New Cassel

Freed Slaves Worked Their Own Land

Beginnings: In the century after Europeans turned the vast Hempstead Plains into a common pasture land, two groups helped settle the area that became New Cassel. The first was former slaves, freed in the mid-1700s by Westbury-area Quakers who came to reject ownership of fellow humans as a matter of conscience. These blacks established a small farming community called Grantsville, near the northern edge of modern-day New Cassel. The other group was Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British during the Revolution. When the war was over, they decided they liked the area and set up their own farming community. They named it New Cassel, after a town in Germany that many of them came from. Despite the presence of the Long Island Rail Road from the 1840s, descendants of the original blacks and Germans lived quietly for decades with little to do with the rest of the world. Poor immigrants from other parts of Europe - the Ukraine, Poland and Ireland - settled in New Cassel to farm in the early 1900s.

Turning Point: With the explosive development of Nassau County after World War II, farmland quickly gave way to housing. New Cassel's always significant black population made it one of the few places on Long Island to welcome minorities during the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, New Cassel's proximity to the railroad and Old Country Road made it attractive to manufacturers. Governmental neglect - primarily poorly enforced building codes and a lack of maintenance of the few public facilities there - by the Town of North Hempstead and Nassau County in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in some deterioration, which the community has fought to overcome in recent years.

Claim to Fame: Thanks to the establishment of Grantsville before the Revolution, New Cassel was one of the first communities of free blacks on Long Island, and one of the oldest in New York State.

Where to Find More: Historical Society of the Westburys.