Oyster Bay, New York
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Oyster Bay is the name of a hamlet on the North Shore of Long Island in Nassau County in the state of New York, USA. The hamlet is also the site of a station on the Long Island Rail Road and the eastern termination point of that branch of the railroad.
The community is within the Town of Oyster Bay, a town which contains 18 villages and 18 hamlets.
The hamlet's area was considerably larger before several of its parts incorporated as villages. At least six of the 36 villages and hamlets of the Town of Oyster Bay have shores on Oyster Bay Harbor and its inlets, and many of these at one time or another have also been referred to as Oyster Bay.
The Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District was created on July 1, 1960 by the action of the voters in the former Oyster Bay and East Norwich School Districts. The district's 13.1 square mile (34 km²) boundaries include the hamlets of Oyster Bay and East Norwich and the incorporated villages of Centre Island, Oyster Bay Cove, Cove Neck, and portions of Mill Neck, Muttontown, Laurel Hollow, and Upper Brookville.
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History
The area was the traditional starting place for settlers from Connecticut, who were granted a patent from New Amsterdam and thus became the first to inhabit the county around 1641. The area became the boundary between Dutch settlements and the English settlements in Suffolk County.
In the 1890s, the LIRR had ferry service from Oyster Bay to Connecticut, where rail service continued to Boston.
The oysters that give the bay its name are now the only source of traditionally farmed oysters from Long Island, providing up to 90% of all the oysters harvested in New York State.
Notable past residents
Oyster Bay is known for the residence and summer White House of Theodore Roosevelt, Sagamore Hill (though that residence is in a nearby area known since 1927 as the Village of Cove Neck).
Many well known United States entertainers spent their youth in this area; among its best known former residents are musician Billy Joel, tennis player John McEnroe, author Thomas Pynchon, and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo (Pynchon and Ranaldo both attended Oyster Bay High School). A less distinguished figure from the hamlet's past is Typhoid Mary, whose contagiousness was discovered following an investigation into her employment at a summer home in Oyster Bay in 1906.
Points of interest
- Planting Fields Arboretum, a 400-acre arboretum and botanical garden near Oyster Bay.
External links
- Oyster Bay Historical Society (http://members.aol.com/obhistory/)
- Newsday article on Oyster Bay hamlet (http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-historytown-hist003h,0,6524226.story)
- Newsday article on Town of Oyster Bay (http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-historytown-tobay,0,6691062.story)
- Oyster Bay roots (http://www.rootsweb.com/~nynassa2/oysterbay.htm)