The Hewletts

A Four-Part Segment of the Five Towns

Beginnings: The patriarch of the family after whom the four Hewlett communities are named was George Hewlett, who came to America in the late 1600s from Buckinghamshire, England, and eventually owned most of the land that is now the Five Towns area of the Rockaway Peninsula.

The Revolution: Col. Richard Hewlett, a descendant of George and one of the foremost American Tories, led various units against the Patriot Army and participated in a failed plot to kill Gen. George Washington. He fled to Canada, but other Hewlett descendants forged a dynasty of local leadership in education, religion, politics, the arts and business.

Turning Points: Though the area had been called Hewlett for generations, the name was changed to Fenhurst in 1892 when the Long Island Rail Road created a depot in the community, and its president at the time, Austin Corbin, decided on that name. Five years later, in 1897, family descendant Augustus J. Hewlett countered by donating land to the LIRR, on the condition that the station (and hence, the area) would be called Hewlett again. It was. The following year, the Hewlett-Woodmere school district was established. It's celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

The Four Hewletts: Hewlett proper is an unincorporated hamlet covering about one square mile, with a current population of 6,500. Three incorporated villages were created during a 1920s building boom. Hewlett Harbor was established in 1925 on what once was the private Seawane Club, composed of socially prominent and very wealthy families. Hewlett Neck, the smallest village at three-fourths of a square mile, was set up on a portion of Woodmere in 1927. The site was a prominent polo field from 1875 to early this century, when Woodmere High School leased it for a football field. Hewlett Bay Park was built by attorney Carlton Macy, also in 1927. The community once had guarded entrance gates, but doesn't now, and, one history said, ``sale covenants were not uncommon.''

Big Money: According to federal census information, the three Hewlett villages in 1996 had the highest median family incomes on Long Island, each listed at $191,686 (on a par only with Kings Point).

Where to Find More: ``Five Towns,'' a handbook by the League of Women Voters of the Five Towns, 1977, and special section on Five Towns history, South Shore Record newspaper, 1976, at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library, Hewlett.