The Long Island Historical Journal
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL JOURNAL I "Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born..." Walt Whitman Spring 1989 Volume I 9 Number 2 The Long Island Historical Journal Spring 1989 Volume 1 * Number 2 PUBLISHED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STONY BROOK copyright 1989 by the Long Island Historical Journal ISSN 0898-7084 All rights reserved The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Office of the Provost, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, The Long Island Com- munity Foundation, Old Westbury, New York, and the Long Island Savings Bank, Syosset, New York. We also thank Dr. Joel T. Rosenthal, Department of History, SUNY at Stony Brook, for his help in launching the Journal. The Long Island Historical Journal is published twice a year, in October and April. Yearly subscrip- tions are $15.00, single copies $8.00. Address ar- ticles, correspondence, books for review, and subscriptions to: The Editor, LIHJ Dept. of History SUNY at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-4348 Manuscripts:We will publish original contributions on any aspect of Long Island history. Submit manuscripts in duplicate (no carbons), on 81 " x 11" stock. Double space, with generous margins, and on only one side of each page. Notes should be numbered consecutively, assembled at the end of the text, and modeled on the examples given in the Chicago Manual or Turabian. THE LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL JOURNAL Editor: Roger Wunderlich, SUNY at Stony Brook. Associate Editor: Richard P. Harmond, St. John's University. Editorial Board: Floris Cash, SUNY at Stony Brook; Lynda R. Day, William Paterson College; Eric E. Lampard, SUNY at Stony Brook; Gary M. Marotta, Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus; Wilbur R. Miller, SUNY at Stony Brook; Alice Ross, SUNY at Stony Brook; Geof- frey L. Rossano, Salisbury School; William R. Taylor, SUNY at Stony Brook; Carol A. Traynor, Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities; Fred Weinstein, SUNY at Stony Brook; Luise Weiss, Middle Country Public Library; and Richard Williams, SUNY at Stony Brook. Advisory Board: Barbara Mazor Bart, Walt Whitman Birthplace Associa- tion; Antonia Booth, Town of Southold Historian; Wallace W. Broege, Suffolk County Historical Society; Edwin G. Burrows, Brooklyn College; Hugh G. Cleland, SUNY at Stony Brook; Robert E. Cray, Jr., Montclair State College; Marlyn H. Dalsimer, Adelphi Univ.; Mildred M. DeRiggi, Glen Cove Historical Society; Roger B. Dunkerley, Suffolk Marine Museum; Elizabeth Ewen, SUNY College at Old Westbury; Dean F. Failey, American Furniture & Decorative Arts, Christie's; John A. Gable, Theodore Roosevelt Association; Doris Halowitch, SUNY at Stony Brook; John A. Hewlett, Half Hollow Hills School District; Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia Univ.; David M. Kahn, Brooklyn Historical Society; Barbara M. Kelly, Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra Univ.; Paul E. Kerson, Queens Historical Society; Gerald S. Kessler, Friends for Long Island's Heritage; Susan E. Klaffky, Museums at Stony Brook; Ned C. Landsman, SUNY at Stony Brook; Rufus B. Langhans, Huntington Town Historian; Frederick S. Lightfoot, Greenport; Robert B. MacKay, Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities; John W. Pratt, SUNY at Stony Brook; Joel T. Rosenthal, SUNY at Stony Brook; Sr. Joan Ryan, St. Joseph's College; Vincent F.Seyfried, Garden City Historian; Edward J. Smits, Nassau County Historian; Gaynell Stone, Suffolk County Ar- chaelogical Association; John A. Strong, Long Island University - Southampton Campus; Francis J. Turano, SUNY at Stony Brook: W.Burghardt Turner, SUNY at Stony Brook, and Evert Volkersz, SUNY at Stony Brook Library. Cover: Stephen Pharaoh, Last of the Montauks. Photograph, taken ca. 1867. Smithsonian Institution. TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL COMMENT 1 AIDS ON LONG ISLAND: The Regional History Of An Epidemic 1981-1988 By Emily H. Thomas and Daniel M. Fox - 93 GRUMMAN VERSUS REPUBLIC: Success And Failure In The Aviation Industry On Long Island By Joshua Stoff - 113 BROOKLYN: THE ELUSIVE IMAGE By Joseph Dorinson - 128 "WHATEVER THE COST, WE WILL SET THE NATION STRAIGHT": The Ministers' Committee and the Downstate Center Campaign By Clarence Taylor - 136 ELLA SMITH'S RECIPE COLLECTION, SMITHTOWN, 1889-1910 By Alice Ross - 147 LAND WHERE MY FATHERS DIED By William A. Fahey - 158 LONG ISLAND AS AMERICA: A New Look at the First Inhabitants By Gaynell Stone - 159 THE CREATION OF NASSAU COUNTY By Edward J. Smits - 170 Reviews of books: THE MUSEUMS AT STONY BROOK. Nineteenth-Century American Carriages: Their Manufacture, Decorations, and Use. By Peter G. Buckley - 183 GAYNELL STONE AND DONNA OTTUSCH-KIANKA. The HistoricalArchae- ology of Long Island, Volume VII, PartI-The Sites. By Linda E. Barber - 186 RICHARD F. WELCH. Memento Mori: The Gravestones of Early Long Island, 1680-1810. By Susan Battley - 188 BOOK NOTES-189 COMMUNICATIONS 191 CONTRIBUTORS John C. Bierwirth, former Chairman of the Grumman Corporation, is now a member of the SUNY at Stony Brook faculty, with the title of "Stony Brook Professor." Joseph Dorinson, chair of the Department of History, Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus has written extensively on ethnic humor and is the co-editor (with Jerrold Atlas) of The Many Faces of Psychohistory (New York: L.I.U. Press, 1984). William A. Fahey is on the faculty of C.W. Post College of Long Island University. Dr. Fahey, a well-known Long Island poet, is editor of the West Hills Review, A Walt Whitman Journal. Daniel M. Fox, Ph.D., is professor of humanities in medicine and direc- tor of the Center for Assessing Health Services at SUNY at Stony Brook. Alice Ross, a food historian, is a doctoral candidate at SUNY at Stony Brook and the director-teacher of the Alice Ross Hearth Studios, Smithtown. Edward J. Smits, Nassau County's official Historian, and Director of Museum Services, is the author of Nassau Suburbia, U.S.A.: the First Seventy-Five Years of Nassau County, New York, 1899 to 1974 (Syosset: Friends of the Nassau Museum, 1974). Joshua Stoff, the Air and space Curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum (Garden City), has written four books and many articles on aviation and space history. His latest book entitled Roosevelt Field, "World's Premier Airport," is forthcoming. Gaynell Stone is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology, SUNY at Stony Brook. Dr. Stone, a founder of the Suffolk County Ar- chaeological Association, is series editor of its Readings in Long Island Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Clarence Taylor, a teacher at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School, City University of New York. His dissertation will focus on the role of black churches in Bedford- Stuyvesant, 1920-1968. Emily H. Thomas, M.S., is a policy anlyst in the office of the vice presi- dent for health sciences, and associate director of the Center for Assess- ing Health Services at SUNY at Stony Brook. EDITORIAL COMMENT We must subscribe my darlings, we must bear the brunt of supporting the Journal, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers! O Pioneers! -after Walter Whitman Here we are, two issues into the mission, and many more in the planning stages. We have expanded the number of pages to cover such basic topics as AIDS on Long Island, the aerospace industry, a new look at Native American culture, the creation of Nassau County, recipes as historical tools, two compelling interpretations of Brooklyn, one significant poem, and selected book reviews and communications. No reader of our first two issues will want to miss Fall 1989 (Number 1 of Volume 2), devoted entirely to the theme of Long Island as an island. There will be articles on the Sound, Bay, and bridges; steamboats, war- ships, and sailing vessels; fishermen, mariners, and whalers; Lion Gar- diner and Gardiner's Island on its 350th anniversary; comment from the Connecticut side; and a study of the Supreme Court's curious ruling (1985) that Long Island is a peninsula and therefore not an island at all. Succeeding issues will feature landmark pieces on the history of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; the social and artistic import of the paintings of Shepard Alonzo Mount; woman suffrage; "Gold Coast" estates; the Quaker program of manumission; Walt Whitman's boyhood; the liber- tarian village of Modern Times (1851-1864); Engel v. Vitale (1962), the case involving prayer in the school that originated in Herricks; and many others of equal interest. It can not happen without your support. I remind each subscriber to Volume 1 that your subscription expired upon receipt of the current issue, Spring 1989. To insure the continuity of our new and needed publication, please send your renewal check for $15, payable to LIHJ, Department of History, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4348. And if each of you stout-hearted charter subscribers not only renews your own subscription but solicits a friend to subscribe as well, you will give our fledgling journal the wings without which it can not fly. We invite you to send us articles. If reviewing books is among your skills, let us know your field of interest. Would you like to help organize con- ferences? Do you have ideas for future editions? Your comments are always welcome. Thank you for your enthusiastic support of Volume 1; now is the time for all good readers to come to the aid of Volume 2. - Roger Wunderlich, editor 91 AIDS On Long Island: The Regional History Of An Epidemic 1981-1988 By Emily H. Thomas and Daniel M. Fox Cases of AIDS on Long Island were first reported in 1981. In 1988, the cumulative total number of cases had reached 900, and the Nassau- Suffolk standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA) ranked 17th among SMSAs in AIDS incidence.