George Naughton Collection

Background on George B. Naughton

George Naughton was born in 1951 into an academically inclined family. His father, Thomas, was a writer and magazine editor until his death in 1959. His mother, Mary, had a varied career with the War Refugee Board and the Office of War Information in Turkey; on the copy desk at Time magazine; and as a music teacher. His grandfather Julius Seelye Bixler, a graduate of Amherst College, taught religion and theology at Smith College and Harvard Divinity School and served as president of Colby College in Maine (1942-1960); and his great-great-grandfather Julius Hawley Seelye was the fifth president of Amherst College (1876-1890).

One of four children, Naughton grew up in the 1960s in Old Saybrook, Conn. He graduated from Mount Hermon School in 1969 and from New College in Sarasota, Fla., with a BA in General Studies, in 1973. For the next few years, his interest in new age thinking and counterculture burgeoning, Naughton lived, worked, and meditated in Cambridge, Mass., and California. In March 1978, he moved to Amherst and went to work at UMass. From 1978 until his retirement in 2011, he worked in University Information Systems in Whitmore Administration Building. Now president of the Amherst Historical Society, Naughton is also active in the Pelham Historical Society and lives in Pelham with his wife, Cindy.