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Birth:          1907 N.Y.
Death:          1989 

Notes
1910 in Marbletown, Ulster Co., N.Y.
1920 in Marbletown, Ulster Co., N.Y.
1930 in Marbletown, Ulster Co., N.Y.
awt thomassmiley
chart from Joan LaChance at Mohonk Resort

from http://cityguide.pojonews.com/fe/Heritage/stories/he_dan_smiley.asp

Dan Smiley put love, respect of land first
By Paul C. Huth
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

By the time he was 13, Dan Smiley was the ‘‘bugman.’’ 
He earned that title on his first summer job at Mohonk Mountain House, where his 
chores included controlling the breeding places — stagnant water — of flies and 
mosquitoes. He was paid 10 cents an hour for that. His other job — catching mice — 
netted him a penny a tail. 

Every now and then people come along who produce a body of work that is far 
reaching — a benchmark in history. The late naturalist Daniel Smiley of Mohonk in 
Ulster County was one. 

For more than 60 years, he recorded the intricacies of the natural world around him; 
his dedication was legendary. Not knowing what might be important at a later date, he 
chronicled everything he could. By the time he died at age 82, he had amassed 
15,000 index cards filled with ecological notations. He pioneered studies on acid rain 
and the tree-devouring gypsy moths, and early on noted the decline of the American 
chestnut, native flowering dogwood and Allegheny Woodrat. 

All this without hardly ever leaving his beloved Mohonk Mountain House resort and its 
mountains in New Paltz. 

I had the privilege of working with Dan from 1974 until his death in 1989. At that time, 
Dan was at the zenith of a career of natural history research concentrated on the 90-
square mile Northern Shawangunk Mountain range. 

In 1993, the Shawangunks were anointed as one of America’s ‘‘Last Great Places’’ by 
The Nature Conservancy for their unique blend of natural and cultural history and 
diversity of rare species. Dan Smiley’s notes helped prove the case. 

Dan was born in 1907 into a Quaker tradition of land stewardship begun at Mohonk by 
the Smiley family in 1869. The village school in New Paltz was miles away, so young 
Daniel studied at home through a correspondence course. ‘‘A boyhood in this sort of a 
physical and spiritual environment,’’ he said, ‘‘was rather abnormal ... the difference 
further emphasized by the isolation from village life and boys our age.’’ 

Early teachings spark writing 

His mother read to him the works of Thornton Burgess, who wrote of the adventures of 
woodland creatures. Dan wrote his first field trip report at age 8 as part of a 
correspondence school exercise that included a drawing of an ice fishing expedition 
on Mohonk Lake. 

Later, at the Mohonk School, Dan trapped skunk, rode horses, built huts and played 
ice hockey, but also began writing prose and poetry for the school publication, The 
Mohonk Sentinel. 

The only significant time he was away from Mohonk was from 1926 to 1930, the years 
he spent at Haverford College in Pennsylvania to earn a degree in electrical 
engineering. 

When Dan retired in 1971 from his part in managing the Mountain House, he focused 
on his own course of ecosystem studies. 

A small notebook, always at hand in his shirt pocket, was frequently put to use. He 
rose every day at 4:22 a.m. — at the urging of his cat ‘‘Miss Black.’’ Bedtime was at 
nine. 

His curiosity was relentless. Each spring, he visited vernal pools to record Ambystomid 
salamanders and Wood Frogs and their egg laying. Under license No. 4029 from the 
Inland Bird Banding Association, Dan banded more than 17,000 birds. 

Dan studied the behavior of mammals, how many there were and what range of 
territory they populated. He first raised the alarm in the 1970s of the Allegheny 
Woodrat’s precipitous decline in New York state. And he helped reintroduce the 
Fisher, a brown furry weasel, to the Shawangunks. 

His theory of ‘‘mutual accommodation’’ in regard to gypsy moth infestations in the 
1950s, ’60s and ’70s opposed most thinking of the time, but was proved to be years 
ahead in recognizing ecosystem relationships. “Mutual accommodation’’ meant not 
spraying pesticides and trusting that nature would eventually balance the gypsy moth 
numbers. 

In the 1960s, Dan began collecting Shawangunk plants and established a herbarium 
that today contains about 2,000 vascular specimens, like flowering plants, trees and 
ferns, and hundreds of non-vascular fungi, lichens and mosses. 

The first pH tests for acidity in the Shawangunks were made by Dan in 1931. A good 
scientist, he had duplicate samples checked independently by a chemist/friend from 
Poughkeepsie. By 1977 — with a preserve research associate — Dan was testing the pH 
of precipitation for every storm — about 95 times a year. He also widely tested 
Shawangunk groundwaters. Today, these are among the longest records of their kind 
in the country. 

Skies enchanted Smiley also 

The sky occupied Dan as much as the ground. He was a weather observer for more 
than 50 years at the National Weather Service’s Mohonk Lake Cooperative Weather 
Station, now in its 103rd year, one of only 17 century-old stations in New York. 

Dan’s correspondence was voluminous, with letters flowing around the world to 
naturalists and scientists to discuss puzzling natural events. This correspondence still 
exists, thanks to a family tradition of not throwing ‘‘anything’’ away. 

When I joined Dan as his full-time research assistant in the early 1980s, we began to 
get down on paper as much as we could about the many subjects he had studied. At 
the time of his death, some 230 ‘‘Research Reports,’’ 220 ‘‘Natural Science Notes’’ 
and 35 ‘‘Historical/Cultural Notes’’ had been produced. 

He was a founding member of the eastern New York chapter of The Nature 
Conservancy, America’s first chapter, and for many years served on the board of 
governors. He was also a founding member of the John Burroughs Natural History 
Society and The Mohonk Trust. 

Today, the Mohonk Preserve, at 6,400 acres, is the largest nonprofit private preserve 
in New York state. Preserve research today continues to study the ecosystem that 
meant so much to Dan, in the way he intended. His life work and memory lives on to 
the benefit of future generations. 

Paul C. Huth is the director of research at the Daniel Smiley Research Center at the 
Mohonk Preserve in New Paltz. 

Parents
SMILEY Albert Keith (8 Aug 1883 - 1964)
CRAVEN Mabel Archer (1883 - 1972)

Siblings
SMILEY Daniel (1907 - 1989)
SMILEY Albert Keith (1910 - 2001)
SMILEY Anna Craven (1914 - 2001)

Marriage To PLUMLEE Alice (1914 - 2001)
    m.  divorced 

Notes


Children by PLUMLEE Alice 1914 - 2001
SMILEY Daniel Craven ()
SMILEY Priscilla ()
SMILEY Anna Plumlee ()

Marriage To VINEY Virginia (1914 - 1974)
    m.  

Notes


Marriage To RITTENHOUSE Jane (1919 - )
    m.  

Notes


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