NEW SCOTLAND — The New Scotland Historical Association dedicated two markers this week — each one a first.

On Friday, June 13, New Scotland got its only historic marker honoring a woman, Winifred Goldring. She was the first female state paleontologist in the nation and in the world.

On Saturday, a marker was unveiled in New Salem, recognizing its legendary name of Punkintown.

While both markers were funded — at a cost of about $2,500 each — by the Pomeroy Foundation, the one in New Salem is the town’s first in the Legend & Lore program.

The red plaque with cream writing is topped by a circular logo with moon and stars, which Alan Kowlowitz described as eye-catching.

Kowlowitz, the association’s president, also described the turnout of about 25 for Saturday’s dedication as “fantastic.”

In addition to history buffs, volunteers from the New Salem fire department were on hand. The company holds its annual fundraiser, the Punkintown Fair, on the property along Route 85A across from the firehouse where the marker now stands.

Kowlowitz told the crowd that this is the second marker the association has placed in New Salem with the goal of increasing awareness of its history.

The area, settled around 1770, was referred to on early maps as Salem Church or Salem until the town of New Scotland was established in 1832 and a New Salem post office was opened.

In the first half of the 19th Century, Kowlowitz told the crowd, based on research by Chris Albright, the hamlet was called Punkintown, “derived from a legend that a sow and her litter were able to live inside a ‘punkin’ here because those grown in present day New Salem were so large.”

The first documented use of the name came from an 1851 letter in which Margaret Crawford Wands of New Scotland wrote to her father, Silas Wands, “​​Robert Taylor has taken another rib to his side he has married the widow Reid of pumkin town.” 

Kowlowitz told the crowd, “Harold Lonnstrom in a 1984 article in The Altamont Enterprise on the founding of the Punkintown Fair, noted that the name Punkintown never completely faded from the collective memory of New Salem folks and was resurrected as a fitting name for a fair begun in 1942 to raise funds for men and women serving in the military during World War II.

“The placement of this historic marker will ensure that the name and legend of Punkintown will live on into the 21st century.”

Winnifred Goldring

The marker for Goldring was unveiled at John Boyd Thacher State Park, with state officials on hand, as it notes she “wrote the guide to geology of Thacher Park” and “lived nearby in New Scotland.”

“Her interest in educating the public inspired numerous innovative fossil exhibits and several publications, most notably her two-volume Handbook of Paleontology and Guide to the Geology of John Boyd Thacher Park,” according to a profile of Goldring by the New York State Museum.

The detailed profile, listing her more than 50 publications, also says, “Her contributions to the science of paleontology were profound …. Goldring’s 1939 appointment as State Paleontologist was a first for women in the nation and in the world.”

At Friday’s dedication ceremony, Kowlowitz credited Bill Ketzer, Bethlehem’s town historian, for his “excellent article” on Goldring published in the Bethlehem Historical Association’s newsletter.

“Dr. Winifred Goldring rose through the ranks of the New York State Museum’s male-dominated bureaucracy to become the first woman appointed a State Paleontologist (1939), and the first to serve as president of the Paleontological Society (1949),” Kowlowitz said.

She lived in the Font Grove Road home where she had grown up for most of her life until she died in 1971.

She attended school at the old District No. 9 schoolhouse in Slingerlands on Route 85 and was class valedictorian at Albany’s Milne School in 1905. “Her interest in paleontology blossomed at Wellesley College, where she finished her graduate work in 1912,” Kowlowitz said.

“Hikes and picnics in the Helderbergs sparked her interest in science, and she is buried in the New Scotland Cemetery,” Kowlowitz said. “It is therefore fitting that the New Scotland Historical Association honor her with a historic marker erected in John Boyd Thacher Park.”