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Lindenhurst

Babe Ruth Left Town That Day as a Winner

Beginnings: Not until the early 1800s did a few farmhouses sprout up along dirt roads that would later form the main thoroughfares of Lindenhurst. Life passed quietly for the first generation of settlers, until Thomas Welwood arrived in the 1860s. A Brooklyn real estate agent, Welwood saw great potential in the pine brush clearings near the tracks of the new South Side railroad, which first rolled through the area in 1867. By 1869, Welwood had acquired so much land in the region that the new railroad station was christened Wellwood, a misspelling that persists to this day.

Turning Point: Welwood found a business partner in Charles Schleier, a German immigrant and wallpaper hanger from Brooklyn. Schleier soon became Welwood's agent and started selling 25-by-100-foot lots to fellow Germans in Manhattan, Brooklyn and even his native homeland. As part of the pair's marketing scheme, Wellwood was renamed the City of Breslau in 1870 after Schleier's hometown in Germany.

Many Germans bought the pitch and some land, transforming the seaside village into a little Germantown. It wasn't long before church services were delivered exclusively in German, and German was taught in the local school.

Turning Point II: Just as the Breslau plan was taking off, Welwood's and Schleier's partnership soured, culminating in a long court battle. The litigation caused many people to lose their homes and bred much resentment among the new inhabitants. It was this bitterness, some contend, that led residents to vote for yet another name change in 1891. This time, they opted for Lindenhurst, inspired by the lovely linden trees that lined Wellwood Avenue. Brush With Fame: It was a cold, windy October day at the Meridale Baseball Park at West Montauk Highway and South Second Street. But nothing could keep the crowds away on that brisk fall day of 1930. That was the day Babe Ruth came to Lindenhurst.

Accompanied by other big-leaguers such as Lou Gehrig, Ruth played an exhibition game against Addie Klein's Lindenhurst Nine, an amateur baseball club. Bundled up in blankets and overcoats, none of the 4,000 fans seemed to mind that the local team got beat by Ruth and his cohorts by a score of 10-4.

Where to Find More: ``The Growth of Our Village From Wellwood to Lindenhurst,'' edited by Louis Hirsch; also, a collection of local newspaper columns entitled ``Historically Yours,'' written by Lindenhurst Village Historian Evelyn Ellis, are compiled and indexed in the Lindenhurst Memorial Library.