Long Island celebrates its Revolutionary roots through restored gravestones and historic 1775 flag
While Nassau County leaders honored the memories of Revolutionary War patriots by planting flags at their graves, Suffolk County officials gathered to celebrate the Hulbert Flag, which might predate the famed Betsy Ross Flag.
Revolutionary War gravesites were restored and honored in Nassau County and a Revolutionary War-era flag was celebrated in Suffolk County on Tuesday as Long Island communities marked America's 250th anniversary by remembering the local people and symbols that helped shape the nation's founding.
In Port Washington, North Hempstead officials planted American flags beside recently restored Revolutionary War gravestones at Monfort Cemetery.
At least eight Patriots of the Revolutionary War are buried there, and the cemetery is also the final resting place of four signers of North Hempstead's historic 1775 Declaration of Independence from Loyalist Hempstead. Their names are Adrian Onderdonk, North Hempstead's first town supervisor; Petrus (Peter) Onderdonk, Thomas Dodge and Martin Schenck.
In 1775, while Hempstead remained under Loyalist control, 15 patriots from present-day Port Washington, Manhasset, Flower Hill, Roslyn and Great Neck broke away, declaring they would "be no further considered as a part of the township of Hempstead."
They then formed the Cow Neck Militia in support of American independence.
Their actions laid the foundation for the eventual creation of the Town of North Hempstead in 1784.
The cemetery, originally established in the 18th century as Flower Hill Cemetery, contains more than 150 graves dating from 1737 through the late 1800s. Some of Cow Neck's earliest Dutch settlers are interred there.
The town says the restoration project was done by Steward Preservation Services, a firm that specializes in historic preservation and monument conservation. They used non-invasive ways to removed centuries of biological growth like moss, algae and lichen.
“The cemetery has been transformed. Sunken stones have been raised and reset. Tilted stones have been straightened. Fragments of stones, large and small, above and below ground, have been gathered,” said town historian Ross Lumpkin. “Most amazing of all, some gravestones thought to be missing have been reassembled. Yet more can be accomplished."
While Nassau County leaders honored the memories of Revolutionary War patriots by planting flags at their graves, Suffolk County officials gathered to celebrate the Hulbert Flag, which might predate the famed Betsy Ross Flag.
According to local historians, the flag was created in 1775 by Capt. John Hulbert and was carried by him and his militiaman from Fort Ticonderoga to Philadelphia, where members of the Continental Congress may have seen its design and drawn inspiration from it when creating the first national flag.
It is considered one of the earliest version of the Stars and Stripes, with the 13 stars and stripes on the flag representing the 13 colonies at the time of the war. It is displayed alongside a question that continues to intrigue historians: "Could this be America's first flag?"
The flag was discovered in Bridgehampton during the 1920s and remains one of the historical societies most discussed artifacts in their collections.
"Often Southampton carries the reputation of being part of the royalist support but we know Southampton's early residents risked their lives to stand up to British colonial power," said Michael Iasilli, a Southampton town councilman.
