WoodstockArts Publications
Woodstock History and Hearsay Second Edition
Cover image is Rock City Waterfall, 1920, a painting by Anita M. Smith
Book Info
ISBN: 0-9679268-4-X
Published 2006; second edition; cloth / hard cover
$37.50 / 8 ½ x 11 / 335 pages, 170 black and white photos; two color inserts with 19 color imagesFront Matter: List of maps (7), preface, acknowledgements, AMS biographical timeline and introduction
Back Matter: Woodstockers in Service (Second World War and Memoria), end notes, bibliography, list of illustrations and index
Book Summary
Anita M. Smith’s story of Woodstock begins with the indigenous god Manitou sending down from the sky the first woman in the shape of a tortoise. Overlook Mountain, which dominates the Woodstock valley, was regarded by Native Americans as the home of Manitou, and is considered sacred ground. Smith’s narrative continues with the arrival of the early European settlers. Her account of the Revolutionary war days balances the viewpoints and activities of local Whigs, Tories and Native Americans—including those of the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. By the start of the 1800s the Industrial Revolution was mobilizing the valley. The principal activities were glass making, tanning and farming. Soon thereafter the area was ablaze with the farmers’ rebellion against the landlords in the tumultuous down-rent war.
In 1902 Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, a disciple of John Ruskin and William Morris, founded the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts colony in Woodstock. Whitehead sought to challenge the mechanistic age by reviving the ancient handicrafts of weaving, iron work, furniture making and pottery in a place that was healthful for the mind as well as the body. Co-founders of his utopian venture were Bolton Brown and a Whitmanesque Midwesterner, Hervey White. Anita Smith, who arrived in the fledgling colony in 1912 as a painter, evokes the magic of this time through a melding of personal anecdotes and scholarship.
Hervey White went on to found the Maverick, a commune just over the Woodstock town line in West Hurley. Here he sponsored a theater and a program of summer chamber music (the oldest continuous series in the United States today). White also founded the Maverick Festival, a forerunner of the world-famous Woodstock Festival of 1969. Soon countless numbers of distinguished American painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, dancers, poets and other artists took up residence in Woodstock: George Bellows, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Philip Guston, Alexander Archipenko, Pierre Henrotte, Georges Barrère, James T. Shotwell, Henry Morton Robinson, Bliss Carman, Helen Hayes and a host of others. With her artistic eye, Anita Smith weaves a rich tapestry of oral and documented lore to capture the byplay between hardworking farmers and businessmen, shape-shifting witches and bohemian artists, providing a wonderful behind-the-scenes view of pre-1969 Festival Woodstock.
Click here for PDFs of the table of contents and the preface.
About the Author
Anita M. Smith (1893–1968) was born a Quaker in Philadelphia. In 1912 she moved to Woodstock to study painting under John F. Carlson. Soon she was exhibiting her work at the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1934 she built a bluestone house near Woodstock’s Rock City corners and embarked on a second career as a herbalist. By 1940 Smith had customers in all forty-eight of the contiguous United States, and in a New York Herald Tribune article published that year she was referred to as “the Herb Lady of the Catskills.” During this time she began contributing papers to the Historical Society of Woodstock. Just as she had designed her gardens with an artist’s eye, Smith captured the painter’s feel for the landscape in her writing. In the late 1950s she wrote the town’s first official history. A blend of local legends, personal anecdotes and scholarship, Woodstock History and Hearsay was first published in 1959. Anita Smith also wrote As True as the Barnacle Tree, The Landscape of History and The Quest of Abel Knight: The Quakers and Shakers.
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Praise for the Book
Praise for the first edition:
“ . . . The history of Woodstock has now been written. The historian is Anita Smith, one of the pioneering artists in the days when the art colony was forming. I cannot imagine anyone better qualified, for she has an infinite fund of folk lore, knows every legend of what we might call the pre-historic era, and shared in the adventurous life of those young artists who made Woodstock famous half a century ago. It was a strange welding of old world idealism and new world realism when Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, pupil of Ruskin and friend of William Morris, founded here his colony of the arts and crafts, to challenge so sordid a thing as machinery. Here he recovered the romance of the past by reading and writing in the language of Plato, Virgil or Dante. How could a product of the Kansas prairies like Hervey White fit into such a life? But the miracle of it is that he and others like him did fit into this community for a time. Then they went their separate ways, giving free rein to their creative life, adding to its richness by the first professional organization of chamber music in America . “Miss Smith has a challenging theme. She has met it splendidly . . .”
—James T. Shotwell, Bryce Professor Emeritus of the History of International Relations, Columbia University and President Emeritus, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Advance praise for the second edition:
“I am delighted by the new edition of Woodstock History and Hearsay and offer the publishers my congratulations. The addition of nearly 200 reproductions amplifies the importance of the book by transforming what was an interesting and entertaining story into a fascinating historical resource about Woodstock .”
—Neil Trager, Director, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY
“ Woodstock—the town and the idea—resonates as one of the most powerful cultural symbols of our time. This well-researched and highly readable account of its history from Colonial times to just before the Festival helps us understand the roots of its meaning. Libraries with interest in popular culture as well as local history and 20th century American art will all want to acquire it. Extensive illustrations and notes greatly enhance this second edition.”
— Lawrence Webster, Library Consulting Services, Bennington, VT
“Anita Smith's Woodstock History and Hearsay is an invaluable and delightful resource for learning about that fascinating creative center. The new edition, lushly illustrated, offers a new generation of readers the chance to become acquainted with this remarkable community and understand why Woodstock matters.”
—Nancy E. Green, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
“Smith's original contextual richness is now enhanced with a garden of color and images . . . readers are in for a memorable stroll through Woodstock's unique history.”
—James Cox, James Cox Gallery, Woodstock, NY
Additional praise for the second edition:
“Woodstock History and Hearsay offers a fascinating ‘insiders' look (author Anita M. Smith was a painter studying under John F. Carlson at the Art Students League of New York summer school in Woodstock ) into the town's most colorful aspects. Includes a wealth of photographs and reproductions along with an array of Woodstock 's ‘notables.'” **** (four-star rating)
—Raymond J. Steiner, Art Times , September 2006
“Smith's delightful storytelling . . . captures the town's charm.”
— Hudson Valley Magazine, September 2006
“A gorgeous new edition . . . . A striking painter, Smith lavishes special attention on Woodstock 's extraordinary artistic heritage.”
— Chronogram , September 2006
“Contains nearly 200 photos highlighting works of art, local personalities, and landmarks, and includes everything from local legends to philosophy to information about 20 th -century artists such as George Bellows and Alexander Archipenko.”
—Pat Horner, InsideOut , September 2006
“Chronicles the history of the infamous Ulster County town, through a combination of words and artwork.”
—Christopher Lennon, Gazette Advertiser ( Rhinebeck , NY ), 8/17/06
“[A] sumptuous production [with its] elegant inclusion of copious illustrations . . . à la the great art books we recall from our youths. Fits . . . Woodstock like a glove. [A] sweet-natured book . . . a gentle reminder of what this town once was and like still is in many hidden pockets.”
—Paul Smart, Woodstock Times , 7/27/06
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