Historian Harry Albert Haring wrote that, in its heyday, "Samsonville was the most important town in the entire Catskill Mountains, - its population was the largest, its payroll the greatest." The Civil War created a high demand for the hemlock-tanned sole leather that was the Samsonville tannery's main product. After the war, demand declined, as did the supply of hemlock bark. As bark cutters wiped out the local hemlocks, all the Catskill tanneries eventually closed. Historian David Stradling wrote: “In many locations...when the tanneries closed, the settlements around them closed too. Samsonville, the site of General Henry A. Samson’s large tannery, was once an important town. In 1854, the Samson Tannery employed seventy men, processing a remarkable 31,000 hides a year. By 1930, Haring declared Samsonville nearly a ghost town; it had never found a replacement of the jobs lost when the tannery closed.” . An article in the September 25, 1964 Kingston Daily Freeman maintained that "The Samson tannery during the seasonal period employed from 50 to 150 hands and included teamsters and numerous teams of horses and oxen."
