Alice P. Kenney (1937–1985)

Alice P. Kenney was born in Schenectady, New York, and grew up in Albany. She earned a bachelor's degree from Middlebury College, Vermont, and received a master’s degree and a doctorate from Columbia University in New York City. She was a New York Regents College Teaching Fellow in 1958-1960, and an American Association of University Women National Fellow in 1960-1961. She joined the faculty of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1961 and that year published her first article, "The Albany Dutch: Loyalists and Patriots," in New York History. Dr. Kenney became a recognized expert on 17th century Dutch-American colonial history. In 1972, she took a one-year leave of absence from Cedar Crest to serve as a visiting professor of history at the New-York Historical Society's Cooperstown Graduate Program, affiliated with the State University of New York at Oneonta. The program included professional training for museum personnel and preparation for scholars in folk culture. She was named chairman of the Department of History at Cedar Crest in 1975. From 1977 to 1979, she served as director of the Museum Access Project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in cooperation with the Lehigh County Historical Society. The project resulted in the publication of "Hospitable Heritage," a handbook to facilitate access for disabled visitors to museums, collections and historic sites. She retired from Cedar Crest as professor emerita in 1979.
Besides numerous articles and reviews, Dr. Kenney wrote books that included The Gansevoorts of Albany: Dutch Patricians in the Upper Hudson Valley (1969), Stubborn for History: The Dutch in New York (1975) and Albany: Crossroads of Liberty (1976). She also published Access to the Past: Museum Programs and Facilities Accessible to Disabled Persons (1980). In 1967, she published a children’s book, A History of the American Family.