Health & Fitness
From Plymouth Rock to Levittown
A look at the history of Levittown from a local historian.
For an event so historically significant, much of what contemporary Americans know about the Pilgrims is lost in clichés, shibboleths and stereotypes. They were not all saintly, pious, humble, Christian folk - although they aspired to be - nor were they opportunistic, land-grabbing, intolerant religious zealots.
The Wampanoag and other indigenous nations they encountered were not tree-hugging hippi pacifists nor belligerent savages in a God-forsaken wilderness. The story of the "first Thanksgiving" is, amongst other things, an extraordinary chronicle of how the English, Wampanoag, and other nations, in middle decades of the 17th Century became inextricably interconnected laying the foundations not merely for the European settlement of New England but the settlement of our own community as well:
1534. King Henry VIII establishes the Church of England.
1558-1603. The reign of Elizabeth I sees the flowering of science, literature, and religious reform; England's emergence as a world power after 1588 but also the growth of destabilizing political and religious factions within the Church of England and Parliament.
1603. James I becomes King of England, authorizes an official translation of the Bible; begins a crack-down on political and religious dissent.
1606. Group of religious dissidents from Scroby in Nottinghamshire- today known as the Pilgrims - reject the Church of England's political and ecclesiastical authority and remove to the Netherlands.
1610. The Wampanoag nation of costal Massachusetts is invaded by the Abenaki from the north and the Narragansetts from the west; Henry Hudson sails into New York Bay under the flag of the Dutch West India Company - the beginnings of New Netherland.
1614. The Wampanoag warrior Squanto is captured by English merchants and sold into slavery. Missionaries secure his freedom and he makes his way to England where he learns English.
1619. Squanto returns to Massachusetts to find that a plague (probably smallpox and probably spread by the Wampanoag-Abenaki war) has decimated the tribes of eastern New England; finds his family dead and village abandoned.
1620. Pilgrims, dissatisfied with being an ethno-religious minority in the Netherlands and fearful that a resurgent Catholic Spain might again take control of that country, arrange - after many setbacks - to secure passage on The Mayflower out of Plymouth, England. Blow off course, they arrive in Massachusetts with nearly half their numbers dead from disease, establish contact with the Wampanoag and arrange an alliance of mutual assistance and defense with Squanto acting as a liaison.
1621. Pilgrims and Wampanoag celebrate a harvest feast now considered "the first Thanksgiving"; additional English ships begin to arrive into New England.
1630. Winthrop Fleet of fifteen English ships arrive carrying nearly two hundred settlers - including John Seaman and Robert Williams; Lion Gardiner arrives on eastern Long Island and becomes the isle's first European settler.
1632. Narragansett War. The Narragansetts are defeated by the English and Wampanoag.
1634-44. Pequot War. English and Wampanoag defeat a the Pequots and Mohegans.
1643. Rev. Robert Fordham and John Carmen lead an expedition of a score of Englishmen (including John Seaman and Robert Williams) out of Stamford, Connecticut to acquire land in Dutch-controlled western Long Island from the Massapequan Indians. The acquisition is known as the Hempstead Purchase and is the beginning of the Town of Hempstead.
1648. Robert Williams meets with Pugnipan of the Matinecock Indians to acquire settlement rights to the lands that comprise present-day Hicksville, Woodbury, and Syosett.
1650. Treaty of Hartford between Dutch West India Company and New England Confederation, a loose association of Puritan villages and farmsteads, divides Long Island along into Dutch and English jurisdictions along what is approximately today's Nassau/Suffolk border.
1653. Peter Wright, Samuel Mayo, and William Leverich purchase land between present-day Hicksville and Oyster Bay from Mohannes and Asiapam of the Matinecock Indians. Town of Oyster Bay is established.
1664. John Seaman's Jerusalem Purchase from Takapausha of the Massapequan Indians includes present-day Seaford, Wantagh, and southeastern Levittown; restored Stuart dynasty under Charles II authorizes the Duke of York the seizure of all Dutch-held lands and the establishment of the Colony of Yorkshire (later called New York).
1666. John Seaman establishes his homestead "Cherrywood" near the current Wantagh Ave./Jerusalem Rd. intersection.
