The Long Island History Project

The story of Nathan Hale is a foundational myth of the Revolution: an earnest but inexperienced patriot takes on the role of spy and unfortunately ends up a martyr to the cause. But that's not the whole story. Historian Claire Bellerjeau, chronicler of Robert Townsend and the enslaved woman Liss, has brought to light another Nathan Hale. HIs name was David Maltbie and his history is remarkably similar to yet also significantly different from Hale's

On today's episode, Bellerjeau explains the documentary trail she followed to uncover Maltbie's espionage activities and his ultimate fate as well as the implications it all has for the history of spies on Long Island.

Further Research

• "This Connecticut Teenager Spied on the British During the American Revolution" (Smithsonian)
• Remember Liss
• Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties by Henry Onderdonk, Jr. (1849)
  • Henry Onderdonk Papers (Center for Brooklyn History)
• Harlem Heights (American Battlefield Trust)
• Occupied City (Museum of the City of New York)
• Music
  • Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

Today we continue our tour of the Long Island Museum with Joshua Ruff, Co Executive Director, Collections & Programming. This time we're traversing the 1970s through the exhibit Long Island in the '70s. It was a decade of change that brought us the end of the Vietnam War, the opening of the Long Island Expressway, a gas crisis, a bicentennial, and so much more. Ruff and his staff, notably collections manager Andrea Squeri, have assembled an experience filled with everything from an AMC Matador Station Wagon to a Telstar Arcade and everyone from Nelson Rockefeller to Denis Potvin. If you lived through the '70s, you'll want to see this for yourself. And bring someone younger so that you can explain to them why you would sit in the way-back of a station wagon, facing out the back window with no seatbelts.

The exhibit runs through October 18th.

Further Research

• Long Island in the '70s
• My Father's Place
• Power of the People: How Opposition Sank the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant 30 Years Ago
• Walk With Frank
• Cold Spring Harbor (Spotify)
• Audio Footnotes
  • Ellen Stark, daughter of Amityville Horror judge Thomas Stark (episode 158)
  • Karl Grossman on the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant (episode 27)
  • Vietnam vet Frank Romeo w Christopher Verga (episode 147)
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

Join us for a private tour of the exhibit The Seat of Action: Long Island in the American Revolution and Beyond at the Long Island Museum. Running through October of this year, the exhibit tells the stories of the lives of people affected by the conflict at all levels of society. Joshua Ruff, Co-Executive Director, Collections and Programming, is our guide.

You'll find some familiar faces along with new insights, mysteries, and revelations. There's the sword of loyalist Richard Hewlett, passed down through the same family over decades. There are muskets that Long Islanders carried into war. Belt buckles and ammo unearthed from British forts, portraits of the formerly enslaved, and of course a Culper Spy letter (from Benjamin Tallmadge to Robert Townsend). Along the way Joshua explains the challenges and opportunities this type of exhibit entails, working with the Museum's own collections as well as historical societies, libraries, and private collectors.

The result is a rich experience that is the perfect capstone to this 250th anniversary year of the American Revolution and Long Island history.

Further Research

• The Seat of Action: Long Island in the American Revolution and Beyond
• Samson Occom
• Don Troiani
• Revolutionary Incidents in Huntington: Occupation & Resistance
• Audio Footnotes
  • David Bunn Martin and the Shinnecock (episode 29)
  • David Griffin and British Forts (episode 137)
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 was the wax figure. Her museum in New York City was a popular attraction, featuring lifelike replicas of notable figures. After disaster struck, this widowed mother with four children moved to London and quickly established herself as a local celebrity. Her new museum became a destination for all walks of life. Filled with conviction for the American cause, Patience made no secret of her views and support (although she was not above a little espionage as well).

Dr. Zara Anishanslin has documented Patience's story, along with other artists on both sides of the Atlantic who championed the Revolution, in her book The Painter's Fire (Harvard University Press). On today's episode, we discuss Patience's decidedly unique personality, her Quaker upbringing, the inherent flammability of wax, and the world of London during the height of the American Revolution.

Further Research

• The Painters Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the Revolution
• Dr. Zara Anishanslin
• William Pitt and Family (Westminster Abbey)
• Thing4Things (Apple Podcasts)
• Audio Footnotes
  • "The Death of Woodhull: An American Ballad" (episode 29)
  • Kerriann Flnagan Brosky (episode 80)
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 takes us from the pushcarts and crowded streets of the lower east side to the cucumber farms and pickle factories flanking the Long Island Rail Road in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Along the way we detail the role of the pickle in the economic, social, and culinary history of the region. Syosset, Farmingdale, Greenlawn and other places all had their "pickle kings" who profited from the pickle. Before, enabling a lucrative industry and legacy that lived on well into the 20th century.

Further Research

• The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles (Amazon)
• Mattmo Creative Agency
• Street Food City (Museum of Food and Drink)
• Audio Footnotes
  • Farmingdale Local History (and Stern's Pickles)
  • The Long Island Seed Consortium
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 Sag Harbor. Men boarded ships for multi-year voyages around the globe, in a dangerous pursuit to hunt, kill, and dismember giant creatures of the sea. And while they worked at this pursuit, they sang.

Stephen Sanfilippo has been tracking whaling songs for the better part of sixty years, preserving and performing them with his wife Susan at festivals, libraries, and historical societies. Some his best finds have come from reading the private journals of seaman in the Sag Harbor whale fishery. These literate young men recorded life on ship, including the lyrics to many of the ballads, shanties, and ditties sung by the crew in the course of their work.

On today's episode, Stephen relates the history and preservation of these songs along with what the sources can and cannot tell us about oral traditions and the life of a whaler. Along the way you'll get a masterclass in the history of Long Island whaling and the chance to sing along.

Related Research

• Isle of Beauty, Fare-Thee-Well (Long Island History Journal)
• "Seasongs" newsletter: email [email protected]
• Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum
• The Whaling Museum and Education Center (Cold Spring Harbor)
• Whaling bibliography
  • Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville (find in a library via WorldCat)
  • Songs the Whalemen Sang by Gale Huntington (find in a library via WorldCat)
  • Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana (find in a library via WorldCat)
  • The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers by James Fenimore Cooper (find in a library via WorldCat)
  • LogBook for Grace by Robert Cushman Murphy (find in a library via WorldCat)
  • Into the Deep: America, Whaling and the World (PBS)
• Audio Footnotes
  • John Strong, Tracing the Whale Design
  • Brenna McCormick Thompson, We Were the Whalers
• Music
  • Intro: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0; Isle of Beauty, Fare-Thee-Well (Susan and Stephen Sanfilippo)

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 survival over the coming crucial months left Long Island a bitter memory best left forgotten.

But today we remember with our guide Dan Davis, Senior Education Associate at the American Battlefield Trust. In this 250th anniversary year of the American Revolution, we look back at this pivotal battle. Although a definite military defeat, it produced heroes like William Alexander, Lord Sterling and the men of the 1st Maryland Regiment. And the battle is a great opportunity to discuss the meaning of these sites in the history of America and the importance of preserving them for future generations.

Further Research

• American Battlefield Trust
• Green-Wood Cemetery
• Prospect Park
• American Veterans Archaeological Recovery
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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-chartered public library by 1900.

The next leap was a $10,000 donation (later raised to $15,000) from steel magnate and library philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The money funded the construction of a neo-classical building on Lake St. that brought state-of-the-art library service to the people of Patchogue. However, by the end of the 20th century the public library had moved down the block, Briarcliff College had come and gone, and the Carnegie building sat empty, soon endangered by looming development.

The story has a happy ending as the building now sits at the corner of West Main St. and West Ave, serving as a vibrant teen center and a museum for the Greater Patchogue Historical Society. How did that happen? Listen to Patchogue librarians Jessi Bouchelle and Gary Lutz, along with the Historical Society's Steve Lucas, tell the tale.

Further Research

• Teen Center at the Patchogue Carnegie Library
• Patchogue Medford Library History
• Greater Patchogue Historical Society
• Carnegie Libraries Across America
• Van Slyck, Abigail A. "" The Utmost Amount of Effectiv [sic] Accommodation": Andrew Carnegie and the Reform of the American Library." The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, no. 4 (1991): 359-383.
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 depredations brought on by British and Hessian troops as well as by Patriot attacks from across Long Island Sound. You'll hear about the enslaved Black woman Liss from Oyster Bay, about the activities of the Culper Spy Ring, and the experiences of others ranging from British officer John Simcoe to Elizabeth Lewis, wife of Declaration signatory Francis Lewis.

The panel itself was funded by a WETA grant awarded to LILRC in support of programming related to the PBS documentary The American Revolution by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt.

Further Research

• The American Revolution (PBS)
• Dr. Joanne Grasso
  • The American Revolution on Long Island. (Find in a library via WorldCat)
  • George Washington's 1790 Grand Tour of Long Island. (Find in a Library via WorldCat)
• Dr. Natalie Naylor
  • Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives. (Find in a library via WorldCat)
  • Long Island Studies Institute
• Claire Bellerjeau
  • Remember Liss.org
  • Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: the True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth. (Find in a library via WorldCat)
• Long Island Library Resources Council
• Feature image from the New York Public Library
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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 from Arcadia Publishing (compiled with his co-author, the late Kurt Kahofer). On today's episode, Zach elaborates on the role of New York State in establishing schools in the 1800s, Walt Whitman's brief foray into teaching, and the surprising afterlife of school buildings as churches, fire houses, and storage sheds.

Further Research

• Historic Schoolhouses of Long Island (Arcadia Publishing)
• Schoolteaching Years (Walt Whitman Archive)
• George Bradford Brainerd (Brooklyn Museum)
• Audio Footnotes
  • Episode 89: Walt Whitman's Birthplace
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0