Long Island
1524 -- Florentine explorer Giovanni Verrazano describes the native Americans in New York.
There were never 13 tribes on LONG Island.
Each Indian group had a geographically descriptive name for their area. The settlers took this name as a tribal name. 18
1609 -- Henry Hudson on the Half Moon
1613 -- Adrian Block from Holland anchors in New York harbor; his vessel burns; build the Restless and journey up the East River, through Hell's Gate, and then eastward down the length of the Sound. They discover that Long Island is indeed and island. 30
1621 -- Netherlands charters the Dutch West Indian Company to oversee New World settlement.
1624 -- merchant adventurers establish a small outpost of Walloon refugees at the tip of Manhattan Island.
4 DUTCH SETTLEMENTS
1) Brooklyn
Well into the 1630s New Amsterdam remained confined to the tip of Manhattan. But then they start expanding. They purchase lands in Brooklyn adjoining the Gowanus Cove and Wallabout Bay. Resident Director Wouter Van Twiller obtains 15,000 acres in Flatlands from the Canarsie Indians.
By the 1630s - the English and Dutch had established "trade houses" along the trading network.
1633 -- John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Colony, considers Long Island the best place for obtaining wampum for trade.
1636-1637 -- Wyandanch backs the English in their war against the Pequot Indians of Connecticut.
Wyandanch exerted a great deal of authority over his own group of Montauks, as well as the other eastern Long Island groups of Shinnecocks, Corchaugs, and Manhassets.
Wyandanch considered the English his friends and they made him the chief negotiator for the other eastern Long Island Indians. 21
1635 -- Lion Gardiner journeys to America to build a fort to protect settlers at mouth of the Connecticut River. Later involved in Pequot War.
1636 -- Sir William Alexander, the Scottish Earl of Sterling and a close friend of King Charles, secures a 1636 Plymouth Company patent for all of Long Island and the adjacent territories. 36
1637 -- after Pequot defeat, Wyandanch petitions English through his friend Lion Gardiner for protection and trade rights, like they did before with the Pequots.
1638 -- Twiller recalled and replaced by William Kieft who had order to speed up settlement.
1639 -Lion Gardiner gets his property via Lord Sterling's agent James Farrett. In a few years he becomes one of East Hampton's founding proprietors.
1639 -- Farrett sells Shelter Island to Stephen Goodyear, a New Haven merchant, iron master, and government leader.
1640 -- eastern end of Shinnecock territory bought by the Southampton Proprietors.
1643 -- Kieft's War. Indian warfare as nervous Dutch militiamen attack and massacre two bands of friend Indians camped in Manhattan and NJ. Over 1,200 Indians and settlers died before calm returned in 1645.
1643-1656 -- Richard Smythe lives in Southampton. Appointed constable in 1650.
1644 -- four sachems from e. Long Island request and receive certificates from the English acknowledging them to be tributaries of the English.
1645 -- end of Indian war; Dutch gant lands across the East River to Jan Bout, Huyck Rossunm, and Gerritt van Clouwenhoven. Tiny village of Breukelen established.
The English did not protect Wyandanch from the Narragansetts of New England and now he had to pay tribute to both English and the Narragansetts. 21
Wyandanch sells land to Lion Gardiner and others. Gardiner helped in paying ransom for the sachem's daughter from the Narragansetts.
Gardiner in turn sells to Richard Smythe and John Cooper. 21
Wyandanch gave away lands of present day Smithtown, Huntington, Hempstead, and North Hempstead, as well as much of Montauk. 21
2) FLATLANDS
1644 -- English from Connecticut found Hempstead.
1645 -- non-conformist English found Flushing under Dutch auspices.
3) FLATBUSH
1647 -- establishment of Flatbush.
4) NEW UTRECHT
1650 -- formal boundary line drawn between New Amsterdam and New England; but border dispute continued until 1664. Boundary at approximately present day Nassau-Suffolk border.
1650s -- Cornelius van Werkhoven gets land abutting Fort Hamilton and the Narrows. This grew into the settlement of New Utrecht.
1653 -- Gardiner moves to East Hampton with his wife and daughter, leaving his son David on the island.
1657 -- Richard Smythe mysteriously banished from Southampton possibly for converting to Quakerism. He seeks refuge in Setaucket where he stays for 9 years.
1657 -- accused of witchcraft, East Hampton's Goody Garlick ordered to Hartford for trial.
1658 -- Quaker Humphrey Norton arrested and sent to New Haven to be convicted of blasphemy and heresy.
5) BUSHWYCK
1658 -- Bushwyck settled.
1659 -- Jamaica, after the Indian name Jameco, founded by English in Dutch territory. It began as an off-shoot of nearby Hempstead.
1659 -- death of Wyandanch
Long Island Indians spoke variants of the Algonkian language family.
1663 -- Lion Gardiner deeds Smithtown property to his friend, Richard Smythe. Smythe settles in the village of Nissequogue. He had 6 sons who eventually settled in the area. This was the beginning of Smithtown.
1663 - Gardiner dies.
1664 -- pop. Of Breukelen 80 adult men.
ENGLISH TAKE OVER
1664 -- King Charles II turns the region of LI over to his brother, James, Duke of York. James dispatches Colonel Richard Nicolls with troops; land at Gravesend. Peter Stuyvesant surrenders.
1666 -- map of Brooklyn shows 5 Dutch towns along with the English settlement of Gravesend.
1665 -- under British rule the towns incorporated into the West Riding of Yorkshire, renamed Kings County in 1685.
1672 -- Long Island's first meetinghouse was erected in Oyster Bay in 1672. Quaker George Fox visits both Flushing and Gravesend.
1673 -- Dutch recapture New York. New York returned in peace settlement in exchange for Surinam in South America.
1683 -- Kings, Queens and Suffolk Counties created on Long Island.
1683 -- Duke of York appoints Thomas Dongan governor.
1685 -- Duke James becomes King James II.
1688 -- Glorious Revolution
1692 -- Richard Smythe dead.
1693 -- Jacob Leisler executed.
LORDS OF THE MANOR
Hempstead's Colonel Josiah Martin (1699-1778). Builds Rock Hall, a splendid Georgian home.
Islip's Nicoll and Floyd families.
The Lloyds of Huntington.
1703 -- King's Highway, present day Jamaica Avenue, authorized by province.
1737 -- first nursery in America open by Prince family in Flushing.
1766 -- Sons of Liberty in Oyster Bay protest Stamp Tax.
1776-1783 -- LI occupied by British. Rebels and Tories raid each other across Long Island Sound. Many patriots flee for Connecticut.
1777 -- Battle of Sag Harbor. Col Return Jonathan Meigs leads successful commando style raid to destroy British supplies and shipping at Sag Harbor.
1780s -- Samson Occum leads many Montauk Indians and some Shinnecock to Brothertown in Oneida Territory .
1791 -- Thomas Jefferson and James Madison visit William Floyd; document Poosepatuck words. President George Washington tours Long Island.
1795 -- Montauk lighthouse constructed.
1798 -- John Lion Gardiner records a Montauk vocabulary list.
Indians of western Long Island spoke the Munsee form of Delaware, as did those on Manhattan, Staten Island, and New Jersey. 22
Long Island Indians generally spoke the language of the group directly across the Sound from them. 23
1801 -- Brooklyn Navy Yard established.
1814 -- steam ferry service begins between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
1834 -- Long Island RR chartered.
1840s -- the L.I.R.R. inches across the island.
1842 -- William Cullen Bryant buys land in Roslyn for country estate, Cedarmere.
1857 - Army establishes Fort Totten at Willet's Point.
1859 -- Shinnecocks given their current 800 acre peninsula reservation in exchange for the 3,000 acres Shinnecock Hills tract wanted for the railroad line. 29
1869 -- Alexander T. Steward purchases over 7,000 acres of the Hempstead Plains for Garden City.
1872 -- Steinway Piano factory and village established by German immigrants in Astoria.
1874 -- Prospect Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, completed in Brooklyn.
1898 -- Camp Black at Mineola and Camp Wikoff at Montauk serve as training grounds for soldiers preparing for Spanish American War. Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders return to Camp Wikoff.
1899 -- Nassau County created from the eastern three towns of Queens (Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay).
1911 -- BBG