A History of Long Island, Vol. 1

Peter Ross, Juergen Beck

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9783849650056
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Geschichte

With these books an effort has been made to present the history of the whole of Long Island in such a way as to combine all the salient facts of the long and interesting story in a manner that might be acceptable to the general reader and at the same time include much of that purely antiquarian lore which is to many the most delightful feature of local history. Long Island has played a most important part in the history of the State of New York and, through New York, in the annals of the Nation. It was one of the first places in the Colonies to give formal utterance to the doctrine that taxation without representation is unjust and should not be borne by men claiming to be free—the doctrine that gradually went deep into the hearts and consciences of men and led to discussion, opposition and war; to the declaration of independence, the achievement of liberty and the founding of a new nation. It took an active part in all that glorious movement, the most significant movement in modern history, and though handicapped by the merciless occupation of the British troops after the disaster of August, 1776, it continued to do what it could to help along the cause to which so many of its citizens had devoted their fortunes, their lives. This is volume one out of three, covering the general history of Long Island.

CHAPTER I. TOPOGRAPHY OF THE ISLAND— NATURAL HISTORY— BOTANY— GEOLOGY.

LONG ISLAND lies between 40 decrees, 34 minutes, and 41 degrees, 10 minutes, north latitude, and between 71 degrees, 51 minutes, and 74 degrees, 4 minutes, west longitude from Greenwich, England. It is bounded south and east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by Long Island Sound and on the west by New York Bay and the East River, which latter divides it from Manhattan Island. Its length is about one hundred and twenty-five miles, its average width about fourteen miles, and its total area 927,900 acres. It is divided into the counties of Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk; but all of Kings and part of Queens are now under the general government of the greater New York, although still retaining their county organization; The population of these divisions according to the census of 1900 was as follows:

Kings .... 1,166,582

Queens 152,999

Nassau... 55,448

Suffolk 55,582

Being a total for Long Island of 1,452,611. In 1880 the total was 743,957, and in 1890, 1,029,097, so that a considerable advance has been made. The advance has been greatest in Kings county, but all the divisions show substantial increases.

The island as a whole is flat and low-lying. Through the center is a range of small hills from New Utrecht northeasterly to Roslyn, and from there extending to Montauk Point, the best known being West, Dix, Comae, Bald and Shinnecock Hills. The average height of this chain is about 250 feet, but Harbor PI ill at Roslyn rises to a height of 384 feet, Janes Hill to 383 feet, Reuland's Hill to 340 feet and Wheatley Hill to 369 feet. Along the north shore from Astoria to Orient Point a bluff follows the outline of the coast, rising sometimes to a height of 200 feet. From the central chain of hills to the south shore the land slopes gently down to the sea, and much of the land, being pure sand, was long uncappable of cultivation, although it is yielding to modern methods and appliances. Between these hills and the bluff which overhangs the north shore is a level elevated plain, broken in many places by rocks and glacial debris, but on the whole capable of being brought to a high state of cultivation. The physical appearance of the entire island bears witness to the force of the movements of nature in the glacial period, and nowhere in America can that wonderful epoch be more closely or understandingly studied. In a general way it may be said that the south shore is level, while the north is full of bits of rugged nature, rocks, dells, splendid marine and land views and an ever changing vista of hills, forests, cultivated fields and rich pasture lands.

The entire coast line is indented with bays and inlets, some forming even in their ruggedness beautiful landscapes, and many of them affording splendid harbors and anchorages. On the south side of the island is the Great South Bay as it is called (although local names have been given to several sections), nearly one hundred miles long and from two to five miles broad, and it is separated from the Atlantic by a sandy bar from a fourth of a mile to a mile in width, changing its dimensions in every direction with every winter's storm. To the west end of the island are Jamaica, Hempstead, Oyster and Huntington Bays, and at the east end Gardiner's, Little Peconic and Great Peconic Bays; and the Peconic River, the only stream of water of any size on the island, ends its course of some fifteen miles at Riverhead. Gardiner's, Fisher's and Plumb Islands are politically incorporated with Long Island.

There are scattered throughout the island, especially throughout its eastern half, many small sheets of inland water, none worthy of mention in a summary such as this except one, the largest of them all — Lake Ronkonkoma. This beautiful lake, about three miles in circumference, has a maximum depth of eighty-three feet; its waters are ever pure and cool, and it has no visible outlet or inlet. The latter peculiarities are common to many much smaller lakes on the island. Ronkonkoma lies in the midst of a beautiful landscape, into which it fits naturally, becoming the center of one of the most delightful bits of scenery on Long Island. It was famous for its beauty even in the prehistoric Indian days, when the red man reigned and roamed over the soil, and many quaint and pathetic legends are yet associated with it, although it has now received the tinsel adornments common to a popular "resort."

The ocean bottom to the south of Long Island has a slope of about six feet to the mile, but intersected in what appears to have been the old valley of the Hudson by a series of deep depressions. In that distant time the shores of Long Island were much higher than now. It is impossible to tell when the age of retrogression set in, but it seems clear that the process is still going on, although so slowly as hardly to make any change visible to the casual eye in any single generation.

The animal life on Long Island presented nothing unusual. We have plenty of evidence that deer once had the freedom of the whole island and were hunted by the red men and the earlier settlers; but they have long been reduced to limited numbers in spite of the most stringent game laws. It has been thought that the moose and elk once roamed through the forests, and in 1712 we read of an attempt being made to ship a pair of moose from Fisher's Island to England as a gift to Queen Anne, but this pair seems to have been the last of the race. Wolves which so often played havoc with the lives and stock of the pioneer settlers have long since disappeared. Foxes, too, which were plentiful at one time, are now imported, or the aniseed trail is made to do duty in their stead for hunting purposes, and the old-time presence of wild cats, beavers, bears, opossum, raccoons and many others is forgotten. It may be said that all the animals common to New York and Connecticut were common to Long Island, and are so still, although the increasing march of population and culture renders their numbers smaller year after year. Bird life was and is plentiful, and grouse in the earlier days especially so. It has been said that some 320 species have been found on the island, specimens of most of them being in the museum of the Long Island Historical Society. The island was a resting place for many migratory species of birds on their semi-annual journeys north and south or vice versa, and at such seasons it was a veritable sportman's paradise. Indeed hunting was long, with agriculture, one of the arts by which the pioneers added to their store of wealth, while in the hands of an Indian a skin was a facile medium of exchange. The people, however, were early aroused to a consciousness that indiscriminate slaughter of animals or birds was a thing to be guarded against, and as early as 1786 the slaughter of deer and grouse was prohibited in Brookhaven except to actual citizens of the town. Since then the successive restrictions upon hunting have been numerous enough to form a theme for separate study, but stringent as they are Long Island is yearly becoming less and less a happy hunting ground for the man who goes out with a gun anxious to shoot something.

But in spite of the restrictions, the man with the gun keeps steadily in evidence. On Nov. 6, 1901, when the season for killing deer opened, it was estimated that 2,000 "hunters" armed with rifles were on Long Island, ready for the "sport." It was then estimated that about 2,000 deer were on Long Island, the bulk being, roughly, in the central portion extending from Islip and Setauket to Riverhead. The center of the hunting area is in the neighborhood of the South Side Sportsmen's Club at Oakdale in whose preserves the deer are not permitted to be killed, even by its own members. It is possible that it is to this organization, and to the rigid way in which it guards its grounds and protects the game from slaughter that the deer on Long Island have not been exterminated long ago. It is one of the disputed points on the island whether or not the deer really should be preserved. The farmers would vote for their extermination, while the hotel-keepers and the summer visitors would like their numbers increased. The growth of large private estates within recent years would indicate a careful preservation of all sorts of game and a consequent increase in numbers, especially of deer — the most picturesque of all game in civilized and populated communities. As early as 1679 we find the oyster industry in the Great South Bay a marked feature, — so marked that even then there was considered a possibility that the supply would be exhausted and orders were issued restricting the annual catch; but the bay from then to now has yearly extended its output, and the oyster industry of Long Island has brought to it more material wealth than any other. The inexhaustible supply of clams has also proved a profitable industry and over $1,000,000 of capital is employed in the Menhaden fishery alone. The factories where the oil is extracted from these fish have never been popular in Long Island for various reasons, but they still give employment to several thousand workers every year in one way or another, and have contributed their share to the commercial upbuilding of the section. Cod, bass and blue fish and other species — some 200 in all, it has been estimated — are common to the shores of Long Island, and generally are to be found, in their season, in immense quantities. The fisheries form quite a feature of the industrial life of the island, but the financial result, great as it is, is but a fraction of what it should be were the wealth of the sea worked as zealously and as scientifically as that which lies beneath the soil. However, Long Island has long been a delight to the amateur angler, and the many successful sporting clubs of which it now can boast all include angling, either with the seine or "with an angle," after the gentle manner of old Izaak Walton.

Although from a botanical point of view the plant life of Long Island is not as varied or interesting as might be expected, still, if we accept the estimate made by Elias Lewis in 1883 that there were then eighty-three species of forest trees within its boundaries, there is not much cause for complaint. The most prolific of these trees was the locust, which was first planted at Sand's Point about 1700 by Captain John Smith, who brought the pioneer specimens from Virginia. It spread with great rapidity and the quality of its lumber was regarded as better than that in the trees it left behind in its parent state. Nowhere else on the Atlantic coast does the locust flourish as on Long Island. Oaks, chestnut and walnut trees are to be found all over the island in great variety.

"Long Island," writes Mr. Elias Lewis, "is fairly well wooded. Its forests are of oak, hickory, chestnut, locust, with many other species of deciduous trees. The evergreens indigenous to the soil are almost entirely of the yellow or pitch pine, Pinus rigida. At an early period of its history the forest growth of the island was doubtless heavier than now. There were oaks, chestnuts, tulip trees, and others of great age and of immense size: a few of these survive. The fox oaks at Flushing, no longer existing, were historic trees and justly celebrated. A white oak at Greenvale, near Glen Cove, is twenty-one feet in girth, and is probably five hundred years old; another nearly as old is at Manhassett, in the Friends' meeting-house yard; others similar are at Smithtown and vicinity. A tulip tree at Lakeville, on the elevated grounds of S. B. M. Cornell, impaired by age and storms, is twenty-six feet in girth near the ground, and was a landmark from the ocean more than a century ago. The famous black walnut at Roslyn, on grounds of the late W. C. Bryant, is probably the largest tree on Long Island; it measures twenty-nine feet in girth at the ground, and twenty-one feet at the smallest part of the trunk below the spread of its enormous branches. Chestnut trees in the neighborhood of Brookville and Norwich, in the town of Oysteir Bay, are sixteen, eighteen and twenty-two feet in girth.

"The growth of hard-wood trees on Long Island is rapid. A few large trees standing indicate what they may have been, or what they might be if undisturbed. The evergreens grow with equal luxuriousness. A century and a half ago pitch pines were abundant from twenty inches to thirty-six inches in diameter."

Of the physical history of Long Island, however, the most interesting feature has been its geology, and this has been so thoroughly recognized that most of the local historians, including Thompson and Prime, have devoted to the subject considerable space in their respective works. It is well to follow their example, but in this case an improvement will be effected by presenting the subject as handled by a specialist, — for no one but a devoted and constant student of geology can write understandingly and with authority upon the youngest and most exhaustive of all the sciences, as someone has called it. So here is given part of a paper on the geology of Long Island which was prepared by F. J. H. Merrill. the learned and studious State Geologist of New York, and which has been buried in the transactions of one of our scientific societies for several years:

The lithology of Long Island is comparatively simple, the crystalline rocks being confined to quite a limited area. The greater part of the region consists of gravel, sand and clay, overlaid along the north shore and for some distance southward by glacial drift. This material forms an important element of the surface formation, and though it has been already described by Mather and Upham, I shall devote a short space to its discussion. For the sake of clearness, we may describe the drift as of two kinds: 1st, the till or drift proper, a heterogeneous mixture of gravel, sand and clay, with boulders, and 2d, the gravel drift, a deposit of coarse yellow gravel and sand, brought to its present place by glacial and alluvial action, but existing nearby in a stratified condition, before the arrival of the glacier. This yellow gravel drift, which in a comparatively unaltered condition forms the soil of the pine barrens of southern and eastern Long Island, and is exposed in section at Grossman's brickyard in Huntington, is equivalent to and indeed identical with the yellow drift or preglacial drift of New Jersey, a formation of very great extent in that state, and of which the origin and source have not yet been fully explained, though it is always overlaid by the glacial drift proper where these formations occur together.

In the hills near Brooklyn the till attains its maximum depth. This has never been definitely ascertained, but is probably between 150 and 200 feet. The only information we have on the subject is from a boring in Calvary Cemetery, where the drift was 139 feet deep, and this point is nearly five miles north of Mount Prospect, which is 194 feet high and probably consists for the most part of till. The occurrence of this till is quite local and very limited along the north shore between Roslyn and Horton's Point. From the former locality eastward the hills are mainly composed of stratified gravel and sand, probably underlaid by clay. On the railroad between Syosset and Setauket is an abundance of coarse gravel with but slight stratification. East of Setauket for some distance the drift is a fine yellowish sand, which washes white on the surface, and at Wading River the drift with cobble-stones was only eighteen inches thick where exposed, being underlaid with fine yellow sand. Along the remainder of the north shore to Orient Point, six feet was the maximum depth of drift observed. Under this were stratified sands, gravels and clays, usually dipping slightly from the shore. On Brown's Hills, north of Orient, the drift is overlaid by three feet of fine micaceous sand, which has probably been carried to its present position by the wind. The drift at this locality is a clayey till, and its surface is strewn with an abundance of boulders of coarse red gneiss. On Shelter Island are high ridges of gravel overlaid by a few feet of till. The hills from Sag Harbor eastward are also composed partially of unmodified drift, but the most extensive deposit on the east end of Long Island is between Nepeague Bay and Montauk Point. Here the drift is disposed in rounded hillocks from 80 to 200 feet above the sea, with bowl and trough-shaped depressions between. The bluff's along the south shore, which are rapidly yielding to the action of the waves, consist for the most part of boulder clay and hardpan of considerable depth, covered by a shallower layer of till. At a few places, however, on the south shore, west of the point, laminated blue clay streaked with limonite occurs, intercalated with the till. At the end of the point a similar bed of clay is exposed, overlaid by stratified sand. From the extremely limited character of the exposures I am unable to determine whether the clay underlies the whole of the point or is merely local in its occurrence. In character and position, however, it is analogous to beds occurring on Block Island. The boulders of Long Island attract the attention of the geologist by their size and variety. They represent almost every geological age, fossiliferous rocks of the Helderberg, Oriskany and Cauda Galli, Hamilton, Chemung and Eocene periods having been found in the drift. Examples of these are in the collection of the Long Island Historical Society. There are also various members of the Archaean series, viz., gneiss, granite, syenite, hornblende, chlorite, talcose and mica schist, limestone, dolomite, and serpentine; and the Palajozoic and Mesozoic ages are represented by Potsdam sandstone, Hudson River slate, Oneida conglomerate or Shawangunk grit, Catskill sandstone, and Triassic sandstone and trap. As the lithology of the boulders has been described in detail by Mather (Geol. 1st Dist. N. Y., pp. 165-177), it would be superfluous for me to undertake a similar description.

In addition to the rocks mentioned above, a ferruginous sandstone and conglomerate occur abundantly in fragments along the east shore of Hempstead Harbor, and in the drift between Glen Cove and Oyster Bay. Many of these fragments contain vegetable impressions, but in only two localities have any leaf prints been found. These were West Island, Dosoris, and the well of the Williamsburg Gas Co. The prints are supposed to belon...

Table of contents

• SONS OF LONG ISLAND.
• PREFACE.
• PROEM.
• CHAPTER I. TOPOGRAPHY OF THE ISLAND— NATURAL HISTORY— BOTANY— GEOLOGY.
• CHAPTER II. THE INDIANS AND THEIR LANDS.
• CHAPTER III. THE DECADENCE OF THE ABORIGINES.
• CHAPTER IV. DISCOVERY— EARLY WHITE SETTLEMENTS AND POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL RELATIONS— THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WAMPUM INDUSTRY.
• CHAPTER V. THE DUTCH— SOME EARLY GOVERNORS— PETER STUYVESANT.
• CHAPTER VI. THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
• CHAPTER VII. SOME EARLY FAMILIES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS.
• CHAPTER IX. SOME PRIMITIVE CHARACTERISTICS — EARLY LAWS— THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
• CHAPTER XI. EARLY CONGREGATIONAL AND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES.
• CHAPTER XII. RELIGIOUS PROGRESS IN KINGS COUNTY,
• CHAPTER XIII. PERSECUTIONS— RELIGIOUS— THE TROUBLES OF THE EARLY QUAKERS— TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.
• CHAPTER XIV. CAPTAIN KIDD AND OTHER NAVIGATORS.
• CHAPTER XVI. THE BATTLE OF BROOKLYN.
• CHAPTER XVII. THE RETREAT FROM LONG ISLAND— A STRATEGIC TRIUMPH.
• CHAPTER XVIII. THE BRITISH OCCUPATION.
• CHAPTER XIX. SOME LONG ISLAND LOYALISTS— RICHARD HEWLETT— JOHN RAPALYE — MAYOR MATHEWS — GOVERNOR GOLDEN — COLONEL AXTELL— LINDLEY MURRAY AND OTHERS.
• CHAPTER XX. A FEW REVOLUTIONARY HEROES — GENERAL WOODHULL— COLONEL TALLMADGE — GENERAL PARSONS — COLONEL MEIGS.
• CHAPTER XXI. THE WAR OF 1812— NAVAL OPERATIONS AROUND LONG ISLAND.
• CHAPTER XXII. THE CHAIN OF FORTS— MILITARY ACTIVITY IN KINGS COUNTY— THE KATYDIDS AND OTHER HEROES— THE POPULAR UPRISING.
• CHAPTER XXIII. THE STORY OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS.
• CHAPTER XXIV. INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS— ROADS AND RAILROADS— THE MAGNIFICENT OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE.