The Long Island History Project

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

Dr. Tammy C. Owens of Skidmore College joins us to discuss her 2019 article "Fugitive Literati: Black Girls' Writing as a Tool of Kinship and Power at the Howard School." Having discovered a treasure trove of letters written in the early 1900s by girls at the Howard Orphanage and Industrial School, Owens was off on a journey to learn more. The research took her from the Schomburg Center in Harlem to Tuskegee University in Alabama and, ultimately, to the doorstep of the Kings Park Heritage Museum.

What Owens pieced together was the story of young Black orphans forging connections and support networks through a unique institution known by some as the Tuskegee of the North. The letters she found tell personal and sometimes painful stories, often by the details which they leave out. Owens' research brings to light voices that are often overlooked or missing from archival collections. We hear her thoughts on the process, the historians and authors who inspire her, and the story of her life-changing day riding around Kings Park with Leo P. Ostebo.

Further Research

• Owens, T. C. (2019). Fugitive literati: Black girls’ writing as a tool of kinship and power at the Howard School. Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 7(1), 56–79. https://doi.org/10.5406/womgenfamcol.7.1.0056
• Howard Orphanage and Industrial School Photograph Collection (NYPL Schomburg Center)
• Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum
• Tuskegee University History and Mission
• Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs (find in a library via WorldCat)
• The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Craft (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Darlene  Clark Hine

While Long Island developed a reputation for affluence throughout the 20th Century, there has always been a parallel history of the everyday workers and servants who toiled in the shadow of that reputation. The economic boom of the war years and the subsequent population boom in the 1950s did not change that.

Tim Keogh, assistant professor of history at Queensborough Community College, delves into this history in his book Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Suburb. He documents the influence of federal spending in the 1940s, the questionable building practices of the Levitts, and a host of attempts to alleviate poverty and fight the dominance of single family housing on Long Island.

Further Research

• In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Suburb (Chicago Press)
• Suffolk County Online Records
• Nassau County Land Records Viewer
• “Business Zone Helps Islip Reclaim a Slum.” (NYT)
• A Freedom Budget for All Americans (The Atlantic)
• Audio Footnotes (related episodes):
  • Making Long Island
  • Cold War Long Island
  • Long Island Migrant Labor Camps

No one sheds a tear for the British Loyalists of Long Island, those inhabitants who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. But genealogist Brendon Burns has spent a tremendous amount of effort tracking them down through libraries and archives across the world. The result is his 5-volume series The Loyal and Doubtful: Index to the Acts of British Loyalism in the Greater New York and Long Island Area 1775-1783. It's a meticulous record of people in New York, Staten Island, and on Long Island, acting in support of King George and the efforts to subdue the patriots.

The Loyal and Doubtful is of a piece with Brendon's work as a genealogist at the Daughters of the American Revolution. He helps vet applications for membership, which includes proving that an ancestor demonstrated "unfailing" service to the revolution. This criteria poses a problem on Long Island where swearing an oath of loyalty or other public acts of support could hardly have been avoided.

On this episode, Brendon walks us through the DAR process, the challenges of disproving loyal acts, and what the surviving records can tell us about life on Long Island during the war.

Further Research

• Brendon Burns (APG)
  • The Loyal and Doubtful
  • The Virginia Genealogist
• Genealogical Research System (DAR)
• Daughters of the American Revolution
• Inhabitants of New York by Thomas B. Wilson (via WorldCat)
• “A List of Persons on Long Island”: Biography, Voluntarism, and Suffolk County’s 1778 Oath of Allegiance by Christopher Minty (LI History Journal)
• Audio Footnotes:
  • Episode 45 : Loyalist Richard Floyd
  • Episode 137: Lost British Forts of Long Island