 |
Map showing part of the Town
of Babylon, from Atlas of Long
Island, NY, published
by Beers, Comstock & Cline, 1873.
|
Community Names in the Town of Babylon
In the Town of Babylon, we have some very unique
community names.
“Amityville” was adopted as a
community name in 1846. The Long Islander newspaper, August 14, 1846,
announced “The people of West Neck South, have had a meeting and resolved that
the name of their village be changed to that of Amityville.” More elaborate descriptions
of that community meeting have been described as raucous which led Samuel
Ireland to recommend naming the community after his boat, “the Amity,”
meaning friendly. It is the name of the village that incorporated in 1894 and the
hamlet to the north, North Amityville. There is another
Amityville community in Pennsylvania’s Berks County.
The name Babylon, which was
reportedly named in reference to Ancient Babylon, was first adopted in 1803,
and the U.S. Post Office officially assigned the name Babylon in 1830. Babylon is
the name of our Town established in 1872, and the village of Babylon, which incorporated
in 1893. It also led to the hamlets named West Babylon and North
Babylon, referring to their locations as north of Babylon, for
instance. (I thought that we had the only places in the United States named
Babylon, but I recently discovered that Fulton County, Illinois, has an
unincorporated community named Babylon, which lies on the Spoon River. It appears
to be a very small community, and is not recognized as a census location or by
zip code, so I will stick with believing we are the only American Babylonians,
at least for the time being.)
Copiague is derived from a Native American word that
reportedly means “sheltered place” or “safe harbor.” It probably has the most erratic
pronunciation by non-locals of any of our communities. It is pronounced CO-payg
(although I have noticed that older generations tend to use the emphasis co-PAYG).
The name Copiague or Copiag is found on maps in the 1800s for the neck or peninsula
along the Great South Bay that is now the American Venice community. A main
thoroughfare through Copiague and North Amityville. Around 1901, it appears
that the Long Island Rail Road chose the name and spelling ‘Copiague’ for its
new railroad station for the community previously known as East Amityville. Our
local community is definitely the only one named Copiague.
A note about Native American words – Spellings and pronunciations of Long Island Native American words and names are subjective and typically determined by community residents. The Native Americans had a spoken language, rather than a written one. Records kept by Colonists in the 1600s-1800s contained writings of the Europeans’ interpretations of the Native American language. The European settlers typically used phonetic spellings, which differ among documents and writers. In 1911, William Wallace Tooker published The Indian Place-Names on Long Island and Islands Adjacent. While Mr. Tooker offers his interpretations on the Native American language and some interesting insights, the book contains a lot of unverified information.
Admittedly, Deer Park is not
a unique name. Fifteen other states, and countries around the world, have
communities named Deer Park. There is also another Deer Park in New York, although
they spell it as one word, Deerpark, Orange County, NY. But you can understand
why it is so popular – the name evokes a sense of pleasant green meadows where majestic,
fawn-colored deer roam and romp. (For the sake of that blissful Bambi-esque moment,
we’ll ignore that a deer park was where one would hunt deer.) It is said that the
abundance of deer, and other wildlife, in the area led to its naming as Deer Park.
Although writers of the past have claimed that the name was given to our Deer
Park area as early as the 1600s, this Town Historian has been unable to confirm
any reference to the name before the establishment of the railroad station in
1842.
Farmingdale is another fairly common name,
used in six other states. In Nassau County, it is the name of the village
incorporated in 1904. One of the previous names for that area was Hardscrabble,
which usually refers to a place with poor soil … which is interesting,
considering that it ended up with an agricultural school (now SUNY Farmingdale)
… but, getting back on track … … Our hamlet of East Farmingdale
was once occupied by many farms, which later gave way to aviation manufacturing
and other industries, but the name remained.
Lindenhurst was not always Lindenhurst … it started
out as Breslau in 1870. The ‘City of Breslau’ (not really a city government,
but just called that) was a bit larger than the current village of Lindenhurst.
It was named by its founders, Abby and Thomas Welwood and their business
partner Charles Schleier. Mr. Schleier was an immigrant from Breslau, the
German name for Wroclaw, in western Poland, which inspired the name. In 1891,
local residents decided to change the name to Lindenhurst. (‘Why?’, you ask? I’ll
tell you another time.) In the late 1800s, the name Lindenhurst (and
previously, Breslau) was sometimes used from the Great South Bay up through
areas now known as Copiague, West Babylon, East Farmingdale and, even,
Wyandanch. In 1923, the village of Lindenhurst incorporated and an area north
of the village line became known as the hamlet of North Lindenhurst.
Wheatley Heights is our youngest hamlet. Historically, going back to the late
1800s, what is now Wheatley Heights was known as Wyandanch, although it was
part of the Half Hollows School District going back to the early 1800s. The
area was largely unpopulated with a small number of residents who lived on
farms. When zip codes were introduced in the early 1960s, Wyandanch was
assigned 11798. In 1974, local residents and civic associations succeeded in
getting a post office substation to serve the northern part of the zip code and
they named it the Wheatley Heights post office. That is how the name was
officially given … by the post office. The name Wheatley Heights
was first used in the Town of Babylon by the Allied Realty Company and its president,
William Geiger (yes, the man for whom the park was named – because he gave the
land to the Town of Babylon). The name Wheatley Heights Estates, first used
around 1913, was given to several residential areas developed by Allied Realty
and Mr. Geiger in the present communities of Deer Park and Wyandanch.
As for Wyandanch, the name
was covered in a post last week. But, in case you missed it … The community was
previously known as West Deer Park, a reasonable geographic description in the
late 1800s, but one that reportedly caused confusion for railroad travelers who
got off at the West Deer Park station when they were headed for Deer Park. The
Long Island Rail Road officially changed the name of its station to Wyandance,
on January 1, 1889. By the early 1900s, however, the common spelling and
pronunciation had changed to Wyandanch.
*For now, I am not going to address the
names of the communities on the barrier islands. They have not been forgotten.
I will address them at a later date.