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Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, and Hewlett, Nassau County, Long Island Compiled by workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of New York American Guide Series Illustrated Co-sponsor, Lawrence-Cedarhurst Chamber of Commerce Published by the Nassau Daily Review-Star Dear Valued Customer, Please note that the images in the original volume of this book are of poor quality, and reproduced herein as best as possible. While we are dedicated to make available products of the highest quality, some circumstances are beyond our control. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your support and we look forward to serving you again with all your history and genealogy needs Best Regards Rodrigue Maindron Your # 1 source for rare and out-of-print book on genealogy and history (800) 319-8434 file:///F|/Documents and Settings/Owner/My Documents/My Web Pages/disclaimer.htm [12/11/2006 10:46:52 AM] Copyright 1941 by the Nassau Daily Review-Star New York State Division of Commerce State-wide Sponsor of the New York State Writers' Project Federal Works Agency JOHN M. CARMODY, Administrator Work Projects Administration HOWARD A. HUNTER, Commissioner FLORENCE KERR, Assistant Commissioner LESTER ·w. HERZOG, State Administrator Printer: Nassau Da.ily Review-Star Printe·d in the United States of America Rock Hall, Lawrence. The Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration in New York State has undertaken and completed a comprehensive guide book of the State. We have now undertaken local histories and guides to a number of village_s, towns, counties, and cities. These books are al I sponsored by public or other interested organ­ izations which arrange to publish, without profit, the text prepared by the Writers' Project. The New York State Writers' Project is happy to have been able to cooperate in the preparation of this community history! with the Nassau Daily Review-Star and the advisory committee, Mr. William J. T. McShane, President of the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Chamber of Commerce; Mr. William S. Pettit, and ··Mr. Charles A. Hewlett. Many research workers contributed their efforts to the com­ pilation of The Story Of The Five Towns and worked with zeal and devotion though aware that their names would never be known. They were aided by many institutions which courteously opened to then, their stores of history, tradition, and current fact. Among those who helped are: Mr. Louis Stancourt, Acting Distr~ct Super­ visor, Long Island District, New York State Writers' Project; and Mr. William Franklin, research worker. The photographs are by Mr. Paul A. Broady of the Writers' Project staff; · Mr. Sidney Forman, State Editor, directed the research workers and prepared the text. Henry F. Maione, State Supervisor New York State Writers' Project. [ 3 ] Foreword . 3 Preface 5 In the Beginning . 7 Farming and Fishing 20 After the Railroad Came . 33 Inwood 54 Lawrence 57 Cedarhurst 63 Woodmere and _Woodsburgh 65 The Hewletts . 66 Appendices General Directory [ 4 ] Were you to ask, "What is the Rockaway Branch?" you would undoubtedly be told that it is that part of the Rockaway Peninsula between the main body of Long Island and Far Rock­ away. Some might say it is the narrow stretch of land that got its name from the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail­ road, which was built through it. Still others may mention the five major villages located on the Rockaway Branch, Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Hewlett, and Woodmere and reply, "Why that is 'The Five Towns'." They would mean to include, of course, Hewlett Neck, Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor, and Woodsburgh. Names denote little except to those who are familiar with the places associated with them. To different people the same name may mean different things. The images cal led up by a particular name in the mind of a merchant, a manufacturer, a jobber, or an office worker who commutes to his place of business each day would be different from those of the local policeman, the storekeeper, a cook, a child going to school, a housewife, or a "bayman." For each the picture of his community depends on his individual conditioning, his mode of life. Every community has individuality and meaning, not revealed in its name, but contained in the experience of its people, in their hopes and aspirations, their organizations and institutions, .their homes1 their gardens, their offices, their play, their factories, their workshops, their manner of speech, their mode of dress. In order to comprehend the meaning of the Rockaway Penin­ sula we must trace its thread of continuity back to the first settle­ ments and to the first people who made their homes in the Town of Hempstead. SIDNEY FORMAN, State Editor. [ 5 ] CHAPTER I The Story of the Five Towns is a story of change from woods, meadow, and marsh inhabited by wild birds, animals, and scattered groups of Indians, to a population of 32,000 men, women, end children residing on palatial estates, or in nests of middle class homes; a change from a people who made their Iiving by fishing or farming, to a heterogeneous people whose various activities integrate into the complex pattern of present day life. The first people of our civi Iization to settle in The Five Towns were the settlers of Hempstead. They were a restless group who, in 1638, had emigrated to­ gether from Halifax, England, to Wethersfield, Connecticut. They got into trouble with the Connecticut authorities over religious differences and boundary disputes and settled Stamford in 1641. It was not long before they sought to "swarm" again as did other dissident groups under the New Haven government. It was quite natural for them to look to Long Island, directly across the Sound, for their new home. Long Island was then claimed by the Dutch' through the indefinite charter of the West Indies Company, and by the English Earl of Stirling, who had received it by grant from the Council for New England. In 1650, the Dutch tried to set their own sphere of activity by a boundary line from Oyster Bay south to the ocean. This division was never observed by the English. Despite the conflicting claims which were settled by the Duke of York's bloodless conquest of New Netherland in 1664, seekers of homes moved across the Sound and took up land. At the eastern end of the Island there developed several English towns governed by New Haven; to the west there grew up five Dutch towns, Breuckelen, Midwout, Ameersfort, New Utrecht, and Boswyck, and a few communities of English in­ habitants which chafed under Dutch jurisdiction. Hempstead (Heemstede) was one of the English villages which tolerated Dutch rule along with Jamaica {Rusdorp), Oyster Bay, Huntington, and Setauket farther east. [ 7 ] The Hempstead settlement was made by the Stamford group which first sent John Carman and the Reverend Robert Fordham across the Sound in 1643 to seek out a site for settlement. Carman and Fordham signed an agreement with a group of Long Island Indians of the Rockaway, Merricoke and Massapequa tribes for a strip of land between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, the boundaries of which were quite indefinite. This grant was confirmed some years later (1657) by another treaty with the Indians, in which arrangements were made to blaze the boundary lines more clearly. After the Dutch Governor De Kieft granted a patent in 1644, the first settlers crossed the Sound to establish their homes. Among them were the families of Reverend Robert Denton, Wil­ liam Raynor, Richard Gildersleeve, John, Robert, and Benjamin Coe, Jonas and Jeremy Wood, Robert Jackson, Simon Searing, and John Erlison. They were joined by John Hicks and Daniel Whitehead of Flushing and, subsequently, by other English settlers from the eastern and western sections of Long Island. Despite treaties and agreements the Indian claimants to the soil remained a vexing problem for many years. The Indian tribes on Long Island were pcirt of_ the Algonkian Nation. In their dealings with the Hempstead settlers they were represented by local chiefs, who -were bought off with Iiquor and cheap trade goods. Not only were the Indian claims "quieted" by the white intruder, but their traditional means of livelihood and sometimes their very lives were taken by the settlers. Some of the settlers found it profitab~e to exploit them in trade and labor but considered them "too worthless to Iive but not bad enough to be hanged." The Indians' title to the land was of little use, since they were unable to enforce their claims. The land-hungry immigrants were not satisfied with their possessions on the Sound and explored the reed-fringed peninsula to the south. Daniel Denton, an early settler who published the first history of New York in 1670, wrote of this area after his return to England: "There are several Navigable Rivers and Bays, which put into the North-side of Long Island, but upon th~ South-side which joyns to the Sea, it is so fortifieo with bars of sands, and sholes, that it is a sufficient defense against any en'emy, yet the South­ side is not without Brooks and Rivulets, which empty th~mselves into the Sea." These South-side brooks he described as "Christal streams" that "run so swift that they purge themselves of such stinking mud and filth which the standing or lowpaced streams [ 8 ] westward of this colony leave lying. Neither do they give way to the Frost in Winter or drought in Summer, but keep their course throughout the year . ~ . well furnished with Fish, as Bosse, Sheepsheads, Place, Perch, Trouts, Eals, Turtles, and divers others." In the matter of game, Denton spoke of "Deer, Bear, Wolves, Foxes, Racoons, Otters, Musquackes and Skunks, Turkies, Heath­ Hens, Quails, Partridges, Pidgeons, Cranes, Geese of several sorts, Brents, Ducks, Widgeon, Teal, and divers others." .

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