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The Town Endures."
That motto, inscribed inside the historic 556-pound bell on display at the Old First Presbyterian Church on Main Street in Huntington, symbolizes the hamlet's early struggle to survive.
That struggle begins with the town's initial settlement in 1653, when crude dwellings began to go up around the "town spotte," now known as the village green. Life was simple and often difficult. The early arrivals had few possessions. They fashioned simple tools and furniture. They planted basic crops such as grain, peas, beans and corn, and raised cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, ducks and geese. Public stocks were constructed, and flogging was another method of punishment.
At first, through town meetings, Huntington was virtually self-governing. For three decades after 1664, as part of the new New York colony, it squirmed under the Duke's Laws, which were unpopular because they took away local control. The struggle to endure became even more intense with the Revolution.
Huntington was the Suffolk County headquarters of foraging British cavalry parties that seized and shipped provisions for their army and navy. Redcoats plundered farms, forced fearful residents to work for them and beat or killed dissidents. Perhaps the worst outrage of the war was the British desecration of the Burying Hill, or cemetery, which was located behind the present town historian's office off Main Street. To build...