InsideOut Interview: Jonathan Donald

By Owen Lipstein May/June 2009



Jonathan Donald is the founder and CEO of Jonathan Donald Productions, Inc., which has written, directed or produced more than 200 documentary and dramatic films for clients ranging from the Discovery and National Geographic channels to Time-Life Television and CBS. The Greene County-based company, which brought home an Emmy for the four-part PBS series “Conserving America,” and a pair of Cine Golden Eagles for the 11-part series “Rediscovering America,” has now trained its cameras on our back yard for a new documentary, “Greene County, USA,” which will air on PBS this September. We were lucky enough to get a beguiling sneak preview with Donald.


InsideOut: What ground does “Greene County, USA” cover?



Jonathan Donald: The film is basically a history of Greene County, [primarily] from 1609 to 1900, [although] it also goes back much further—to 11,000 years before the present, when the Paleo-Indians first came into this area. Even during that period, Greene County was important because it had flint mines—in [what is now] West Athens Hill, and Flint Mine Hill in Coxsackie—that are really quite special. Paleo-Indians from a very large area in the Northeast used
to come here to get that flint because it was particularly hard, and
it fractured well.
These were the people that used to hunt the mega-fauna, when it still existed: the giant mastodons, ground sloths, giant beaver, and elk-moose—all these ancient animals that were moving north with the retreating glaciers, and would soon be gone. These people were making what were called Clovis points, which were very powerful, large spear points that were used in throwing spears—which was the only kind of weapon they could use against something very big and powerful, like a mastodon.
But it worked quite well. And Clovis points are the distinguishing feature of these ancient people. Many of those—in this part of the world, anyway—came from this particular mine. And we know that because archeologists and physical anthropologists have found those kinds of points [at] some great distance—hundreds of miles—from here, unmistakably made of the flint that comes from these open mines.



IO: What happened to Greene County after Henry Hudson arrived?



JD: Well, the film jumps quickly ahead to 1609, the year that Hudson came up the river. Very soon thereafter, the Dutch were involved in trading for beaver here along the river, and the Dutch West India Company was formed, and there were some of the very earliest settlements along the river. New York City, of course, was the first, then there was Fort Orange, which became Albany. But very shortly thereafter, there were the beginnings of a settlement at Coxsackie, in 1663.
Pieter Jonasson Bronck, who was a tavern-keeper in Fort Orange, came south and bought some land at Coxsackie, which he would farm in the summertime. He had a lot of trouble in Albany—he had a great number of debts, and was in trouble with the law. Finally, he retreated to that farm and spent the rest of his life there. Actually, a bit earlier than that, in 1649, there were settlers who attempted to, and did partially, settle Catskill—but that wasn’t an official thing until much later. But that’s the early history, which is distinguishing because these were some of the earliest settlements in America, and Coxsackie and Catskill are early earmarks of the importance of Greene County.



IO: How did Greene County develop after that?



JD: There was a great influx of settlers from Connecticut, and from downstate immediately after the Revolutionary War, [who were] all looking for land. And even before that, in the middle of the 18th century, the area to some extent became populated as a result of the French and Indian wars. The British government gave land in the Catskills to a lot of veterans of those wars.
Then, beginning in the 19th century, the Hudson River School of Art raised its head with the arrival of Thomas Cole, and all his various followers. That happened at a time when the earliest kind of industrial development was also taking place in Greene County. Tanneries were built in the mountains, [close to] the hemlock that were cut and used in the solutions that tanned hides. Hides shipped from South America were brought up the Hudson, carried overland by wagon, and dyed and cured in these tanneries.
The largest one in the world, at the time, was in Prattsville, started by a man named Zadock Pratt, who was a real wunderkind. He not only built the largest tannery in the world, but he built a town so that the people that were working [for him] would have a place to live, subsequently called Prattsville because of the enormous prodigies that he performed there. Pratt was very benign, in an age when industrialists didn’t have a reputation for being benign. He was very good to everyone who worked for him.
He went on to serve in Congress, [where] he established the National Bureau of Standards [now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology]. He was quite a character: Had his own bank. Printed his own money. And then carved his own effigy into the mountain, right there, at Prattsville. He had a marvelous sense of humor.
He was [also] enthralled by warfare. He would go out and buy a barn from some farmer who didn’t need it. Then he would dress himself up, in a Napoleonic or [War of] 1812 costume, and dress his men, and they would go out on a Saturday or Sunday and lay siege to the barn. They’d bring a field piece out, and they would conclude the operation by blowing up the barn. Then there would be a big party afterwards, that he threw for the whole town.



IO: Sounds like one hell of a guy.



JD: A really marvelous character. Zadock Pratt: He’s not as well remembered as he should be. Anyway, not too long after that, American tourism began. American tourism really had its origins in the Catskills—inspired, to a very large degree, by the Hudson River School of Art: the paintings of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, and everyone that followed [them].
Curiously, Church—but particularly Cole—were adamant in their opposition to what they called the “despoiling of the land” by people like Zadock Pratt. And when we look at the Catskills today, from the porch of Cedar Grove [Cole’s home] we see a beautiful set of mountains, all clothed in trees. But in those days, most of those trees were gone. And Cole used to fret, badly, over this. He was a great opponent of [logging activities]—and then subsequently [of] the railroads, and anything else that destroyed—in his mind—the natural beauty of the area.
The whole idea of “natural” beauty is something that really was born with Thomas Cole, and became the notion behind what would eventually become the Conservation Movement. He really precedes anyone else, including Thoreau, in terms of his ideas about nature, and the importance of it, including the idea that nature was a subject for art.
In any case, the art that Cole painted—and those that followed him—produced tremendous interest around the country. There were no pictorial newspapers in that day. So these huge landscapes that they painted became a very popular sensation. People would go to see them in the major museums and in Manhattan, which encouraged them to think about going to these places. People began thinking, Well, if Cole says this is important, or that this is America...
Really, that’s what it was. His paintings became the iconographic representation of American beauty, and importance. People began to take sloops up the Hudson to visit. In 1825, the first Catskill Mountain House was built. And then, about 1839, Charles Beach began to transform it into the great Greek Revival palace that it became. And very shortly after that, various other people came along and built various other big hotels, until all along the escarpment, you had a dozen or more huge hotels. We’re talking about hotels with 300 rooms or more. And people arrived in great numbers. They would take stagecoaches up from Catskill Landing to get to these hotels.



IO: What other innovations were occurring?



JD: Just at the same time that the Hudson River School of Art was getting going, the American Romantic Movement—of which the Hudson River School of Art is part—was putting forth people like James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, who are acknowledged to be America’s first novelists. And, of course, their subject matter was centered up here—at least, part of it was. In fact, they came here often. In The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper had the dénouement, if you will, situated on the great [Catskill] escarpment; and there is a painting by Thomas Cole that shows the ending of that great story. And that [escarpment] is where the Mountain House would ultimately sit.
And of course, Washington Irving was writing about Rip Van Winkle, which immediately caught fire. And, while no one—even he—ever said where exactly it was located, it was always attributed to these mountains. So the area was essentially responsible, as a site or location, for the beginnings of American fictional literature.
Other inventors came along as well. For example, there’s a man named Levi Hill, who invented the first color photography process in the world. The Smithsonian has just given him credit for that. For years, the French contended that they were really responsible. Daguerreotype, of course, was already in place, and Levi Hill was a daguerreotypist. But he actually developed a color process around 1835, 1840.
The man who would put up the first “skyscrapers” of that time was raised in Catskill. He was the first one to work malleable iron into structural members for large buildings, and with his kind of structural iron girders, they could put up buildings four stories high, which was unheard of, in the day.



IO: What was Greene County’s relationship with the rest of New York?



JD: Well, Catskill was popular as a center. Just before the building of the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, Catskill was the most important port on the Hudson River after Fort Orange and New York City, because of the Susquehanna Turnpike, which [in the early 1800s] began in Catskill and ran west to Unadilla, and to the wheat lands out there. Wheat was a big crop in the late-18th, early-19th century in New York state. It was transported [via the turnpike] to Catskill, which had the largest gristmill in [the] state. Most of the flour in New York state was ground in Catskill and shipped north, south, and east. So Catskill was, to a very large extent, the granary to a major part of the United States.
Then they dug the Erie Canal. And the Erie Canal gave wheat farmers in the central part of New York a far easier, quicker route to the markets. The Erie Canal carried [the wheat] to the Hudson, from where it could go north and south. The town fathers, though,
in Catskill, were not to be outdone. And they attempted to dig a canal from Catskill to Canajoharie to cut off the Erie Canal—to get everything down [their] way. But it didn’t work.
Then they tried to build a railroad, too, and that didn’t work; the financing fell through. But they weren’t about to give up—which is quite remarkable, considering the importance of the Erie Canal. You’d think a lot of people would just throw their hands in the air and say, “Our day is done.” But no. They tried to beat ’em at it. They did not, unhappily; and then Catskill became less important, if you will, in that sense.



IO: Where did you find your source material?



JD: Well, it began with Raymond Beecher [former Greene County historian and author], who was key to everything. If anything had ever been written down about this part of New York—he had read it at one time. So you could ask him a question about anything, and he would have some kind of an answer. So he gave me leads.
Then I did a great deal of reading from all of the local source books. For example, there’s a book by Frank A. Gallt called Dear Old Greene County [1915, Catskill, N.Y., out of print.] There’s a very famous book that everybody uses as a source, J.B. Beers’ History of Greene County, New York 1778-1884 (1884, J. B. Beers & Co.)—[it’s] very, very ample. And by reading Beers, and reading others—you find different threads that take you into different places.
For example, the Dutch are generally dismissed because of the image painted of them by Washington Irving—that they were quaint old duffers that sat on their stoops, and smoked their pipes. [But] that’s not true. They were a very dynamic people who, if they could, lived lavishly well. In the 17th century, the Dutch were the richest people in Europe, had the most extensive trade network and they had the largest fleet in the world—bigger than that of the French, the British, and the Spanish—all combined.



IO: When can we see the film?



JD: There will be a premiere in Catskill at the Community Theater on Sept. 12th. Then there’ll be another, probably at the Onteora Club [in Tannersville] or the Twilight [Park] Club in Haines Falls, on the 13th. And then it goes on television [PBS, WMHT] in the middle of September.



IO: This seems to be a great way to learn some local history. You’ve become quite the historian just in the process of making this film.



JD: Well, history is my great love. And I did a whole history series for the Discovery Channel some years ago. It’s my avocation; I read a lot of history all the time, so this fell quite naturally into something I wanted to do. I had a very good time researching this, and digging up all kinds of odd things.
But in the end, what really comes to light is the fact that this funny little place, which a lot of people would ignore—a lot of people [as close as] Albany don’t even know where Greene County is—was the seat of so much activity: It produced an extraordinary number of inventors, innovators, some great entrepreneurs, the first and only... school of art [native to America], and was the site of [some of] the plots of America’s first two novelists.



IO: Did you know a lot of this before you began the project?



JD: No, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I thought, Well, you know, this would be fun to do. But I didn’t really have any idea of the breadth of the whole thing, or how significant it is. In fact, we call the film “Greene County, USA: A Local History of National Importance” because I think it demonstrates something that people are generally not aware of—
Despite the fact that in times past, when people generally lived in fairly small places, and typically didn’t go very far—there were nevertheless many people that did travel extraordinary distances. And they learned about all kinds of things, and made connections between their little place[s] and the greater world. Greene County is an extraordinary example of that