. Both the 1894 and 1903 decisions recognized the Sheffield claim that the bedrock base of the pond extended into the canal's bedrock base and this gave them a continuous right to the natural flow of water to their mills as it passed freely to tide water. This was the flow used to calculate the volume tapped by the canal on the south side of the dam that had been previously divided between the old iron works' historic needs and the paper mill's.

This all started in 1902 when the Martin Cantine Company was going to purchase the old Ulster Iron Works property on the south side of the dam and use its first right to the water to generate electricity for manufacturing at its plant on the north side of the dam. It was the demands of this level of power generation that created a controversy over the historic rights to waters in the canals.

Cantine's plan was to partner with Edwin Gould who owned the iron works property and use the canal #2 flow to run a generator at the pulp mill's turbine location. The electricity was to be fed to his plant on the north side of the creek across transmission lines. The land south of Dock Street had been purchased for running these lines to the plant and also into the village. However, the amount of water that could be brought through the rock cut was shown to be insufficient to drive the generating capacity for electrifying the plant and supplying the village and still leave enough for the paper mills.

In the 1903 agreement there were four parties: The Martin Cantine Company; Edwin Gould; Sheffield Paper Company; and, Agnes R. L. Sheffield representing the bondholders of the family trust. The distinct property divisions created to make the agreement practical were brokered by Judge Charles Davis. Agnes R. L. Sheffield and Edwin Gould were representing contractual agreements they had made to sell to Diamond Paper Mills and the Martin Cantine Company respectively. In the agreement all the parties reserved their water rights and only land transfers were resolved.

What was resolved, in essence, was the dam was divided between electric generation for primary use on the north and for manufacturing as secondary use on the south side. That was done by deeding for the first time the stream bed between the tide water and the dam and dividing the respective north and south sides of the dam. A division of the iron works property and paper mills property down the middle of the canals made in 1858 was moved in favor of the paper mills ownership of all canal beds. Canal #2 was capped, filled and totally removed from the map leaving no water power access to the old iron works site. Finally, respective access to the dam from both the north and south sides was deeded as a ten foot strip along the south edge of Canal #1 and the shoreline of the pond between the bridge and the dam. Right to use these accesses for repair of the dam was granted to each owner.

To this day the four parties of this agreement retain these rights, as near as can be figured. The power generation right was shared between Cantine and Gould and the water rights never left the Sheffield trust who, even though the paper mill was in the process of being sold to the Diamond Paper Mills as these negotiations were taking place, always kept some interest in the form of a mortgage or lease to them and each successor, right up to the current era.

These negotiations were under the expert guidance of Judge Charles Davis, arguably the all-time master when it comes to knowledge of legal title to the soil of the Village of Saugerties. Sadly, the level of knowledge during the rest of the twentieth century hasn't proven anywhere near as masterful.

It's hardly any wonder since it appears banks were adroitly played by investors in a long series of cleaver mortgage deals that left so many foreclosures and referee deeds on the record, all ending in the same Sheffield involvements, that ownership has been an elaborate shell game since the 1880's. Indeed, there are so many corporate names used in the transfers of the same soil since then that there is no wonder that this confusion about ownership and responsibility had allowed this iconic historic setting to languish in ruin for so long.

The way Judge Davis “drew the line” in this new era when water flow was in demand for electricity generation, was to separate water used for factory processes from that used for driving machinery. Placing the first right to the water at the dam itself, where it was unconstrained, and then further constraining the flow at the canal, thereby limiting the secondary rights to not enough water for both power and the water intensive paper making processes, had the effect of endorsing electric or steam powered machines for factory operations from then on.

The fourteen feet of water in the canal above its bed specified in this 1903 agreement left little the ancient mill sites on the south side of the dam could do to expand since the paper making easily used up Canal No. 1's full allotment.

Martin Cantine and Edwin Gould were first cousins by marriage. Edwin Gould was Jay Gould's son and in the family tradition he was an engaged investor. He understood the advantages ownership of hydro electric power gave to an investment and he used his own persuasive powers to keep that in the family.

John G. Myers foreclosed on his mortgage to the Sheffield and Parsons partnership in the Pulp Mill after Parsons voluntarily closed the Barclay Fibre Company in 1897. The land of the old iron works went up for sale to satisfy the mortgage and Myers ended up with it. In a booklet made around 1899 the complete property is described relative to its first rights to all the waters of the Esopus Creek. This is what prompted Edwin Gould to purchase the land.

In the 1904 laws of the New York State legislature a blow to the value of this first right was struck. Section 724 permitted New York City to eventually select a site for its water supply that diverted the flow of the Esopus at its greatest reserve point into the Ashokan Reservoir. This seriously handicapped the future of the Barclay dam at Saugerties as a power generation site.

The village of Saugerties was electrified in the early 1890's. By that time steam generators were common in mills and factory buildings. The use of the electric motor opened up mechanized manufacturing throughout the village and the insurance maps for 1892 show the symbol for the generator in most of its commercial buildings.

Once the hydroelectric generation had proven itself at the Martin Cantine Company on the north side of the dam a Novelty and Crape Paper factory using the Barclay Fibre Company buildings on the south was planned for the power. But by 1912 when production was just starting the prospects for a steady flow of water had come into question and the Martin Cantine Company began to expand closer to the railroad sidings. In 1914 The Tissue Factory was built as the first large scale factory building totally unrelated to water power in Saugerties.