44 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2021
BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
CELEBRATING THE BICENTENNIAL OF
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Two centuries ago in January 1821,
Henry C. Sleight, a Sag Harbor resident
who had served in the War of
1812, founded the Long Island Farmer
in Jamaica, Queens, kicking off a long
and proud legacy that has evolved into
the publication you’re reading today.
The paper Sleight launched changed
names, owners, and locations a few
times over the years as it went on to
chronicle the Island’s historic moments,
becoming part of the fabric
of the region along the way. Some descendants
of Sleight still live on Long
Island today — one even delivered the
paper when it was a daily in the 1960s
and ’70s, unaware of his own ties until
this reporter contacted the family.
“I think it’s just unbelievably ironic
that I used to deliver that paper,” says
Jimmy Pooley, a realtor from Merrick.
“My father used to make me read it
every day, but I’m sure he didn't know
about this connection either, or he
would have mentioned it.”
The Sleight family traces their arrival
from the Netherlands to the U.S.
during the colonial period, settling
in the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, and
later Sag Harbor, where they sought to
escape the British.
“They were attacked by the British in
the War of 1812 and our ancestors...
fought off the British and saved their
harbor,” says Thom Pooley, Sleight’s
great-great-great grandson, a retired
telecommunications and solar
energy professional from New Jersey
who has extensively researched
the family tree. “Very interesting
history of the Sleight family and
proud to be part of it.”
Born in 1792 and orphaned when he
was an infant, Sleight moved to Sag
Harbor to live with his widowed
grandmother, where he learned the
craft of printing before the war.
“On leaving school he entered the
printing office of Mr. Alden Spooner,
who was then publisher of the Suffolk
Gazette, a weekly paper, in Sag Harbor,”
but he then was called to fight,
his daughter Mary B Sleight wrote,
according to Sleights of Sag Harbor:
A Biographical, Genealogical and
Historical Record of 17th, 18th, and
19th Century Settlers of Eastern
Long Island and the Hudson Valley in
the State of New York. “In 1817, after
publishing for a time in Kentucky,
in connection with a bookstore, a
weekly paper entitled The Messenger
he went into the mercantile business
with a long-established house, but
the next year, owing heavy losses by
fire, the firm was obliged to dissolve
and he returned to New York. The
following year he started the Long
Island Farmer.”
Sleight’s forays into journalism did
not begin and end with the Farmer.
He had also founded what historical
accounts describe as the first newspaper
in Rochester.
"When his health failed in 1826 he
took a trip to the west and, passing
through Rochester, was so impressed
with the business facilities it offered
in its almost unlimited water supply,
its central local on the Erie Canal,
then just completed, and in the finest
of agricultural advantages, that he
remarked, 'All Rochester needs to
make it a great manufacturing center
is a daily paper to bring it notice to the
world,’” Morton Pennypacker wrote
in a letter to the editor of The East
Hampton Star in 1944. “And it was
thus these Long Islanders started at
Rochester, N.Y., the first daily newspaper
published between Albany and
the Pacific Ocean."
This took some in Rochester by surprise.
An attorney named Louis Sibley
told Sleight that he had his doubts,
“Had you then bought real estate here you might
have made a fortune by the great rise there has been
in prosperity since the starting of your paper,”
said Louis Sibley.
GOT A STORY?
As we continue our We Are Long
Island series to celebrate the
200th anniversary of our founding,
we ask you, dear readers, to
send us your stories and memories
of the Press over the years.
We look forward to celebrating
with you. Email us at letters@
longislandpress.com
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