Zadock Pratt, born in Stephentown, Rensselaer County, New York, on October 30, 1790, and buried in Prattsville, New York, was a tanner, farmer, builder, banker, and U.S. congressman who rose from poverty and limited education to wealth and distinction. A contemporary praised him as an unassuming and patriotic citizen whose native genius carried him from the workshop to Congress while preserving a reputation for honesty. In Congress he promoted reduced postage, reported on durable materials for public buildings in Washington and submitted plans and estimates for the new General Post Office, spoke on completing a dry dock at Brooklyn, advanced the importance of a Bureau of Statistics and Commerce with a bill to collect national statistics, supported repairs to the presidential mansion, and addressed the importance of a railroad across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Beginning in 1845, a series of carvings on Pratt Rock symbolized major events in his life, including tributes to horses, the hemlock-based tanning industry that made his fortune, the Prattsville tannery, his son Col. George W. Pratt, his patriotism, his children George and Julia, the Bureau of Statistics, the workingman, his likeness and birthdate, and the Pratt coat of arms with the motto “Do well and doubt not.” Pratt identified himself proudly as “The Greene County Tanner” and said that in 1825 he erected a tannery 530 feet long with 300 tan vats, employing 200 men and tanning 60,000 sides of leather per year; over twenty years it consumed vast quantities of wood and bark, tanned more than a million sides of sole leather, and turned immense sums in business and profit without litigation. He also linked his name to the creation of Prattsville, where after arriving in 1824 he found a rude hamlet in the woods and within sixteen years was responsible for constructing about 100 buildings, helping create a busy and prosperous community whose growth and prosperity were inseparable from his life.