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 formed the Riverhead Falcons baseball team out of local talent to play in exhibition games. Their opponents ranged from Negro League stalwarts such as the Black Yankees to barnstorming attractions like the House of David. Other events included women’s softball, rodeos, and professional wrestling. By the mid-1950s, however, the stadium was gone with little left to mark its passing.

Enter Fabio Montella – Suffolk County Community College librarian, history professor, and friend of the podcast. As part of his on-going explorations of baseball in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Montella became aware of the stadium’s short but illustrious existence. He was able to uncover more about Wivchar’s past and his pursuits, even finding and interviewing Wivhcar’s wife and daughter.

The result, as today’s episode will attest, is a fascinating glimpse into one man’s passion and the field of dreams he built to contain it.

Further Research

• “Riverhead Stadium Opens.” County Review, May 26, 1949
• “Giving the House a Home” [House of David baseball]
• Audio Footnotes:
  • More episodes with Fabio Montella
• Music
  • Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 Stop Speaking Dutch? The Persistence of the Dutch Language in Old New Netherland” (New York History journal, 2024). He tracks the long history of Dutch-language speakers across the centuries, finding traces of it in Revolutionary War records, cemetery headstones, contemporary travel accounts, and in enslaved people like Sojourner Truth, taught it by their Dutch owners.

We unpack it all in this interview, touching on old Brooklyn, the Queens-Nassau border, Albany, and other enclaves up the Hudson Valley. Along the way Martin Van Buren and Sinterklaas make an appearance as evidence of Dutch influence.

Despite their short-lived enterprise on the East Coast, the Dutch (along with their language) made a long-lasting impression. When did New York stop speaking Dutch? The answer will surprise you.

Further Research

• O’Keefe, Kieran J. “When Did New York Stop Speaking Dutch? The Persistence of the Dutch Language in Old New Netherland.” New York History 104, no. 1 (2024): 150-170.
• Dr. Kieran O’Keefe at Lyon College
• The New Amsterdam Project
• A Tour of New Netherland (New Netherland Institute)
• Featured image: George Henry Boughton (1833-1905), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Music
  • Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 introduces us to brain clubs, mutual autopsy societies and above all, the American Anthropometric Society of Philadelphia. The AAS had a particular interest in collecting and studying the brains of prominent scientists and intellectuals. You can imagine their excitement then, when Walt Whitman died in 1892 not far from their laboratory.

Wright walks us through the ensuing complicated tale uncovered by him and other historians. Did Whitman really donate his brain to science? Why did Henry Ware Cattelll, who performed the autopsy, keep changing his story? And how does eBay and the 1931 movie Frankenstein play into it all?

Join us for a special Halloween episode that is not for the feint of heart.

Further Research

• Wright Jr, James R. “Henry Ware Cattell and Walt Whitman’s brain.” Clinical Anatomy 31, no. 7 (2018): 988-996.
• Hecht, Jennifer. The end of the soul: scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. Columbia University Press, 2005. (Find in a library via WorldCat)
• Burrell, Brian. “The Strange Fate of Whitman’s Brain.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 20, no. 3/4 (2003).
• Gosline, Sheldon Lee. “” I Am a fool”: Dr. Henry Cattell’s private confession about what happened to Whitman’s brain.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 31, no. 4 (2014).
• The Walt Whitman House. Camden, NJ
• Music
  • Horror Music by Tele50 via Pixabay.
  • Glass Jar Tap by ekfink. License: Creative Commons 0
  • Funny Halloween by FASSounds via Pixabay

Edward Lange was a German artist who started his career on Long Island in the late 19th century. He meticulously captured the landscape and built environment across the island from Flushing to Sag Harbor in water color paintings rich in detail and charm.

Preservation Long Island has just published Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870-1889 by chief curator and director of collections Lauren Brincat and former curatorial fellow Peter Fedoryk. The book features over 100 color reproductions of Lange’s work along with essays from Brincat, Fedoryk, and contributors Jennifer L. Anderson, Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, and Joshua M. Ruff.

On today’s episode, Brincat and Fedoryk discuss their work on the book including the new research that fills in the gaps of Lange’s family and education. We also talk about his entrepreneurial drive, his love of photography, and the life of a landscape painter on a Long Island that was rapidly turning from bucolic farmland to a vacation destination.

Further Research

• Order the book
• Authors Talk and Book Signing 11/16/24
• Edward Lange exhibition
• The Art of Edward Lange
• “The Tile Club at Play“, Scribner’s Monthly, February 1879 (Google Books)
• William Sidney Mount (National Gallery of Art)
• Music
  • Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

The Association of Public Historians of New York State held their annual conference at Danford’s in Port Jefferson this year, gathering public historians from all corners of the state to discuss resources, projects, and to provide a great opportunity for people to talk history.

The Long Island History Project was there to hold a workshop, “How to Be a Podcast Guest.” Today’s episode features the brave individuals who sat down at the mics and told us a little bit about their work, the challenges they face, and where exactly “upstate” begins.

Further Research

• Association of Public Historians of New York State
• Ross Lumpkin
  • North Hempstead Town Historian
  • Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society
• Marilyn Hayden
  • Greenwood Lake Village Historian
• Amy Folk
  • Southold Town Historian
  • Oyster Pond Historical Society
  • Southold  Historical Museum
• Debra Allen
  • Oswego County Historian
• Gabrielle
  • Brightwaters Historical Society
• John Tracy 
• Robert Finnegan
  • Historical Society of Islip Hamlet
• Regina Feeney
  • Freeport Village Historian
  • Freeport Memorial Library
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

Robert Moses had a vision for Jones Beach in the 1920s that included a theater to bring high quality entertainment to the people. That theater on Zachs Bay went through a number of iterations but reached its height from 1954-1977 when it was under the direction of Guy Lombardo. Along with his brothers Carmen and Lebert, the Canadian-born band leader/impresario brought Broadway shows and original productions to the beach. Their stage was an 8,200-seat amphitheater with a host of spectacular additions including icebergs, waterfalls, showboats, and floating mansions.

Richard Arnold Beattie got more than a front row seat, performing as a child actor in The Sound of Music and The King and I at Zachs Bay in the early 1970s. Although he went on to a career that included journalism, songwriting, and audio production, he never forgot his time at the Jones Beach Theater. He has captured the experience in a new audio documentary called From Broadway to Jones Beach, streaming now on Spotify and planned to be repackaged as an audiobook.

Hear more on today’s episode about the development of the Jones Beach Marine Theater and its connections to Broadway history and the Lombardo family who lived in nearby Freeport. You’ll also get a preview of Richard’s documentary through interviews with actors Connie Towers and June Angela.

If you like your Broadway big – including Nazis in speedboats and sharks circling the stage – then you’ll love this story.

Further Research

• From Broadway to Jones Beach (Spotify)
• Louis Armstrong “Mardi Gras” with Guy Lombardo
• List of Jones Beach Theater productions (OVRTUR)
• Sound effect
  • Overture and Fanfare.wav by Anapwodicn - License: Creative Commons 0
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

An obscure bit of early 20th century technology embroiled Dr. Woody Register in a murder mystery. Register, a professor of history at the University of the South (Sewanee), became intrigued by the detective dictograph and followed its trail to the 1914 murder of Louise Bailey in Freeport. Mrs. Bailey was shot in the Merrick Road office of Dr. Edward Carman. Dr. Carman's wife, Florence, had secretly installed a dictograph in her husband's office hoping to capture evidence of his philandering.

What followed was a media frenzy of an investigation that played out in countless inches of newspaper columns across the country. Register's 2014 essay in the Journal of Theory and Practice examined the case, the surrounding newspaper coverage, and the legal, social, and philosophical issues that lay at its heart. We do not find all the answers but on this episode you'll hear more about the tragic crime that rocked Freeport and momentarily knocked the First World War off of the front page.

Further Research

• Woody Register (University of the South)
  • "Some truths about the rumors, gossip, hearsay, and innuendo surrounding the Freeport murder mystery of 1914."
  • The Muckers: A Narrative of the Crapshooters Club (Amazon)
  • The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation.
• "What is the Limit of a Married Woman's Jealousy?" (Chronicling America)
• A Suspicious Wife (IMDB)
• Mrs. Balfame by Gertrude Atherton (Google Books)

Librarian and baseball historian Fabio Montella returns to the podcast to bring us the story of Ralph “Sammy” Bunn. Bunn was a Setauket native who excelled at baseball all his life. A star athlete in high school in the 1930s, he went on to play for decades on a number of teams and leagues in the makeshift world of community baseball in Suffolk County. His short stint pitching for the Brookhaven Highway Department team (starting in 1939) makes Bunn, by Montella’s research, the first documented Black player to break the color barrier on Long Island. (Bunn was soon followed by his Brookhaven teammate Kenneth Sells.)

On today’s episode Montella describes Bunn’s storied career in baseball and his life as a dedicated family man and World War II veteran. Working with Sammy’s son, Ralph Jr., and his nephew Carlton Edwards (an accomplished player in his own right) Montella brought to light many details, including Ralph’s Shinnecock heritage, a fact not mentioned in contemporary accounts. You’ll also hear more about the world of community and semiprofessional baseball on the Island along with other teams like the Suffolk Giants and the Huntington Police Department who make it such an interesting glimpse into local history.

Further Research

• Fabio Montella
• “The Suffolk Giants of Setauket: From Segregation to Integration.“
• Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
• Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
• Audio footnotes (past episodes with Fabio Montella):
  • The Arthur Murray Girls Baseball Team
  • Satchel Paige in Riverhead
  • The Cuban Giants of Long Island

Greig Stewart “Chubby” Jackson was a swinging sensation in his day. A child of vaudevillians, he was raised in an enclave of actors, musicians, and performers in Freeport, Long Island against the backdrop of Prohibition and a burgeoning club scene. Exposed to music at an early age, he jumped from high school to playing bass in swing bands in New York City and on the road, most notably with bandleader Woody Herman.

On today’s episode we trace the life of the man with three very special guests: Freeport Village historian Regina Feeney, jazz historian Scott Yanow, and Chubby’s daughter Jaijai Jackson. And thanks to Monk Rowe and the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College, we can add in the voice of Chubby himself.

Chubby was a colleague to Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz greats (you’ll see him near the top of the steps in A Great Day in Harlem). His career spans the height of the swing era and the rise of bop with a side trip into headlining several kiddie TV shows in Chicago and New York. Through it all the constants in his life remained the love of family, of performing, and of Freeport.

Further Research

• Chubby Jackson oral history (Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College)
• Freeport History Encyclopedia (Freeport Memorial Library)
• Jazz Network Worldwide
• Not Just Jazz Network
• Scott Yanow, journalist and historian
• Music credits from Freesound.org
  • Jazz Bass B 1.OGG by gregstermatic. License: Creative Commons 0
  • Double bass Jazz loop by elzozo. License: Creative Commons 0
  • Jazz loop.wav by FrankyBoomer. License: Creative Commons 0

The Long Island-born, Yale-educated Benjamin Tallmadge seized his moment to shine in the American Revolution. Whether fighting the British on horseback with the 2nd Continental Dragoons or uncovering their secrets through his agents in the Culper Spy Ring, Tallmadge kept up a hectic pace. You can also throw in maritime battles on the Long Island Sound and daring raids behind enemy lines.

Historian Richard Welch documented Tallmadge's eventful life in his 2014 book General Washington's Commando: Benjamin Tallmadge in the Revolutionary War. On today's episode he explains the significance of this important figure in Long Island and American history. He also helps illustrate the nature of British activity in the New York region, the documentary trail he followed, and what questions were left unanswered.

Further Research

• General Washington's Commando: Benjamin Tallmadge in the Revolutionary War by Richard Welch (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (Google Books)
• The Battle of Brooklyn/Long Island (American Battlefield Trust)
• The Death of John André (William Clements library)
• Audio Footnotes
  • All episodes on the American Revolution