Cold Spring Harbor

Variant name of place

Cold Spring

Geographic position

40.8667° N, 73.4500° W

Sources

"The Early Years." Town of Huntington, 2014. Web. http://www.huntingtonny.gov/content/13747/13817/16487/16489/default.aspx; "History." Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2015. Web. http://www.cshl.edu/About-Us/History.html; "History." Cold Spring Harbor Village, 2009. Web. http://www.coldspringharborvillage.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=169&Itemid=56; Hughes, Robert. "Cold Spring Harbor." Huntington History, 2 Sep. 2014. Web. http://huntingtonhistory.com/2014/09/02/cold-spring-harbor/; Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+cold+harbor+long+island

General note

Cold Spring Harbor is a hamlet within the town of Huntington on the Long Island Sound in New York’s Suffolk County. It was originally called Cold Spring because of the naturally cold freshwater springs in the area, and the later addition of "Harbor" distinguished the town from New York’s other Cold Spring located on the Hudson River. The area’s original inhabitants were Delaware-Munsee speaking Indians whom the Dutch called the Matinnecocks. Despite the popular belief that Long Island was originally home to 13 tribes, historians argue that no formal tribal structure existed in the area before European settlement. Instead, they theorize that internal structures arose among the people called the Matinnecocks to cope with European expansion and became integral to the survival of the tribe as a people. Yet, diseases brought by the English and Dutch devastated indigenous communities on Long Island before the area’s settlement. By 1653, when three Englishmen from nearby Oyster Bay purchased what would become the town of Huntington, which encompassed Cold Spring Harbor, from Sachem Raseokan, only a small portion of the area’s Matinnecocks remained. After 1653, English settlers, who were primarily Congregationalists from Massachusetts and Connecticut, began to establish homes in Cold Spring Harbor. British troops occupied the town for the duration of the Revolutionary War following Washington’s defeat in the Battle of Long Island. After the war, Occom preached to remaining Indians in Cold Spring Harbor. Today, the town is famous for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, founded in 1890 and home to key advancements in the fields of genetics and cancer research.