History of Gilboa Historical Society

Background

Three historic events were seminal in the creation of the Gilboa Historical Society:

1. The construction of the Gilboa Dam in the 1920s removed the center of our town, and a “New Gilboa” (or Imerville) took its place in the second half of that decade, however, that hamlet had been razed by fire, the Post Office relocated to Conesville Road near the Gilboa town line, and the town hall moved to a one-room school house on Stryker Road just west of the creek. There was to be no center to the town for the next 60+ years.
2. The flood of 1996 threatened the United Methodist church and the town hall, and FEMA’s property acquisition process took over. The buildings were to be moved to a new elevation or destroyed. The town opted to move these two buildings.
3. By the late 1990s, the town of Gilboa was nearing its 150th birthday. A group of residents were of a mind to create historical society, and its first meeting was on the third Wednesday, June 1997.

Preview of our history

In our first decade, we acquired a decommissioned town hall to use as a fossil museum, and our collection included Gilboa fossils, artifacts, and photos of the village.

The second decade saw our society really bloom with outbuildings for farm equipment, a museum addition doubling our display space, and an expansion of our charter to fully include our cultural as well as our natural history.

Now, starting our third decade, we have added a large covered pavilion for outdoor events, and have grown to be a full-blown repository of rural history in upstate New York and a tourist attraction for southern Schoharie, western Greene, and northeast Delaware counties.

Creating Panels of our History

We are adding 7 panels along the front porch that will chronicle major steps within the Gilboa Historical Society. Each panel would be lockable, exterior-grade aluminum frame, and 2 ft x 3 ft in size. They will be evenly spread out like windows, with five between the entrance and the emergency door, and the other two with the same spacing after the emergency door. At this time, let’s call them 1 through 7 from left to right. The following will be the general areas of coverage, and will be developed by specialists in each area. The bottom five inches of all shadow boxes will have a common invitation to use our help desk that will be detailed in panel 7.

• Panel 1: The Founding of the Gilboa Historical Society: The story of the charter members and anecdotes of first year of the GHS organization.
• Panel 2: Community support behind the Gilboa Historical Society: Activities supporting the historical society by the town government and the movement of the old town hall to become the Gilboa Museum.
• Panel 3: Development of the Gilboa Historical Society: The 15-year period creating the Gilboa Historical Society, publishing newsletters, the equipment shed.
• Panel 4: The expansion of the Gilboa Museum and the Juried History Center: The expansion of the cultural side of the museum by the Juried History Center, and a profile of our benefactor.
• Panel 5: The creation of the Dorothy Cox Juried Pavilion, an expansion beyond a museum to an outdoor celebration of life in Gilboa and the Catskills.
• Panel 6: Our entry into the tri-county communities of southern Schoharie, northern Delaware, and western Greene counties: Interaction with local historical societies and the publication of the Catskill Tri-County Historical Views.
• Panel 7: Resources you can find in the Gilboa Museum and Juried History Center.
  • Permanent and rotating displays of the Gilboa Fossils, Gilboa Village, and the Gilboa Reservoir;
  • rotating displays on neighborhoods and lifestyles,
  • seasonal display(s),
  • a new Help Desk and on-demand special tours;
  • View of the Gift Shop.

YOU can help!

We are currently asking for volunteers and content (text and photos) for each of these displays. Please contact Gerry Stoner if you have interesting content for any of these displays, or would like to work on an area of interest to you.

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