As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, the North Shore Historical Museum is looking beyond the familiar Revolutionary War stories of Boston and Philadelphia and focusing on what the fight for independence meant much closer to home.
The museum’s new exhibit, “250 Years on the North Shore,” explores the Revolutionary era through the experiences of Long Islanders, while connecting the nation’s founding to later chapters of Glen Cove history. The exhibit, which runs through November, features artifacts, historical accounts and illustrations, along with photographs and a flag from Glen Cove’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration.
“We always so often think about Boston and Philadelphia, the Revolutionary War, but Long Island, for example, Brooklyn, Manhattan, this area became very important,” said Richard Harris, a museum board member and professor of humanities, assistant dean and director of humanities at Webb Institute, in Glen Cove.
British forces, Harris explained, took control of Long Island early in the war and held it for seven years. The region was politically divided as well, with many residents remaining loyal to the Crown while others supported independence. For local Patriots, Harris said, living in British-controlled territory meant they were often outnumbered by Loyalists.
The exhibit took roughly 10 months to develop, and was assembled by several museum board members, who divided the research among different aspects of the Revolutionary period and its local connections. Harris focused on the broader history and major events and personalities, while Jonathan Sherman concentrated on Long Island. Board member Koorosh Leibowitz developed a section examining Glen Cove’s Bicentennial.
Sherman, a Sea Cliff art conservator, said that one of the challenges was reducing the enormous amount of material he discovered into digestible exhibit panels.
“It’s really hard to edit everything down to these cards, because I know it’s a lot of reading, but there could have been a lot more,” Sherman said. “In a way, it would have been easier, from everything I learned, to write the thesis than it is to divide everything up into little cards.”
His research revealed a Long Island far more politically complicated than the simplified Patriot-vs.-British narrative often associated with the Revolution. Sherman said that Long Island was heavily Loyalist, but divisions existed. The South Shore generally leaned toward Britain, while the North Shore, with its closer connections to New England, had stronger support for independence.
The exhibit traces the period leading to war, including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the publication of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” before moving through major battles and the British surrender at Yorktown. A separate section focuses on the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn.
But the museum also brings the story forward two centuries.
While searching its archives, Leibowitz discovered a box containing materials from the Glen Cove Bicentennial. He incorporated photos and other memorabilia into the exhibit, giving visitors a glimpse of how the city marked the nation’s 200th birthday 50 years ago.
“We can maybe look at these photos, relate to them, see some familiar faces,” Leibowitz said, noting that the images show local politicians and residents celebrating. “It looks like a ball at the Bicentennial.”
Leibowitz also uncovered an older document that provided an unexpected parallel to the Revolution: the July 3, 1917, referendum on Glen Cove’s separation from the Town of Oyster Bay.
The dispute, he said, centered largely on taxes, with Glen Cove residents believing they contributed more to Oyster Bay’s tax base than they received in services. The city ultimately broke away, adding to the exhibit what Leibowitz jokingly described as Glen Cove’s “own little revolution.”
The history was already familiar to at least one young visitor. Satya Gidwani, 11, of San Francisco, was visiting family in Locust Valley when he stopped at the museum and enthusiastically began recalling what he knew about the events of the Revolution that took place on Long Island.
“I’ve heard about the American Revolution that was on Long Island, like the Battle of Long Island and Brooklyn Heights and the Battle of Setauket,” Satya said.
For Harris, those local connections can make a period known only from textbooks feel new again.
“This is a period — the personalities, which I think almost everyone has read about in American history books, high school courses and so forth,” Harris said. “But there’s so many interesting personalities and stories that never appeared in the books or details about what happened.”
For visitors, the exhibit, which runs through November, offers a reminder that the Revolution wasn’t simply something that unfolded elsewhere. For seven years, Long Island was occupied territory, its communities divided by competing loyalties and its geography strategically important to the war.
For more information visit: northshorehistoricalmuseum.org
