On The Discovery of Rosendale Cement
The Century House Historical Society proudly celebrates and interprets the history of the Rosendale Cement industry. The cement produced locally was hydraulic cement, given that name because it sets even when submerged in water. The area’s limestone deposits supplied more than half of North America’s cement needs in the second half of the nineteenth century, so this industry was immensely important to the development of the United States. It was used in the construction of the US Capital, the Croton Aqueduct and Dam, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Starrucca Viaduct, Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct, the NYS Thruway, and many other structures.1
There are many erroneous accounts of the discovery of Rosendale Cement widely disseminated in the secondary sources. What follows is a brief account of what is known concerning the discovery of natural cement in Ulster County in the nineteenth century, relying heavily on primary sources. The hope is to clear up the confusion so many later accounts have propagated.
Rosendale cement is a natural cement, made from a very specific rock: clay-rich dolostone, which is essentially a variant of limestone, but contains additional elements, mainly magnesium (found in the mineral dolomite) and aluminum and silicon (contributed by the clay). When fired properly, it becomes calcined, which is to say, chemically transformed. It is then ground to a fine powder that, when combined with water, eventually hardens to produce a very durable man-made stone that has many applications. (Concrete is cement combined with aggregate, usually stones but also with reinforcement such as rebar.) Natural cement is made from rock that already contains all the necessary chemical compounds in the right proportion, as found in the ground, whereas Portland cement, the product that has largely supplanted natural cement, is made by bringing together and combining limestone (its chief component) with the other necessary ingredients from multiple separate sources. The limestone that natural cement is made from is called dolomite or dolostone.
The Romans made a version of hydraulic cement that is so enduring that many of the structures that they constructed with it are extant today, over two millennia later. In addition to limestone (calcined to lime), Roman cement incorporated a specific kind of volcanic ash, known as pozzolana. This product was a hydraulic cement but obviously not natural. The knowledge necessary to produce this cement was lost after the fall of Rome but rediscovered and used by the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by English engineers at the end of the eighteenth century (2).
Canals were a vital transportation mode in North America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the railroads that eventually supplanted them developed. The Erie Canal, constructed by the State of New York between 1817 and 1825, taught Americans that they could build canals successfully, and became the training ground for early civil engineers. Indeed, its Chief Engineer, Benjamin Wright, was subsequently dubbed “The Father of American Civil Engineering”. Men who worked for him on the Erie Canal’s construction learned civil engineering and then went on to construct many of America’s other canals, civil engineers such as Canvass White, John Bloomfield Jervis, and James McEntee. This was the only way to learn engineering at the time, as the first civil engineering college degrees in America were not given until the early 1840s.
Canvass White (pictured) studied the cement being made in England when he was sent there by the state to investigate canal technology in 1817. He was convinced that limestone suitable for making cement could be found in North America. Upon his return to New York to work on the construction of the canal, he discovered dolostone “...on the land of T. Clark in Chittenango”, in 1818 (3). He then worked out the process of turning it into hydraulic cement, for which he was awarded a patent in 1820. His “White’s Patent Hydraulick Cement” was used in the Erie Canal’s construction, albeit mostly by other local producers violating his patent. (White was eventually awarded $10,000 by the State of New York as compensation that he may or may not have actually received. Nathaniel Sylvester’s 1880 history claims it was $20,000.) The engineers had already dismissed the idea of importing hydraulic cement from England as being too expensive, so had planned to employ regular limestone mortar, which is not watertight and does not set underwater. One can only speculate about how that would have turned out. A now removed NYS historic marker credited Nathaniel Bruce with making the discovery in High Falls, NY in 1818 but only the year is correct. He did make natural cement in High Falls but not until after the discovery was made by someone else.
The War of 1812 created a fuel shortage in America. The heavily settled East Coast had insufficient timber resources by that time, two centuries after settlement, and coal could only be affordable supplied, from Virginia and England, by shipping it on the Atlantic Ocean. The British blockaded the east coast during that war, cutting off those supplies. In consequence, the anthracite coal fields in north east Pennsylvania, where three quarters of all the world’s anthracite are found, were developed. In 1825, a new company was incorporated as “The President, Managers and Company of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company” (D&H). It constructed a 108 mile long canal to transport anthracite coal from its mines in Carbondale, Pennsylvania to the Hudson River. That required hydraulic cement, primarily for its 110 locks and 19 aqueducts. The nascent D&H Company hired Benjamin Wright as its first Chief Engineer, who brought both Jervis and McEntee from the Erie to work on the construction of the canal. He planned to get cement from Chittenango but, aware of White’s discovery there, the D&H thought they might find similar limestone along its route from Honesdale, Pennsylvania to Rondout, New York. In this, they were proven correct. The earliest primary source we have for the discovery of Rosendale cement is the D&H Canal Company’s very first annual report, for 1825, published in March of 1826. It says that “The stone of which water cement is made has been found in great abundance by a Geologist, who was specially employed for that purpose and the quality is ascertained to be equal at least to that used in constructing the Locks on the Erie Canal.” Note that it was discovered by a geologist who was hired expressly to look for potential mineral resources.
The first detail concerning the discovery that is in dispute is the location where the dolostone was originally found. Many sources say it was on Snyder’s property, part of which is now the Century House Historical Society site. Nathaniel Sylvester’s 1880 History of Ulster County New York is the next primary source for information and the one that Dietrich Werner and Gayle Grunwald relied on extensively when they wrote the historic narrative of the Rosendale Cement historic district for its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1992. Sylvester wrote that the discovery was made during construction of the D&H Canal in High Falls, New York. He continues, “The first specimens of rock were burned in a blacksmith’s forge at High Falls…It was found to be of excellent quality, and it was at once decided that no further purchases from Chittenango would be necessary.” Subsequently, Mr. John Littlejohn was contracted to furnish cement for the canal’s construction. He built a kiln in High Falls a short distance from Simeon DePuy’s flour mill. The fired material was transported there, where it was ground into cement. Sylvester continues the story of this important discovery by detailing how James McEntee, “...was thus familiar with all the details of the discovery and the manufacture. He was then boarding at Simon De Puy’s, and knew about the contract to grind.” McEntee was the resident engineer for the initial construction of the first 20 miles of the D&H Canal from Rondout south. This brings us to the second fact that is in dispute, who made the discovery. Somehow, the fact that McEntee was (possibly) present when dolostone was discovered in High Falls led to his being credited or that discovery, despite the fact that he was not a geologist. Sylvester included a full page biography of McEntee in another section of his book that does not even mention this discovery. Interestingly, Sylvester mentioned that his account relied on articles concerning the discovery written by McEntee’s son and published in the Rondout Freeman “...a few years since”. Unfortunately, I am yet to find copies of those articles. Sylvester says that once Littlejohn finished supplying to the D&H, he shut down his operation (4).
In 1910, the historical journal Olde Ulster published an account from 1878 that was in the possession of the contributor, Chaplin Roswell Randall Hoes U.S.N., who attested that it was in the handwriting of James McEntee’s son, the artist Jervis McEntee (named for James’ friend and fellow engineer John Jervis). This document is his father’s recollection, over fifty years after the fact, of the construction of the D&H Canal. In it, he related the names of many of the property owners the canal was built through, along with anecdotes. As to the discovery of Rosendale cement, he simply states that “Cement was first found in the county by engineers of the canal” (5). Not what you would expect had he been the actual discoverer!
Where did the claim that it was discovered on A.J. Snyder’s property in Rosendale come from? Sylvester’s detailed history makes it clear that that occurred subsequent to the discovery in High Falls. “No one was manufacturing for the general market. The first man to revive the business and manufacture for shipment was Judge Lucas Elmendorf, the man from whom the Lucas Turnpike takes its name. He commenced quarrying and burning cement where the village of Lawrenceville is now located, and the grinding was done in the old Snyder mill.” He continues with a discussion of how there was confusion as to the discovery even at that time and includes an 1878 letter to an unknown recipient from John B. Jervis, who was Assistant Chief Engineer for the D&H then, that states “By your letter and the documents with it I find an inquiry as to who first discovered cement in Ulster County, James McEntee claiming that it was by the agents of the Delaware and Hudson Company…The canal was commenced in the spring of 1825 and the cement was discovered during that summer. As to the claim that Ulster County hydraulic cement was manufactured and used before the want of it was felt by the Delaware and Hudson Canal, in my opinion has no just basis in fact.” This further invalidates the spurious claim that Nathaniel Bruce made the discovery in High Falls in 1818. Jervis’ letter gives details of the discovery of a magnesium lime that had also been discovered in the same time period, a product that made a strong mortar with a “...lightly cement quality, but it is quite different from what is known as hydraulic cement.” He credits this fact with confusion that already existed at that time (6).
In conclusion, Rosendale Cement was discovered in High Falls, N.Y. in the summer of 1825 by an unnamed geologist hired by the D&H Canal Company specifically to look for it, not by James McEntee, not by Nathaniel Bruce, and not by A.J. Snyder, despite what has been subsequently written. It was discovered along the line of the canal in High Falls, not on the Snyder property in Rosendale. It is probably too much to hope that this will put to rest the many incorrect versions of the story of this important discovery that exist in many secondary sources.
The author thanks Laurel Mutti for her help with the geology.
Bill Merchant
Deputy Director for Collections, Historian & Curator
1) Werner, Dietrich & Burmeister, Kurtis, An Overview of the History and Economic Geology of the Natural Cement Industry at Rosendale, Ulster County, New York, Journal of ATSM International, Vol. 4, No. 6, 2007.
2) Bastoni, Gerald, Episodes From The Life of Canvass White Pioneer American Civil Engineer, Proceedings of the Canal History and Technology Symposium, Vol.1, January 30, 1982, The Center for Canal History and Technology, page 76.
3) Howe, Dennis, The Industrial Archaeology of a Rosendale Cement Works at Whiteport, Whiteport Press, Kingston, NY, 2009, page 7.
4) Sylvester, Nathaniel Bartlett, History of Ulster County New York, Everts & Peck, Philadelphia, 1880, Part 2, page 240.
5) Olde Ulster, James McEntee’s Story of the Canal, October 1910, No. 10, Benjamin Myer Brink, Kingston, NY, 1910.
6) Sylvester, Part 2, pages 240-1.
