Cohalan proposed for Suffolk historian

Suffolk County is getting a historian for the first time since 2007.

A resolution will be put before lawmakers at the legislature meeting Tuesday to appoint State Supreme Court Justice Peter Fox Cohalan, a former county executive, to the position.

Cohalan, who is expected to retire from the bench in the coming months, will not be paid for the role, said the county Legislature's Presiding Officer William Lindsay, who sponsored the motion. After being introduced, the resolution will be assigned to a committee before a possible vote by the full Legislature March 13.

Although New York State law requires an unpaid local historian for each city, town or village -- and in every borough if a city has more than one million inhabitants -- the law leaves such an appointment optional for counties.

"Suffolk County is a county rich in history and its history is the fabric that America is made of -- we ought to be preserving that," Lindsay said.

The Riverhead-based Suffolk County Historical Society had agreed to supply office space for the historian to work, Lindsay said.

Cohalan, a former Islip Town supervisor in the 1970s whose family has produced the most State Supreme Court justices -- five -- of any in the state, said he was honored to be recommended for the position.

"History is more than a hobby for me. . . . I have a great deal of interest in and love of the history of the county and the places the people come from who established the 10 towns," Cohalan said.

The last county historian was J. Lance Mallamo, who held the position for two decades. He also served as executive director of the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport. Mallamo left the county to become the director of the Office of Historic Alexandria in Virginia.