The Long Island History Project

Welcome back to our Native American Heritage Month discussion! From Whaling and Fishing by Charles Nordhoff, 1895. Today we bring you the rest of our conversation with members of the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center & Museum in Southampton, Long Island. This time out we'll hear from director and curator David Bunn Martine. David relates how he got interested in Shinnecock history and by telling h...

David Martine, Cholena Smith, Chris Kretz, Connie Currie (l to r) To honor Native American Heritage month here at the Project, we've got two interviews lined up regarding the Shinnecock Nation in Southanmpton. Connie and I sat down with David Bunn Martine (Director and Curator) and Cholena Smith (Education and Program Manager) from the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center & Museum to discuss the hist...

"Showing the Inventor in the Effulgent Glory of Myriad Tongues of Electric Flame After He Has Saturated Himself with Electricity." New York World, July 22, 1894. Nikola Tesla was a bona fide Gilded Age celebrity, pulling front page headlines in the New York press and attracting the rich and famous to his late night laboratory demonstrations. You were nobody until Tesla shot you through with electr...

Corner of the Wardenclyffe site. Photo by Chris Kretz. The historic site you want to preserve is up for sale for $1.3 million dollars. The good news: New York State will give you $850,000. The bad news: you have to raise the same amount. And there are other interested buyers. And the clock is ticking. That's the position The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe (TSCW) found themselves in by the su...

"Nikola Tesla, Dreamer" From The World To-Day, 1901. Jane Alcorn was hooked on science from an early age but it was not until a friend clued her in to the Wizard of Electricity  that she became hooked on Nikola Tesla. A major scientific player at the turn of the last century, Tesla established a lab at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham, Long Island to pursue his innovative experiments in electricity, radio...

Longtime radio broadcaster Ray Adell of Ray Adell Media, WGSM, WBAB and more. Photo by Tom Hoffman. Ray Adell is a radio man, from his early days broadcasting down in Virginia to his arrival at WGSM ( World's Greatest Suburban Market! ) in Huntington in the early 1950s. But perhaps you'll remember him best as the voice (and mind) behind "About Long Island," the long-running radio spot sponsored by...

Sylvester Manor from Historical Papers on Shelter Island and Its Presbyterian Church, with Genealogical Tables. N.Y, 1899 We're back for part II of our interview with Dr. Gaynell Stone, executive director of the Suffolk County Archaeological Association and now accomplished filmmaker. Her connection to Stephen Mrozowski's work at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island led to her first film, The Sugar C...

Dr. Gaynell Stone was instrumental in the creation of Readings in Long Island Archaeology and Ethnohistory , the series of reference books that, starting in the 1970s, pulled together the foundational sources and background information on archaeology in the region. In the first part of this two-part interview, Dr. Stone walks us through the fascinating history of Long Island archaeology, uncoverin...

James Foote (l. Photo courtesy of James and Joni Foote). President Roosevelt (r. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress) http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/JamesFoote.mp3 Stream in the player above or download audio . James Foote has some pretty big shoes to fill but he's been pulling it off effortlessly for decades. Starting with a close resemblance to the 26th President of the United States...

Bob Lundquist – Part I http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/BobLundquist1.mp3 Download audio Bob Lundquist – Part II http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/BobLundquist2.mp3 Download audio Robert Lundquist was station engineer at the vast RCA transmitting station at Rocky Point known the world over as Radio Central. In this two-part interview he provides a crash course in the history, development, and...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/BevTyler.mp3 Stream in the player above or download audio . Historian Bev Tyler of the Three Village Historical Society Bev Tyler, historian with the Three Village Historical Society, walks us through the true story of the Culper Spy Ring that operated out of Setauket and Manhattan during the Revolutionary War. Made up of a small tight-knit group of friends and...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/GeneHorton.mp3 Stream in the player above or download audio . Gene Horton and friend. "You are on the Merrick Road, not far from Blue Point, the place that made the oyster famous. You look to the right and to the left, and, tacked to a tree, you see a sign and you try to read it, but the top of it has been shot off by a quail hunter. However, on the lower part y...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/AddieSanders.mp3 Download audio I Don't Want to Go from Lobster Press Written by Addie Meyers, illustrations by Andrew Rowland ( Image from GoodReads)   A self-confessed Nancy Drew aficionado, Addie Meyers has followed her passion and made writing an integral part of her life, finding inspiration for her books from the wide range of her experiences. Here she dis...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/StuChamberlain.mp3 Download audio Retired from a life in radio and television, Stuart Chamberlain can look back on the long hours, overnight shifts, small town stations, and manic deadlines with a smile. In this interview he recounts his path from WMAJ in State College, PA to ABC where he wrote and produced "World News This Week." One of the highlights, however,...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/ToveAbrams.mp3 Download audio Tove Hasselriis Abrams was there at the beginning, four-and-a-half years old and watching her mother Karen perform in H.M.S. Pinafore at the old Sayville High School on Greene Avenue. That first group of performers went on to found the Sayville Musical Workshop.  Tove soon joined in, starring as Gretel in Humperdinck's opera of Hans...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/WarrenMcDowell.mp3 The summer of 1977 brought Star Wars , blackouts, and the first appearance of The Fire Island Tide . From that first 24-page Memorial Day edition, Warren McDowell's dream grew to a  140-page color news magazine with poetry, history and artwork along with community news.  Here Warren recounts that growth and the work it took: delivering papers...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/Moriches.mp3 Download audio Growing up in the Moriches, Mary Field noticed what most people didn't. As old buildings were being torn down, she wondered who would remember what had gone before. What followed was a lifetime of interest in local history, culminating in books like The Illustrated History of the Moriches Bay Area and the 1881 Diary of Nettie Ketcham...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/GeorgeMunkenbeck.mp3 His full name was about as long and storied as his career: Philippe Regis Denis de Keredern de Trobriand. He was a Baron, a novelist, a painter, a gardener,  a member of the Garde Lafayette (Fifty-fifth New York), a hero of Gettysburg, and summertime resident of Bayport. Historian George Munkenbeck ( Co. H, 14th Brooklyn ) recaps the fascina...

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/MartyHimes.mp3 Download audio Photo courtesy of the Marty Himes Collection. Long Island at the turn of the last century was a dream come true for early racing enthusiasts: miles and miles of flat open roads. In this interview, Marty Himes relates the history of auto racing on Long Island, from the early days of the Vanderbilt Cup Races to the post-WWII boom in m...

Welcome to the lives and times of The Home Grown String Band.  Rick and Georgianne Jackofsky have been performing old time traditional music with their daughters Erica and Annalee since 1997. In this interview you'll hear how they got their start along with tales from the road as well as a  leisurely tour through the intertwining histories of old-time music, bluegrass, radio and television. The ta...