Eddie Moran, 24, has just been named the new Tour and Interpretation manager at Historic Huguenot Street. What does this mean? That Moran, born and raised on a family farm in Wallkill, will now be in charge of the tours that are given weekly, daily, even several times a day during the busy season along Huguenot Street: the oldest incorporated street in America, preserved and protected in the Village of New Paltz.
While the street itself is a living, breathing testament to Huguenot ancestry, with stone houses and revolutionary forts dating back centuries, Moran finds that much of its vitality is what exists beyond the structures themselves – or underneath them where enslaved African Americans slept, in longhouses where indigenous tribes once flourished – and into the larger community itself, where history is taking place all day, every day.
“When I lead a tour, it’s as much about New Paltz’s diverse history as it is making connections with the people on the tour,” said Moran. “History is never done, and it’s never one story. I want everyone to feel the connection with New Paltz whether they’re descendants of the 12 Huguenot families who signed the patent or descendants of the vibrant African American community or Esopus-Munsee tribes, or that they went to college here or rock-climb every summer or had ties to a family that were not the ‘12 families,’ but were every bit as much a part of New Paltz’s history.’ I want to talk about the Revolutionary War, the role women have played at every stage and Jason West,” referencing the former Village mayor who presided over 25 same-sex marriages in 2004.
Moran’s desire to read every book ever written about New Paltz and take deep dives into the documents and research conducted by his peers and predecessors is contagious. He believes that all of New Paltz’s historians “are having a dialogue with each other. Ralph LeFevre is talking to Susan Stessin-Cohen who is talking to Ruth Heidgerd who is talking to Eric Roth” – all authors of either papers and/or books about various aspects of New Paltz history. “The conversation should never stop. I hope that one day, someone is standing where I am now [inside the French Huguenot Church], talking about what a fool I was to have interpreted history in some way or another. History never stops, and I feel so fortunate to be in a position where I can talk about it and share it and learn about it every day.”
As a kid, Moran – whose grandmother was a Janssen and has lineage going back to the original patentees – always enjoyed history and outings with his family to local museums and historical sites like the one on Huguenot Street, and found himself gravitating toward history in under the tutelage of Wallkill High School teacher Glenn LaPolt. “I think that Moran side of me led me to become very interested in Irish history, which is a dynamic, ongoing story,” he said. “But when I got to college, I kept thinking that I should pick a more standard career path – one that would lead to a job.”
In the meantime, as a sophomore in college, he found his way to Historic Huguenot Street (HHS) to be a summer tour guide, and loved it. “You’re given a script, and as our understanding of history has evolved over the decades to become much more inclusive and multicultural, those scripts become more complex and exciting.” Moran enjoyed the people he worked with and kept coming back to work part-time.
As his college career progressed, he said, “I always came back to history. That’s what I loved.” So much so that Moran did a semester abroad in Ireland, where he could really sink into the bog of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland’s historic strife and the Colonial role that Brittan played and still plays in that dynamic. He became so enamored with historical relevance and accuracy and theories that he applied for and was admitted into the PhD program at SUNY Binghamton, where he planned on continuing his focus on Irish history or aspects of 20th-century American history.
Once he became ensconced in academia, his interest quickly waned. “I found that being a TA [teaching assistant] and writing papers was not as rewarding as the work I was doing right here [at HHS]. I realized that I could have so much more of a direct effect with public history and public outreach than sending an academic paper into the ether. It’s not that it doesn’t have a place, and I do want to go back and get my PhD at some point; but there’s so much richness right here.”
Now Moran can apply his formal academic training toward historical accuracy, which he believes leans more toward multiculturalism than it does the overarching “12 Huguenot founding fathers of New Paltz” type of narrative. “Our story is not that simple. It’s very complex and rich and at times hard to look at.” He’s referring to the Huguenots owning people and enslaving them, as well as some land deals with the Esopus Munsee tribes in 1677 that were in reality exploitive land steals at best, armed robbery at worst.
“Even the ‘Huguenots’ included so many different cultural heritages,” said Moran. “I think inclusivity is bringing all of this into the tours. We are not one thing, and history is not fixed.” Moran is a huge advocate of empowering people with historical knowledge, theories and question marks, but most of all making them feel that connection to New Paltz.
Asked what area compels him the most when it comes to local history, Moran said quickly, “The burial grounds, the cemeteries. This is what is left, physically. It speaks so much to some of these power imbalances that have gone on throughout the centuries.” There are questions of who has a burial site and was it recorded, or were the sites integrated, and were the cemeteries public or private? Answers to these questions, if they can be unearthed, provide a trove of information for historians like Moran and the staff he so admires at HHS.
“We have the French Huguenot Church Cemetery [on Huguenot Street] and the African American burial ground site [on Huguenot Street] and the Rural Cemetery [on Plains Road], as well as dozens of family cemeteries on private land and old farms,” he said. “There’s so much more research to be done there, and at the same time, these burial grounds that we know exist have such a direct connection to the present,” because of being able to walk among them, read the headstones and see the engravings and style of the memorial stones.
Although he has been at this post for just under a year, Moran said that he feels “like I just started. I can’t believe how much I learn every day. I feel so fortunate that HHS has positions where we can actually work as historians. That’s incredible.”
Join the family! 
