This episode digs into the life and career of Winifred Goldring, an incredibly prolific scientist who overcame prejudice to become the first female NYS Paleontologist at the State Museum in Albany. She was also a highly successful educator and innovative exhibit designer and would spend 40 years as a scientist at the State Museum.
Interviewees—Dr. Lisa Amati, NYS Paleontologist, and Audrey Trossen, Environmental Educator at John Boyd Thacher State Park.
Marker of Focus—Winifred Goldring, Albany County.
Further Reading:
New York State Museum, Women of Science: Winifred Goldring.
Winifred Goldring, “Guide to the Geology of John Boyd Thacher (Indian Ladder Region) and Vicinity” New York State Museum Handbook, 1933.
D.W. Fisher, “Memorial to Winifred Goldring, 1888-1971,” Memorials of the Geological Society of America, 1974.
Music: Lemon Groves by Bon Voyage
Educational Resources:
National Museum of Natural History: Paleontology Resources
National Park Service: Fossils and Paleontology
John Boyd Thacher State Park: Education Resources
Devin Lander:
Welcome to A New York Minute in History I’m Devin Lander, the New York State Historian.
Lauren Roberts:
And I'm Lauren Roberts, the historian for Saratoga County. For this episode, we're going to be focusing on a marker that's located in Albany County. The location is 830 Thatcher Park Road in Voorheesville. And this sign is actually located inside John Boyd Thatcher State Park. It's actually right in front of the visitor center there, and the text reads: "Winifred Goldring, 1888 to 1971 first woman appointed New York State paleontologist, wrote the guide to geology of Thatcher Park. Lived nearby in new Scotland, William G Pomeroy foundation 2025." when we started to do the research for this episode, Winifred Goldring was not a name that I was familiar with, but I'm sure, Devin, you knew her name being a part of the New York State Museum. So could you tell us a little bit about who Winifred Goldring was and why she's so deserving of this marker.
Devin Lander:
Absolutely, this episode really hits close to home for me, because, as you noted, I am a current employee of the New York State Museum, and one of the towering legends from the history of that institution really is Winifred Goldring for a variety of reasons. We're going to celebrate her on this episode because of her groundbreaking and glass-ceiling-shattering career. But she was more than that. She was more than just the first female state paleontologist. She was an acknowledged expert in a variety of disciplines within the field of science and paleontology, geology. She was an expert in exhibit design, one of the early groundbreaking exhibit designers in museum history, not just the State Museum history, but museums in North America, some of her work. So she was somebody that, when I was first hired as state historian, almost 10 years ago, I would hear about, and we have as part of our exhibit some of her work, and it was something that over time, I was able to learn more about her, and it's really one of the joys of working at an institution that's as old as ours. 1836 was really when the first state museum, or when the State Museum became real as the state Geologic Survey. And you know, so having the ability to work, or the really, the opportunity to work in an institution that's that old really brings you in touch with, as I said, some of these towering figures. And Winifred happens to be a scientist, and I still work with many scientists today, including Dr Lisa Ahmadi, who we were fortunate enough to interview about not only Winifred legacy, but Lisa's own work as today's state paleontologist.
Lisa Amati:
Winifred Goldring didn't intend to go into science actually originally. She was born in 1888 in Kenwood, New York, which is now part of Albany, and she would eventually go on to become the fifth state paleontologist of New York and the first female state paleontologist anywhere in the country. Her father actually worked at Kew Gardens in London, and he was an orchid grower, then he moved to New York to take care of Erastus Corning's estate. When Goldring was born, therefore, she had an interest in botany through her father. But when she went to college, she actually intended to study classical languages. In her first, I believe it was her first year, she took a botany class, and that was it, as happens for many of us in science, we take one science class and it's over. We're sucked in, and we can't help it. And she pursued geology and geography and paleontology from that point on.
Lauren Roberts:
According to the historic marker, she was born in 1888 so she must have been coming to age in the early 1900s. I would be wondering, how does a young woman in the early 1900s get into paleontology? What is her background that allows her to have those types of doors open to her in that time period?
Devin Lander:
Well, it was very rare, as we know, for women to have these positions. And I should note, not only was she the first female state paleontologist, she was actually the first female curator at the New York State Museum before she was state paleontologist. So that shows that, you know, there weren't a lot of women in these scientific positions or in these museum positions in general during the early 20th century and so, you know, she was somewhat unique. And I think really her background, growing up in Kenwood, near Albany and near Thatcher Park, really introduced her, not only to the nature and the beauty of the surroundings, but also the geologic record that existed at Thatcher Park and exists at Thatcher Park, making it one of the most attractive places for geologists to investigate to this day. But it was also kind of in her family, right? Her father, Frederick, was a trained specialist in orchids, and actually worked at Kew Gardens in England, and was a renowned expert who actually immigrated to this country to take over orchid growing on the estate of Erastus Corning, which is how he ended up in the United States, and how Winifred ended up being born near Albany in Kenwood, New York. And her mother was a teacher, so she obviously came from educated parents with an interest in nature and science and the surroundings in which they lived. And I think that was probably what spurred her on and opened doors for her as a student that would then lead her to the State Museum in Albany.
Lauren Roberts:
Yeah, I was surprised to learn that she actually had her master's degree in geology in 1912 from Wellesley College. I'm trying to remember, if I've you know, how many females I've heard of getting their master's degree in and around New York state at that time. So and like you said, you know she, she is the child of immigrant an immigrant parent. So it wasn't as though she came from a very privileged, wealthy background. So, education must have been really important to her whole family. And she must have been a pretty smart lady early on.
Devin Lander:
She definitely was. She graduated as valedictorian, as one of Albany's preeminent schools, the Milne school, and then, as you noted, went on to Wellesley College, where she attained her BA and MA, and then stayed on as a teacher. So she actually taught college before she ended up at the New York State Museum. So she taught at Wellesley for a period of time, and then also taught at Boston's teachers School of Science. She did some more graduate work at Harvard and Columbia, and she began her career at the State Museum in 1914
Lauren Roberts:
So, when she started at the State Museum, was she immediately the state paleontologist?
Devin Lander:
No, she wasn't good question. Actually, she started off her first two years at the State Museum, she was considered a scientific expert in paleontology, which was kind of a lower rung position and was in no means a full curator, and certainly not the state paleontologist. She lasted, as I said, two years in that position. Then in 1915 she was promoted to assistant paleontologist. So again, moving up the ladder, but slowly shattering glass ceilings as she did so, and she held that position for 11 years. And then in 1926 she was promoted to paleobotanist, so no longer an assistant, she was a full paleobotanist. And then in 1928 she was promoted again to associate paleontologist and in 1932 Assistant State paleontologist, and it wasn't until 1939 that she actually became the state paleontologist, and she served in that role until 1954 when she retired.
Lisa Amati:
In, let's see, I think it was 1914 she was first hired at the New York State Museum as a scientific expert in paleontology. Now we don't have any information about how she landed that initial job, but we do know that John Mason Clark was the state paleontologist at the time. He was the third state paleontologist of New York, and everything I've read that he wrote about Goldring was very complimentary, and he appears to have been a man who respected her abilities and her scientific acumen and wasn't hung up on the fact that she was female. So she was given this first opportunity. One year later, she became an assistant paleontologist. And then her first big break came in 1916 when she began studying the crinoids of New York. These are fossil organisms and James Hall the second state paleontologist of New York, who is actually state paleontologist for 57 years. He started studying this group of organisms before 1860 and nobody ever managed to get this manuscript together. They would work on it. They'd collect specimens, then they'd move on to something else. So from before 1860 people had been working on this. Goldring has assigned this project in 1916 by 1919 she'd finished it, wow. And Clark was so impressed. The State paleontologist at that time was so impressed that when they discovered the fossil forest at Gilboa sometime around 1920 we don't have the exact date she was assigned that project, particularly since her major had been in botany.
Devin Lander:
You know, it's pretty clear that Winifred was skilled enough to be continually promoted, although there were, as we said, glass ceilings in place, and she really had to show her ability to get the attention of the administrators above her to enable her to continue to climb that ladder and eventually become state paleontologist.
Lauren Roberts:
And we know it wasn't all smooth sailing. Winifred certainly had to deal with a lot of adversity and maybe even discrimination to get where she wanted to be.
Lisa Amati:
There was a short period of time when she took a leave of absence. It was in 1926 and the official reason for her taking a leave of absence was basically they said she had a nervous breakdown, but she actually left because she was making less than the stenographers at the museum.
Devin Lander:
Oh, wow. So how did that get rectified, because she obviously came back. Was she successful?
Lisa Amati:
She came back, but I there's no record of if she succeeded in getting higher pay, but there's also, I haven't been able to identify this quote. I haven't been able to find it anywhere, but I've been told that. She was told, you can call yourself the state paleontologist, but you're not, but she absolutely was.
Lauren Roberts:
One of the really interesting things about Winifred Goldring was that she didn't just specialize in one specific discipline, as we see many, as we see most often today, she had interests across the board, and she was really good at all of them.
Lisa Amati:
Goldring was really three things. She was a paleontologist, and she had a very broad range of subjects that she tackled everything from 490 million year old algal mounds near Saratoga Springs. And she also studied salinity levels in Pleistocene Champlain sea. So Lake Champlain actually used to be salt water that was only 10,000 years ago. So she studied about a half a billion years of life history in New York. In addition to that, she was a geologist. She studied layers of rocks, identified them, described them, and then figured out what order those layers of rocks occurred in she completed two geologic maps where you hike up and down mountains and down canyons and along streams and down railroad tracks and document what the rock name is at each place you're located. And then you indicate that on a map. So you get a map where anywhere you. To go on that map, you know what type of rock is exposed at the surface there? That's straight geology. In addition to be being a paleontologist and a geologist, she did some groundbreaking work in exhibits, as you mentioned, probably the main example would be the Gilboa fossil forest diorama that was constructed at the at the New York State Museum when it was located in what is now the education building. This was a three dimensional diorama that went back into the wall with real fossil tree stumps and recreations of what she thought the trees would have looked like when they were alive. That opened February 12, 1925, and no one's sure, but they think that might be the first example of a big, three dimensional diorama in a museum. In addition to that, what she's less well known for is she had an exhibit called what is a fossil that explains what fossils are and how they can become preserved and how we're able to interpret them. Pretty much every museum that has fossils displayed has a what is a fossil exhibit, and she was the first, in fact, as we prepare exhibits at the New York State Museum, if we get our new exhibits, they will include an exhibit called what is a fossil, because you have.
Lauren Roberts:
to have it. At the beginning of the episode, we mentioned that Winifred gold rings historic marker is placed in front of the visitor center at John Boyd Thatcher State Park. Why was Thatcher Park chosen as the right place to commemorate Winifred gold rings work?
Devin Lander:
That's a great question, and we know that she grew up kind of near there. But I asked the same question to Audrey Trossen, who was from the New York State Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation, and who works at John Boyd Thatcher State Park.
Audrey Trossen:
Thatcher Park was chosen as the location for gold rings marker through a collaboration with both, you know, the New York State Parks Department, as well as the new Scotland Historical Association and the William G Pomeroy Foundation, obviously, for a couple of reasons, one of them being that Winifred lived the majority of her life in Slingerland, which is very, very close to the park. She moved there when she was about two years old with her family. Her father was like an orchid specialist who started a floral business there, and she lived in that house for the rest of her life, for 81 more years, just, you know, in the shadow of the Helderberg escarpment, kind of, you know, very close to that really wonderful cliff that preserves that ancient ocean in those fossils there. So that's one reason really strong ties to the area. The other is that the marker is placed, you know, right in front of our visitor center. You know, when folks come to visit the park, they might go there first if they want to hike our Indian ladder Trail, which goes right under the escarpment where you can see those fossils up close. And it's one of the first things that you see. So it's really prominently displayed.
Devin Lander:
If you ever want to see what success looks like for a scientist in the 20th century, early 20th century, take a look at the New York State museum's website dedicated to Winnifred gold ring, and you'll see a list of publications that is quite long. It shows how prolific she was. It shows how interdisciplinary she was, as she published in several different topics, but one of the most enduring publications that Winifred was able to accomplish during her long and prolific career was something called "A Guide to the Geology of John Boyd Thatcher Park.
Audrey Trossen:
In a, like, really impressive breadth of work, she studied, you know, hundreds of 1000s of years worth—hundreds of millions of years-worth of history. And today, most paleontologists will study like a specific time period or a specific animal. But she would study all different types of things, from salinities in the Pleistocene all the way back to the Cambrian, and then obviously her work on those forests in the Devon Ian period from Gilboa, New York. And I think you're right that you know, facing adversity like that would kind of drive her to publish really large quantity of work, but also really meticulous. So her kind of catalog of crinoids, which are a kind of animal that's like a sea lily, they're also called, they have this long stem and these fronds that kind of flow in the ancient ocean, she identified 50 new species, and her cataloging of everything that they knew about them to that point was over 600 pages, because her work is just so accurate, precise and meticulous. And just to kind of speak to that point too, her two-part guide to the geology of Thatcher Park, which is another way that she's really kind of connected to what I do today. That guide is still so. So accurate that we use it to train our new staff. And that's, to me, just so impressive. It's almost 100 years old, and obviously there are
Lauren Roberts:
some it seems fitting that Winifred gold ring would find a place in Thatcher Park to be commemorated for the amount of work that she did. And I took a look at Thatcher park's history, and actually it was acquired by the state in 1914 and you know, it's named after John Boyd Thatcher, who was a former state senator and Mayor of Albany, but it was actually his wife, Emma Treadwell Thatcher, who was the one who donated 350 acres of land to New York state after her husband's death in order to make sure that this important area was preserved for the people of the state of New York. Winifred had a pretty impressive roster of publications, but not only was she good at the written word, we know that she was amazing as someone who could put together engaging and educational exhibits, and she helped to bring what can be a pretty confusing subject of paleontology to the public. And as part of that, she designed an exhibit in the former New York State Museum location called the Gilboa fossil forest diorama, where she was able to recreate the types of fossils and trees, the fossilized tree stumps that were found in the area. And it was so epic, it lasted for decades, actually, until the New York State Museum moved to its new location, her diorama remained intact until the 1970s.
Devin Lander:
So after 40 years of achievement and groundbreaking work as a paleontologist, a paleo botanist and a geologist, Winifred retired in 1954 and retirement was really an opportunity to free up some time, as it is, with so many people, but it allowed Winifred to focus on something other than science, really for the first time, and she really enjoyed going on long walks around her home in Kenwood, which she lived in her childhood home for 81 years. She was there her entire life. She also enjoyed crocheting, reading and music, and it was sadly on January 30, 1971 she passed away just three days shy of her 83rd birthday.
Audrey Trossen:
I think that there's a lot we can glean from what we know about winter Fred's life, especially her early life. And there's always this quote that I'll come back to that she wrote in a letter when she was a little bit older, which is, I don't recall ever being bored in my life. So when I read that to me, that kind of means that, like she has sort of always felt this call towards science, and especially the science that she was able to find in the area where she grew up. She would then go on to get a bachelor's, and then a Master's of geology from Wellesley College, and then she would teach there for a few years before only at the age of 26 being hired by the New York State Museum, and then coming back here and kind of settling down. Lots of people have been quoted as saying that she had a bit of a stern and Frank demeanor, which I kind of love to think about. She was always very, you know, open about how frustrated she could get, you know, trying to operate in these sort of like male dominated bureaucracies, both at the museum as well as like in science as a whole. You know, as a female scientist, you know, in the early 20th in the early 20th century, she would find herself kind of boxed out of certain conversations and communities, often, right? And I think, you know, she was really honest about how difficult that could be. And to me, when I think about her and what she experienced, it makes total sense that someone like that would then go on to lead a life that was so dedicated to opening science for others, right? Because when you are someone who has doors close to you, it makes sense that you would want to open doors for others. So she really spent a lot of time trying to make geology and science accessible to everyone.
Lauren Roberts:
Having Winifred gold rings marker at Thatcher State Park was a partnership between the new Scotland Historical Association who applied for the marker and the Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation which allowed the marker to be placed there, this partnership writes a missing piece in the history of Thatcher Park, and in naming Winifred gold ring as one of the really influential people who was able to write about the history of the park in a way that the public. Public can understand and Devin you and I are public historians, and we often feel that pinch between academic history and public history. If there was such a thing as public scientists, I think that that Winifred would would fall into that category where, you know she's writing for her own colleagues in the scientific field, but also the ability to write for the public, so that people that visit a place like Thatcher park can have the benefit of her, her knowledge, her information, her publication, to actually know what they're looking at and why it's important. So these kinds of partnerships between historical associations and public parks and the William G Pomeroy Foundation are great for the visitors who then get to benefit from our history.
Audrey Trossen:
Winifreds marker was, you know, installed as part as the of our agency's our whole history initiative, which is all really targeted and focused on finding those historically under told stories of both those ordinary and also kind of exceptional New Yorkers, and highlighting them for the public. And it might seem like a small thing, but having Winnifred marker, you know, so prominently displayed at our park in a spot where most of our visitors will see it, if it inspires even one person to learn more about her and her journey and how she was, one so dedicated to science, just incredibly, just an incredible scientist in her own right, and then also a trailblazer for women in science. I think small things like that. Can also encourage, you know, girls like me to study geology as they get older, because it is truly just an amazing science. And, you know, speaking a little bit more to why she we should care about gold ring and her legacy. You know, I think that is kind of at the core of it. And for me, personally, as an environmental educator, I'm taking people who have maybe never been on a hike into the woods, and I'm asking them to trust me and to take my hand and so so that I can show them something that will spark their curiosity. And when I do that work, I try to remember Winifred deep love of the landscape that I am bringing people into. And if I can, like, find that love in myself and let it shine, I think people really do resonate with that. That's kind of what I see in my work. You know, when I am truly enthusiastic about a topic, I think that becomes a little infectious. And I think even through time gold rings, passion has infected me a little bit too.
Devin Lander:
Thanks for listening to a New York minute in history. This podcast is a production of WAMC northeast Public Radio and the New York State Museum With support from the William G Pomeroy foundation. Our producer is Aaron Shellow-Lavine.
Lauren Roberts:
A big thanks to Dr Lisa Ahmadi and Audrey Trossen for taking part. If you enjoyed this month's episode, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and share on social media to learn more about our guests and the show, check us out at WAMC podcasts.org, we're also on X and Instagram at NY History Minute.
