Freeport High School - Voyageur Yearbook (Freeport, NY)

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AS YOU HAVE READ, THIS BOOK is dedicated to our town of Freeport, and we're going to take a little jaunt through the community and note the things that make it such an interesting place. Our town began in the year of 1650. Before that time, the Meroke Tribe, a band of Indians, inhabited the region north of Seaman Avenue along the ridge of woods extending east to Main Street. At that time, nearly all of the section north of the rail- road Was covered with dense forests. Free- port received its name because, as tradition goes, just south of our town is Jones Inlet, a water route leading from the bay to che ocean, and trading vessels could sail through the inlet and land goods Without paying a

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M NISTR T O duty, at a free port. In 1790, one of our first important historical events was Presi- dent George Washington's visit to Long Island, and it is believed that he stopped at a home located in the eastern part of Freeport. The house was a one-story build- ing with a sloping roof, and had an outside stone chimney on the west wall. The log cabins built by our early settlers remained until 1783, and then frame houses began to rise. By I795, there were about 24 dwell- ings in Freeport. Our first post office was established in 1858. For some time prior to this date, Freeport was called Raynortown, due to the many families of that name residing there, but when the post oHice was established, the name was changed to the present one. The stage coach was our only means of transportation until the year 1868, when the South Side Railroad Company laid out our present line of communication oc- cupied by the Long Island Railroad Com- pany. Because of this new means of travel, Freeport gradually enlarged in population, and on june 18, 1892, a group of citizens met on Main Street to discuss incorporation. Several months later a certificate was filed in the Queens County Clerk's Oiiice at Ja- maica, duly certifying that Freeport was now an incorporated village. After this, Freeport grew rapidly. It has its civic, social, educational, and religious centers, just like any other community of about 23,000 population. In the Atlas, we read, Freeport, Nassau County, New York: On the Long Island Railroad, a residential sub- urb of New York situated six miles from Jones Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. And there you have it-that's Freeport in a nutshell.