Pioneer Information
Born Edith Ruth Johnson in Chicago, Illinois, Piwonka earned a B.A. from DePauw University in 1962 and an M.A. in English Literature from Indiana University in 1964. In 1969 she moved to Kinderhook, New York, where she became immersed in regional history, concentrating on Dutch colonization. She came to be recognized as one of the foremost scholars in the art, architecture, and history of Columbia County and the upper Hudson Valley.
In 1976 Piwonka redesigned the herb garden of the Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany, New York in an early American Colonial style in honor of the country’s bicentennial. That year she also became the executive director of the Columbia County Historical Society, serving for seven years. In 1986 she became the first executive director of the Columbia County Land Conservancy and in 1991 was appointed curator of the Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village. Piwonka later served as the Kinderhook Municipal Historian and as a consultant for the State Historic Preservation Field Services Bureau. She helped found the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History in 2014.
A prolific writer, Piwonka authored A Portrait of Livingston Manor: 1686-1850 (1986), co-authored additional histories and biographies, and published several articles in prominent journals. She prepared several National Register of Historic Places nominations, including those for the Jan van Hoesen House in Claverack (1979) and the Kinderhook Persons of Color Cemetery (2015). She was a fellow of the Holland Society of America and the New York Academy of History, and in 2020, a recipient of the Martha Washington Woman of History Award from the Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site. Piwonka passed away at the age of 81 in Albany, New York.
Photograph of Piwonka by B. Docktor Photography, Courtesy Jacob Leisler Institute.
