The Long Island History Project

There are untold stories of the American Revolution. We've highlighted many that took place on Long Island but today we follow a remarkable life that started on Long Island in the mid 18th century but wound up in the heart of empire during truly tumultuous times.  Patience Wright was born a Quaker (and a relative of the Townsend family) in Oyster Bay. She had a talent for sculpting and her medium...

Consider the pickle. Whether sour or sweet, sliced or speared, it's a seasoned veteran vegetable with a story to tell. New York plays a big part in that tale, as does Long Island. Today we reach deep into the barrel of food history and talk with Paul van Ravestein, co-author along with Monique Mulder of The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles (Princeton Architectural Press 2026).  Paul tak...

Long Island played a major role in the development of whaling in the Americas. Native Americans along the south shore were well practiced in harvesting whales near the coast. They shared their knowledge with early settlers, leading to chartered companies and competition for what became, for much of the 19th century, a very lucrative industry. And nowhere was this industry more visible than out of...

The Battle of Long Island went down in history as a major defeat for the fledgling American army and George Washington. The fighting in late August 1776 focused around the Gowanus Heights in Brooklyn and saw the patriots outflanked on their left, routed by Hessians in the center, and hunted down across the marshy Gowanus Creek. Washington did manage to evacuate most of his troops but the fight for...

The story of the Carnegie Library in Patchogue is a great case study in library history. The village started with an association library in the late 1800s, a subscription-based collection of books that floated between stores and offices and languished for lack of funds. Then the women's suffragist organization Sorosis spearheaded the effort to turn the neglected collection into a New York State-ch...

Today's episode is a recording of a panel discussion hosted on January 15, 2026 by the Long Island Library Resources Council. The panelists, all notable historians who have researched the Revolutionary War period on Long Island, give their insights into what life was like in the area from 1776-1783. This time of British occupation saw the inhabitants of Kings, Queens, and Suffolk counties suffer d...

Today we come to praise the one-room schoolhouse of the 19th century (and some of its earlier forebears). Humble in appearance, these buildings might be easy to overlook but their existence hints at a broader social, cultural, and educational history across Long Island. Zach Studenroth, architectural historian and preservationist, documents this history in  Historic Schoolhouses of Long Island  fr...

Steven Damman disappeared from outside a supermarket in East Meadow on Halloween day, 1955. He was not yet three years old. Still unsolved, the case has intrigued many over the ensuing years - none more so than Newsday journalist John Valenti. For Nothing is Hidden , Valenti's new novel, is the culmination of his meticulous research into the case mixed with his years of observations covering Long...

Where history fails to provide, authors of historical fiction can fill the gap. In her new novel  To Outwit Them All , author Peggy Wirgau delves into the Revolutionary War history of the Culper Spy Ring. More specifically, she tells the story of the unknown woman referred to in Abraham Woodhull's correspondence – only once – as "a lady of my acquaintance." Woodhull supplies her only a number, 355...

Even as Hitler and his Nazi regime ran roughshod over Germany and Europe in the 1930s, there were those in America who championed their rise. And nowhere so much as on Long Island. Camp Siegfried in Yaphank became a focal point for certain German Americans to gather and espouse the Nazi cause. Other groups added fuel to the fire, promoting antisemitism, isolationism, and even the overthrow of the...

Christian Avenue sits at the heart of the Three Village area on the North Shore of Long Island. Surrounded by Old Fields, Setauket, and Stony Brook it has long been home to a community of Black and Native American families. The names of the people date back to before the Revolution and include the Harts, Sells, Greens, and Tobias. They also provide evidence of the perpetual presence of the Setalco...

Culper Spy Day has been an annual tradition on Long Island for over a decade. Created by Margo Arceri in conjunction with the Three Village Historical Society, it has grown into a weekend-long celebration of resilience and resistance during the Revolutionary War. I made the trip this year to experience the sights and sounds and mingle with people who share a similar passion for local history. You'...

Are you curious about the past and love talking to people? Do you have a keen eye for detail and a persistent yet welcoming demeanor? Then oral history may just be right for you! Today we're talking with Erica Fugger, oral historian and PhD candidate at Rutgers, about the art and craft of oral history. We'll be discussing the development of oral history as a practice since the mid 20th century, de...

Chances are that your local public library has a local history librarian who oversees a rich collection of images, artifacts, and information about your community. Today we highlight and celebrate one of this unique group - Natalie Korsavidis. She is the local history librarian at Farmingdale Public Library in Nassau (and a little bit of Suffolk) County. Natalie walks us through how she became a l...

We continue our tour of Long Island-based oral history collections. This time out, Robert Anen ( LILRC Project Archivist ) and I sat down with the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. Robert helped digitize their extensive oral history collection. The recordings cover a wide range of memories and experiences from residents of the City by The Sea. You'll hear about the father of Long Beach...

Robert Beattie was many things: an architect, a designer of iconic public buildings on Long Island, and a decorated World War II veteran. But most importantly, he was the father of today's guest, Richard Beattie. So we're celebrating Father's Day by celebrating the life and work of Robert Beattie. As an architect, Beattie's specialty was mid-century modern architecture. Working with clean lines, n...

There's a rough stretch of water between Australia and Tasmania called the Bass Strait. Within the strait there's a group of islands called the Furneaux Group. Within the group lies Long Island, a small, mostly-uninhabited stretch of grass and trees that attracted the attention of Madeleine Bessel-Koprek and her colleagues. We're traveling far afield on today's episode, discussing paleoecology wit...

The voices of the past are all around us, if you know how to listen. And sometimes those voices are trapped on small thin strips of tape wrapped in cheap plastic. That's where Robert Anen comes in. As project archivist for the Long Island Library Resources Council, he works with historical collections across Nassau and Suffolk counties. Specializing in audio preservation and digitization, he's res...

Isle of Ever  is Jen Calonita's newest middle grade novel, a story grounded in the history of Long Island's North Fork. On today's episode, Jen discusses growing up on Long Island and spending many summers at her grandparents' house in Mattituck. It was here, in between trips to Greenport, that she first heard tell of Captain Kidd's lost treasure. She tried digging up the local beach, came up empt...

Tom McKeown lived and breathed basketball throughout junior and senior high school in Babylon. As an eighth grader in 1974-1975, he got to experience the thrill of watching the varsity team win their league and the Suffolk County championships. As fate would have it, this was also the first year that New York State allowed county champions to play each other, setting up a showdown between Babylon'...

When Jessie Pierson and Lodowick Post argued over a fox in early 19th century Southampton, they probably didn't think the resulting court case would echo down the ages. Yet here we are 220 years later talking with legal historian Angela Fernandez about the odd, improbable history of Pierson v Post. A professor of law and history at the University of Toronto, Fernandez has delved deep into the case...

The science of genetics took a wrong turn in the early 20th century and it ran through Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Here overlooking a former whaling port, Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport created the Eugenics Record Office and served as director of the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution. From these posts he promoted and pushed the Eugenics Movement in the US and throughou...

Memorial Day 1949 was an auspicious day in Riverhead as it saw the inaugural game at the brand new Wivchar Stadium on Harrison Ave. The brainchild of Tony Wivchar, a local entrepreneur and owner of an earth-moving company, the venue soon came to be known as Riverhead Stadium. Although it only existed for a few brief years, the stadium was alive with excitement. To help drum up interest, Wivchar fo...

The Dutch held on to their New Netherland colony for some forty years. They lost it to the English twice, at gunpoint in 1664 and by treaty in 1674. But although officially gone, the Dutch were not forgotten. In addition to their cultural legacy, the Dutch language held on stubbornly across the region for a long time. How long? That's the question Dr. Kieran O'Keefe answers in "When Did New York S...

The science of the brain was changing throughout the 19th century. Medical researchers were peering ever deeper into cerebral mysteries and one question piqued their interest more than any other: who has the biggest brain? On today's episode we turn for answers to Dr. James R. Wright, medical historian and retired professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Calgary. He intr...