Zadock Pratt

19th-century American entrepreneur who built the world's largest tannery complex in the Catskills and then literally named the town (Prattsville, NY) after himself — a study in industrial-era American self-promotion.

The Prattsville experiment: Pratt built the largest tanning operation in the world at Prattsville (1824-1845), processing thousands of hides yearly and employing most of the town's population. He memorialized himself in carved rock bas-reliefs on a cliff face ('Pratt's Rocks') — an eccentric monument that still stands. As a U.S. Congressman, he argued for the importance of American manufacturing. A minor but illustrative figure in American industrial history, representing the industrial-era entrepreneur who built a company town and made his civic mark literally carved in stone.