History of the Gilboa Historical Society: Our Founders

Panel 1: Founding members, movers, and shakers

Richard Lewis was the town historian the lead speaker during the formation of the society, and its first president in 1998. The vice president was Cindy Buel; treasurer, Wilma Jones; and secretary, Shirley Kutzscher.

Two strong members at the start of the Historical Society were Beatrice Mattice, historian of the Town of Conesville with her immense knowledge about Gilboa and the neighborhoods around this area; and Kristen Wyckoff, with both her knowledge of Devonian fossils and our guru in artistic matters.

Other essential early members were Carolyn Brown, Pete and Jane Fox, Marlyn Kessler, Mary Jane Laben, Cynthia Mattsen, Marianne Neuber, Janette Reynolds, Cathy Sanzari, Linda Stratigos, Wally and Sylvia Van Houten, and Mary Wyckoff.

Early artifacts in the GHS collection from Richard Lewis

Gilboa Monitor newspapers: Richard Lewis inherited a number of Gilboa Monitors dating from 1878 through 1980. In time, he had them microfilmed through the Capital Newspaper Project. Subsequently, Lee Hudson expanded the numbers of newspapers in our collection and had them all digitized. They are accessible at fultonhistory.com and nyshistoricnewspapers.org.

Photographs of the 1910 village: Richard received a phone call from a man who claimed to have a box of photographs that appeared to be of properties in the village of Gilboa. Richard naturally thanked the man and arranged to have the pictures shipped here. It turns out that these pictures were created by the New York City’s Board of Water Supply to establish value of the properties confiscated under eminent domain. These pictures have been scanned and are being made available online. In total, we have pictures of most of the properties in the village and are working with the Board of Water Supply archives of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection to round out our collection. We also have title maps and tax rolls to define each of the properties.

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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