- Bedloe’s Island & Fort Wood
- Yanks Week 14 Notes
Everybody Loves Somebody
- YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Quick bit of history up top. Last Sunday’s bit about Fort Gibson mentioned that Liberty Island today was once called Fort Wood. Here’s more on the island that the Statue of Liberty calls home…
Like Ellis Island today, Liberty Island was grouped as part of the “Oyster Islands” in the New York Harbor. Known for its excellent source of oysters and such, it was a food source for Native Americans who dared to boat out to it. After Henry Hudson showed up in 1609, another Dutch colonist, Issac Bedloe, claimed the island in 1667. It officially became Bedloe’s land when British Colonial Governor Francis Lovelace gave him a written grant, noting that Bedloe wished to rename it “Love Island.” Unfortunately, Bedloe didn’t have the budget to support 30 useless single people hanging out in a Villa for 2 months or the camera crew to film such an extravagant reality TV show because it was 1670. Anyway, Issac Bedloe would pass away in 1673, and that same year, Governor Lovelace would be overthrown by the Dutch Navy, who renamed Love Island to Bedloe’s Island.
(Source: National Park Service)
A year later, once the English took back Bledloe’s Island in 1674, they figured we might as well just keep it the same name, and while we’re at it, let’s give the land to Issac Bedloe’s widow. So, Mary Bedloe Smith would hold onto Bedloe’s Island until she faced bankruptcy in 1732. A pair of New York merchants, Adolph Philipse and Henry Lane, bought the land of Mary Bedloe Smith, but the two men didn’t have much say in how it would be used as the city of New York started to use it as a quarantine station to inspect incoming ships for smallpox. Once Phillipse and Lane got bored of having NYC use it on the sick, they sold the island to Archibald Kennedy in 1746. Kennedy worked as a foreman general on the Port of New York from 1722 to 1763, and his goal was to turn Bedloe’s Island into his retirement summer house. Within a decade of owning Bedloe’s Island, Archibald Kennedy even built a lighthouse, but the City of New York would again intervene and force him to sell it to them so they could build a small hospital for those with infectious diseases.
