Customer Reviews

Woodstock History And Hearsay

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The character and essence of a community is based on the quality and type of people who settle in it. From its early beginnings and into the present times, Woodstock, NY has attracted a cast of charismatic, passionate, energetic, entrepeneurial, hard working and artistic group of people to grace her historical stage. Different eras attracted a different type of characteristic in its settlers. All helped build the community into the dynamic, artistic community which it is today. Each person left his or her imprint and indelible presence ... Anita M. Smith the author of this book is no exception. She first became well known for her impressionistic paintings of the region which were exhibited at such prestigious locations as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Gallery of Toronto (now called the Art Gallery of Ontario). Such recognition speaks volumes about her artistic talent. Ms Smith had a strong presence in the community and was the first person to research and record the complex history of Woodstock which was published as the first edition of Woodstock: Hearsay and History. We can thank Weston and Julia Blelock for including more colorful photos of her paintings in the second edition. They also provided an outstanding biographical timeline of Anita's life which gives the reader an idea of how well traveled and broad her outlook on life was. I particularly enjoyed the preface where they provide a background of why this book is so important to them and how personally meaningful it is. When growing up, they knew Anita by the dimunitive "Nietsie" ...

This book is a richly textured volume, a multi-layered historical document filled with fascinating detailed accurate history obtained from local archives. It also contains anecdotal stories, similar to local legends about various residents from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, through World Wars I and II and into the present. Reading about local residents and their experiences during the Revolutionary War made this most important event in US history come alive with meaning. What stands out most is that prior to 1775, loyalty to the King of England was the expected political position. However, shortly thereafter *if* anyone expressed support for England it was considered treason, punishable by imprisonment or worse. Revolutionary War politics comes alive for the reader, making one realize that the mood of the people had shifted towards independence, to making a break from the Crown a reality. The following chapters are especially captivating, filled with many unique stories which engage the reader's attention from start to finish: "Chapter Two - Frontier Days: Indian Forays, Revolution and Liberty", "Chapter Three - Glass Making in the Nineteenth Century", "Chapter Four: The Down-Rent War: Catskill Farmers Rebel Against Feudalism".

Each chapter stands out for its well documented and researched contents, indicating meticulous attention to accuracy which makes the book so great. Along with real history, the hearsay keeps the reader hooked, wanting to read more. Anita interviewed local residents and preserved their human interest stories, providing amusing and entertaining tales from the past. Most especially intriguing are her insightful stories about the local artists who started two famous art colonies in Woodstock: the Byrdcliffe and the Maverick. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Hervey White and Bolton Brown were the founders of Byrdcliffe. Later, Hervey White separated from the group and started the Maverick. He was also the founder of the first Woodstock Festival (not to be confused with the 1969 rock concert which went by the same name but was held on a nearby farmland). I loved reading about their life stories, as young adults when they broke with convention, travelled to Italy and experienced other cultures. The wonderful true stories about Rosie Magee a local resident who provided food and lodging to a generation of artists is a thrill to read. One's heart goes out to this generous, kind-hearted, hard working lady who was a kindred soul to the artists ... A most highly recommended book. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

This new edition of Anita Smith's classic book has kept her text though it added end-notes to clarify details. The illustrations of this new edition have been selected with great care to provide the reader with a complete approach of the visual dimension of Woodstock, but also of the past, the characters, the vision Anita Smith had of her world and its past, the vision she tried to translate into words and paintings in a time when picture books were rare. This new edition takes part in the centennial celebration of the founding of the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony. But the book develops the whole history of Woodstock. The style and vividness of the information gives depth to events we only know from history textbooks. The Independence war is rendered in great detail and is born in front of our eyes into real life. Imagine what this war may have been with the "foreign" British army, but also the Civil strife with the loyal Tories, and what's more the use of Indians by both the British and the Tories. The patriots had to fight three armed enemies: their Tory next door neighbors, unknown and unsuspected; the Indians from up in the mountains or the back country attacking at any time, particularly at night; and the British army that only entered battle when the field had been opened by the others. The victory was thus all the more difficult to capture. The chapter on glassworks at the beginning of the 19th century shows how the US developed a mixed economy from the very start, agriculture and industry, side by side, leading to the idea that agriculture was an industry of its own. The down-rent rebellion in the mid 1840s is fascinating: it demonstrates that historians like Fukuyama have it all wrong. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights did not give full freedom to everyone, far from it. In this case a feudal system survives with farmers who cannot own the land they till but are only tenants of absentee landlords. The battle, and it was one, lasted three or four years with acts of violence, disguised as Indians or not, with tens of arrests and the subsequent trials and convictions. But it shows how the political system cannot change the economic system with a bill. But politicians can summon a convention of all concerned parties for them to find a solution to solve the problem and satisfy the demand, which was done in 1846. Then a politician can run in the election for governor and win it, and the newly elected Governor can then pardon those who have been imprisoned for their action. The Constitution and Bill of Rights do not contain everything and any improvement requires a real fight as long as the contradiction that is behind the various factions is not solved. This chapter is more than enlightening: a real lesson in social action and democracy. The Byrdcliffe Art and Craft Colony founded by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead is one of these utopian ventures that could probably only exist in the US. It does not aim at changing society, or even having an influence on it. It creates a bubble of free air, land and water where a bunch of creative minds could dedicate their lives to some creative physical activity, joining imagination and the body to produce beautiful works of art or craft. This utopia was founded in 1902 when the Whiteheads moved to Woodstock. Artists could come and stay here for a while to find the peace and atmosphere they needed to create, paint, write, carve, or just practice their crafts, along with enriching their minds in the rich library of the colony. This benevolent attitude of a rich man to the artists of his time is the continuation of the Renaissance when the rich took care of artists in exchange of some artistic work, but also of the utopian 19th century, especially the English Fabian Society that believed that evil came from man's bad social surroundings. It is also the link to modern art-patronage from rich individuals or corporations, and its IRS-managed version of the Artistic Freedom Voucher proposed by Dean Baker (CEPR, Washington DC). Benevolent to compensate, correct the harshness of the market economy with the blooming of arts and crafts to nurse beauty into embellishing the world. Lectures were delivered too in events like symposia or conventions. Hervey White and the Maverick Festivals are essential to understand what happened in Woodstock. A bohemian poet opens next to Byrdcliffe a performing arts village, starting with music, and then theater, and then dancing. He also develops publications of all types for poetry and other writings. And it works. The festivals attract big crowds that finance the whole village. What was their magic formula: to bring together all arts, all forms of artistic production and expression, as well as the participation of the public with costumes and other activities, and at the same time the refusal to depend on anyone or any institution, the will to be independent and free like the big boys and girls they were. Hervey White died peacefully in some shed he chose to migrate to at the end of his life in 1944 and he was carried to the other side of life by quite many people who came from everywhere, New York City and Chicago for instance. He might have winced at such public homage, the proof that he had turned his life of a poor man into a valuable life for others. And the 1969 Woodstock Festival was only one more step on the long road to the living heart of man's imagination. And that is not all but I am running out of space, though not steam. Get to the book and enjoy it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

The very mention of the word 'Woodstock' conjures visions of the great summer of 1969 when the little location in New York state became a symbol for free love, rebellion against the Vietnam War, and some of the finest music of the time. But why was Woodstock chosen for that momentous event? Reading this newly revised edition of Anita M. Smith's original 1959 WOODSTOCK HISTORY AND HEARSAY sets the stage for the answers to that question and does so in an immensely readable, thoroughly documented, richly illustrated book - a book that should be on the bookshelves not only of all libraries, but also in the libraries of readers who are curious about that wonderful institution, the 'art colony'.

Anita M. Smith (1893 - 1968) was an accomplished painter, herbalist, historian, writer, and devotee of the arts. In her history of Woodstock she not only manages to include all the researched data from the founding of the community in 1778 through its emergence into an art colony, but she also includes anecdotal information, measures of the tenor of the times she examines, and introduces the many fascinating people who found residence there, people including Alexander Archipenko, George Bellows, John Burroughs, John Dewey, Philip Guston, Helen Hayes, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Thomas Mann, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Rosen, Pete Seeger, Conrad Kramer - great minds, great philosophers, painters, writers, environmentalists and significant lesser known individuals who supported the concept. Some may liken the group to the Bloomsbury Group in England, but the extent of time and variation of characters is far greater for Woodstock.

The book is beautifully designed and contains many full color photographs of Smith's paintings as well as numerous photographs of the people and the places within Woodstock through the century when it flourished: it remains an important have for thought and the arts. In Smith's writing we are not only introduced to a place (though the beauty of the physical Woodstock is constantly painted for us in her poetic prose), but it also addresses that elusive essence of an art colony - a place where people of great talent interact to influence each other.

WOODSTOCK HISTORY AND HEARSAY is a superb contribution to understanding American art and thought. This expanded volume, created for 2006 90th anniversary of the Maverick concert series, is a handsome and richly significant book. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 07

This book is a history of Woodstock, New York, with an emphasis on the development of its artistic community. Originally published in 1959, the book has been updated with endnotes by Weston Blelock and many new images and plates. Smith first arrived in Woodstock in 1912, when she spent a summer with the artists' colony. She soon returned to Woodstock to take up full-time residence, and in addition to painting, began collecting stories and anecdotes from townspeople. Her interest in local history became widely known, and in 1931, she began publishing papers about the history of Woodstock through the Historical Society of Woodstock. Following World War II, she compiled a history of the wartime contributions of Woodstock community members. In 1959, she published a volume of her historical research on town history, Woodstock: History and Hearsay. In this edition, family friends, Weston and Julia Blelock, have painstakingly reviewed Smith's manuscript, added endnotes, a new introduction, a biographical timeline of Smith's life, and hundreds of new illustrations and photographs. This edition includes an index, an annotated list of illustrations, a bibliography, and endnotes, as well as the World War II service record summaries from Smith's original work.

The book represents a massive work of scholarship, covering the history of Woodstock from its earliest European settlement through the period just after World War II. As well as being an active member of the artistic community, Smith was an avid collector of stories, and recorded firsthand accounts of life in Woodstock dating as far back as the early Nineteenth Century. In this book, she includes stories of frontier life, the glass-making factories, and a large section on the Down-Rent War, a rebellion against feudal land ownership. She then traces the development of the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, the Maverick Festival, and many of the artists who came to live in Woodstock. At the end of the book is a remarkable history of the WWII contributions of Woodstock residents, at the home front as well as in the services. In addition to the plates contained in Smith's 1959 edition, the Blelocks have added hundreds of photographs, color reproductions, and maps that make the present volume quite attractive as well as illustrative of Smith's stories.

The book is a delight to read, as well as highly informative. Smith writes in a down-to-earth narrative style, conveying the character of her interviewees. She clearly had a wide range of interests and cultivated friendships with people from all walks of life. She discusses some of the politics and personality conflicts of the original artists' community impartially, although she was a firsthand witness and participant in many of the events. Scholars studying artists who resided in Woodstock during these early years will find much of interest in the book, as she provides many personal anecdotes about her colleagues and mentors. Smith's details of the WWII contributions on the home front are particularly interesting for the information they provide about the effects the war had on the social climate of a representative small American town. Overall, the volume is a treasure trove of historical information, fascinating to read, and a pleasure to browse through.

Although I've had this book for a while, it's been difficult to find time to adequately praise it. Consequently, several others have beat me to the punch, superbly. As Ms. Borsos properly notes, Woodstock, N.Y. is known for its character and characters, the one influencing the other in ways that made the town a haven for "passionate, energetic, entrepreneurial, hard working and artistic" people.

These U.S. born bohemian types fortunately included the late Anita M. Smith (1893-1968), whose paintings Weston and his sister Julia Blelock have lovingly compiled in the latest edition of this book. How they came to do that is as much of interest as the book itself, for the Blelocks' parents had during their childhood rented Smith's home, while she lived in a cottage next door, adopted them as her "spiritual" grandchildren, and wrote the first, 1959 edition of the book.

The masterful current edition won the 2007 Independent Publisher's Award, presumably for its magnificent printing quality--and its fabulous content, including the introduction of Smith's 1920-1928 impressionist artwork, heretofore not in print. Smith's previously famous artistic renditions of New York's Catskill region had been shown in Chicago's Art Institute, Toronto (now Ontario's) Art Gallery, and Pennsylvania's Academy of Fine Arts.

But Smith was also first to write the Woodstock local history, which is far more scholarly and complete than most regional histories I have seen. Smith's life experience (recorded here in a time line) indicates the breadth of experience, knowledge and intellectual exposure she brought to her account, despite her grandmotherly familiarity with editors, during their childhoods.

Woodstock's Revolutionary-era Tory bent would not surprise anyone familiar with other rural New York areas. Setauket, Long Island, for example, has struggled (successfully) to retain its colonial feel, preserving even its circa 1730 Caroline Church, to which George II's Queen, Wilhelmina Karoline of Brandenburg-Anspach, gave its original alter cloth and Sacrament ornaments--and whose western side proudly exhibits Continental soldiers' bullet holes. Under British control for 7 years after the Revolution, Setauket was like Woodstock also home to Yankee boatmen whom the "damned Red Coats" labeled a local "Spy Ring."

Woodstock's Civil, World War I and World War II histories are also admirably recounted here, in a scholarly and equally engaging manner. Students of early American history will love the local color provided in chapters on New York's time along the budding nation's "western frontier," its liberation from Tory control, its 19th Century glass-making (a common art throughout the North East and into Canada) and rural agricultural disputes with large area landholders.

Then there are Smith's word-paintings of the beginnings and life in the original Byrdcliffe art colony, founded by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Bolton Brown and Hervey White, the last of whom later split off to start another such early art commune, the Maverick.

As others have mentioned, the characters on Smith's word canvas include instantly recognizable popular, business, intellectual, literary and political names (Helen Hayes, Edward G. Robinson, John Burroughs, John Dewey, Thomas Mann, Eleanor Roosevelt and Pete Seeger) and less famous (Alexander Archipenko, George Bellows, Philip Guston, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Charles Rosen and Conrad Kramer) alike. In a way, Anita Smith was rural New York's Gertrude Stein.

I can't recommend this fabulous 2nd edition highly enough.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

"Woodstock: history and hearsay" is a history of Woodstock, even before its beginning as an arts enclave, when the land was occupied by Native Americans. This beautiful book includes both facts and legends, a unique combination that manages to engage and inform the reader, leaving him wanting to visit the place he is reading about.

Written by Anita Smith (1893-1968) and first published in 1959, this book doesn't let us know what happened after that year, but gives us plenty of clues regarding the reasons why the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 ended up being celebrated there. What better place, after all, than a town that always gave great importance to music and art?

This second edition of "Woodstock: history and hearsay", prepared by Weston and Julia Blelock, includes extra material that gives Smith's work the opportunity to shine even brighter. I especially enjoyed the addition of some of her paintings of the Woodstock area, not included in the first edition.

Do I need to say more? Of course, highly recommended . . . .

- Belen Alcat, June 2007 -

First published in 1959, Woodstock: History And Hearsay by gardener, artist, and historian Anita M. Smith (1893-1968) is an engaging and in-depth, up-close-and-personal history of Woodstock in the decades leading up to the world-famous Woodstock Festival of 1969. Coffee-table sized and illustrated with black-and-white color photographs as well as a color portfolio of Smith's paintings of the town and landscape, Woodstock: History and Hearsay chronicles Woodstock from Native American legends revering it as sacred ground, to the Revolutionary War era, to the dramatic repercussions of the Industrial Revolution, to the founding of the utopian communes and the Maverick Festival, Woodstock: History and Hearsay covers both sweeping historical transformations and the folksy charm of charismatic individuals who shaped Woodstock over the decades. A classic local history and a true pleasure to read.

This is a great book about a great small town that for many years has heavily influenced the history of art and culture in the US. This engaging book is interesting from cove to cover. Anita Smith, artist (1893-1968) compells the reader to follow her lead throughout her unique history of Woodstock, New York. The book includes a rich account of the region from the American Indians, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony (still a working art colony), local lore and much more. The illustrations are excellent. High in quality content and well written. You'll want this book for your personal library!

Babs Moley, Owner
River Rock Health Spa, Woodstock NY
[...]

Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (11/07)


Anita M. Smith (1893-1968) is not only portrayed as an accomplished writer, but also as an accomplished artist as she reveals Woodstock in this wonderful second edition "art book." What a breathtaking way to create a visual tribute to 20th century artists such as Konrad Cramer, Doris Lee, Andrew Dasburg, and of course herself, Anita M. Smith.

But there is more. Smith includes history and daily life. There is an extensive chapter on the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts colony as well a section emphasizing the Maverick music and arts festivals, the predecessor to Woodstock. This coffee table book also features nearly 200 photos accentuating local individuals and attractions.

Those of us that grew up in the era of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, even if we didn't attend it, will always relate to it. But, most of us, unless we live in the area, do not know the history of Woodstock. Smith gives the opportunity for us to visit Woodstock in a way we couldn't have in 1969.

"Woodstock History and Hearsay" is captivating to say the least. The local tradition and myths, along with the researched narrative and paintings captures the splendor and magic of one of America's oldest arts communities.

Book received free of charge.