Patriots in Bellport and the surrounding area were many

Six Patriots from Bellport joined with 29 others from the nearby Brookhaven Southaven areas, local soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Some of today’s street names honored them, like Munsell Road for John and Alex Munsell, and Osborn Lane and Avenue for Joseph and Isaac Osborn.

But Native Americans helped the cause, too.

“There’s a great story that former Chief Harry B. Wallace of the Unkechaug Indian Nation told us,” said Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society and Museum director Tricia Foley. “When William Floyd’s family was evacuated from their estate, the Unkechaugs helped them escape through the woods and then eventually to Connecticut.”

Foley, who is also the exhibit’s curator, had tons of stories like that as she went through the BBHSM’s current exhibit on display to Sept. 6, “Before the Revolution When Bellport was Occumbomack.”

William Floyd was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His estate in Mastic had 44,000 acres and he had enslaved people. Nearby, the Manor of St. George had 64,000 acres. Both sites still exist, although with much less land.

As for the proliferation of Patriots in the area, “Cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia had mostly Loyalists because the shopkeepers did business with the British,” Foley explained. “Out here, where it was agricultural and rural, you had mostly independent people.”

You can see all the names of the local Patriots on a scroll next to the cannonball from the Battle of Long Island.

King George had to replenish his coffers for the Seven Years War, taxing the North American colonists yet again to pay for their defense, a pivotal decision that pushed the revolt. But tensions had been escalating for about a decade before. “There was the Stamp Act and others like the Boston Tea Party and New York Tea Party,” Foley added.

A yarn winder and a spinning wheel sit by the entrance signifying the important roles women played. The Daughters of Liberty boycotted English fabrics, encouraging women to make homespun cloth of wool and linen. “Women made Liberty Tea out of herbs, a way women could speak up,” Foley said. “They started spinning their own wool and had spinning bees. Also significant, “they also took over the farms when the men went to war.”

Seventy-five interesting items are in the exhibit, including the cannonball from the Battle of Long Island; a prized 18th-century desk, which has a secret compartment, from the Dominy craftsmen master cabinetmakers in East Hampton; and a copy of the Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776.

“Most of the language was crafted by Thomas Jefferson,” Foley said, pointing out that he crossed out words.

The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation awarded BBHM $5,000 for the exhibit.

The story leading up to the Declaration of Independence really deserves individual study. But in a nutshell, Great Britain’s taxation and frontier policy issues forced the colonists’ hands. Debates over authority and rights finally broke out in armed combat and the first shots of the Revolutionary War took place on April 19, 1775, in the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

But besides the local Patriot contribution, which was significant, the exhibit also delves into the area’s origins known as Occumbomack.

Did you know South Country Road was cleared in 1702? Or that the BBHSM has arrowheads and spearheads dating from 3,000 to 5,000 years old? Foley said Chief Harry witnessed the Native American tools. “He brought the curator of the Southold Indian Museum and their archivist. They were impressed.”

The area originally was a backwater and all Native American land. In 1664, Richard Howell and John Cooper bought property called Old Purchase South from Chief Tobaccus of the Unkechaugs (now Bellport, Brookhaven Hamlet and Southaven). Those facts are on a timeline of  events displayed as you enter the BBHSM space on the left, citing Howell and Cooper and some of what life was like.

“What made sense was doing a timeline,” Foley said of the exhibit. “I kept going to talks about the Revolutionary War and made notes carrying around the timeline for a year.” Information gleaned from the U.S. Bicentennial Celebration featured in the Long Island Advance helped, Foley said. LuAnn Thompson of Bellport Arts & Framing provided the frames and the exhibit text.

Exhibit items, with the exception of the portrait of George Washington, recently lent, were already in BBHSM’s collection.

“A surprising revelation was the number of our Patriots on the list and living with their legacy every day,” Foley said.