All About Amityville
The Village of Amityville is a beautiful waterfront community located on the south shore of Long Island, just 20 miles from the New York City line.
There are many lovely old homes in Amityville; some are situated on the Great South Bay while others are found on one of our many tree-lined streets. We pride ourselves in being a "Tree City, USA". Though all the seasons are wonderful, summer is a special time of year as it is our sailing and boating season.
We have our own Village Beach, wonderful summer youth programs and a number of places to fish.
The Town of Babylon Beaches, available to village residents are located on the Atlantic Ocean just 20 minutes away by car across the Robert Moses Bridge.
Our proximity to NYC makes for a relatively easy commute to Manhattan by car or the Long Island Railroad.
The Village is 2.5 miles square, steeped in history, and adorned with many small shops.
Amity means friendship and Amityville is "The Friendly Village".
How Amityville was named
There are several legends recounting how Amityville received its name, all colorful and sound and woven with the kind of tales that legends are made of. Some are recounted here.
The one most commonly repeated legend is that about 1850 a group of citizens living in what is now Amityville called a meeting to choose a name to replace that of Huntington South West Neck. There were many different opinions as to a suitable name and the discussion became so heated that finally Mrs. Ruth Williams, wife of Nathaniel Williams, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, exclaimed: "Friends, what this meeting needs is some amity, otherwise we should name our village Contraryville."
Struck by her observations, the residents decided that Amityville was a proper name and gave the sense of warmth and friendliness they wanted their Village noted for.
Another, preserved by Captain John Ketcham, said that the name Amityville came out of discussions in the store of William Cornelius; a store that was in 1846, a popular spot where residents sat and talked "about this and that" in the evening. As in many of the issues raised at that local gathering place, the one involving what to name their community remained unresolved. The argument was carried to the schoohouse meeting where Samuel Ireland said: "Let’s name it after my sloop, the Amity." And that, according to Ketcham, ended the argument and the name was adopted in tribute to Ireland’s sloop.
No sooner was Captain Ketcham’s story recounted on Feb. 17, 1911, in the Amityville Record, then did a contributor to the Record dispute the events. The "old resident" found no fault with Ketcham’s dates—1846 was fine—but added that it took the residents three meetings to iron out the argument, not one store front argument and one formal meeting, and that Contraryville was a popular choice.
Moreover, the old resident introduced another player in the events, a doctor who had come from Riverhead to hang his shingle. In this version, the doctor was shocked at the idea of living in Contraryville and gratefully grasped the proposal of Mr. Ireland to name it Amityville. According to the account, the doctor got the floor at the last meeting and succeeded in hammering the name home.
The old resident was eventually unmasked for the Record’s readers as Nathaniel Potter Williams, a resident who took pride in keeping written records of his years in Amityville. He lived as a child at the northeast corner of Broadway and South Country Road and died on April 24, 1915 in Utica, New York. He was 80 years old.
Credits: Official website for the Village of Amityville
Amityville Record http://www.amityvillerecord.com/news/2000/0814/History/How_Amityville_was_named.html
