Zadock Pratt Museum Announces Its 2019 History Award Recipients

Zadock Pratt Museum announces the 2019 Zadock Pratt Museum History Award Recipients: Janelle Conine Maurer, Donald B. Teator, Kevin Berner and Ginny Scheer, who will be awarded in recognition of their outstanding work in the local and regional history of the Tri-County area of Delaware, Greene and Schoharie Counties. 

A lifelong resident of Freehold, Donald B. Teator has been the Town of Greenville’s Historian for thirty-one years.

His accomplishments include:

• Program structure: April through November programs (alternating share sessions ended Nov. 2013);
• Programs: one room school house, WWII, farming, house histories, cemeteries, our hamlets, service and social organizations, church history, school histories, town supervisors, artists, Three Suitcases, Bryant’s history, South Street, Main Street, Freehold, general stores, resort visits (Sunny Hill, Baumann’s Pine Lake Manor), Warren Eckler and Tom Teich, the Stevens family, Barbara Brumell, Flip Flach, Greenville Drive-In, Shelly Dobski, and so on for 150 more;
• Multiple programs: local historian Chuck D’Imperio; local geologist Dr. Robert Titus and wife Johanna; old implements by Allyn and Mary Shaw; Walter Ingalls, Audrey Matott – Greenville history based on local, Ted Hilscher, County Historian David Dorpfeld, Jonathan Palmer;
• Membership: started at about 20, steady at 50-75 pre-email era, currently at 2,000;
• Attendance: 15-ish average for almost 25 years; 20-50 the past several years; largest almost 100 for Bryant’s program; other large audience: Stevens and South Street, One Room Schoolhouse;
• Greenville Local History Group Newsletter: 279 issues – July 2019;
• Newspaper collection (Local: 1963ish–end; Press all; Pioneer: current);
• Census transcription – 1910, 1925;
• Calendar – 1991-2005, 2009-2010, 2012, 2014-2019 (2020 coming); recognitions of almost 40 community members – half posthumously;
• Duplicate 2,000 photos (loans from dozens of people);
• Take 10,000 photos – buildings, cemeteries, people, events; start database;
• 550 pages of negatives: numbered by page and frame;
• Photo slide shows: usually one per year for the last decade;
• Notebooks & albums: 50 buildings by streets; cemeteries; school; miscellaneous;
• GCS Yearbooks: 1939 to present; currently, separate editions for HS, MS, Elementary; have most MS, almost no Elementary;
• Collections: O’Hara, Felter, Bogardus, Kieffer post cards, Orrin Stevens, Pat Elsbree, and more;
• Diary transcriptions: Carrie Ingalls (Don Teator); R. Edwin Taylor (Harriett Rasmussen); Eleanor Goff Ingalls (Harriett Rasmussen); and several shorter works;
• Published sources;
• Artists (continued): Cantarella;
• Collaboration with Civil War Round Table (Mary Heisinger);
• Tax books:1880s–1950;
• Maps;
• Greenville in the wars;
• Interviews of residents (on tape, a few transcribed);
• Lillian Joy scrapbooks;
• Planning Board history, documents;
• Greene County home tours;
• Newspaper & magazine clippings: hundreds sorted by topic by former historian Edna Adams; hundreds more on wide range of topics relating to Greenville by Don Teator;
• Genealogy: Harriett Rasmussen (Abrams, Griffin, Elliott, Taylor, Utter, Tripp, Coonley, Wakely, and dozens of others as the topic arose);
• GCS history, newsletters, documents (three folders from Lee & Arlene Brown);
• GCS history – Richard Ferriolo, et. al.;
• GCS Alumni Association;
• Concordia Circle contents;
• “Things That Aren’t There”;
• Greenville Homemakers contents;
• Phil Ellis photos (many saved by Kathie Williams);
• Edward Drake Bicentennial;
• Collaboration with Sylvia Hasenkopf, Nick & Mary Lou Nahas;
• Sylvia Hasenkopf programs (four – last three Novembers);
• Travelogues by Don & Debra Teator, Jackie & Jonas Havens, Den Mower;
• Support Eagle Scout projects;

Janelle Conine Maurer is a sixth generation Prattsville resident. Born into a prominent local farm family, Janelle has served two terms as President of the Board of Directors of the Zadock Pratt Museum. Once from 1994-1999 and again this year when she joined the Board for the second time during the Museum’s sixtieth year celebration. In fact, Janelle has been an active supporter of the Zadock Pratt Museum for over 25 years, through fundraising, membership, volunteering and managing the Museum’s gift shop. She has also raised money by selling museum-related gift shop items in the Prattsville Diner, which she owns with her husband, Kenny.

Kevin Berner grew up in Cobleskill, Schoharie County. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University and a Master’s degree in the same field from the University of Montana. Kevin held wildlife jobs in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Nebraska. He taught within the Wildlife Management program at SUNY Cobleskill for thirty years before retiring two years ago. He conducted bluebird research for twenty-five years and was active in the Schoharie County, New York State, and North American Bluebird Societies for many years. He is also the Vice President of the Cave House Museum of Geology and Mining. His current passion is conducting research for the Jefferson Historical Society where he serves as President. He has published two volumes of the book Jefferson Then and Now, contrasting old photos of Jefferson with current photos taken from the same perspectives. He has also published a book based on the 1933 diary of Jefferson resident Willard Rising Stewart, and a photo book about the Maple Festival’s history in Jefferson.

Ginny Scheer grew up in Oklahoma and moved to Roxbury from New England in 1974 to teach at the Manhattan Country School Farm. She became director of the Farm in 1981 and retired in 2014, having seen the Farm through major developments in its educational program, its on-farm food and energy production, and its physical plant. While director, she founded the Catskills Folk Music Project, took a sabbatical to pursue a Master’s degree in folklore at Western Kentucky University, and wrote her thesis on “[Catskills] Farm Houses That Became Boarding Houses.” In 2007 she and Karyl Eaglefeathers founded Catskills Folk Connection, an organization designed to celebrate the folkways of the Catskill Region. Ginny was married to Roxbury’s beloved nature writer and wildlife photographer, Walter Meade, and collaborated with him on many projects until his death in 1993. She still lives on their farm in Montgomery Hollow.

The Zadock Pratt Museum Awards Ceremony will take place Saturday, September 28 at Villa Vosilla in Tannersville, NY. The festivities will begin with Cocktail Hour at 5 p.m. (cash bar), followed by Dinner & Awards Ceremony at 6 p.m. Joe Loverro from WRIP and John Young, who serves on the Museum’s Board of Directors, will be masters of ceremony. Pianist David Peskin will perform live music.

To reserve your seat, contact Suzanne Walsh at prattmuseum@hotmail.com or 518-299-3395.