On the street where you live

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The names of streets in a community sometimes tell an interesting story. In Oceanside, Oak Street was the name of the street between Foxhurst Road and Brower Avenue in front of where School #3 stands today. While that area was once referred to as “The Oaks,” (and there is an Oakview Avenue and Oak Court nearby), the main north-south corridor is no longer known as Oak Street. It’s now known as Fortesque Avenue. While it appears that Oak Street became Fortesque Avenue in the late 1800s, the origins of the name Fortesque Avenue is unclear. At the time Oak Street was a road that connected the old Pettit Farm to School Street (present-day Foxhurst Road). So why would the community change its street name from Oak Street to Fortesque Avenue? It is possible that the street’s name change was tied into the Roosevelt family.

While there is no evidence to tie the name Fortesque to Oceanside or its prior names of Christian Hook and Oceanville, there is, however, a connection of the name Fortescue to the area. According to the 1880 U.S. Census, a “Marion T. Fortescue”, was known to be living in the Oceanside area along with her three children: Kenyon, Maude, and “Roland”; and two servants. Born Marion Therese O’Shea in Ireland in 1852, Marion was purportedly the widow of Robert Francis Fortesque at the time of the 1880 census. Very little information exists, however, on Robert Fortescue; no known records of when and where he was born, when and where he died, or his occupation. There is also no known connection of Robert Fortescue to Oceanside.

Many people believe that Robert Francis Fortescue never existed. In fact, Raymond Spinzia, a Long Island historian and author, asserts that Robert F. Fortescue was nothing more than a fictitious lawyer created by Robert B. Roosevelt – the uncle of Theodore Roosevelt.

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