Theodore Roosevelt’s Assassination Incident of 1903

Editors Note, Dr. Nancy Tomes: This paper had its origins in my course HIS 401, “Presidential Assassinations in Historical Perspective,”  which Nava took in Spring 2019.   Taught seminar style, the course looked at the history of Presidential assassination attempts, both failed and successful, from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan.  For her 401 paper, Nava chose to follow up […]

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We “protest the unjust treatment of pickets”: Brooklyn Suffragist Lucy Burns, Militancy in the National Woman’s Party, and Prison Reform, 1917–1920

By Kelly Marino From 1917 to 1919, the National Woman’s Party (NWP), a militant suffrage organization that campaigned for women’s right to vote in the United States during the Progressive Era, started dramatic demonstrations to promote their cause in Washington, DC. NWP co-leaders, Alice Paul, a New Jersey native, and Lucy Burns, an upper-class New […]

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The Battle for Long Islanders’ Souls and Minds: Holy Name Society’s Fight against the Ku Klux Klan

By Christopher Verga An insurgence of hate and nationalist groups spurred by a growth in immigrant populations that practiced a foreign religion and spoke a foreign language; false news that targeted new immigrants as threats to American society and promoted political campaigns designed around a Protestant conservative social etiquette — these events are reminiscent of […]

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Friend of Government or Friend of Country: The Revolutionary War Journey of Thomas Banister from Rhode Island to Long Island

By Marian Desrosiers Mid-eighteenth-century colonial seaports generated a vibrant exchange of goods, services, and ideas. Newport, Rhode Island, for example, experienced a growth in population because the community provided jobs, schools, and religious toleration. However, Acts of the British Parliament during the 1760s interfered and restricted colonial trade. This changed the relationship between England and […]

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Long Island during Prohibition, 1920-1933

By Jonathan Olly Long Island changed an awful lot When Prohibition came. Some fine old standards went to pot When Prohibition came. Fishermen sailed away at night, Knowing the weather wasn’t right For any sort of fish to bite, When Prohibition came…. Paul Bailey, Suffolk County historian, 1962[1] One minute after midnight on January 17, […]

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Blockbusting on Long Island: The Case of Gerald Kutler and the 1962 Legal Battle against Real Estate Bias in North Bellport, New York

By Neil P. Buffett On November 1, 1962, Gerald Kutler, a real estate agent from Islip Terrace, had his realtor’s license revoked by the Department of State of New York.[1] After a series of public hearings were held in New York City, the Secretary of State’s Office found that, based upon witness testimony, Kutler’s practices […]

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Annie Rensselaer Tinker (1884-1924) of East Setauket and NYC: Philanthropist, Suffragist, WWI Volunteer in Europe

By Catherine Tinker Annie Rensselaer Tinker, Philanthropist[1] Annie Rensselaer Tinker was an independent thinker, an advocate for women, an equestrian, and a self-described “spinster.” At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, a newspaper chronicled how “Miss Annie Tinker, daughter of Henry C. Tinker, former president of the Liberty National Bank, of New York, […]

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Long Island Women Preserving Nature and the Environment

By Natalie Naylor The modern environmental movement of the last half century has its roots in conservation activities beginning in the late nineteenth century. Long Islander Theodore Roosevelt was a national leader in these efforts, creating national forests, bird reserves, and national parks.[1] Many of the early conservation efforts were in the West, but TR’s […]

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Race, Ethnicity and Class on Shelter Island, 1652-2013

By Nancy Robin Jaicks Less than 110 miles from Manhattan and roughly the same size, eight thousand acres, sits the place called Shelter Island. The island is nestled between the North and South Forks of Long Island. Bounded by tranquil bays rather than by oceans – Gardiner’s Bay to the north and the Peconic Bay […]

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The Modernization of the Long Island Rail Road

By Derek Stadler Like other American railroads, the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) was at an impasse by the mid-twentieth century. Since rail was no longer the preferred method of transportation, many private railroads faltered and were forced into bankruptcy, unable to fund operating costs and essential improvements. Ultimately, public management set railroads on the […]

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Reminiscences of a Shinnecock-Montauk Whaling Family

By David Bunn Martine My grandmother, Alice Osceola Bunn Martinez, born in 1901, was a keeper of many oral histories. She remembered whaling stories from our Shinnecock-Montauk family and community going back to the early 19th century. In fact, she was a granddaughter of David Waukus Bunn, who was a whaler on several ships. But […]

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Preservation Update: The Case of the Pyrrhus Concer Homestead

By Georgette Grier-Key Introduction Archaeologist Steve Mrozowski, Ph.D. acknowledges that Long Island’s history, as in much of the North, seems largely to escape the slavery narrative. Stories about African Americans and enslaved Africans on Long Island are the less-told stories largely because of the lack of surviving or noted physical evidence.[1] Yet, Long Island had […]

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Indian Whalers on Long Island, 1669-1746

By John A. Strong Introduction The Long Island Algonquian communities along the south shore were closely attuned to their maritime environment. The coastal wetlands provided them with a reliable supply of shellfish, fish, migratory fowl, and sea mammals. They collected clams year round, trapped and netted fish, and hunted water fowl, seals, and whales. Little […]

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The Lee Family and Nineteenth-Century Shinnecock Whaling

By Nancy Shoemaker The American whaling industry originated on Long Island in the mid-seventeenth century, and as the historian John Strong has demonstrated in numerous books and articles, including his essay in this collection, Native American men’s labor was fundamental to the enterprise’s growth and success.[1] The bounty of whales off Long Island and Cape […]

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Richard Floyd IV: Long Island Loyalist

Introduction The wartime experiences of Colonel Richard Floyd IV, a wealthy Brookhaven landowner and influential judge, provide an intimate lens through which to view the varied Loyalist perspectives on the Revolution. Richard IV, who was a steadfast Loyalist throughout the entire Revolutionary War, was one of only three Suffolk County Loyalists named in the 1779 […]

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The Value of Mature

Determine why you are not having sex now, and what precisely you’d have to improve in order to begin. Sex is a shape or relaxation in which you forget your worries temporarily. Making love caused me to enormous quantity of annoyance in the form of bullying. The longer you wish to have sexual activity , […]

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What Do You Do With the Garbage? New York City’s Progressive Era Sanitary Reforms and Their Impact on the Waste Management Infrastructure in Jamaica Bay

Introduction For most of New York City’s history, the city’s filth was about as evenly distributed as its wealth.  Before reliable municipal services were widely available, affluent residents paid for regular garbage collection, street sweeping, and privy cleaning.[1] But in poorer neighborhoods garbage and filth were allowed to accumulate on the streets and in the […]

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Introduction: African Americans on Long Island, A Rich History

Issues of cultural awareness and racial equality for African Americans have long been important topics of discussion on Long Island. Historical research has proven that blacks were tightly woven into the social fabrics of both Nassau and Suffolk Counties since the earliest settlement period. However, most of the initial fact-finding and preservation of artifacts related […]

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Mapping African American History Across Long Island

African American experiences on Long Island are tied to the earliest colonial period. They include struggles with slavery, quests for freedom and autonomy, and the building of long-lasting institutions and ways of life that have given the region its character. In addition to the in-depth case studies featured in this special issue of the Long […]

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Miss Sperry: Corporate Beauty Pageants and the Prizing of Femininity in Postwar America

In December, 1958, the Sperry Gyroscope Corporation, a large defense contractor located on Long Island, presented Sandy Kuene, a female worker, with an award. No ordinary honor, human resources managers and employees recognized Kuene for winning the coveted title of “Miss Sperry” for 1958.[1] Her prizes (described somewhat curiously as “gifts”) included a large oil painting […]

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The Prisoners of New York

Editor’s Note Professor Burrows presented this talk at a symposium, “The American Revolution on Long Island and in New York City,” held at Stony Brook University on October 4, 2010, and co-sponsored by the Three Village Historical Society, the LIHJ, and Stony Brook University. The LIHJ includes the talk as it was delivered by Professor […]

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In Search of Catoneras: Long Island’s Pocahontas

Figure 1: The Wedding of Pocahantas with John Rolf, 1867. Lithograph by Joseph Hoover. Library of Congress. One of the more compelling dramas associated with the settlement of North America is the story of Pocahontas. Historians, artists, poets, and novelists have celebrated her rescue of John Smith and her marriage to John Rolfe.[1] Pocahontas’ conversion […]

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Thomas Jones: Embittered Long Island Loyalist

Historians still debate how significantly the American Revolution altered the people who experienced it.[1] Fortunately, biographies of participants can enhance our appreciation of the momentous changes sweeping across American society between 1763 and 1789. By studying an individual before the Revolution, gauging his or her expectations for the future, and then assessing how much the […]

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Chartering the New York State School of Agriculture on Long Island

Physiography, climate, and location have all combined to make Long Island a farming country. Gabriel, The Evolution of Long Island, 1921, 34. Through its nearly one hundred years of development as a leading educational institution, Farmingdale State College, SUNY, has mirrored Long Island’s transition from rural to suburban and from agriculture to high technology. It […]

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We were pretty gung-ho; we were going to save the world: High School Student Activism in Defense of Long Island’s Nissequogue River, 1970-1979

Figure 1: Aerial View of the Nissequogue River. Source www.striperonline.com/kayaking_nissequogue_river.htm Shakespeare alleged that “what’s past is prologue.” If this is true, then millennial ecological concerns such as those unveiled in recent films ranging from Al Gore’s award-winning An Inconvenient Truth to Gregory Greene’s The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American […]

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Lee E. Koppelman: Master Planner

Dr. Lee E. Koppelman’s name is synonymous with the planning and development of Long Island in the second half of the twentieth century. For twenty-eight years (1960-1988), he was Director of the Suffolk County Planning Department and for forty-one years (1965-2006), the Nassau-Suffolk County Regional Planning Board Executive Director. Koppelman was a planning gymnast, contorting […]

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Diasporas in Suburbia: Long Island’s Recent Immigrant Past

Figure 1: Twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration, Schackman (of Riverhead) and Barish (of Freeport), c. 1927. Both were Russian Jewish immigrant families. The Long Island Museum Collection, Gift of Elaine Schackman Kimpel. Figure 2: Santos Hernandez (center back) and Sinia Miranda (right back) and their family, from El Salvador and now living in Bay Shore, taken […]

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Long Island: Global, National, and Local

Either as independent laboratories or as connected nodes, islands are instructive settings. They can be interpreted as sites of natural experiments providing laboratory-like case studies of flora and fauna as well as nature-and-society systems. Finches from the Galápagos Islands have inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution; and the environmental destruction of Easter Island’s Polynesian society has […]

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