SCHS: Photo of Week Aug 17th | Town of Riverhead, 1792 + Equestrian History of LI, 8.24th

Photo of the Week

August 17th, 2024

FROM THE SCHS LIBRARY ARCHIVES

“How shall we know it is us without our past?”
– John Steinbeck

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Aerial View of Riverhead, 1938. (Image from the Riverhead Pictorial Collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society Library & Archive. Image © copyright Suffolk County Historical Society. All rights reserved.)

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The Town of Riverhead was created on March 13, 1792, when the New York State Legislature officially divided it from the Town of Southold:

“WHEREAS, many of the freeholders and inhabitants of Southold…have represented to the Legislature that their town is so long, that it is very inconvenient for them to attend town meetings and…to transact the other necessary business of the said town; and have prayed that the same may be divided into two towns.”

This followed a petition by “Peter Reeves and others” seeking the separation from Southold, which was ultimately approved despite requests by “John Wells and other Justices of the Peace and other inhabitants of Southold” that the action be held over until the next meeting of the Legislature.

“THEREFORE, Be it enacted by the People of the State of New York…that all that part of the said Town of Southold lying to the westward of a line beginning at the Sound and running thence southerly to the Bay…and which is the eastern boundary or side of a farm now in the tenure of William Albertson and is the reputed line of division between the parishes of Ocquebogue and Mattituck shall…be erected into a distinct and separate town by the name of River Head.”

Up until this historic moment, the area known thereafter as the Town of River Head had flourished in colonial times as the western portion of the Town of Southold, which had been settled in 1640, and which had included Shelter Island and other islands, and all the North Shore of Long Island from Orient Point to Wading River.

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Suggested Readings: Seeking the Past: Writings from 1832-1905 Relating to the History of the Town of Riverhead, edited by Tom Twomey (Newmarket Press, 2004), and Pioneers of Riverhead Town, compiled by Virginia Wines (Suffolk County Historical Society, 1981).

by Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, Head Librarian

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