About the project

About the Project

The Town of Islip History Project gathers, describes, and makes freely accessible the primary sources of Islip's past — and asks what that past still means for the people who live here now.

The Town of Islip holds nearly three and a half centuries of documented history, from the 1683 patent granted to William Nicoll on land long held by the Secatogue, through the Revolution that placed Long Island under British occupation, to the railroad towns, baymen, and great estates that followed. Islip is also one of the most diverse towns on Long Island today, and its history is still being made by the families who have arrived over the last half-century.

This archive is built to hold both. It assembles maps, photographs, documents, and scholarship into collections that students, researchers, and residents can use freely, and it pairs that record with interpretive work connecting the town's founding ideas to its present-day communities.

The Project launches with its inaugural study and public exhibit, The Promise of Independence, produced as part of a Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation fellowship. Future contributions will expand the archive across the town's collections and communities.

Using this archive

Everything here is intended for research, teaching, and public education. Materials may be cited and shared for those purposes; rights to individual items rest with their holding institutions, which are named on each record. Where a date, figure, or attribution is still being verified, it is marked as such rather than presented as settled.

Accessibility & language

The Project is committed to meeting WCAG 2.1 AA and to presenting its core public work in more than one language. The site is published in English and Spanish, and a Polish edition is in preparation. If you encounter a barrier to using this site, please tell us so we can fix it.