Local city information for Southold, NY

Southold is a town in Suffolk County, New York, United States. It is located in the northeastern tip of the county, on the North Fork of Long Island. The population was 20,599 at the 2000 census. The town also contains a hamlet named Southold, which was settled in 1640.

Southold was settled in 1640 and in most histories is reported as the first English settlement on Long Island in the future New York State although Lion Gardiner established a manor on Gardiner Island in East Hampton a year earlier in 1639. The Dutch had settled around Albany, New York in 1615 and at Manhattan in 1625.

English Puritans from New Haven Colony in Connecticut settled in Southold on October 21, 1640. Under the leadership of the Reverend John Youngs, with Peter Hallock (after lots were drawn, the first to step ashore), the settlement consisted of the families of Barnabas Horton, John Budd, John Conklin, William Wells, John Tuthill, Thomas Mapes, Richard Terry, Matthias Corwin, Robert Akerly, Zachariah Corey and Isaac Arnold. The land had been purchased in the summer of 1640 from an Indian tribe, the Corchaugs. The Indian name of what became Southold was Yennicott.

Southold was to remain under the jurisdiction of New Haven until 1662, and of the Connecticut Colony until 1674. Both colonies sought to establish the town as a theocracy and a principal difference between the two was that New Haven did not permit other churches to operate while Connecticut allowed freedom of religion.

When the colony of New York was handed over to the Dutch in 1673, the eastern towns, including Southold, East Hampton and Southampton, refused to submit; the Dutch attempted to force the matter by arms, and the colonists of the towns repelled them, with assistance from Connecticut. When New York became English again in 1674, these eastern towns preferred to stay part of Connecticut, and Connecticut agreed, but the government of James, Duke of York forced the matter. Governor Sir Edmund Andros threatened to eliminate the residents' rights to land if they did not yield, which they did by 1676. The Duke of York's intransigence was largely a result of his grudge against Connecticut, as New Haven had hidden three of the judges who sentenced the Duke's father, King Charles I, to death in 1649.

Following the death of Rev. Youngs, the town installed as its second minister a Harvard graduate from Hingham, Massachusetts, Rev. Joshua Hobart, son of Rev. Peter Hobart, the founding minister of Old Ship Church, the nation's oldest church in continuous use. Rev. Joshua Hobart was installed in 1674 and served the town until the day of his death in 1717, when he was 88 years old – having served Southold for 45 years. Rev. Hobart's brother Josiah was one of the earliest settlers and initial trustees of East Hampton, Long Island, as well as High Sheriff of Suffolk County.

The name Southold is believed by some to be a misspelling of Southwold, which is a coastal town in the corresponding English county of Suffolk. John Youngs was born and brought up in Southwold, Suffolk, England, and perhaps more importantly, Youngs was a member of St. Margaret's Church in Reydon, where he likely assisted the vicar, who also ministered at St Edmunds Church in Southwold, which had been annexed to the Reydon vicarage. "To this St. Margaret's of Reydon it may be supposed that the Rev. John Youngs belonged when he proposed to cross the ocean for Salem in New England," wrote the Rev. Epher Whitaker, pastor of the First Church of Southold and councilor of the Long Island Historical Society in his definitive early study of the town's first century.

Interestingly, on Rev. Youngs' first attempt to leave England, when he tried to board ship in Yarmouth in Norfolk County in 1633, the authorities intervened, refusing passage to the young minister. "This man was forbyden passage by the commissioners," read the English records, "and went not from Yarmouth."

Within the New York town's limits is an area known as Reydon Shores, perhaps a reference to Reydon, England, which is the adjoining village to Southwold in Suffolk County, England, and was the home of John Youngs' wife. An alternative explanation is that the name refers to a "holding" to the South New Haven ), from whence the original settlers hailed.

In 1650 the population of Southold was about 180, growing to 880 by 1698. The harbor at Greenport was important in trade, fishing, and whaling because it rarely froze over.

In November 1994, the village of Greenport voted to abolish its police department and turn responsibility for law and order over to the Southold Town Police.

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