Museum exhibit honors five local women
Five Esopus women who left their mark on the world are being recognized in an exhibit at the Klyne Esopus Museum.
The museum, which opened for the season on June 4, is recognizing the women as part of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York.
“It just seemed very natural, on the occasion of that event, to recognize some of our own outstanding women here in Esopus,” said Steve Sickler, the museum’s first vice presi-
dent and publicist.
The exhibit, which will run for the entire museum season, will highlight the lives and contributions of Sojourner Truth, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Hilda Worthington Smith, Catherine Murdock and Mary Polhemus.
• Truth, born Isabella Baumfree in what is now the town of Esopus, was born into slavery and went on to become an abolitionist and activist for women’s right to vote.
• St. Cabrini, the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, founded the Missionary of Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880 and an orphanage in West Park in 1890. Although not originally from Esopus, Sickler said the community was her “adopted home” and where she asked to be buried.
• Smith was the founder of the Hudson Shore Labor School, a program she opened in her family’s West Park property for working people in 1921.
• Murdock was the first female lighthouse keeper of the Rondout Lighthouse.
• Polhemus, a Port Ewen resident and local educator, was the first women to be ordained a deacon in the Reformed Church of America.
Sickler said the exhibit will feature lots of graphics that display the lives of the women and offer a chronological view of their lives.
He said it will also feature a number of artifacts, particularly from St. Cabrini, including attire that she and the other nuns would have worn, and other items that would have pertained to their life in the church.
He said diaries and
other items belonging to Smith will also be on display.
The temporary exhibit will join the permanent exhibits at the museum, which is located in a 19th century Dutch Reformed Church, and includes exhibits depicting the towns brick-making industry, Native American culture, and items related to when the United Nations was eyeing the riverfront community as its headquarters.
The museum, located at 764 U.S. Route 9W, is open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays to Mondays, through the first Monday after Columbus Day.