May 16, 2008
Suffolk
Community Profile
By the time Suffolk County was formed in 1683, English settlers already had been living on the East End for more than 40 years.
Amagansett
Beginnings: Jacobus Schellinger brought more to early Long Island than his business ambitions when he moved from New Amsterdam to East Hampton after the English took over the Dutch colony in 1664 and renamed it New York. Three of his children - Abraham, Jacob and Catherine - wanted land to farm, so in 1680 they moved three miles east and founded Amagansett (``place of good water'' in Indian language).
Amityville
Amityville Beginnings: When the Carmans family built their mill at Carmans Lane around 1700, the area was known as Huntington West Neck South. Salt hay sprouting from the region's marshy wetlands and harvested for animal feed was the big draw for settlers who carved up the one-time Indian tribal land into small farms.
Aquebogue
Beginnings: When white settlers first bought the land now encompassing most of the Town of Riverhead in the late 1600s, they referred to the entire region as Aquebogue, an Indian word meaning "head of the bay" or "cove place." Eventually, individual communities took on their own names such as Baiting Hollow and Jamesport. The hamlet known today as Aquebogue was settled about 1758.
Asharoken
Eatons Neck had the distinction of being one of six royal manors on Long Island during the colonial era, but it was to gain wider notoriety for the submerged rocks running a mile out from shore into Long Island Sound. The reef off Eatons Neck Point has been the most treacherous location for mariners on Long Island's North Shore: It's been the site of more than 200 wrecks.
Babylon
The last of Suffolk County's 10 towns to be formed, Babylon was born the way many political entities are born: out of resentment. Until the late 1800s, the southwestern corner of Suffolk was part of the Town of Huntington, and people referred to it as Huntington South. It was a designation that perturbed its residents, who felt neglected in town affairs. Finally in 1872, the residents of Amityville, Babylon and Breslau (now Lindenhurst) asked the State Legislature to separate Huntington into two townships. Their secessionist plea may have been helped by the weather. Of the 713 people who braved the cold on a particularly frigid day in January, 1872, 445 were from what then became Babylon. The town was officially formed on Jan. 3, 1873.
Babylon Village
At first, it was little more than a stagecoach stop. Gradually over two centuries, it evolved from farming village to summer resort to suburban bedroom community.
Bay Shore
Beginnings: In October, 1708, Queen Anne of England confirmed John Mowbray's purchase of land that was to become Bay Shore and Brightwaters. Mowbray, a tailor and teacher from Southampton, is said to have paid the fish-dependent Secatogue Indians ``several eel spears'' for the Bay Shore-Brightwaters land. Sagtikos Manor to the west of the hamlet is traditionally considered part of Bay Shore, but its original patent in 1693 went to Stephen Van Courtlandt, a Dutch merchant related by marriage to William Nicoll, a wealthy New York politician who received the earliest royal grants for land that is now Islip Town.
Bayport
Beginnings: The land that is now Bayport, in the southeast corner of Islip Town, was part of Brookhaven Town between 1666 and 1697. That year, William Nicoll, the Islip Town founder, who had made his first land purchases from the Secatogue Indians four years earlier, added the future Bayport to his holdings. After the Revolution, William Nicoll IV, seeking money to pay debts, sold off what would be about two-thirds of southern Bayport to Jeremiah Terry and Gersham Hawkins. The Bayport Heritage Association recognizes Dec. 16, 1786, the date of the Terry deed, as the hamlet's founding date.
Baiting Hollow
Beginnings: Though this section of the original Aquebogue purchase was divvied into 60 lots as early as 1660, there was not much activity there until the late 18th Century. That is, except for the building of a cart path through the ``Great Woods'' in 1702, easing travel from Southold to Brookhaven Town. Today's Sound Avenue mirrors the course of the old path. Early travelers actually inspired the name Baiting Hollow, referring to a pond where they ``baited'' or watered their horses. The 1825 census listed just 261 inhabitants, really not a sharp contrast from today's population of 1,037.
Belle Terre
Beginnings: This upscale village on the east side of Port Jefferson Harbor traces its roots to a deed obtained in 1660 from the Setauket Indians by a British adventurer named John Scott and a second deed of 1687 to Richard Woodhull, William Smith and Richard Floyd Jr. Early names were Mount Misery Neck and Oakwood.
Bellport
E.B. White spent a summer there and later wrote a poem about it. Artist William Glackens immortalized its beaches in his impressionistic paintings. And Elmer Sperry, inventor of the gyroscope, loved it so much he retired there.
Blue Point
Beginnings: The Indians knew it as Manowtassquot or, roughly, ``land of the basket rush,'' after years of harvesting the rush from the area's marshes to make baskets and mats. Deeded to English colonists in 1664, the area was controlled by the Winthrop family until the 1750s, when it was sold to Humphrey Avery. In desperate need of cash to settle his debts, Avery later devised a lottery, dividing up the land and hawking tickets to aspiring landowners. He sold 8,000 tickets for 30 shillings each - and raised enough money to buy back Blue Point and part of East Patchogue.
Bohemia
Beginnings: Three young couples seeking freedom from the Hapsburg rule in Austria and Hungary arrived in the heavy woods of mid-Suffolk on March 5, 1855, and became the founders of what was to become the Islip Town community of Bohemia. They were John Vavra, John Kratchovil, Joseph Koula and their wives. Koula, a cabinet maker, built a house for each pair, and part of one home still exists. The men soon chanced upon the William Ludlow estate in Oakdale, took laborers' jobs, and encouraged friends and relatives in Europe to come over. In 1859, the growing Czech settlement was christened New Village of Tabor. Tabor meant ''camp.''
Brentwood
Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews were brilliant and idealistic men, social reformers whose dream was to create a utopia where everyone would live in harmony, where profit would be a dirty word and absolute personal freedom - including ``free love'' - would be the ultimate goal.
Bridgehampton
Beginnings: Bridgehampton records its start in 1656 when Josiah Stanborough, an original settler of Southampton, built a house in Sagg, today known as Sagaponack. Soon after the first settlers moved in, a bridge was erected over Sagg Pond, joining Sagg and Mecox to its west. They named the lane that crossed the small causeway Bridge Street, which likely inspired the hamlet's future name: Bridge Hampton (later bridged itself to form one word). Most of the founding families were in some way connected to the whaling industry, the East End's most profitable pursuit in colonial times. Once Sag Harbor was settled about 1730, whaling fell off. But the soil in Bridgehampton was rich enough for farming to take over.
Brightwaters
Beginnings: For two centuries after John Mowbray was given a royal patent in 1708 for the tract that included Brightwaters, nothing much disturbed the bucolic section of saltwater swamps, freshwater lakes and woods adjacent to Bay Shore. Real estate developer Thomas Benton Ackerson changed all that. He bought the Charles E. Phelps estate of several hundred acres to start a planned community.
Brookhaven
The largest town in Suffolk County at 368 square miles, Brookhaven is also among the oldest. In 1655, the first pioneers landed at Setauket, where the early town business was conducted. Officially, Brookhaven was not recognized as a town until 1788. And by then, its boundaries had spread. Its territory had reached the South Shore, compelling the town fathers to move meetings to a more convenient midpoint. They chose Coram, where town meetings were held for the next century. (They're now held in Medford, in the decidedly unhistorical sounding Building 5.)
Brookhaven Village
Beginnings: The seaside hamlet's natural treasures of salt hay and shellfish were attractive to the English colonists who settled in Setauket in 1655. So much so that many decided to make the place their home, negotiating a deal with the native Unkechaugs in 1664 for land encompassing Brookhaven and neighboring Bellport. As if that weren't enough, the settlers three years laters finagled from Tobaccus, sachem of the Unkechaugs, the rights to every whale pulled from the surrounding waters. The price: 5 pounds of wampum or colored shards of seashell the Indians used as currency.
Calverton
Beginnings: Named in 1868 for Bernard J. Calvert, the hamlet's first postmaster, Calverton was essentially a farming community carved out of marshland. Before that, it had been called Baiting Hollow Station after the railroad came in 1844 and, alternately, as Hulse's Turnout, indicating the point travelers turned north to the Hulses' place in Wading River. The Indians called it Conungum or Kanungum, meaning a ``fixed line'' or ``boundary.''
Center Moriches
Beginnings: Believed to be named for an Indian who once lived there, the area today encompassing Moriches, Center Moriches and East Moriches went through a dozen spellings after the first Europeans arrived. Take your pick: Meritche, Merquices, Maritches, Marigies, Meritces, Moritches, Muriches, Moricha and Meriches all have been spotted in historical records. Col. William (Tangier) Smith, who already owned hundreds of acres in Brookhaven known as the Manor of St. George, snagged some land in the Moriches area in patents of 1691 and 1697. But he retained little of those purchases due to competing claims from earlier settlers who had deeds with the Indians.
Centreport
Beginnings: Matinecocks resided on the Little Neck Peninsula before the arrival of European settlers in the 1600s. The first of these was an English Quaker, Thomas Fleet, who in 1660 built a home by a small cove that still bears his name. White residents gave the community a succession of names: Stony Brook, then Little Cow Harbor about 1700, Centreport in 1836 and Centerport after 1895. The name Centerport reflected the community's position midway between the boundaries of the Town of Huntington. It soon had more mills along the waterfront than any other Long Island community. The hamlet was strongly anti-British during the Revolution, in part because farmers' crops and animals were often plundered. After the war, it was a quiet place with baymen working the waters and sailing vessels carrying grain to mills and leaving with barrels of flour.
Centereach
Beginnings: Until 1927, Middle Country Road in Centereach was a two-lane dirt road where teenagers played baseball every Sunday afternoon. It took longer for middle Island communities such as Centereach to evolve. The earliest settlers congregated in the more populous seaside communities on the North and South Shores.
Central Islip
Beginnings: In the summer of 1841, Edgar Fenn Peck, a wealthy New York doctor who had just moved to Smithtown, began the first serious exploration of the virtual wilderness of what is now Central Islip. He was convinced the pine barrens was an area suitable for development, though many disagreed. A year later, the Long Island Rail Road arrived at what was called Suffolk Station, and the adjacent Central Islip was effectively born. In 1848, a close friend of Peck, George Kasson Hubbs, bought 939 acres of land, much of northern Central Islip, from William Nicoll VII, a descendant of the original patentee of Islip Town, for $4,225.50. Hubbs (a friend of Walt Whitman) married Ruth Wheeler, for whom he named Wheeler Road. For three decades, Suffolk Station depot was a rail and stagecoach center, and most of the early arrivals were of English descent or birth.
Cold Spring Harbor
Cold Spring Harbor developed as a company town. And the company was run by the Jones family.
Commack
Beginnings: Indian inhabitants called the area Winnecomac - Algonquian for ``pleasant land.'' This was later shortened to Comac and pronounced, some historians insist, as Com-mack, not Co-mack. Because the community was split between Huntington and Smithtown and because of conflicting deeds resulting from purchases from different Indian sachems, there were many boundary disputes. They were not resolved until 1675 when Smithtown founder Richard (Bull) Smith was successful in claims made in Dutch and English courts. The resulting dividing line between the two towns also divided the properties of prominent early families with names such as Burr, Wicks, Harned and Whitman, the ancestors of the poet.
Copiague
Beginnings: Like neighboring Amityville, Copiague's main reason for being in the early days was its harbor. The water drew settlers such as Zebulon Ketcham, Nehemiah Heartte and Abraham Wanzer, who built mills to grind corn or saw wood along the region's waterways.
Coram
Beginnings: There wasn't much at Coram before 1750. For the earliest white settlers, it was a stop along the route from Setauket to Mastic. In fact, its name is derived from the Indian word Wincoram, meaning ``a passage between hills or a valley.''
Cutchogue
Beginnings: Most of the settlers who put down roots in Cutchogue after its founding about 1667 were second-generation immigrants. Newly cleared lands outside the original settlement of Southold were tax-exempt for at least three years, and homesteaders figured it might take the tax man longer than that to catch up on the backlog. So a new generation of farmers settled in to what became Cutchogue, fencing in the lands that in some cases would remain in the same family for generations. Like other North Fork communities, Cutchogue became known for its potatoes, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. The name is thought to be derived from the Indian place name Corchaug, loosely translated as ``the principal place.''
Deer Park
Beginnings: Jacob Conklin was one of the first settlers in the region that in the late 1600s was still thick with scrub oak, pine and carpets of vine. When Conklin went north to visit Huntington village, he'd tell people about his farm located ``south toward the Great Bay before you get to the swamp. My farm is in the deer park.'' Apparently Conklin and his few neighbors shared their new home with the deer that thrived in the thick underbrush. The name stayed even when the deer did not.
Dering Harbor
Beginnings: The state's tiniest incorporated village -- 28 households, 200 acres -- lies on the north side of Shelter Island facing Greenport. It rose phoenix-like in 1916 on the site where the legendary Manhanset House hotel had stood from 1874 to 1910. The sprawling, 300-room resort, one of two on Shelter Island that emerged in the 1870s and changed it from a backwater to a booming resort, was destroyed by fire May 14, 1910. Wealthy ``cottagers'' who lived around the hotel became alarmed that key services it provided, including fresh water, fuel, street maintenance and sewage disposal, would be lost. They bought the hotel site for about $85,000 and formed the village in 1916.
Dix Hills
Beginnings: The community takes its name from Richard, or Dick, Pechagan, a Secatogue who controlled the hilly area in colonial times. Settlers began building cabins and setting up farms in the 1680s. And on May 2, 1700, Pechagan sold what was known locally as Dick's Hills to the trustees of the Town of Huntington for a few bottles of rum and some coats and axes. Over the years, the spelling was changed from Dick's to Dix.
East Farmingdale
Beginnings: This agricultural area was largely untouched until it evolved as the outer reaches of Farmingdale Village in the mid-19th Century. Indeed, there was no need to distinguish it from Farmingdale until that village incorporated in 1904. Some time after that, the portion of the community over the Suffolk County line became known as East Farmingdale. It retained its rural aspect for some time, known most for its several pickle works on Broadhollow Road.
East Hampton
From the Montauk Lighthouse to the Victorian mansions of Sag Harbor, from the hoary byways of East Hampton Village to the enduring beauty of Gardiners Island, East Hampton Town presents a rich cross section of Long Island history.
East Hampton Village
Exuding as it does the charm of a tranquil American colonial place, East Hampton Village nevertheless owes much of its modern grace to its emergence in the last 120 years as an affluent resort community. The evolution from pioneer beginnings of a Puritan enclave in a new world 350 years ago to the quiet elegance of today's renowned village provides one of Long Island's richest histories.
East Islip
Beginnings: For decades before Jan. 16, 1890, this small community was part of what was known as ``east of Islip.'' The citizens obviously didn't want much change: The official name bestowed on that date was East Islip. The area was part of the original 51,000-acre purchase from the Secatogues by Islip founder William Nicoll.
East Marion
Beginnings: The first inhabitants were the Orient Focus People, Indians who lived about 1000 BC. They vanished long before the arrival in about 900 AD of the Corchaugs, who called the area Poquatuc. The Corchaugs were still present when six English families settled in 1661. The new residents called the area Oysterponds because of the abundant shellfish that they began to gather and sell to nearby communities. While farming remained the principle occupation, trading vessels began operating out of the sheltered harbor during the colonial period.
East Northport
Beginnings: This community - at eight square miles the largest and most populous in the Town of Huntington - began as a farming area in the 1700s. The first tract of land was purchased in 1653 from Chief Asharoken of the Matinecocks, who had maintained hunting camps in the area. Part of the area was known as Clay Pitts for the clay that was first used by the Indians for cooking vessels and then by white settlers for making bricks.
East Moriches
Beginnings: Believed to be named for an Indian who once lived there, the area today encompassing Moriches, Center Moriches and East Moriches went through a dozen spellings after the first Europeans arrived. Take your pick: Meritche, Merquices, Maritches, Marigies, Meritces, Moritches, Muriches, Moricha and Meriches all have been spotted in historical records. Col. William (Tangier) Smith, who already owned hundreds of acres in Brookhaven known as the Manor of St. George, snagged some land in the Moriches area in patents of 1691 and 1697. But he retained little of those purchases due to competing claims from earlier settlers who had deeds with the Indians.
Eastport
Beginnings: Hard to imagine - it's barely 11/2 square miles - but Eastport started out as two communities, Seatuck and Waterville. The two hamlets joined in the 1850s and hoped to be christened Seatuck, but the U.S. Post Office nixed the idea. Seatuck was too close to Setauket. The runner-up was Eastport. Gristmills were built at the heads of local creeks, one as early as the 1730s, and farming was the mainstay of the community.
East Quogue
Beginnings: Even before John Ogden purchased lands in the Quogue area from the Indian sachem Wyandanch in 1659, settlers from Southampton traveled there to harvest hay from its broad meadows. They loaded the hay onto barges or rafts and poled them back to their farms in Southampton. By the 1790 census, there were only 12 families said to be living in Quogue, a shortened version of Quaquanantuck, an Indian word denoting a cove or estuary.
Eatons Neck
Eatons Neck had the distinction of being one of six royal manors on Long Island during the colonial era, but it was to gain wider notoriety for the submerged rocks running a mile out from shore into Long Island Sound. The reef off Eatons Neck Point has been the most treacherous location for mariners on Long Island's North Shore: It's been the site of more than 200 wrecks.
Elwood
Beginnings: About 1725, the Town of Huntington decided to promote settlement in the Eastern Plains area, including a community called North Dix Hills. A tract of land almost 2 square miles was surveyed, and farmers moved in to take advantage of the flat land and fertile soil.
Farmingville
Beginnings: After its initial settlement in the late 18th Century by farmers, this quiet, hilly enclave in central Brookhaven was called Bald Hills and Mooney Ponds, but ``Farmingville'' finally stuck. The hamlet between Lake Ronkonkoma and Coram was probably part of the original purchase of Brookhaven land from the Seatalcott (Setauket) Indians in 1655, which extended roughly from Long Island Sound to the middle of the Island, town historian David Overton says. The first farmhouses appeared in the 1770s, but the community's name proved ironic: The sandy pine barrens soil and hilly terrain were not ideal for agriculture, as President George Washington observed on his tour of Long Island in 1790.
Fire Island
Across three centuries, the famed Fire Island barrier beach has been the setting for Indians, settlers, whalers, pirates, buried treasure, shipwrecks, slaves, murdering thieves, valiant life-savers, developers, gay people and the pursuit of seashore fun for everybody.
Fishers Island
Beginnings: While sailing to the island that was later named for him, Dutch explorer Adrian Block discovered Fishers Island in 1614. Block may have named the island for one of his navigators, a man by the name of Vischers. The future governor of Connecticut, John Winthrop Jr., purchased the tiny island two miles off the Connecticut shore from the Indians in 1644. When Winthrop became governor of Connecticut in 1657, he ensured that Fishers Island was included in the state's royal charter. But the ownership of the island was soon confused by another royal charter in 1664, granting the Duke of York Fishers Island in addition to Long Island. It was the beginning of a 200-year battle for ownership.
Flanders
Beginnings: This lightly populated, heavily wooded hamlet in northwest Southampton Town was virtually uninhabited by whites in colonial times. Among its early settlers were Dutch who settled in the area about the end of the 18th Century. They gave the location its name because it reminded them of Flanders, a region of Holland. In the 1800s, families from New York City and western Long Island summered in Flanders. The community also produced cordwood, and loggers used it as a rest stop on their way to woodlots on the South Fork.
Fort Salonga
Beginnings: In 1695 Sarah Smith, wife of Smithtown founder Richard (Bull) Smith, deeded to her son Daniel 100 acres at Bread and Cheese Hollow, also known as Fresh Pond. There were clay deposits in the area which are believed to have been used by the Indians for making pottery. In 1684, the Long Island Brick Co. was established and for more than 200 years bricks from the area were shipped all over Long Island and to New England. Pirate captain William Kidd's ship, the Adventure Galley, was anchored off Treadwells Neck in the 1690s, according to reports at the time. Some old maps indicate a point marked as Kidd's Money Hole. But rumors that some of Kidd's treasure remains buried on the beach at Fort Salonga have never been substantiated.
Gardiners Island
Beginnings: It's hard to say whether Lion Gardiner realized how deep his roots would reach when he bought the magnificent island in Napeague Bay on March 10, 1639, from Wyandanch, sachem of the Montauketts. The cost is said to have been ``a large black dog, a gun, some powder & shot, and a few Dutch blankets . . .'' He won perpetual rights to the island from Charles I of England.
Oak Beach and Gilgo Beach
Beginnings: Crusty old baymen still refer to the 18-mile barrier island that stretches from Jones Beach to Captree as ``the strand.'' And centuries before there was an Ocean Parkway, it was simply a collection of empty beaches and swampy marshland. In 1695, a Welsh privateer named Maj. Thomas Jones bought thousands of acres from the Indians and used the land as a whaling outpost. Long after Jones' death, people continued to call it Jones Beach. Besides a few hunting shacks, there were no dwellings on the main beach or adjacent islands until 1879, when Henry Livingston built a cottage on Oak Island. Before that, mainland farmers used to drop off cattle at the island to graze the pastures until they were picked up in late fall. But by the turn of the century, the Oak Island steamer was ferrying summer vacationers back and forth to cottages and boarding houses that sprang up at the bustling beach resort.
Gordon Heights
In 1927, Louis Fife bought a parcel of land, sandwiched between Coram and Middle Island in the wilderness of Suffolk County, from ``Pop'' Gordon, who ran Gordon's Hotel. Fife then knocked on doors in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, offering farmland to working-class black families for as little as $10 down and $10 a month. Borrowing Gordon's name, Fife called his company the Gordon Heights Development and Building Corp. It was one of Long Island - and the nation's - earliest housing developments marketed to blacks.
Great River
Beginnings: This small residential community has its roots in the 1840s, when Erastus Youngs and his family began building and repairing boats on the west shore of the Connetquot River near Great South Bay. With hardly anyone else around, the place was called Youngsport for 30 years. Alva Vanderbilt, the Oakdale socialite, bought the Youngs property later and gave it to a Brooklyn church, which used it as a summer camp for city children.
Greenlawn
Beginnings: The community, originally called Old Fields, was included in the First Purchase of Huntington by Richard Houldbrock, Robert Williams and Daniel Whitehead from the Matinecocks in 1653. The land was initially used as pasture by settlers in Huntington, but by 1780, farm families with prominent names like Brush, Wick, Jarvis, Kissam and Whitman had settled in the area. The first commercial building was the general store built in the 1860s and owned and operated by Hezekiah Howarth. The structure still stands on Broadway.
Greenport
Greenport residents have always found ways to make money from their waterfront, but perhaps never more creatively than during Prohibition.
Halesite
Beginnings: Before the Long Island Rail Road came to Huntington in 1868, the community then known as Huntington Harbor was the town's center of transportation and commerce. Because it took several days to travel overland to New York City, most produce and people were carried by schooners making regular trips from docks in Halesite. The trips - bearing cordwood and agricultural products to the city and manure from city horses back to Huntington farms for fertilizer - took five to six hours when conditions were favorable. By the 1860s, steamboats were taking an increasing part of the traffic. There was ferry service to Connecticut between 1765 and 1916, and boatyards built sloops, barges and, during World War II, subchasers for the Navy. The harbor was also the site of a gristmill that was built in 1752 and lasted until 1930. A dam that served that mill is now Mill Dam Road.
Hampton Bays
Beginnings: Some oldtimers still refer to Hampton Bays as Good Ground, as it was called until 1922. Among the first buildings in the area was the Canoe Place Inn, built as a home in the early 1700s and named for the spot where the Indians used to leave their canoes when fishing or hunting.
Hauppauge
Beginnings: The area around the headwaters of the Nissequogue River was dubbed Hauppauge by the Indians; it means ``overflowed land'' in the Algonquian language. With the arrival of the Europeans, ownership of the area was divided between the Towns of Smithtown and Islip. On the Smithtown side, the land was owned by founding father Richard Smith and then handed down to other family members. But the first settler was Thomas Wheeler, who built a small house at the intersection of Hauppauge (Route 111) and Townline Roads before 1740. The area became known by the Revolution as The Wheelers. That name stuck until 1843, when it reverted to Hauppauge. The earliest development was near Wheeler's farm. He was followed by other settlers with still prominent local names such as Blydenburgh. These settlers farmed the land and cut trees for cordwood.
Head of the Harbor
Beginnings: These three communities have shared their histories for three centuries. European activity in the area dates to 1677, when Smithtown founder Richard Smith began deeding land on Stony Brook Neck - in what is now Head of the Harbor - to one of his sons, Adam. Adam Smith constructed the first house on the east side of Three Sisters Harbor, now known as Stony Brook Harbor. Starting in the 1690s, Richard Smith deeded land in what is now Nissequogue to his other children and they established farms.
Holbrook
Beginnings: The land was part of a royal patent obtained by William Nicoll, a wealthy New York City politician, in 1697, certifying his purchases from the Secatogue Indians. But there was almost no colonial settlement for a century and a half, until 1848, when Alexander McCotter bought about 5,000 acres and offered small tracts for sale. In 1860 the first school was built about 1,000 feet south of the railroad, and the first church, Presbyterian, was built in 1863. The building became St. John's Lutheran Church about the turn of the century and is a town-designated historic structure. Holbrook's late development is illustrated by this remarkable fact unearthed by Agnes Rysdyk, who has spent years examining the hamlet's history: The first white person born in Holbrook, Maria Davidson, died in 1950. She was 94.
Holtsville
Beginnings: A few farmhouses apparently existed in the huge tracts of woods and fields around the Brookhaven-Islip Town boundary in the late 1700s, but historians say that the first maps showing homes in Holtsville - known as Waverly in the early years - are dated 1838 to 1844. Historian Virginia Terry Meyer says one of her forebears, Daniel Terry, was known to be the first owner in what is now Holtsville, buying 1,000 acres from the town in 1749. The establishment of Waverly Station by the Long Island Rail Road in 1843 gave the place identity, connecting the trains to the stagecoach line then in use along the present north-south Waverly Avenue and making shipments of lumber and farm products easier.
Huntington Bay
Beginnings: Originally known as East Neck, the area was settled in the early 1670s when a trail - now Cove Road - connected Huntington Harbor with Fleets Cove to the east. Several large farms occupied the area, including those operated by the Conklin and Chichester families.
Huntington Station
Beginnings: There wouldn't be a Huntington Station if the Long Island Rail Road hadn't built a Huntington station. In 1867, the railroad extended its tracks to the hills south of Huntington and built a depot surrounded by farmland. By the turn of the century, there was still only one house north of the station, but eventually a thriving downtown evolved. The hamlet was originally called Fairground - the name came from a racetrack a mile from the station. So when a post office was established in the railroad station on July 24, 1890, it was called Fairground. But in 1912 the name of the post office and the community was changed to Huntington Station. In 1909-10, the railroad created the current underpass on New York Avenue and a new station was built on the east side of New York Avenue north of the tracks.
Huntington
As Long Island's fifth oldest town, Huntington has evolved during the last 345 years with many faces: tiny pioneer outpost, guerrilla stronghold in the American Revolution, home of Walt Whitman, whaling center, mother of Babylon Town, Gold Coast enclave and thriving suburban township.
Islandia
Beginnings: Amid sharp controversy, this 2-square-mile incorporated village was carved out of northeast Central Islip and south Hauppauge in April, 1985, next to the busy interchange where Exit 57 of the Long Island Expressway crosses Veterans Memorial Parkway. Islandia became Long Island's first new village since Lake Grove was established in 1968. Islip Town and Suffolk County planners charged before the 505-178 approval vote that the incorporation bid was a transparent effort to gain zoning control to lure new industry and make the village, which has about 2,900 residents, a tax haven. They warned that too much industrial buildup would further aggravate traffic problems around Exit 57, and later criticized the new village's willingness to give concessions to businessmen seeking zoning changes.
Islip Hamlet
Beginnings: On March 26, 1692, Andrew Gibb, a friend and business partner of William Nicoll, Islip Town's founder, received a royal patent that made him owner of what was to become the pivotal community in Islip Town - the hamlet of Islip. The land Gibb obtained came to only about 3,500 acres but was the center of town commerce and social life in early times and has long been the seat of town government.
Islip Terrace
Beginnings: There were only a few farmhouses in the area north of East Islip as the 19th Century ended. In 1914, as World War I began, Andrew Wolpert Sr., a Bavarian native who had been a real estate agent in New York City, and his three sons began building houses in the woods between East Islip and Central Islip State Hospital. The Wolperts wanted to attract people of German origin, according to historians. The place was known as Germantown, but the war brought pressures to change the name of the community. Many people who moved there worked in the state hospital.
Islip
In the early years of its existence, Islip Town was owned entirely by a handful of wealthy men who ran it like feudal lords and didn't even bother to call a town meeting for a decade after the town was established.
Jamesport
Beginnings: Sorting out the early years of these old Riverhead hamlets is rather tricky. Consider this passage, taken from a history published in the 1960s: ``The name Aquebogue was first applied to the entire area of the Aquebogue purchase. Later, it was attached to the ancient village now called Jamesport. After the development of another settlement a few miles to the west, the new community was called Upper Aquebogue, and the older one was called Lower, or Old, Aquebogue. The original Jamesport was not laid out until 1833 on the Bay. By a curious shift of names, Jamesport became South Jamesport, Lower Aquebogue became Jamesport, and Upper Aquebogue acquired for all time thereafter the ancient name of Aquebogue.''
Kings Park
Kings Park was a quiet farming community known as Indian Head until Episcopal priest William Augustus Muhlenberg came to town in 1869.
Lake Grove
Beginnings: By the early 1700s, an old Indian footpath from Brooklyn and Queens reached into Suffolk as part of the King's Highway - now Middle Country Road. It bisected what is now Lake Grove, but there wasn't exactly a rush into the woods. Local historians say the first farmhouses didn't appear for nearly a century. The first church group, Methodist Episcopal, was formed in 1796 and built a church in 1852-53 that still stands. The Methodist Episcopal group was part of a countywide circuit of itinerant preachers after 1820. Later, it became part of the Smithtown circuit. Meetings were held in a schoolhouse until the church was built. The community's first church building, built in 1818, was the First Congregational Church of New Village. That building has been preserved and is depicted on the village seal. Lake Grove was long entangled in identity problems, surrounded by Stony Brook, Lake Ronkonkoma and Centereach. In the early 19th Century, the area was variously called Lakeland, Lakeville, New Village, Ronkonkoma or West Middle Island because there was lots of space, unclear boundaries and few people. The community was named in the mid-1800s for the groves of trees near Lake Ronkonkoma.
Lake Ronkonkoma
Beginnings: Smithtown founder Richard Smith's original holdings included the headwaters of the Nissequogue River east to a ``freshwater pond called Raconkamuck,'' which translates as ``the boundary fishing place'' in the Algonquian language. What is now known as Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Indian communities: Nissequogues, Setaukets, Secatogues and Unkechaugs. It is now owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent, while land around it is controlled by three governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. That's because different Indian communities gave separate deeds to the land under their control.
Laurel
Beginnings: Because it was situated midway between Aquebogue and Mattituck on the North Fork, Laurel was known for many years as Middle District. When Riverhead Town split from Southold in 1792, the new border ran through the little farming community, dividing it in half. Middle District later became Franklinville some time before residents formed their own Presbyterian church in 1831, and finally Franklinville became Laurel in 1890. The substitution may have been inspired by the area's abundance of laurel trees and bushes. In winter, many homesteaders gathered seaweed along Long Island Sound and piled it around the foundations of their homes for insulation.
Lindenhurst
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.
Lloyd Harbor
They weren't the first residents, or even the first white residents, but the Lloyd family of farmers and traders gave its name to the harbor that almost bisects the community. And when the community incorporated in 1926, joining the Lloyd Neck and West Neck areas, the name of the resulting village became Lloyd Harbor as well.
Manorville
Beginnings: Although early land patents made it difficult to determine precise boundaries, historians are certain Manorville lay within the huge tract known in the 1700s as The Manor of St. George, granted to William (Tangier) Smith in a royal patent of 1693. The Smith family did not own Manorville long. In 1721, it was sold to a group of colonists from Southold.
Mastic
Beginnings: The Algonquians roamed its shores for thousands of years, farming, fishing and hunting. But it took the English barely two generations after landing on Long Island in 1640 to make Mastic their own. By the early 1700s, the Floyds, the Nicolls, the Woodhulls and the Smiths had carved huge estates out of the ragged-edged peninsula jutting into Moriches Bay. One of the principal landowners, Col. William (Tangier) Smith, died in 1705 and left his property to his descendants. Four years later they began construction of a manor house at Mastic that still stands.
Mattituck
Beginnings: Corchaug Indians, who were the first residents of the area, sold land, including what is now Mattituck, to Theophilus Eaton, governor of New Haven in Connecticut. The meadowlands at Mattituck - believed to mean ``the great creek'' in the Indian language - were held in common by the residents of Southold from its founding in 1640 and were used to grow salt hay. The woodlands were also held in common until 1661 when that land was divided among individual proprietors. A year later, settlement began.
Medford
Beginnings: When the Long Island Rail Road reached what is now Medford in 1843, it was a flat wilderness of scrub oak and pine, but a good connection for the stagecoach line that ran between Patchogue and Port Jefferson along what was Stage Road (now Route 112). People started coming from miles around to get their mail. The soil was poor for farming, but the woods offered copious lumbering, and there were miles of land to be sold. The railroad held an auction in New York City in 1850 to peddle lots. The O.L. Schwenke Land & Investment Co. bought four square miles, and sold 25-by-100-foot lots for $10 to $75.
Melville
Beginnings: Melville developed at the intersection of two Indian paths that became major roads. One was first known as Neguntalogue Road and later South Path. It was traveled by Indians and then settlers bringing salt hay from the South Shore to Huntington, and now it is Route 110. This was crossed by an east-west road now known as Old Country Road. Indians originally called the area Sunsquams. After settlement by whites, it was first known in the 17th Century as Samuel Ketcham's Valley after one of the earliest residents. Later it was called Sweet Hollow, perhaps because early settlers found wild honey in the trees growing there.
Middle Island
Beginnings: Before the Long Island Expressway came along, the main passage east on Long Island was Middle Country Road, bisecting the communities now known as Coram, Ridge and Middle Island. In the 1700s, passengers traveled by stagecoach along Middle Country Road on their way to Greenport from New York City, often stopping at Brewster's tavern in what was first known as Middletown.
Miller Place
Beginnings: This beautiful and historic community on Long Island Sound was named after the prolific family of Andrew Miller, a barrel maker-turned-fa