About Us

Author and Researcher

Bryan R. Dunlap

Bryan R. Dunlap is an author and researcher whose

community work in the Hudson Highlands has deepened

public appreciation for the region's ties to the West Point

Foundry. Through the Putnam History Museum, he

curated the "Voices of the Foundry" audio display for the

Foundry's Bicentennial Exhibition in 2018, earning a

Volunteer Service Award that same year, and lectured on the connections between

the Foundry and the Warner family of Constitution Island. His years as Trustee and Archivist of the Warner Family Collection for the Constitution Island Association, recognized with a Distinguished Service Award in 2013, further connect his work to

the Foundry's broader historical circle. Dunlap is also the author of several books, including The Boys from Canaan and The Boy from Front Street, with The Boy from Albion forthcoming.

Civil War Cannon Shooter and Reenactor

Howard Fryburg

Coming soon!

Industrial Archaeologist and Researcher

T. Arron Kotlensky, MS, RPA

T. Arron Kotlensky, MS, RPA, has spent much of his

career as an archaeologist exploring the legacy of the

West Point Foundry, the historic ironworks founded by

Gouverneur Kemble in Cold Spring, New York. His

connection began as a field school student at the

Foundry site in 2004 and graduate student in 2005, and later grew into a professional passion when he returned to supervise archaeological monitoring there from 2012 to 2013. His award-winning study of the Foundry's blast furnace, published in 2009, earned the Society for Industrial Archeology's 2014 Robert M. Vogel Prize. From 2016 to 2017, he proudly led the effort to nominate the West Point Foundry Archaeological Site as a National Historic Landmark, seeing it successfully designated in 2021. Though he now works in his home state of Pennsylvania as an archaeologist for PennDOT, Kotlensky continues to champion the Kemble family's rich industrial story.

Founder and Author

David Watson, MD

David Watson, MD, spent decades as a pediatrician and

he retired in 2011 and, with his wife, purchased and

restored the historic William Kemble House on the

Hudson, part of the West Point Foundry National

Historic Landmark, renovating the property between

2017 and 2022. His discovery of the site sparked a deep research interest in the Kemble family, leading him to consult with historians and archaeologists and ultimately found The Center for Kemble Studies. He authored a coffee-table book on the Kembles and has become a sought-after lecturer on the family's role in early American industry. Most recently, Watson executive produced and appeared in a film chronicling four generations of Kembles and their pivotal contributions to the industrialization of America. Mr. Watson continues creating opportunities to have the Kemble legacy preserved and known.

Technology Historian

Steven A. Walton

Steven A. Walton is a historian of technology whose

scholarship has helped define the study of the West

Point Foundry within the broader story of American

industrialization. He edited a landmark theme issue on

the Foundry for IA: The Journal of the Society for

Industrial Archeology in 2009, contributing two essays of his own, including a study drawn from the diary documenting the Foundry's founding in 1817. His related article on Peter Townsend's cannon foundry, published in a special "Iron in the Hudson Valley" issue of the New York State Museum Record, further explores the Foundry's origins, and his 2015 article on iron ore washing won the Society's Vogel Prize in 2019. He is currently completing a monograph, Networks of Industry: The West Point Foundry and Nineteenth-Century American Industrialization, proposed to Johns Hopkins University Press. A professor at Michigan Technological University, Walton also served as editor of IA from 2017 to 2025.