Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Merrick Community in Horton’s Journal, 1742

Azariah Horton’s June 7, 1742 journal entry records a visit to Native people at Merrick during his travels along Long Island’s South Shore. Horton’s journal records Native people living in Merrick long after colonial land transactions. Their presence is part of a continuing community history that accounts of settlement often overlook. In his third missionary journal, Azariah Horton recorded a Merrick visit on June 7, 1742, between his June 6 entry for Rockaway and a June 7 afternoon entry for Fort Neck. He described the Merrick listeners as thankful for the instruction he offered. The account appeared in Christian Monthly History , no. VI (1744), and was later reprinted in Gaynell Stone’s edited The History and Archaeology of the Montauk . Horton wrote as a Christian missionary. His brief assessment records his own perspective; it does not tell us the listeners’ names or give their...