Editorial

Women’s History Month

Posted 3/27/19

The local celebration of Women’s History Month reached its climax this past weekend, when Mildred Starin received the Martha Washington Woman of History Award at Washington’s …

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Editorial

Women’s History Month

Posted

The local celebration of Women’s History Month reached its climax this past weekend, when Mildred Starin received the Martha Washington Woman of History Award at Washington’s Headquarters.

Her story, told here last week by Newburgh Historian Mary McTamaney, begins when young Millie and her husband Jeffrey Starin secured a GI loan to buy an old brick house along what deeds referred to as Jew’s Creek in Middle Hope. She began researching the history of the house and would discover that it was built by a Sephardic Jew who fled the 17th century Spanish Inquisition and came across the Atlantic to save his family and start a new life in a new world. He built a trading post along a Lenape trail and financed his son to barter goods for furs, the commodity so desired in Europe at the time. Luis Moses Gomez established what has been verified to now be the oldest Jewish homestead in the United States.

The long restoration process of the house and mill led to what would become the Gomez Mill House. Millie worked until she secured New York State and then National Register status for the old Gomez Mill House and, after her family had grown, she turned it over to a special foundation to preserve and protect it for the future as a public site.

Hers is one of many stories of remarkable women who have helped shape our history and culture. That’s why, in 1987, Congress designated the month of March as Women’s History Month. Since 1988, U.S. presidents have issued annual proclamations designating the month of March as Women’s History Month.

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation,” noted President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 proclamation (when the observance was confined to a single week in March.) “Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.”

The Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative illuminates women’s pivotal roles in building and sustaining our country and will expand what we know of our shared history. The initiative uses technology to amplify a diversity of women’s voices—not in one gallery or museum, but throughout the Smithsonian’s many museums, research centers, cultural heritage affiliates and wherever people are online—reaching millions of people in Washington, D.C., across the nation, and around the world.
The see these stories, and perhaps share some of your own, visit their website at womenshistory.si.edu/about.