Woodstock History and Hearsay/Early Days

James T. Shotwell, the great worker for peace and a Bryce Professor Emeritus of the History of International Relations, Columbia University asked Anita Smith to compile a database of all the men and women who served during the Second World War. This project, together with research gathered since the founding of the Historical Society of Woodstock in 1931, served as a foundation for Woodstock History and Hearsay.

The book is a balance of painstaking scholarship and folkloric tales gathered first-hand at quilting and canning parties from hardy Catskill mountain farmers and hunters. In addition, Smith who was a painter wrote countless vignettes about the denizens of the early golden age of the Woodstock art colony—including such notables as George Bellows, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Philip Guston, Henry Morton Robinson, Hervey White, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Doris Lee, Helen Hayes, Charles Rosen and many, many more.

This title was the town’s first official history. Smith also wrote an herbal, As True As The Barnacle Tree; an art book, The Landscape of History; and a family memoir, The Quest of Abel Knight: The Quakers and The Shakers.