History
On April 27, 1677, New York's Governor Andros signed an agreement with the Esopus Indian Kaelcop, chief of the Amorgarickakan Family, to purchase the land, which is now Saugerties. The price was a blanket, a piece of cloth, a shirt, a loaf of bread, and some coarse fiber. A stream called Sawyer's Kill, where Barent Cornelis Volge operated a sawmill between 1652-1663, roughly identified the northern boundary. The Indians called Volge "The Little Sawyer" and the area became associated with the Dutch word for this title. Volge eventually sold his property to George Meals and Richard Hayes. A mill was established about half a mile west of Volge's site around 1750

In 1710, one of the largest eighteenth century migrations of European people to America took place. Three hundred families from the Palatine region of Germany sailed 110 miles north on the Hudson River, and established camps on the east and west side of the Hudson in October of 1710. The camp on the west side of the river became known as West Camp in the Town of Saugerties. The camp on the east side of the river became known as Germantown. In 1998 the Palatine Monument was erected on the lawn of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in West Camp. The monument contains a listing of all the heads of families that arrived in the camps. The following words preface the list of names:

Know O Traveler, within sight of this hill on October 6, 1710, led by the Rev. Joshua Kocherthal and the Rev. Johann Frederick Hager, there arrived on the East and West shores of Hudson's River nearly three hundred families of refugees of the Palatine region in Europe, who suffered many sorrows in the ravages of war, sickness, poverty, and destitution, yet survived to settle these shores, sustained by their faith in the Lord and the sympathy of Queen Anne of England, whom they came to serve in the reduction of the pine forest for naval stores for Her Majesty's fleet. Do you wish to know more? Seek out their names on this tablet, on the pages of history their deeds.