Long Island - History

History

At the time of European contact, the Lenape people (named the Delaware by Europeans) inhabited the western end of Long Island, and spoke the Munsee dialect of the Algonquian language family. Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to record an encounter with these people, after entering what is now New York Bay in 1524. The eastern portion of the island was inhabited by speakers of the Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett language group of the same language family, indicative of their ties to the aboriginal peoples inhabiting what is now Connecticut and Rhode Island. In 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson explored the harbor and may have landed at Coney Island. The western portion of Long Island was later settled by the Dutch, while the eastern region was settled by English Puritans from New Haven, Connecticut, settling in Southold on October 21, 1640.

From the first half of the 17th century the Conklin family and other related families, like the Ketchums, Smiths, and Gardiners, owned the entire area of Long Island, Gardiners Island, and Manhattan.

Indian deeds to the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as "Sewanhaka", "Sewanhacky", and "Sewanhacking". Sewan was one of the terms for wampum (money made from shells and beads), and is also translated as "loose" or "scattered", which may refer either to the wampum or to Long Island itself. The name "t'Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs" (later shortened to "Lange Eylandt") appears in Dutch maps from the 1650s. Later, it was often called "Nassau Island" by the British, after the Dutch Prince William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (who later also ruled as King William III of England). It is unclear when the name "Nassau Island" was discontinued.

Until 1664, jurisdiction of Long Island was split, roughly at the present border between Nassau County and Suffolk County between the Dutch in the west and Connecticut claiming the east. The Dutch had granted an English settlement in Hempstead (now in Nassau) in 1644, but drove out English settlers in Oyster Bay as part of a boundary dispute. In 1664, all of Long Island came under English dominion, when the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was taken over by the English and renamed New York.

The 1664 land patent granted to the Duke of York included all islands in Long Island Sound. The Duke of York held a grudge against Connecticut, as New Haven had hidden three of the judges who sentenced the Duke's father, King Charles I, to death in 1649. Settlers throughout Suffolk County pressed to stay part of Connecticut, but Governor Sir Edmund Andros threatened to eliminate the settlers' rights to land if they did not yield, which they did by 1676.

All of Long Island (as well as the islands between it and Connecticut) thus became part of the Province of New York within the Shire of York. Present-day Suffolk County was the East Riding (of Yorkshire), present-day Brooklyn was part of the West Riding, and present-day Queens and Nassau were just part of the larger North Riding. In 1683, Yorkshire was dissolved and the three original counties on Long Island were established: Kings, Queens, and Suffolk.

Early in the American Revolutionary War, the island was captured from General George Washington by the British in the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the entire war. The island remained a British stronghold until the end of the war, and was the center of much of General Washington's espionage activities, due to its proximity to the British military headquarters in New York City. After the British victory on Long Island many Patriots fled, leaving mostly Loyalists behind.

In the 19th century, Long Island was still mainly rural and agricultural. The predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) began service in 1836 from the South Ferry, Brooklyn, through Brooklyn to Jamaica in Queens, and the line was completed to the east end of Long Island in 1844 (as part of a plan for transportation to Boston). Competing railroads (soon absorbed by the LIRR) were built along the south shore to accommodate travellers from those more populated areas. From 1830 until 1930, population roughly doubled every twenty years, and several cities were incorporated, such as the City of Brooklyn in Kings County, and Long Island City in Queens.

Until the 1883 completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, the only connection between Long Island and the rest of the United States was by boat. Other bridges and tunnels followed, and a suburban character spread as population increased. On January 1, 1898, Kings County and portions of Queens were consolidated into The City of Greater New York, abolishing all cities and towns within them. The easternmost 280 square miles (730 km2) of Queens County, which were not part of the consolidation plan, separated from Queens in 1899 to form Nassau County.

At the close of the 19th century, the communities along the North Shore of Long Island saw the construction of large "baronial" estates built by men who made vast fortunes during the Gilded Age. The availability of land with water views, along with the proximity to Manhattan, made men like J. P Morgan, William K Vanderbilt, Charles Pratt create clumps of estates that would give the area its moniker, Gold Coast. Books like The Great Gatsby chronicle their lives and the era.

From the 1920s to the 1940s, Long Island began the transformation from backwoods and farms to the paradigm of the American suburb. Numerous branches of the LIRR already enabled commuting from the suburbs to the city. Robert Moses engineered various automobile parkway projects to span the island, along with beaches and state parks for the enjoyment of residents and visitors from the city. Gradually, development also followed these parkways, with various communities springing up along the more traveled routes.

After World War II, Long Island's population skyrocketed, mostly in Nassau County and western Suffolk County. People who worked and lived in New York City moved out to Long Island in new developments built during the post-war boom. The most famous post-war development was Levittown: the area became the first place to massively reproduce houses on a grand scale — providing opportunities for GIs returning home to start a family. The immigration waves of southern and eastern Europe, followed by more recent ones from Latin America, have been pivotal in creating the diversity on Long Island that many other American regions lack. These immigrations are reflected in the large Italian American, Irish American, and Jewish American populations.