Chapter 3: The Colonial Period -- Newsday.com

The Colonial Collision

As the 17th Century dawned in Europe, two powerful countries pushed west across the ocean on a search for new lands to exploit and settle. Their collision in the New World would decide the future of Long Island.

Breuckelen Becomes Home

By the mid-1630s, the Dutch were ready to expand their base from the southern tip of Manhattan Island -- a collection of clapboard houses, a church, a tavern, a large storehouse, orchards and cow pastures -- to the unchartered wilds of Long Island.

Dutch Settlers Left Their Mark

In late September, the members of the Brookville Reformed Church gathered to celebrate the church's anniversary and to dig deep into the congregation's past.

A `Dangerous' 1600s Woman

Nobody knows where Lady Deborah Moody is buried, but an appropriate epitaph would have been what one official wrote about her in 1644: ``Shee is a dangerous woeman.''

Blood Flows, War Threatens

By the winter of 1643, relations between the Dutch and their Indian neighbors had gone bad. Suddenly, there were killings on both sides and calls for war.

A Man Hated and Hailed

For a few months after the Dutch summoned Indian leaders from Long Island to their fort at New Amsterdam, there was peace across the region. But by the fall of 1643, the killing had begun anew. As panicky settlers across western Long Island fled to the fort at New Amsterdam, Gov. Willem Kieft and his advisers reached out for help from the English community in Connecticut. While offering no troops, the English allowed for the raising of a small army of English mercenaries.

A Man Named Lion

'In the year 1635, I, Lion Gardiner, Engineer and Master of works of Fortification . . .''

The Settler and the Sachem

The Pequot War behind him, Lion Gardiner took the first step into his new life and into Long Island history.

Wyandanch, Ever an Enigma

THERE ARE FEW clues and much conjecture about Wyandanch, the Montakett chief who befriended Lion Gardiner and changed the course of Long Island history.

Gardiners Island: What Next?

For 358 years it has been their island. The family's ownership has survived Indian wars, pillaging pirates, the Revolution, the Civil War and two World Wars. It has survived the income tax, the inheritance tax, the Depression and bitter feuds.

The Legend of the Bull

Sure, Paul Bunyan was a big guy. And Johnny Appleseed had a green thumb. But they've got nothing on Richard (Bull) Smith, the legendary founder of Smithtown.

The Dutch Welcome the English

The Dutch had a problem. Nearly 20 years after they arrived on Manhattan Island, the settlement of New Netherlands in 1644 didn't extend eastward very much beyond where Brooklyn is today. The Dutch couldn't find enough immigrants to inhabit the vast Long Island territory they claimed.

The Rise of Slavery

Long Island had the largest slave population of any rural or urban area in the north for most of the colonial era. For almost two centuries, New York was a slave colony and Long Island was a slave island. Beginning with the introduction of 11 black slaves into New Netherlands in 1626, the number of slaves in New York grew to almost 20,000 on the eve of the Revolutionary War a century and a half later.

Slave Life at Lloyd Manor

A spoon. A sock. A room. A fireplace. A spinning wheel.

A Freed Slave on His Own

When Alice Crabb's will was probated in Oyster Bay in October, 1685, it contained a striking sentence about her slave, known as Black Tom: ``I give to my negro man one calf one iron skellet one mare and his freedom and liberty.''

Flushing Stands Up for Tolerance

To publicly proclaim the new Quaker religion on western Long Island was to risk arrest and banishment. To let a Quaker spend the night in your home could lead to a heavy fine.

No Tip of the Hat

Late in the afternoon of Sept. 1, 1662, John Bowne heard a pounding on the front door of his Flushing home. Both his pregnant wife, Hannah, and his 1 1/2-year-old daughter, Marie, were very sick. With the infant in his arms, Bowne opened the door. He was faced by Director-General Peter Stuyvesant's sheriff, Resolve Waldron, backed by a company of soldiers armed with guns and swords. They were there to arrest him.

The Sisterhood of Friends

Mary Dyer, a middle-aged mother of six, was hanged as a Quaker from a sturdy branch of a great elm tree on Boston Common in 1660. A Puritan in the gathered crowd looked at the lifeless body and jested: ``She hangs there as a flag for others to take example.''

Witchhunt in East Hampton

One Friday in early February, 1657, 16-year-old Elizabeth Gardiner Howell lay feverish and delirious in her bed in the small, isolated village of East Hampton. Elizabeth's infant daughter had just been taken from her breast after feeding, and she crooned a psalm at the departing child. Suddenly, the teenage mother stiffened and shrieked:

John Scott, Scoundrel

Long Island -- like the rest of the New World -- was a land of opportunity. And one of the most flamboyant of those pioneering opportunists was John Scott.

England Expands Its Empire

In August, 1664, an English soldier named Richard Nicolls sailed his warship into the deep water off the western Long Island shoreline, dropped anchor, and ordered the Dutch to leave their small community on Manhattan island.

The Trials of Catherine

From the day she ascended the throne of England, circumstance conspired against the happiness of Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese-born monarch for whom the borough of Queens is named.

Historic Highways and Byways

The path leads through dense woods, overgrown with thickets and brambles, not far from the rush of traffic on Route 25A. Thick-trunked trees form a canopy overhead, with only splashes of sunlight allowed to break through.

Legend of Capt. Kidd

He was a respected member of his church in Manhattan and passed the collection plate on Sundays. He was an accomplished sailor and a businessman whom the king of England said was "well beloved." He was hired by powerful political figures to stop marauding vessels from preying on commercial ships. He buried a fortune in stolen treasure on Long Island.

A Devastated People

The Montaukett Indians had lived on the windswept plain for thousands of years. But by the mid-18th Century they had reached a critical milestone in their history. They were, one of them wrote, in danger of becoming "Vagabonds on the Face of the Earth."

Preaching to the Indians

From their first encounter with the Indians of Long Island, Europeans sought to convert them to Christianity.

Colonial Cooks Stir a Rich Mix

They carried their Englishness over the Atlantic and dreamed of re-creating the best of England in the New World. They brought the things they knew -- their religion, their language, a technology that included essential iron and brass cooking equipment, and, of course, their beloved recipes.

Ride 'Em, Island Cowboy

It was called ``going on'' in Montauk and Shank remembers it well. ``All the local fellows used to help with the cattle drives,'' he said.

The Blooming of Flushing

At the western end of Flushing there is a dreary commercial patch that includes an auto parts store, an asphalt plant, a glass signs shop and a lumberyard, all bathed in the exhaust fumes of a constant flow of trucks and cars. Here and there alongside the cracked concrete sidewalks grow the ubiquitous ailanthus and the irrepressible chicory, its lavender flowers the only bright spot in a dismal panorama, a hint, perhaps, of a more fragrant past.

Measuring Franklin's Impact

Ben Franklin was a man of great invention. And he prided himself in making things easier.

Diary of a Colonial Housewife

On a midsummer day in 1769, soon after her 55th birthday, Mary Cooper sat down wearily at a table in her Oyster Bay farmhouse, opened her diary, and with quill pen in hand began pouring out her anguish:

The Well-Kept Colonies

In the year 1750, the prosperous Oyster Bay merchant Samuel Townsend sent out his sloop Solomon under Capt. John Jones on a voyage to the Virgin Islands. The single-masted ship was loaded with cargo: 76 barrels of flour, 26 barrels of pork, five quarter-barrels of butter, four casks of hams, beef and tongues, 4,250 barrel hoops, seven geese and 20 bushels of corn.

The Daily Grind

'Ship's biscuit" -- a slow-to-spoil wheat concoction with the consistency of concrete -- was a staple of the 18th-Century sailor's diet. And sailors embarking from New York in the mid-1700s often tested their teeth on biscuit baked on Long Island.

Harnessing Water and Wind

The man who could harness the power of water and wind was a major figure in a colonial village. The miller and his gristmill were equaled in importance only by the blacksmith and his forge.

Little Shops of Craftsmen

From their little shops on North Main Street in East Hampton, the Dominy family presided over a remarkable domain.

A Reputation Forged in Silver

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of ... Elias Pelletreau? Well, not exactly.

Sun to Sun, All Work Little Fun

In colonial Long Island, it was expected that all but the wealthiest and most feeble bodies would perform the tasks required for daily living.

Evolution of the Colonial

Picture a time machine, out of which jumps a century-tripping colonist from a Long Island of 300 years ago.

A Magical History Tour

On a trip on horseback to New England in the summer of 1744, a 32-year-old doctor from Annapolis, Md., named Alexander Hamilton got a good taste of colonial Long Island:

In Charge at Town Hall

Early town governments on Long Island were often kept in the family. In Huntington, for example, only five families held the supervisor's job between 1694, when the first board of trustees was formed, and 1776, when the Revolution started.

Drawing on Colonial Life

'When you spot something that would make a good cartoon, you know right away,'' says Tony D'Adamo of Smithtown, a former Newsday staffer who is now a freelance artist.

Crime and Punishment

On his way to a waterfront tavern one Saturday night, an Oyster Bay native named Adam Smith fell into bad ways.

On the Verge of War

On a cool fall day in New York, Oct. 28, 1765, representatives of nine of the 13 colonies held an urgent session at Town Hall to rage against the Stamp Act, newly imposed by Great Britain.

A Woman Ready to Fight

Charity Clarke was a young New York City woman with strong opinions about the growing tensions caused by Great Britain's tightening grip on its American colonies. A staunch defender of the American cause, she waged a rousing war of words with her cousin Joseph Jekyll, a London lawyer, in a series of letters written between 1768 and 1774.

Proud Old Houses

We see our history in our houses. Many homes of the colonial Long Islanders still exist. With an architecture influenced by the Dutch on the west end and by the English on the East End, these old structures have a story to tell. Here is a sampling of some of Long Island's earliest houses to be visited and enjoyed.

A Somber Yuletide

A roasted goose rests on the table. A Christmas tree, adorned with candles and strings of cranberries, takes up a full corner of the room. Stockings hang from the hearth, stuffed with presents. And perhaps a Tiny Tim-esque boy offers the season's toast: ``God bless us every one!''

Knowing Their Roots

Newsday visits with descendants of some of the families whose roots on the Island go back to that period. Many of these families have spent countless hours researching their ancestors in town records, property deeds and other documents. Here, in their own words, are the stories pieced together by members of those families.

Getting Curious About the Past

Thank you to all our readers who have responded so enthusiastically by both letter and e-mail to "Long Island: Our Story." We have received ideas, comments, letters from descendants of long-ago Long Islanders, historic photographs and answers to our "History Mysteries." Many of you posed questions about the history of Long Island and we would like to take this opportunity to reply to some of them.

Hot on a Cold Trail

Another rock imprinted with the shape of a three-toed track has surfaced on Long Island. And it may have been made by a dinosaur that actually lived here.

Catching Up With the Present

Here are some developments on stories we covered in the first three chapters of ``Long Island: Our Story.''

Chapter 3: The Colonial Period

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