FEATURE: WOMEN ON THE MAP

WOMEN ON THE MAP

MANY CATSKILLS TOWNS AND LANDMARKS WERE NAMED AFTER INFLUENTIAL FIGURES. BUT WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

In the mid-2010s, a series of researchers around the world began making headlines for their efforts to document how few places are named for women compared to those named for men. A team of engineers with Mapbox released a study in 2015 showing that in seven cities spanning multiple continents, only 27.5% of streets bore women’s names. That same year, an activist group in Paris renamed 60 streets in protest of the fact that only 2.6% of city streets were named for women (versus 31% for men). Movements have cropped up on college and university campuses to examine namesakes of dorm and classroom buildings. Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s 2016 Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas includes a map imagining every subway stop renamed for a woman.This disparity has historical roots, of course. Places are often named for the people who discovered, colonized, settled, or were otherwise influential in them. Sexism and the bias of those shaping our history have effectively erased the contributions of many who are not men. In many cases, when a place is named after a woman, it is someone given the honor due to their relationship to a man, typically a mother or wife.

We don’t have data on the breakdown of place name origins in the Catskills. A crowdsourced list on Catskill Center social media brought up quite a few options, but if we had asked for places named for men or for geographic features, we suspect there might have been more. In the following list, we have highlighted some of these local places named for women. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but instead to show the variety in these name origins.

AUGUSTA SAVAGE IMAGE: COLLECTION OF SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE, NYPL. DOT NEBEL IMAGE: PHOTO BY WERNER J. KUHN, COURTESY OF BELLEAYRE MOUNTAIN. MAUDE ADAMS IMAGE: PHOTO BY EDMOND ROSTAND.

Augusta Savage Road (Saugerties):

Augusta Savage was a Harlem Renaissance sculptor who moved to Saugerties in the 1940s. She was an activist and an educator. Her Saugerties home and studio is listed on the New York State and National Register of Historic Places and her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and other

museums.

Charlotte Creek and Charlotte Valley (Delaware County):

In the 18th century, Sir William Johnson named his 26,000 acre land patent for British monarch Queen Charlotte (1744-1818).

Claryville (Sullivan County):

Claryville was originally called Claraville, named for a local landowner’s wife.

Dot Nebel Ski Trail (Belleayre Mountain):

Born in Schenectady, NY in 1905, Dorothy H. Nebel was a decorated downhill and slalom skier and a

pioneer for women in the sport in the United States. Nebel also worked at Belleayre Mountain designing trails and directing the ski school. She was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1972.

Ellenville (Ulster County):

Ellenville was called Fairchild

City until Charles Hartshorn came to town and realized the locale needed a post office and, therefore, an official name. After debating the issue in the Hoornbeck Tavern and failing to come to a consensus, they named it for Ellen Snyder, who was in town visiting her sister, tavern owner Maria Hoornbeck.

Leavitt Peak (Hunter):

Also known as Southwest Hunter, this 3740’ peak is named for Elinore and Bill Leavitt, the first finishers to summit the required peaks to become members of the Catskill 3500 Club in 1963.

Margaretville (Delaware County): The town of Margaretville’s namesake was Margaret Lewis, great-granddaughter of land patent owner Robert Livingston. She inherited the tract of land that was named in her honor in 1850. It was previously Middletown Center.

Mary’s Glen (Hunter):

The Mary of Mary’s Glen was Mary Scribner, wife of Ira Scribner who owned a sawmill there.

Maude Adams Road (Tannersville):

Maude Adams, born in 1872 in Utah, was a famed stage actress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Best known for being the first actress to play Peter Pan on Broadway, Adams was very private and largely withdrew from the public eye by the 1920s. She purchased an estate in Tannersville where she spent most of her retirement. She died there in 1953.

Mt. Utsayantha (Stamford):

Lore tells of the mountain being named for an indiginous woman named Utsayantha. The story was popularized in the 19th century, when the mountain became a tourist attraction for summer boarders and vacationers.

One thing that becomes quickly apparent in studying geography is that place names are not static. People frequently change them to better suit modern norms and

tastes, to honor new people, or for various other reasons. Will we see more Catskills places named for women in the coming years? It remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is there is no shortage of local women-- famous and not, historical and contemporary-- who could deserve such recognition.