In a letter book of Henry Barclay there is copied a response to Moses Y. Beach who wants to run a grist mill off the water power. Barclay's reply is grist mills do not employ enough workers. He states that his principal reason for creating the water power was to fill the lots of his village with workers.

The first mill that Henry Barclay made functional was an iron works. Within months of his startup it was sold to Henry Carey and Henry Barclay exited the iron manufacturing business. He continued to use it as a centerpiece for promoting Saugerties industry and it is “Barclay's Iron Works” in an 1831 engraving even though it had been the Ulster Iron Works and completely refurbished by John Simmons for years by that time.

When Barclay's original 1825 stone dam across the Esopus was destroyed in 1858 and a wooden one replaced it Leon Barritt, the most prolific chronicler of the era, was only seven years old. He would record the fact that Sheffield and White who then owned the paper mill and the Tuckerman brothers who owned the iron works built the new dam. But he had no idea of what they agreed to in order to do this. For that agreement the canals were re-channeled to give the Tuckerman's iron works the direct flow of the water and the reservoir was filled in. Sheffield and White's use was throttled through a small outlet called Canal #3. Henry Barclay's plan of using a large reservoir to extend the water of the pond that passed through the rock cut to power many smaller mill sites twenty feet below the reservoir on tide water through many flumes and races had been eclipsed by the success of the Ulster Iron Works and the power demands of its early rolling mill technology. But because this was not included in Barritt's writings speculation on accuracy of an image of a reservoir on the Barclay maps and the 1851 map of the “Village of Ulster” went on for over a century.

The Ulster Iron Works is legendary for setting the quality standard for production of high strength iron. But Ulster Iron is less about the legend then it is about the creation of it. There is little that would be known about Henry Barclay, paper manufacturing, the iron works or any of this early era if it were not for Leon Barritt.

The earliest history of Saugerties is a “Memorandum for a brief for Lt. Swords' trial, 1770". It is a single sheet of note paper with a scribbled list of events put into chronological order by adding numbers placed independent of the order of the writing. The names of occupants and ownerships from the first Indian deed up to the time of the writing is listed.

The numbers organize a progression of history supporting a November 6, 1767 Crown grant of 2000 acres overlaying the northern part of the present Village of Saugerties and extending west over the Winston Farm and to the present border with Woodstock.

It is a document written by William Cockburn in his capacity as land surveyor. In the eighteenth century the surveying profession required a knowledge of most of the important historical references of the community. Surveyors used their archive of ancient deeds and maps and notes daily for verifying the boundaries they marked.

William Cockburn was not just a local surveyor. He was official surveyor and confidant to Cadwallender Colden, the Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of New York; a recognized intellectual of the period and himself a writer of a history of the Indians. This memorandum used some pretty solid sources from that connection.

But all the history most familiar to Saugerties comes from The Pearl. For over a century all histories have simply restated Leon Barritt's original words in The Pearl.

The Pearl is an 8 page periodical produced in 12 monthly issues during 1875, with pages numbered consecutively, 1 through 96, as a planned Volume 1. The Pearl is so rare today that very few have had the opportunity to read its pages before now.

A January 27th, 1875 Kingston Freeman short article reads:
"The Saugerties Pearl.
Messrs. Barritt and Jernegan, of Saugerties, have hit upon a plan to make their place attractive, and advertise its advantages to the world. They have started a little eight-page monthly, in which they will depict the objects of interest roundabout their village. Mr. Jernegan furnishing the photographs, three of which will ornament as many pages in each number. Mr. Leon Barritt will furnish the literary portion of the periodical, including descriptions of the pictures. There will be also a page of advertisements. This little periodical is called "The Pearl." It is printed in very elegant style by A. V. Haight, Esq., on heavy tinted-paper, and is the most tasty looking paper ever published in Ulster. It should meet a sale of thousands in Saugerties and in fact the people of the entire county will find it interesting and pleasing."

Over the next five years Leon Barritt contributed as agent of the Kingston Freeman for both Saugerties and Tivoli news. His style and his byline are heavily represented in the Town of Saugerties section of Nathaniel Bartlett Sylvester's 1880 compilation of the History of Ulster County, New York.

Barritt left Saugerties for Boston in 1880 to train and work as an engraver of illustrations. Then after going to Minnesota for a year after 1882, he returned to Saugerties around 1884 and purchased a house on Elm Street. His contributions and illustrations for "Barritt's Easel" published for a year in 1884 with his father under "T. J. Barritt and Son" was his last work in Saugerties.

Leon Barritt, 1852-1938, led a long, varied and highly productive life as a journalist writer, cartoonist, illustrator, publisher and inventor, and later had a rather international reputation.

The first of his Barritt line in the United States, Thomas Barritt, arrived in 1800 with letters of introduction to Thomas Jefferson. He was a Republican forced to flee England for his political views. Thomas Barritt settled in Poughkeepsie and married Mary Henderson of Fishkill in 1811. Their first child, Alice, born 1812 was married to Benson J. Loosing, the distinguished American historian. Uncle Benson is likely as much Leon's inspiration as an historian as his grandfather is for the sharp political wit Leon Barritt later became famous for.

Thomas Jefferson Barritt, fourth child and third son of the eight children of Thomas and Mary Barritt was born in Poughkeepsie in 1818. In 1846, after an early life at sea on whalers and freighters, he married Catherine S. Malcolm (Kate). In 1852 T. J. Barritt leased the former Myndert Mynderse tavern on Main Street (facing down Market Street) in Saugerties and purchased it in 1854. He carried on a stationery, news and Jewelry business there. During the Civil War he owned and operated the ferry "Air Line" between Saugerties and Tivoli.

Leon Barritt, the fourth son, third surviving, of T. J. and Kate Barritt was born in Saugerties in 1852. A Leon Barritt born in 1851 to T. J. and Kate died in 1852 and our Leon was born that same year and given the same name as the deceased brother. (The Library of Congress has an 1851-1938 date in their authorities that has not overcome this confusion. The first Leon is buried in the family plot in Saugerties; our Leon is buried in Brooklyn, New York)

Leon Barritt moved from Saugerties, permanently, first to Middletown to open a stationary business. There he purchased a half interest in the Daily Argus and for a year and a half was its publisher. He sold his interest in the Argus and, in 1889, then moved to New York City to establish himself first as a contributor of cartoons to the New York Press. In 1890 he publish his first book "Engravings. How to establish their cost...". After 5 years with the Press he left to become a general freelance political cartoonist to all the major newspapers in the city.

As a cartoonist Leon Barritt is best known for his June 29, 1898 Vim Magazine "The Big Type War of the Yellow Kids" cartoon depicting Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst characters dressed as the Yellow Kid arguing over promotion of the Spanish American War. This gave rise to the term "yellow journalism". This political cartoon and the one he drew as commentary on large department stores, making them vampires sucking the life out of small business, are both familiar illustrations still used today to explain the issues of that period in history.

After producing a popular book on how to draw in 1904, and collaborating with Garrett Serviss in the invention, patenting, and production of the Barritt-Serviss Star and Planet Finder in 1906, at the height of his career as an artist, he developed a paralysis in his right hand, loosing his ability to draw.

Undeterred, Leon Barritt immediately founded a monthly publication based on his star and planet finder that published the location of stars and planets for each month. Within three years this became the largest circulation astronomical journal in the world. Leon Barritt's obituary has him still the publisher of his Monthly Evening Sky Map when he died at 86, February 1, 1938.

Many newspaper articles on Leon Barritt were written during his later years that are appreciations of his dedication to the historical contexts in his astronomical writings. To the very end he had lived out the interest in history that is so mature in the work he began in Saugerties.

As an artifact The Pearl, itself, symbolizes Saugerties as a birthing place of creative innovation. As impressive as The Pearl is for the written contributions of Leon Barritt, it is equally important as a controlled sampling for a study of photographic processes. As an early photo journal application that directly applied over 260 of the same photo to each page, a digital archive collecting all these photographic prints from all the issues of The Pearl is something that would be available nowhere else.

The Pearl is thus an experience. But in the content that Leon Barritt left in it and in the History of Ulster County and in articles he wrote in newspapers, for instance, promoting the creation of the Saugerties Long Dock, all the critical information regarded as containing the most accurate content for a history of Saugerties is readily available.

Barritt reports on the testing that defined the quality standard of Ulster Iron. He tells of Barclay's original paper mill burning in 1872 and then how many Washburn bricks Sheffield used to rebuild it. Details of the processing of the iron and the paper are given as part of the description of the Pearl's period photos of the mills. Everything one needs to know about Saugerties before 1880 has been captured by Leon Barritt. These period accounts are all available in reprints, on the Internet and in digital editions from the library and in bookstores.