Dr. Natalie A. Naylor - An interview with the Professor Emerita at Hofstra University, Author and Long Island Historian. "I enjoyed school… especially Social Studies, which is basically why I ended up in history."
11/10/2022
Natalie A. Naylor
Natalie A. Naylor is a Professor Emerita of Hofstra University on Long Island in New York. During her tenure at Hofstra, she taught classes at the School of Education and New College. When the university started the Long Island Studies Institute in 1985, Natalie was tapped for the position of director. She held that position for 15 years until she retired. At approximately this time, Natalie began editing, publishing books and articles on Long Island history. Some of the publications featured stories of prominent women of Long Island, as well as women’s suffrage. Today, Natalie has a nice resume of publications on Long Island history, including articles on Teddy Roosevelt. She has been editor of the Nassau County Historical Society’s Journal for over 25 years. Natalie is a former president of the Nassau County Historical Society (2008-2020) and currently is co-President of the Long Island Studies Council and sits on the board of the Rock Hall museum.
R.V.B. – Thank you for taking this time with me. Congratulations on your historical career. You’re really doing a great service for the people of Long Island.
N.N. – Thank you
R.V.B. – Can you tell me a little about your family and your ancestry?
N.N. – My mother was a 1st grade teacher for many years… from when I first started kindergarten. My father had originally been in the Newspaper business and eventually owned a small printing shop in Peekskill New York. I grew up and went to the schools there. Some of my ancestors are early Dutch… others go back to 1890’s Hungary. Some were Irish, German, Scottish and English.
R.V.B. – A wide variety of European heritage. Do you have any fond childhood memories growing up in upstate New York?
N.N. – I enjoyed school… especially Social Studies, which is basically why I ended up in history. I’m still in touch with a few of my friends from high school. We zoomed during the pandemic as they are spread far and wide. We were all on the debate team in high school and were involved with the newspaper, yearbook and other activities.
R.V.B. – Did you realize while you were in high school that you wanted to proceed in the area of history?
N.N. – No. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do at the time. I wasn’t sure of my path, even in college.
R.V.B. – How did you enjoy your college years?
N.N. – I enjoyed them. I was at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. I majored in political science but it was really more like American studies. I took all the American history courses that were offered… which weren’t a lot.
R.V.B. – Was there any reason in particular that you chose Bryn Mawr?
N.N. – I had applied to several colleges. I thought I wanted to go to Swarthmore… which is a neighboring college there. I had a visit arranged. I’m still not sure why but I kind of turned off from it and my parents insisted we stop at Bryn Mawr. It was a lovely campus and we were greeted nicely, so I decided to go there.
R.V.B. – You received your undergraduate degree there.
N.N. – Yes. Then I took a position with the National Bureau of Economic Research. I only had one year of economics in college, but was involved at the NBER with its Study of Philanthropy in the American Economy. While I was working there, I was taking courses at Columbia and Teachers College. I received a Master’s in teaching of Social Studies at Teachers College.
Then I taught at the Junior/Senior high school in Tuckahoe New York for three years. It was a small Junior/Senior High school… there were 500 students for the six years. While I was teaching there, I applied for an NDEA – National Defense Education Act fellowship at Teachers College. There were shortages of college teachers at the time. I was awarded this fellowship and spent three years at Teachers College specializing in the History of American Education. When I came to Hofstra, I hadn’t finished my dissertation yet but I had finished the course work, and had started the dissertation. I came to Hofstra in 1968 - at the School of Education – teaching in the Foundations of Education department. I was teaching mostly The American School course and one course in History of American Education.
R.V.B. – What was the topic of your dissertation?
N.N. – It was on American Education Society which was a 19th century benevolent organization that funded scholarships to men who planned to go into the ministry. The theological seminary that it helped establish was the first real graduate institution in the country. It was at a time when many of the faculty in colleges were ministers, so it was preparing college faculty. The American Education Society basically grew out of Congregational churches in New England. The Society insisted on what they called a learned ministry, which they defined as four years of college and three years of seminary. It was a lot more education than most ministers had at the time. It was certainly more than lawyers and doctors had.
R.V.B. – Is this the time period where you moved to Long Island?
N.N. – When I came to Hofstra in 1968, I moved to Long Island. I lived in Hempstead originally… a mile from the university and later to Uniondale. I had been living in the city while I was at Columbia… taking history courses.
R.V.B. – Was this the time when you started becoming involved in local history?
N.N. – That took a little time. My father had been an unofficial historian in Peekskill. He had written a book Civil War Days in a Country Village on Peekskill in the Civil War period. So that was another influence in terms of history - visiting places - battlefields and such. In terms of teaching, I didn’t get into local history until I moved from the School of Education to New College… which was a smaller liberal arts college at Hofstra. I started teaching in New College in 1976. It had started as an experimental inter-disciplinary college. You could make up your own courses more easily, instead of going through all the curriculum committees. I was taking students to Old Bethpage Village Restoration.
R.V.B. – As you were educating students, you were also partaking in writing projects?
N.N. – My first writing project was finishing my dissertation… which took a while. (Haha) I was very thankful that my primary dissertation advisor told me, “Don’t plan on getting anything done on your dissertation in your first year of teaching college.” I worked on my dissertation during summers and finished my dissertation in 1971.
R.V.B. – What was your first Long Island writing projects after your dissertation, when you got settled into your position?
N.N. – The first articles that I published were not on Long Island nor local history; they were from my dissertation. I was teaching courses in social history, women’s history, immigration and Generation Families in 20th century America, as well as History of Education. The first Long Island article I published was on Long Island’s notable women. It was an article in the Long Island Forum, back in 1984.
R.V.B. – There wasn’t a whole lot written about Long Island women at that time.
N.N. – That’s correct. Long Island women were traditionally invisible in local history. Nationally, women’s history was becoming a more popular field in the 1970s.
R.V.B. – Was it challenging finding information on this subject?
N.N. – For that particular article, I went to the standard biographical dictionary, Notable American Women. It was one thick volume at that point. In the Dictionary of American Biography, women were less than one percent of the entries. I went through it [Notable American Women] looking for women who had some kind of Long Island connection. I included Brooklyn and Queens. Many of the women’s connections were in what became New York City, but geographically part of Long Island.
R.V.B. – It didn’t stop there because I see you wrote a couple of books on the subject; Long Island Women: Activists and Innovators and Women in Long Island’s Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives.
N.N. – Yes. The first one I co-edited from a conference we had at Hofstra. The second is the one I did in retirement. It focused on Nassau and Suffolk women.
R.V.B. – What do you think that you brought out in this publication that helped Long Islanders understand the rich history of women on Long Island?
N.N. – Very little had been available before. In the conference, we didn’t have many people propose papers as I had hoped. It was a bit disappointing. But I drew on that conference volume for my own book as well as additional research. Some of those women had been in that very first article I did. There were subsequent volumes in that Notable American Women biographical dictionary… for women who died in later years. To be in that dictionary you had to be dead. Some people asked - while I was writing that book - if they were going to be in it and I said “You don’t want to be in it because you need to be dead.” Hahaha. I made some exceptions but it’s hard to put recent past into perspective. It’s easier to talk about individual woman… I tried to give some indication of the general involvement of – not just eminent women. The subtitle of that book was “A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives.”
R.V.B. – That is very honorable and notable. Did becoming the President of the Nassau County Historical Society dovetail into some of the other publications that you have produced, such as Roots and Heritage of Hempstead Town and Journeys on Old Long Island: Travelers’ Accounts, Contemporary Descriptions and Residents’ Reminiscences, 1744 - 1893?
N.N. – Not so much, because I was Secretary and Vice President before I became President. I had been an assistant editor for The Nassau County Historical Society Journal. I wrote a lot of articles for that. I drew on some of those for the book as well. The Journal has been published since 1937.
R.V.B. – Was it kind of like the sister of the Long Island Forum?
N.N. – They both started about the same time. Initially, the Forum was published monthly. It is no longer being published. The Nassau County Historical Society Journal was initially four issues a year. It has now been an annual publication for many years. The first article I did was in the Long Island Forum… a two-part piece. I published other articles in the Long Island Historical [now History] Journal, currently published on line. Some articles were for conferences held by the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra. That was more of an impetus. In 1985, Hofstra started the Long Island Studies Institute in cooperation with Nassau County. The county’s research library moved to Hofstra. I was the director of the institute from the beginning… until I retired after 15 years. I was in charge of publications and conferences. I organized 14 conferences and co-directed seven others. We published 30 titles in 15 years; I was editor or co-editor of 11.
R.V.B. - Was there a staff that helped with this process?
N.N. – For the conferences and the conference publications at Hofstra, the institute has secretarial assistance.
R.V.B. – What was the process of getting the library in order and categorized?
N.N. – Part of the institute was Hofstra’s Long Island and New York State history Special Collections. The Nassau County Museum’s reference library moved there, so all of those books were available for reference and research. I was not responsible for the libraries collections. They are still available today but at this time there are still Covid restrictions to public access.
R.V.B. – What are you proud about with your accomplishments in the local history and the history field in general?
N.N. – Well… the various publications of the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra, the book I wrote, and the articles I published. I’ve done a number of articles on Theodore Roosevelt. One of them was for Sagamore Hill and a couple for the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal. In recent years I’ve been writing about women’s suffrage and the suffrage movement on Long Island.
R.V.B. – I’ve noticed you have done some work on the New Deal art paintings on Long Island. A lot of these paintings still exist and are available for public viewing.
N.N. – I wrote two articles on that. One in the Nassau County Historical Society Journal and one in the Long Island Historical Journal, with a different focus in each. Some of the paintings are in Post Offices and some are in schools. I wasn’t too aware of it, but Hofstra had an exhibit on it at one time. I learned where the murals existed from the catalog of the exhibit. It would be nice to have a revival of that.
R.V.B. – Where are some of these murals located on Long Island?
N.N. – The Oyster Bay Post Office has a nice selection. This was done during Franklin Roosevelt’s time in office and Oyster Bay was the home of his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. They received more than any other single place on Long Island. The Freeport Post Office has interesting murals. Hempstead and Garden City have two of the largest murals. A lot of people are not aware of these because they take them for granted, but they depict aspects of Long Island history.
R.V.B. – They’re right out there for the public to see.
N.N. – I did the two articles and have done some talks on these as well. That’s another thing I have done… numerous speaking engagements at various historical societies and libraries on Long Island history topics over the years.
R.V.B. – You are still active today… visiting various historic locations and exhibits on Long Island. Do you have any current projects that you are involved in?
N.N. – At the moment, I am editing the 2022 Journal for the Nassau County Historical Society. There’s a section at the end called “The Last Word”, so depending on how many pages the layout is, determines how much historical news I can add. I also write an Editor's Message with an overview of the topics. There are usually three of four articles per issue on different aspects of local history.
R.V.B. – And you are still getting out to see old historic structures on Long Island.
N.N. – Right… because often there are new things that are happening. Last week, Planting Fields had a Frederick Law Olmsted symposium. I didn’t realize that the Planting Fields landscape was done by Olmsted. They had a good deal of information on the Olmsteds and their work and had tours of a dozen sites on the weekend which I missed. I’m on the board at Rock Hall, and they had their annual fair on Saturday, so I was helping there. On Sunday… the Nassau County Historical Society had its annual meeting and luncheon.
R.V.B. – It’s great to see that you’re keeping busy. Thank you very much for taking this time with me… I enjoyed the conversation.
N.N. – Thank you, Rob.
Interview conducted 10/25/2022 by Robert von Bernewitz
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