Category: Articles

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 America, affecting a […]

Introduction In 1999, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California acquired two account books which were identified as having belonged to “a Long Island merchant named Richard Floyd” of Brookhaven, New York. With further research, these ledgers have proven to be of major significance to early Long Island history. These two volumes—which span forty-six years […]

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, 1920, the Eighteenth […]

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 in the North Bellport […]

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, sailed for the […]

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 cousins, W. Emlen […]

No good children’s story is without a villain. In the comic books, the villains have ranged from the Joker and the Riddler to the Prankster and the Puzzler. But in the real-life early twentieth century, starting on Long Island and soon throughout the rest of the country, the children’s enemy was far more deadly. It […]

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 to the south – […]

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 right track since […]

After the Battle of Long Island in the fall of 1776, British forces re-gained control of New York from rebel forces. Until 1783, they commanded the southern portion of the colony-turned-state. A consequence of the British occupation was that New York — New York City, in particular — became a beacon for American Loyalists. Thousands […]

In the spring of 1939 all the world converged on Flushing, Queens to cast a hopeful eye on the future. With George and Ira Gershwin’s Dawn of a New Day as its anthem, the 1939 World’s Fair promised a peek at the “World of Tomorrow.”[1] Flushing Meadows-Corona Park played host to the international exposition. The […]

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 […]

Note:This article is based on a paper given by Lamont and Strong at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference at Mohegan Sun, Uncasville, CT June 3-6 2012. We thank the Fire Island National Park administration for purchasing digital copies of the ledger books from the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Introduction […]

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 […]

Bethel-Christian Avenue-Laurel Hill Historic District

While travelling along Middle Road in Cutchogue, New York, you may notice the large Town of Southold sanitation facility seemingly out-of-place among the agricultural fields, vineyards, and farm houses. What you will likely not see is the historic Church Lane neighborhood, which borders the sanitation facility on the north side of Middle Road. This is […]

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 […]

Editor’s note: throughout this manuscript, spelling and grammar from historical documents  are kept in their original primary form. In a letter dated September 23, 1837, Aaron Smith of Smithtown, Long Island, lamented to his aunt, Elizabeth Blydenburgh, living in Michigan City, Indiana, that Smithtown remains the same sluggish, unaspiring and unimproving place that it has […]

Before this technological era of music carriers, iPods, MP3s and digital downloads, Golden Crest Records was Long Island’s only significant gramophone record company. Operating from 1956 through 1984 and based in Huntington Station, it flirted with national influence through hit records by the Wailers in 1959 and 1964, and released a broad spectrum of American […]

Founded in April 1912 to train high school students to become farmers, the New York State School of Agriculture on Long Island at Farmingdale (now Farmingdale State College) has gone through a series of changes during its 100 years of history. Albert Aaron Johnson served as the school’s first Director from 1913 to 1923, setting […]

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 […]

The government of Suffolk County has been a leader in creating environmental and conservation initiatives and legislation over the last half century.1 Many were the first of their kind within New York State and even the country. Why is this? Economics? Limited natural resources? Personnel? And when did this begin? The county’s legacy of protecting […]

Ernestine Rose was an only child, born in 1880 to two Anglo Americans, farmer Stephen Rose and teacher Anna Chatfield. Her parents and paternal grandparents lived in Hay Ground, a settlement considered at the time to be part of the hamlet of Bridgehampton, located on the South Fork of the eastern end of Long Island, […]

Archaeologists from the New York State Museum uncovered the foundation remains of a small house along North Country Road in Rocky Point, New York, in 1991. The house was occupied during parts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then left abandoned in the wilderness for roughly 150 years. The site was rediscovered during a cultural […]

Figure 1: View of the Brooklyn City Water Works (Ridgewood Reservoir), copy of lithograph print by G. Kraetzer, 1859. Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Division, Eugene L. Armbruster Collection. The formation of Greater New York in 1898 cemented the city’s position as the nation’s premier metropolis and promised to address, if […]

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 […]

At first glance, a banner of Adolf Hitler would seem out of place near a banner of George Washington and the American flag. Yet, on the night of February 20, 1939 at Madison Square Garden members of the German-American Bund saw no contradiction between a founding father of the American democracy and the fascist European […]

On September 10, 1938, a swirling air mass began to take shape off the west coast of Africa. Eleven days later it made a mad dash up the eastern seaboard of the United States striking Long Island and greater New England. The following morning, Long Islanders awoke to a scene of utter devastation. Legions of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]