Welcome to the fourth issue of the online LIHJ, as we mark our second year of publishing our journal on the web.
In the articles section of this issue of the LIHJ, you will find two new original contributions: Ann Sandford shares with us her exploration of the life of Ernestine Rose, a Bridgehampton resident and New York City librarian, who played a prominent role in the development of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Ernestine Rose also appears in this issue in Gaynell Stone’s tour of the exhibit, “Southampton Women Who Made A Difference,” in our eMuseum area). Additionally, an article by R. Lawrence Swanson, Carolyn Hall and Kristin Kramms, places the environmental initiatives of Suffolk County’s past century in the broader context of state and federal legislation.
This issue also features the illustrated transcript of a talk by Professor Edwin Burrows of Brooklyn College examining the British treatment of American captives held in custody in Manhattan during the Revolutionary War. Professor Burrows’s presentation took place at a symposium at Stony Brook University in October, 2010 on “The American Revolution on Long Island and in New York City” and he graciously shares it in this issue with LIHJ readers. The LIHJ was pleased to be a co-sponsor of the symposium, planned by the Three Village Historical Society. A second symposium, “Rebels, Resisters and Rioters: New Yorkers Respond to the American Revolution and to the Civil War,” took place on November 12th, at Stony Brook University. Details about the symposium are at www.tvhs.org.
Our reviews in this issue address recent books on Long Island high school sports, Alfred Cosden and his Southold estate, “Eastward,” and the third and final volume in Edmund Morris’s monumental biographical study of Theodore Roosevelt.
I would also like to alert readers to an invaluable new research resource, that being the completed digitization of the Long Island Historical Journal, 1988 to 2008, overseen by Kristen J. Nyitray, the Head of Special Collections and University Archives at Stony Brook University. Researchers of Long Island history now have all of the invaluable content of all past issues of the LIHJ a mouse click away by going to sunysb.libguides.com/lihj .
We welcome reader comments for our Letters section and also encourage LIHJ readers to visit the “subscribe” link on the home page to enter a free subscription to the LIHJ.
Charles Backfish
Editor in Chief