Librarian and baseball historian Fabio Montella returns to the podcast to bring us the story of Ralph “Sammy” Bunn. Bunn was a Setauket native who excelled at baseball all his life. A star athlete in high school in the 1930s, he went on to play for decades on a number of teams and leagues in the makeshift world of community baseball in Suffolk County. His short stint pitching for the Brookhaven Highway Department team (starting in 1939) makes Bunn, by Montella’s research, the first documented Black player to break the color barrier on Long Island. (Bunn was soon followed by his Brookhaven teammate Kenneth Sells.)

On today’s episode Montella describes Bunn’s storied career in baseball and his life as a dedicated family man and World War II veteran. Working with Sammy’s son, Ralph Jr., and his nephew Carlton Edwards (an accomplished player in his own right) Montella brought to light many details, including Ralph’s Shinnecock heritage, a fact not mentioned in contemporary accounts. You’ll also hear more about the world of community and semiprofessional baseball on the Island along with other teams like the Suffolk Giants and the Huntington Police Department who make it such an interesting glimpse into local history.

Further Research

• Fabio Montella
• “The Suffolk Giants of Setauket: From Segregation to Integration.“
• Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
• Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
• Audio footnotes (past episodes with Fabio Montella):
  • The Arthur Murray Girls Baseball Team
  • Satchel Paige in Riverhead
  • The Cuban Giants of Long Island

Greig Stewart “Chubby” Jackson was a swinging sensation in his day. A child of vaudevillians, he was raised in an enclave of actors, musicians, and performers in Freeport, Long Island against the backdrop of Prohibition and a burgeoning club scene. Exposed to music at an early age, he jumped from high school to playing bass in swing bands in New York City and on the road, most notably with bandleader Woody Herman.

On today’s episode we trace the life of the man with three very special guests: Freeport Village historian Regina Feeney, jazz historian Scott Yanow, and Chubby’s daughter Jaijai Jackson. And thanks to Monk Rowe and the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College, we can add in the voice of Chubby himself.

Chubby was a colleague to Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz greats (you’ll see him near the top of the steps in A Great Day in Harlem). His career spans the height of the swing era and the rise of bop with a side trip into headlining several kiddie TV shows in Chicago and New York. Through it all the constants in his life remained the love of family, of performing, and of Freeport.

Further Research

• Chubby Jackson oral history (Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College)
• Freeport History Encyclopedia (Freeport Memorial Library)
• Jazz Network Worldwide
• Not Just Jazz Network
• Scott Yanow, journalist and historian
• Music credits from Freesound.org
  • Jazz Bass B 1.OGG by gregstermatic. License: Creative Commons 0
  • Double bass Jazz loop by elzozo. License: Creative Commons 0
  • Jazz loop.wav by FrankyBoomer. License: Creative Commons 0

The Long Island-born, Yale-educated Benjamin Tallmadge seized his moment to shine in the American Revolution. Whether fighting the British on horseback with the 2nd Continental Dragoons or uncovering their secrets through his agents in the Culper Spy Ring, Tallmadge kept up a hectic pace. You can also throw in maritime battles on the Long Island Sound and daring raids behind enemy lines.

Historian Richard Welch documented Tallmadge's eventful life in his 2014 book General Washington's Commando: Benjamin Tallmadge in the Revolutionary War. On today's episode he explains the significance of this important figure in Long Island and American history. He also helps illustrate the nature of British activity in the New York region, the documentary trail he followed, and what questions were left unanswered.

Further Research

• General Washington's Commando: Benjamin Tallmadge in the Revolutionary War by Richard Welch (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (Google Books)
• The Battle of Brooklyn/Long Island (American Battlefield Trust)
• The Death of John André (William Clements library)
• Audio Footnotes
  • All episodes on the American Revolution

Dr. Tammy C. Owens of Skidmore College joins us to discuss her 2019 article "Fugitive Literati: Black Girls' Writing as a Tool of Kinship and Power at the Howard School." Having discovered a treasure trove of letters written in the early 1900s by girls at the Howard Orphanage and Industrial School, Owens was off on a journey to learn more. The research took her from the Schomburg Center in Harlem to Tuskegee University in Alabama and, ultimately, to the doorstep of the Kings Park Heritage Museum.

What Owens pieced together was the story of young Black orphans forging connections and support networks through a unique institution known by some as the Tuskegee of the North. The letters she found tell personal and sometimes painful stories, often by the details which they leave out. Owens' research brings to light voices that are often overlooked or missing from archival collections. We hear her thoughts on the process, the historians and authors who inspire her, and the story of her life-changing day riding around Kings Park with Leo P. Ostebo.

Further Research

• Owens, T. C. (2019). Fugitive literati: Black girls’ writing as a tool of kinship and power at the Howard School. Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 7(1), 56–79. https://doi.org/10.5406/womgenfamcol.7.1.0056
• Howard Orphanage and Industrial School Photograph Collection (NYPL Schomburg Center)
• Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum
• Tuskegee University History and Mission
• Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs (find in a library via WorldCat)
• The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Craft (find in a library via WorldCat)
• Darlene Clark Hine

While Long Island developed a reputation for affluence throughout the 20th Century, there has always been a parallel history of the everyday workers and servants who toiled in the shadow of that reputation. The economic boom of the war years and the subsequent population boom in the 1950s did not change that.

Tim Keogh, assistant professor of history at Queensborough Community College, delves into this history in his book Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Suburb. He documents the influence of federal spending in the 1940s, the questionable building practices of the Levitts, and a host of attempts to alleviate poverty and fight the dominance of single family housing on Long Island.

Further Research

• In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Suburb (Chicago Press)
• Suffolk County Online Records
• Nassau County Land Records Viewer
• “Business Zone Helps Islip Reclaim a Slum.” (NYT)
• A Freedom Budget for All Americans (The Atlantic)
• Audio Footnotes (related episodes):
  • Making Long Island
  • Cold War Long Island
  • Long Island Migrant Labor Camps

No one sheds a tear for the British Loyalists of Long Island, those inhabitants who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. But genealogist Brendon Burns has spent a tremendous amount of effort tracking them down through libraries and archives across the world. The result is his 5-volume series The Loyal and Doubtful: Index to the Acts of British Loyalism in the Greater New York and Long Island Area 1775-1783. It's a meticulous record of people in New York, Staten Island, and on Long Island, acting in support of King George and the efforts to subdue the patriots.

The Loyal and Doubtful is of a piece with Brendon's work as a genealogist at the Daughters of the American Revolution. He helps vet applications for membership, which includes proving that an ancestor demonstrated "unfailing" service to the revolution. This criteria poses a problem on Long Island where swearing an oath of loyalty or other public acts of support could hardly have been avoided.

On this episode, Brendon walks us through the DAR process, the challenges of disproving loyal acts, and what the surviving records can tell us about life on Long Island during the war.

Further Research

• Brendon Burns (APG)
  • The Loyal and Doubtful
  • The Virginia Genealogist
• Genealogical Research System (DAR)
• Daughters of the American Revolution
• Inhabitants of New York by Thomas B. Wilson (via WorldCat)
• “A List of Persons on Long Island”: Biography, Voluntarism, and Suffolk County’s 1778 Oath of Allegiance by Christopher Minty (LI History Journal)
• Audio Footnotes:
  • Episode 45 : Loyalist Richard Floyd
  • Episode 137: Lost British Forts of Long Island

Every other year, Preservation Long Island compiles a list of historic places on Long Island that are endangered. Each list is a mix of structures from different periods of time, each with its own history and own preservation challenges yet all worthy of preserving for future generations.

On today's episode, Preservation Long Island's Preservation Director Tara Cubie joins us to discuss the 2023 list. The seven places are: the Stepping Stones Light House (Kings Point), the Coindre Hall Boathouse (Huntington), the Shutt House (Brentwood), Kings Park Psychiatric Center (Kings Park), the Eliphalet Whitman House (Smithtown), the Mill Pond House (Oyster Bay) and the Perkins Electric Generating Plant (Riverhead). 

Tara talks about the sites, the groups who nominated them, the struggles that each of them face, and the reasons why you should care about their survival.

Further Research

• Preservation Long Island
• Friends of Caleb Smith Preserve
• Great Neck Historical Society
• Coindre Hall
• Preserve KPPC (Facebook)
• Brentwood’s Endangered Historic Places
• The Perkins Local History Collection
• Audio Footnotes
  • Episodes about preservation

There is a Long Island just below the Kansas border with Nebraska, between the Elk and Prairie Dog Creeks. It's apparently the creeks that gave the area its name. When swollen with rain, they cut off the land in between until it appeared to be an island rising from the surrounding plains. 

Long Island is also the home town of Carrie Cox and on today's episode she describes what it was like growing up in a small town on the family farm. We discuss the local sites and legends, the value of history in the tourism industry, and the success of the Northern Valley Huskies.

Further Research

• Travel Tales from Long Island, Kansas
• Monument Rocks, Kansas
• Northern Valley Huskies Sports
• Long Island, Kansas Meteorite
• Grasshopper Plague of 1874