Oyster Bay Historical Society names Jamie Arty president

Oyster Bay resident Jamie Arty has been named the new president of the Oyster Bay Historical Society’s Board of Trustees. Arty, a lifelong lover of history, said that she is thrilled to get the chance to help promote the history of the hamlet and shine a light on the amazing stories that have taken place in Oyster Bay over the centuries.

The Oyster Bay Historical Society is an organization which maintains and runs the Earle-Wightman House in the hamlet, as well as storing, analyzing and managing thousands of documents, photos and artifacts from throughout Oyster Bay’s history. A nonprofit organization, the Society, holds monthly exhibitions which look at history through a wide range of lenses, including military, cultural, political and racial.

Arty explained that she has been involved with the Society since before she and her family moved to the hamlet in 2018. When she and her husband Frantz were renovating their new home, a run-down mansion that was built in the 1830’s, she reached out to Denice Sheppard-Evans, the Historical Society’s director, for advice on preserving the historic accuracy of the property.

“Denice was probably one of the first people I ever met here,” Arty said. “This is such an old historic town, I felt like I just had to get involved with the Historical Society.”

Arty has also worked with other historical organizations, most notably as fundraising co-chair for the board of Raynham Hall. She and Sheppard-Evans said that it was thanks in part to her work fundraising for Raynham Hall that the Historical Society asked Arty to join their board as well.

At the Society, the protocol for a new member joining is that they first serve for three months as advisory members of the board, before getting promoted to full membership to prove their diligence and commitment to the work.

Shortly after finishing her advisory period, the board held an election for president, and chose Arty, despite the short amount of time she had officially been a member. She explained that she believes that it is her passion for history and for the community that made her stand out to her fellow board members.

“I truly do love history. Any time I find out different things about my house or the hamlet I just go down the rabbit hole of Google to find old records and archives,” Arty said. “I think that they saw that, and they thought that this is probably a really good fit.”

As president, Arty has a wide range of responsibilities on behalf of the Society. While the director oversees the day-to-day operations at the museum, the president leads the board in organizing fundraisers, finding ways to engage the community and planning the overarching goals and direction of the Historical Society.

Sheppard-Evans, the society’s long-time director who is leaving the organization this October to pursue her doctorate in education, explained that the role requires a lot of time and energy, and that she has no doubt that Arty is up to the task. Although as director Sheppard-Evans was not a part of the voting process, she said that Arty’s love of history as well as her close connections with other local organizations like Raynham Hall and the Main Street Association made her a natural fit for the role.

“I think she has a lot of bright ideas that could elevate the society to a point beyond where we’ve been operating,” Sheppard-Evans said. “She’s a lovely person to work and collaborate with, and I know that she’s going to do a great job bringing the board forward into the future.”