The Long Island History Project

The voices of the past are all around us, if you know how to listen. And sometimes those voices are trapped on small thin strips of tape wrapped in cheap plastic. That's where Robert Anen comes in. As project archivist for the Long Island Library Resources Council, he works with historical collections across Nassau and Suffolk counties. Specializing in audio preservation and digitization, he's rescued a number of collections – copying them to digital media and making them publicly available online.

Today we focus on Robert's work with one of the oldest oral history collections on Long Island at the Manhasset Public Library. Library director Maggie Gough introduces us to the scope and depth of their oral history collection while Antonia Mattheou, their consulting archivist, helps us unpack the history contained on the recordings.

Special shout out to Manhasset's first librarian Ruth Cowell who conducted most of the oral history interviews. Her foresight, along with a committed group of patrons, means that we get to listen to memories of the Blizzard of 1888 and the Vanderbilt Cup Races from those who experienced them. Recorded in 1953 on a reel to reel recorder, the interviews were converted to cassette tapes sometime in the 1980s before Rob digitized them in the 21st century,

On today's episode you'll hear from these Manhasset residents:

• Ernest Willets
• Herbert Fish
• Laura Schneider
• Ernest Willets
• George D. Smith

Further Research

• Manhasset Public Library Oral History Collection (1953-1988)
• Manhasset Public Library History Center
• Long Island Library Resources Council
• The Whitney Greentree Estate
• Spinney Hill, the African American History of Manhasset and Great Neck
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

Isle of Ever is Jen Calonita's newest middle grade novel, a story grounded in the history of Long Island's North Fork. On today's episode, Jen discusses growing up on Long Island and spending many summers at her grandparents' house in Mattituck. It was here, in between trips to Greenport, that she first heard tell of Captain Kidd's lost treasure. She tried digging up the local beach, came up empty, but the idea buried itself in Jen's mind.

Now she has worked her experiences into the tale of Benny Benedict, a young girl caught up in a race to solve a puzzle and claim an inheritance. The plot and the clues to the mystery are tied up in Greenport's history. Jen walks us through the Greenport locales and local legends that made it into the book in one form or another.

We also talk about her love of reading and of middle grade and young adult fiction.

Further Resources

• Jen Calonita
• Isle of Ever (Sourcebooks)
• Long Beach Bar 'Bug' Light
• Preston's
• Greenport Carousel (temporarily closed)
• Sweet Valley High (Good Reads)
• Steven Kellogg
• Music:
  • Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

Tom McKeown lived and breathed basketball throughout junior and senior high school in Babylon. As an eighth grader in 1974-1975, he got to experience the thrill of watching the varsity team win their league and the Suffolk County championships. As fate would have it, this was also the first year that New York State allowed county champions to play each other, setting up a showdown between Babylon's Panthers and Nassau County's champs, the South Side Cyclones of Rockville Center.

It was an epic season that engaged Tom so deeply that he has written his version of the story as This Is Panther Country. We don't want to spoil the outcome but the subtitle is A Memoir of Youth, Underdog Spirit, and Basketball Glory. Available March 18, 2025, the book chronicles life on the court, in the school hallways, and in the McKeown family home on Coppertree Lane. You'll learn a lot about the ins-and-outs of basketball tournaments but you'll also be pulled back to your own high school days of close friend groups, petty slights, unrequited crushes, and weekend parties.

Further Research

• This is Panther Country by Tom McKeown
• Babylon Jr/Sr High School
• Glenn Vickers (Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame)
• "The ABA was Short Lived, but Its Impact on Basketball is Eternal" (Smithsonian Mag)
• Audio Footnotes:
  • Mickey Quinn and St. John the Baptist High School (episode 133)

When Jessie Pierson and Lodowick Post argued over a fox in early 19th century Southampton, they probably didn't think the resulting court case would echo down the ages. Yet here we are 220 years later talking with legal historian Angela Fernandez about the odd, improbable history of Pierson v Post.

A professor of law and history at the University of Toronto, Fernandez has delved deep into the case. Her "legal archaeology" uncovered important, presumed-lost information on the early phases of the proceedings. Her 2018 book Pierson v. Post, The Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture, unpacks more of the impact and context around the decision.

On today's episode we discuss the local history surrounding the case, more about the Piersons and the Posts, and the surprisingly whimsical inner life of the legal profession.

Further Research

• Angela Fernandez (University of Toronto)
  • Fernandez, Angela. Pierson v. Post, the hunt for the fox: Law and professionalization in American legal culture. Cambridge University Press, 2018. (Find in a library via WorldCat)
  • Fernandez, Angela. "The lost record of Pierson v. Post, the famous fox case." Law and History Review 27, no. 1 (2009): 149-178.
• Pierson v Post NYS Supreme Court

The science of genetics took a wrong turn in the early 20th century and it ran through Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Here overlooking a former whaling port, Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport created the Eugenics Record Office and served as director of the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution. From these posts he promoted and pushed the Eugenics Movement in the US and throughout the world.

Historian and attorney Mark Torres has explored the far reaching and sinister influence of Davenport's activities in his new book Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance (Arcadia Press). It is not the story of a fringe movement but of "the rage of the age." Eugenics, which sought to control the development of the human race through such means as selective breeding, segregation, and forced sterilizations, was touted by politicians, intellectuals, academics, and even Supreme Court justices.

In his work, Torres traces a sinister strategy that included legislative control, the trappings of academic credentials, and partnerships with like-minded movements like the emerging Nazi Party in Germany. On today's interview you'll hear more about the people involved, the power they wielded, and their surprising, ultimate fate.

Further Research

• Mark Torres
• Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics (Arcadia Publishing)
• Eugenics Record Office Collection (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
• Audio Footnotes:
  • Episode 138: Long Island Migrant Labor Camps with Mark Torres
• Music
  • Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
  • Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0

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