The “Out Plantations” were incorporated into the Town of Newtown. The earliest land grants, starting from the first settlement at Maspeth in 1643, were a crazy patchwork of conflicting titles for small farms and large estates. These claims ran up both the Dutch Kills and the East River, and extended over to Bowery Bay.
Under British rule, in an effort to standardize the colony's government, all property claims were resurveyed and recorded. A new system of counties and townships are set up. All lands north of Newtown Creek and west of Flushing Meadows became part of Newtown Township. The ‘old town,’ Maspeth, disappeared after 60 years.
January 24, 1708
William Hallet III, his wife and five children were murdered by his slaves–a black man and his Indian wife. The two were arrested and executed at Beaver Pond in Jamaica, the man by hanging and the woman by burning. This was the first recorded capital crime in Queens County.
The location of their farm at Newtown Road and 43rd Street was for years regarded as a sinister place best shunned at night. They were buried at the Hallet family cemetery near today’s Goodwill Park in Old Astoria Village.
May 20, 1721
One of the first schools in Queens opens in Middletown, a still surviving hamlet of very old homes on what is today Newtown Road and 46th Street. British and Hessian soldiers during the American Revolution undoubtedly marched by it.
A generation later, some schoolboys found $840 in gold coins in its walls. The hoard was hidden by the schoolmaster during the Revolution.
About 1850, it was sold and became a kitchen attached a local dwelling. Pinpointed through old maps, we are able to confirm that an old house stands on that spot today.
October 1727
Between the hours of 11 PM and midnight, two small earthquakes rattle Queens.
August 1730
An extreme drought makes pastures unable to support livestock in Queens. Desperate farmers feed cattle the first hay crop. But doing so only postpones disaster. It is now inevitable that their herds will starve in the coming winter.
September 1741
Slaves in New York were suspected of plotting to set fire to the city. Many were executed. Although a number in Queens County were arrested, all were freed when their owners vouched for their character.
July 1756
A devastating hurricane sweeps through the Hell Gate and storms across Queens leaving a 15 mile path of destruction.
July 12, 1771
Dow Ditmars, Astoria’s most famous doctor, was born. After graduating from Princeton, he took up medicine and practiced in South America for a while. He moved to Astoria in 1816 and established a medical practice that continued until his 90th year. He died in Astoria in 1860. The present-day Ditmars Boulevard is named after him.
June 18, 1773
A minor earthquake struck the New York City area. Several faults cross the city. One of the most well-known is the Manhatanville fault which runs diagonally along 125th Street in Manhattan to Crescent Street and 35th Avenue in Long Island City.
Another fault line defines the course of the Harlem river. Inability to find bedrock due to this fault caused the builders of the Hell Gate Bridge to have to construct a small “bridge” over the defect in order to anchor the Wards Island pier of the bridge.
April 03, 1775
A group of “Freeholders of Newtown” led by Col Jacob Blackwell signed a public petition asking that Queens County send delegates to the Continental Convention. As every other town in Queens was against this appeal, Queens County was given observer status, but not a vote, at the conference.
May 12, 1776
The Jamaica committee to execute the resolutions passed by the Continental and Provincial Congress passed a resolution stating that:
no person be permitted to move into this township from the date hereof, unless he produces a certificate from the committee where he resided, that he has in all things behaved as a friend to the cause of American freedom. And whereas, sundry persons, in passing and repassing through this town have given just cause of suspicion that they are employed in aiding and assisting the unnatural enemies of America: Therefore, Resolved and Ordered, that all such persons passing through this township be taken up for examination.”
July 04, 1776
Francis Lewis of Whitestone voted for independence at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. A few weeks later he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Born in Wales, he immigrated to the United States in 1735 and established mercantile houses in New York and Philadelphia. He participated in the French and Indian War, when he was captured, and taken as a prisoner to France. On his return the colonial government gave him 5,000 acres of land in recognition of his services.
His estates were lost during the American Revolution and he died in poverty, aged 90 and was interred in Trinity Churchyard.
July 20, 1776
The Provincial Congress resolved that the live stock on Long Island be collected into convenient places where they could be driven to the interior of the island and there guarded or even killed, if necessary, to prevent them falling into the enemy’s hands. Each farmer was to be left one pair of horses. Every large family was allowed to keep three milk cows, a middling family two and a small family one. One-fourth of the militia and minute-men of Long Island were to be drafted immediately to execute these resolutions.
August 1776
After the Battle of Long Island in the summer of 1776, the British army moved into Queens and by the beginning of September, occupied all the major communities. Major General Robertson wrote his official report of the battle to the British parliament while encamped in Elmhurst, and sent troops to Hell Gate to watch the Americans entrenched near present day Gracie Mansion.
In the following weeks both sides exchanged long artillery duels across the East River. The British moved their command to the head of Newtown creek near the location of St Saviour’s church. On October 12, 1776, General von Heister and his German Hessian troops, who were mercenary troops paid by the British, marched from Newtown Village (Grand Avenue and Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst) first to Jamaica, then along Kissena Boulevard to Flushing, pursuing the Americans who had retreated to Westchester, he crossed the East River on 53 flatboats and landed at Throgg’s Neck.
The war was over in Queens and the occupation began. It would last seven long years.
August 1776
Nelly Cornell looked out of an upper window of her house and called out to an officer at the American encampment in Far Rockaway and told him that she saw “trees rising from the ocean.”
He called another officer and observed, “that’s the British fleet; down with the tens, and let’s be off to the ferry.”
Wagons were impressed to convey baggage, and all the cattle were driven off. The Americans lost the Battle of Long Island later in the month, and Queens was occupied by the British for the remainder of the Revolutionary War.
August 28, 1776
A British regiment near Carpenter’s Tavern in Hollis captured American general Nathaniel Woodhull. When he refused to say “God save the King!” Woodhall was slashed on the head by a British officer and bayoneted through the arm. He was sent to a British prison ship in Wallabout Bay, where he later died of his wounds.
Estimates of deaths on those prison ships range as high as 11,000. If so, this would be more than half of all American casualties during that war.
September 1776
The British army, on its way to repel an anticipated American attack at Hell Gate, marched from Brooklyn through Astoria. But there was no enemy at Hell Gate, so British General Robertson requisitioned the house and farm of William Lawrence (located at present day 30th Avenue and Steinway Street), where the army camped for two weeks. After Robertson’s departure British Generals Clark and Heister arrived with their troops, to camp at Lawrence's farm for another three weeks, before finally leaving him in peace.
November 24, 1777
On November 24, 1777, residents of Jamaica debated at a town meeting how to fairly defray the cost of food and lodgings for the British troops billeted in the area. It was decided that the charges would be met like all other public charges, but that householders unlucky enough to have a British soldier billeted in their house would be exempt from providing firewood for the army. Other residents who escaped billeting would have to cut and deliver firewood for the troops.
November 25, 1780
The HMS Hussar, a British frigate supposedly carrying gold and silver to pay British troops, struck Pot Rock in Hell Gate, took on water, and sank just off the Bronx coast near North Brother Island. This sinking, at the height of the American Revolution, was not suspicious at the time since the British controlled all of the seas in and around New York for the duration of the war, 1776-1783.
Over time the sea floor and channel have been blasted and dredged into submission. While most likely on the river's murky bottom, the Hussar's exact whereabouts are unknown.
May 1782
May 1782 saw the inauguration of the first regular ferry service between Horne’s Hook (today, 86th Street) Manhattan and Hallett's Cove, in Queens. It was the second oldest ferry to Long Island after the one at Brooklyn.
A large bell swung between two uprights on either shore. Passengers wishing to cross, and finding the boat on the other side of the river, rang the bell. On the opposite side, the captain would ring the other bell assuring the waiting passengers that the boat would be over right away. If the tide was strong, it required an hour and a half to cross.
November 30, 1783
An earthquake of magnitude 4.9 on the Richter scale struck a wide area of the Northeast. It was strong enough to “throw down chimneys” and was felt from Maine to Virginia.
Two other quakes of approximately magnitude 5.0 on the Richter scale occurred, one in 1737 and the last in 1884. These three quakes are the strongest to hit the New York area (since records have been kept).
We are now in the longest known period without a magnitude 5.0 earthquake. On a geologic timetable, it is only a matter of time before such an event occurs. If such a quake occurred in New York City now, it is expected that serious damage would result.
December 08, 1783
Jamaica was finally free of the last British soldiers. Two weeks after Evacuation Day (Nov. 25), Long Island's seven-year Revolutionary War occupation was over. A large patriotic rally followed the Redcoats’ departure from Jamaica and smaller rallies were held in Dutch Kills and Astoria. The American Revolution was won.
December 22, 1783
The first Town officers of Newtown were elected under independence. They and all political officials in Queens at that time had to deal with the aftermath of the British occupation including dilapidated farm buildings, burned fences and woodlands destroyed by the foraging army.
March 31, 1785
The state legislature selected a site for a new Queens County courthouse at the geographical center of Queens (on Jericho Turnpike east of Nassau Boulevard). The building was dedicated in 1789.
“The entry of the court-house is lined on court days with the stalls of dram sellers and filled with drunken people,” a lawyer wrote shortly after it opened.
Prisoners would routinely sneak away from hallways or kick their way out of cells. Efforts to replace the courthouse after the Civil War created a split in Queens County when the Board of Supervisors voted to move it to Long Island City.
The split became permanent when the western townships (Jamaica, Newtown, Flushing, and Long Island City) voted to become part of New York City in 1898. The eastern townships, Oyster Bay, Hempstead, and North Hempstead voted to create Nassau County.
Ironically, separate fires destroyed both the old and new courthouses in 1905.
September 1787
Rufus Kings signs the United States Constitution. After moving to New York and taking up residence in Jamaica, he embarks in a brilliant career in politics and diplomacy.
October 10, 1789
Sailing up the East River to Flushing, President George Washington, Vice President John Adams, New York Governor George Clinton, and other members of Washington’s cabinet visited the Prince Nursery. The commercial nursery, the first in our new nation, contained, to quote the President,
“fruit gardens and shrubberies.”
Although impressed by the one welcoming cannon salute he received, Washington wrote: “these gardens did not answer my expectations. The shrubs were trifling and the flowers were not numerous.”
October 22, 1789
Two black slaves, Sarah and Nelly, angry at their perceived mistreatment, set fire to the home of Flushing town clerk, Jeremiah Vanderbilt. His house was destroyed along with the town records. The chronicle surrounding the town’s early struggle for religious freedom were destroyed.
Both slaves were convicted in a trial prosecuted by New York Attorney General Aaron Burr at the Queens County courthouse in September 1790. Sarah, the youngest, was eventually reprieved, but Nelly was hanged on October 14, 1790.
April 20, 1790
President George Washington left his mansion at 39 Broadway in Manhattan to acquaint himself with the Long Island countryside. His first day’s trip took him through Brooklyn, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Gravesend and ended in Jamaica, where he stayed overnight at Warner’s Tavern on Jamaica Avenue. On the 21st, his journey went along Jamaica Avenue and Jericho Turnpike through Queens Village. Over the next three days he toured Coram, Setauket, Huntington, Oyster Bay and Manhasset. Proceeding along today’s Northern Blvd, his party stopped over at Flushing then on to along Flushing Avenue to Bedford crossroads before returning to New York via the Brooklyn ferry.
April 07, 1791
Stephen Halsey, known as the ‘Father of Astoria’ is born. Mr. Halsey, in 1835, purchased a large tract of land on what was then called Hallett's Cove. He managed to have a bill passed by the state legislature incorporating it as the first village in Queens County. The name “Astoria” is adopted after John Jacob Astor of New York, an old friend. Until his death forty years later, Halsey took an active interest in developing the community.
January 22, 1794
On January 22, 1794, Josiah Blackwell sells a part of Blackwells Island to his cousins, the Hallett family, which started his family’s slow divestment of the farms they held for more than a century. The Blackwell family painted a colorful chapter in local history.
Although a Blackwell house still stands on Roosevelt Island today (the current name of Blackwells Island), their main farm was across the East River in Ravenwood, Queens. There, an imposing house built of stone built by Josiah’s grandfather stood at the foot of 37th Avenue from 1730 to 1901.
Josiah’s father, Jacob Blackwell, was born in the house in 1717. In his youth he assisted his brother-in-law, Joseph Hallett, in the damming of Sunswick Creek and erecting a grist mill (near present day Socrates Sculpture Park). Jacob, who became a captain in the Newtown Militia, and later a colonel, participated in the French and Indian War of 1754-1763.
To finance this war, the British imposed taxes, creating wide-spread resentment. A provincial congress with representatives from all the colonies assembled at Philadelphia in 1774. At a protest meeting held in the Town Hall at Newtown (Queens Blvd. at Grand Avenue), Colonel Jacob Blackwell was elected a delegate to that Philadelphia convention.
When the Revolution broke out in 1776, and as British advanced through Astoria to Hell Gate, Colonel Blackwell was forced to flee from his house. A British officer hacked an arrow mark on his door with a saber, as a sign that Jacob, a known rebel sympathizer lost his home to a squad of British troops. A few years later, in 1780, he died never living to see his beloved country become independent.
February 15, 1797
Heinrich Englehard Steinweg is born. The master cabinet maker crafted some 400 pianos in Germany before leading his family to America. By 1853, he formed Steinway & Sons.
Known as the “Instrument of the Immortals,” Steinway pianos are the standard piano for the world. By their 150th Anniversary in 2003, the firm built over 550,000 pianos (each one carefully numbered and recorded in master ledgers at the plant). Today, more than 99% of all concert and recording artists use a Steinway piano.
