yachting and boating on the Sound, the Great South Bay and the Ocean, and hunting and fishing are attractions. At Garden City, Nassau (Glen Cove), Great River and Shinnecock Hills are well-known golf links; there are several hunt clubs; and at Southampton are some of the best turf tennis-courts in the United States. Few parts of the island are summer resorts in the ordinary use of the word; there are large hotels hardly anywhere save on Coney Island, at Far Rockaway, on Long Beach and on Shelter Island; and a large part of the summer population lives in private mansions. Some Long Island “country places” are huge estates with game and fish preserves and luxurious “châteaux.” The roads are good. The course of the Vanderbilt automobile races is along the roads of the Hempstead Plains. Also on the Hempstead Plains are the Creedmoor Rifle Range, where, in an Interstate Park, E. of Jamaica, annual international rifle shooting tournaments for the championship of America were held until 1909; Garden City, which was founded by A. T. Stewart for the purpose of providing comfortable homes at low cost to his employés and others, and where are the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation, St Paul’s School for Boys and St Mary’s School for Girls; and, near Hempstead, the grounds of the Meadowbrook (hunt and polo) Club and those of the Farm Kennel Club. The only railway is the Long Island Railroad (owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad) with western termini on Manhattan and in Long Island City and Brooklyn, whence lines meet at Jamaica, and thence three principal lines branch, the north shore to Wading River, the main line to Greenport, and the south side to Montauk.
Long Island is a part of New York State, its western third forming Brooklyn and Queens boroughs of New York City—these boroughs were formed respectively from Kings county and from the w. half of Queens county upon the erection of Greater New York, what was formerly the E. half of Queens county then became Nassau county (area 252 sq. m.; pop., in 1900, 55,448, in 1905, 69,477), whose county-seat is Mineola. The eastern and the larger part of the island is the less thickly settled Suffolk county with an area of 918 sq. m. and a population in 1900 of 77,582 and in 1905 of 81,653. The county-seat of Suffolk county is Riverhead, so named from its position at the head of the Peconic river on the W. end of Great Peconic Bay. The ten townships of Suffolk county are large governmental units, showing, by their similarity to the towns of New England, the relation of the early settlers to New England. The largest in area is Brookhaven, which reaches all the way across the island near its central part. The townships of Suffolk county with their population in 1905 were: Huntington (10,236). Babylon (7919), Smithtown (3325), Islip (13,721), Brookhaven (16,050), Riverhead (4950), Shelter Island (1105), Easthampton (4303), Southold (8989) and Southampton (11,024). The total population of Long Island was 1,452,611 in 1900, and 1,718,056 in 1905 (state census), the population of the borough of Brooklyn alone for these years being 1,166,582 and 1,358,686.
History.—The principal Indian tribes on Long Island at the time of the first settlement by the whites were the Montauk, on the eastern end of the island, where they gave their name to the “point” and where their last “king,” David Pharoah, died in 1785; the Shinnecock, who, much admixed with negro blood, now live on the reservation between Canoe Place and Shinnecock Hills; the Manhasset, on what is now Shelter Island; the Patchogue, near the present village of that name; the Massapequa, between the Hempstead Plains and what is now Islip, who were defeated and practically exterminated in 1653 by John Underhill; the Canarsie, who lived near the present Jamaica; and on the north side the Nessaquague or Nissequoge (in the present town of Smithtown), and the Sealtocot who gave their name to Setauket in Brookhaven town. The first pastor of the church (Presbyterian-Congregational) at Easthampton, Thomas James (c. 1620–1696), is supposed to have translated a catechism and parts of the Bible into the dialect of the Montauk, among whom Samson Occum had a school between 1755 and 1765.
The territory of Long Island was included in the grant of 1620 by James I. to the Plymouth Company and in 1635 was conveyed to William Alexander, earl of Stirling. The conflicting claims of English and Dutch were the subject of the treaty concluded at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1650, by which the Dutch were to hold everything west of Oyster Bay, the English everything east—a provision which accomplished no agreement, since Oyster Bay itself was the matter of contention, and English settlers on what the Dutch called the west side of Oyster Bay refused to remove. Long Island was included in the territory assigned to the duke of York in 1663–1664, when the New England towns on the island objected to separation from Connecticut. On the recovery of New York by the Dutch in 1673 the eastern towns refused to submit to the Dutch governor. In 1674 by the treaty of Westminster Long Island became a part of the British colony of New York. The Dutch settlements were more important ethnically than historically; on the west end of the Island the Dutch Reformed Church is still strong and there are many Dutch names; at West Sayville, on the “south side,” about 50 m. from New York, in a settlement made about 1786 by Gustav Tukker, who did much to develop the oyster fisheries, Holland Dutch was the common speech until the last quarter of the 19th century. The “Five Dutch Towns” were: Nieuw Amersfoord (after 1801 officially called Flatlands), on Jamaica Bay, where the first settlement was made about 1623 and the first grant in 1636; Midwout (later Vlackte-Bosch and Flatbush), settled between 1645 and 1650 and having in 1654 the first Dutch church; Nieuw Utrecht, settled soon after 1650 and incorporated in 1660; Breuckelen (now Brooklyn), which was settled a little before its organization as a town in 1646; and Boswijck (Bushwick), first settled by Swedes and Norwegians and incorporated in 1660. These five towns became one administrative district in 1661.
Apparently the earliest English settlement was at Hempstead in 1640 by colonists from Lynn, Massachusetts, who based their claim on the patent (1621) of Nova Scotia to Lord Stirling, but were almost immediately driven out by the Dutch. In 1643 another English settlement was made at Hempstead by men from Stamford, Connecticut, who in 1644 secured a patent from Governor Kieft of New Netherland. In 1645 Kieft granted land at Gravesend to Lady Deborah Moody, who had settled there about 1643, when she had left Lynn and the Salem church because of her anti-pedobaptist views. At Gravesend in 1664 Colonel Richard Nicolls first landed the English troops which occupied the island; and in 1693 it became one of its three ports of entry. The Connecticut towns on Long Island were as follows: Southampton was settled in 1640 by the Lynn men driven out of Hempstead by the Dutch, and in 1644–1664 was in the Connecticut jurisdiction. Southold (the “South Hold of New Haven”), called from 1640 until 1644 by the Indian name Yennicock, had a church in 1640, and a court based on the Levitical law, which was abolished in 1643 upon the remonstrance of the authorities of New Haven. The Southold settlers were from Hingham, Norfolk and New Haven, and the colony joined New Haven in 1648, in which year the colony of Forrett’s (now Shelter) Island also submitted to New Haven. Easthampton was settled in 1648 from Lynn. Oyster Bay was also settled by Lynn men in 1640 and contested by the Dutch and English. Newtown, officially called Middleburgh, was settled in 1652, purchased from the Indians in 1656, “annexed to the other side of the Sound” in 1662, in the same year took the name of Hastings, in 1706 was the scene of the arrest of the Presbyterian itinerants Francis Mackemie and John Hampton, and in 1766 was the site of the Methodist Episcopal Society at Middle Village, the second oldest of that denomination in America. Huntington was settled in 1653 from New Haven, Hempstead, Southold and Southampton. Other early settlements were: Jamaica, about 1657; Brookhaven, first settled at Ashford (now Setauket) from Boston in 1655, and Smithtown, patented in 1677 to Richard Smith of Setauket, who was said to be a soldier of Cromwell, and of whom there is a story that having bargained with the Indians for as much land as a bull could cover in a day he rode his trained bull in a great circuit about the land he coveted and
