Panel 6 of 7
Many Roots, One Town
In brief
After the Revolution, Islip kept growing as new families and communities made it their home. The Jewish community of Islip is one strong example of how the town's story kept widening to include more people.
The promise of independence kept unfolding long after the Revolution, because the meaning of “the people” kept expanding. Over generations, new families and communities entered Islip's civic, religious, and cultural life and built institutions that made belonging visible.
The roots reach back to the town's very first records. In January 1798, Supervisor Nathaniel Conklin counted about 120 dwelling houses in Islip and wrote that twenty-five of them, about one in every five, were homes where “Indians, Mustees and free Negros” lived; “Mustee” was a period word for people of mixed ancestry, commonly Native American and African. The town minutes tell the same story through individual lives: in 1740 Joseph Nicolls, whom the clerk recorded as “Mallator,” meaning mulatto, agreed with the town to board a poor neighbor for two shillings a week, and in 1787 the town bought grain for a woman the clerk called “Indian hannah.” Early Islip was never a town of one people.
One clear example is the Jewish community of Islip Town. A local history records that Jews have lived in Islip since at least the end of the Civil War, tracing the community through the Bay Shore United Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery Association recognized in 1897, the first synagogue in 1918, and the later growth of congregations in Bay Shore, Brentwood, Central Islip, Oakdale, East Islip, and Sayville. It also records Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Islip after World War II, among them Samuel Sitko.
This kind of community history is the bridge between the Revolution and the present. The Revolution created a language of rights and belonging; later generations had to make that promise real in local life. In time, this panel should hold other communities as well, including Italian, Hispanic and Latino, Polish, Central American, Dutch, Irish, African American, and Indigenous families, as the sources become ready.
Sources
- Mollie Sebor, “The Story of the Jewish Community of Islip Town” (Girl Scout Gold Award booklet).
- Nathaniel Conklin, “Description of the Town of Islip in Suffolk County,” January 11, 1798; transcribed and annotated by Christopher Albergo and George J. Munkenbeck, Office of the Town Historian.
- Carl A. Starace, ed., Book One of the Minutes of Town Meetings and Register of Animal Ear Marks of the Town of Islip, 1720–1861 (Town of Islip, 1982); digitized by the Office of the Town Historian.