Suffolk County · Long Island · New York
The Promise of Independence
La Promesa de la Independencia
Revolutionary Long Island and the people of Islip — many roots, one town.
Islip did not watch the American Revolution from a distance. After the Battle of Long Island in 1776, the town lived under British occupation; Sagtikos Manor, in West Bay Shore, was used as a British headquarters, and in 1790 a newly elected President Washington spent a night there during his tour of Long Island.
This project asks what the Revolution's promise — liberty, citizenship, the question of who belongs — has meant in Islip ever since, including for the families who have made the town one of the most diverse on Long Island today.
From 1776 to today
One town, two centuries of the same question
The land traces from the Secatogue, through the 1683 patent granted to William Nicoll, into a nation being born. Isaac Thompson, the squire of Sagtikos Manor, served in Islip's town government before and after the Revolution; the British billeted their officers under his roof, and Washington later thanked the spies who had helped win independence just down the road.
The ideals that came out of that founding were not settled in 1783. They are a promise each generation extends. This archive places Islip's revolutionary past and its present-day communities in the same frame — and asks how the meaning of independence is decided, again and again, in one Long Island town.
Where to begin
Ways into the project
The archive is being built in stages. Today you can read about the project, its research, and the fellowship behind it; the collections and exhibit follow.
Read
About the Research
The team
About the Fellowship
Get in touch
Contact & Contribute
About the project
A permanent, citable record for the town
The Town of Islip History Project gathers and makes freely accessible the primary sources of Islip's past. It is developed through a Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation fellowship at Stony Brook University, and launches with its inaugural study and bilingual public exhibit on migration and the meaning of independence.