18 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2018
WHERE WE’VE BEEN,
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
A year ago this month, the Long
Island Press relaunched as a monthly
news and lifestyle publication, keeping
alive a proud tradition dating back
197 years — and what a year it’s been.
But informing readers of the region’s
recent shake-ups or sharing
entertaining interviews with hometown
heroes such as Jerry Seinfeld
or Christie Brinkley are just a blip
on the radar compared to the nearly
two centuries of LI history chronicled
in the pages our predecessors published.
The earliest incarnation of
the newspaper, then called the Long
Island Farmer, preexisted the Long
Island Rail Road, the formation of
which it covered.
“The great and paramount advantages
resulting from railroads
... in furnishing the cheapest, the
safest and most expeditious mode of
conveyance ... are now universally
known and appreciated,” the Farmer
wrote in 1834, two years before the
LIRR was chartered.
THE PAST
A lot has changed since then, and
not just the perceived affordability
and expeditiousness of riding
the LIRR. When the Farmer was
founded in 1821, James Monroe,
the nation’s fifth president, was
beginning his second term in the
White House. The U.S. had just
bought Florida from Spain. Missouri
became the 24th state.
“Fear no man and do justice to all
men,” was the paper’s motto during
the Civil War.
The Farmer was also around to
report on the opening of the Brooklyn
Bridge, LI’s first crossing into
Manhattan, in 1883. Back then, there
was no debate over whether Queens
was really part of Long Island, since
everyone from Brooklyn to Montauk
needed a boat to get to the
mainland. For the first 156 years
of its existence, the Farmer and
the Press were based out of Queens,
predating the formation of Nassau
County in 1899.
Since its founding, the population
of LI has grown from 56,978 — slightly
more than the Village of Hempstead
today — to 7.5 million, or 2.8 million
for those that only consider the Island
to be Nassau and Suffolk. As the
population grew with expansions of
the LIRR, construction of additional
East River crossings and, after World
War II, the development of America’s
first suburb, in Levittown, the Press’
coverage followed its readers east.
Among the daily Press reporters
still in the media is Karl Grossman,
the dean of LI print journalism, who
won the coveted George Polk Award
for his Press reporting on sandmine
excavation, and went on to found the
Press Club of Long Island, the local
chapter of the Society of Professional
Journalists.
“The Levon Corporation was
excavating a square mile of the
COVER STORY
LI PRESS AT
A GLANCE
January 4, 1821: The Long
Island Farmer, a weekly
publication based in Jamaica,
Queens, was founded by Henry
C. Sleight, a Sag Harbor native
who served in the War of 1812.
1831: Sleight passed the paper
to Thomas Bradlee, a justice of
the peace and police justice in
Jamaica, who turned the paper
over to Isaac F. Jones a year later.
1840: Jones transferred the
publication to Charles S.
Watrous.
March 1849: B.H. Willis takes
over from Watrous.
1860: Charles Welling becomes
publisher.
1891: John C. Kennehan of
Great Neck Hills buys the
Farmer and makes it a daily
newspaper.
1919: Kennehan’s nephew,
James F. Sullivan, takes over
after the publisher dies, and
soon sells his interest to James
F. O’Rourke.
1920: Benjamin Marvin buys
the paper and changes the
Delivering the old Long
Island Press was a first job
for many Long Islanders.
The Press coverage of the 1969
moon landing.
The Press coverage of the JFK
assassination.
The Long Island Press was
originally called The Long Island
Farmer, which was founded in
1821 as a weekly.