17th Century Land Dispute Split Commack Between Two Towns

The early days of the area where Commack now meets East Northport found residents in a land dispute for two decades. In the 1670s, the area was officially split between the townships of Huntington and Smithtown.

According to local historian Noel Gish, most of the land disputes on Long Island began with confusion over who was given land from the Native Americans. Nessaquakes, Matinecocks and Secatogues, who were part of the Algonquians, lived in and around the Commack and East Northport area.

Gish said that land ownership wasn’t part of the Native American culture. The early inhabitants of the island believed that you couldn’t own something that was part of nature, including land. The Native Americans referred to areas in general and didn’t have any official boundary lines.

“Native Americans did not have an understanding of land ownership,” said Gish.

In his book Smithtown New York, 1660-1929 Looking Back Through the Lens, Gish wrote that land from Cow Harbor in Northport to west of the Nissequogue River was granted to Jonas Woods, William Rogers and Thomas Wilkes of Huntington in 1656. This territory was given to them by the Sachem Asharoken of the Matinecocks.

Around the same time Richard Smythe acquired the land that would become Smithtown from his friend Lion Gardiner. The Sachem Wyandanch presented Gardiner this area which he believed extended to the west of the Nissequogue.

The overlapped area of these two claims is now the Smithtown part of Commack. For twenty years a debate continued as to whether the Huntington group or Smythe owned the land. According to Gish, the founder of Smithtown persisted in Dutch courts and then English courts and won his claim in the late 1670s.

Despite the dispute, Commack became quickly inhabited. The merging of Huntington and Smithtown at Townline Road and Jericho Turnpike became the center of the area and became known as Commack Corners.

In its early years, however, the area was called Winnecomac. When the name was shortened, Comac was initially used.

In William Wallace Tooker's The Indian Place-Names on Long Island and Islands Adjacent, With Their Probable Significations published in 1911, he translated the Algonquin words used in the area including Winnecomac. Tooker wrote that Winne could mean good, fine or pleasant. As for Comac, it translated to a house, place or field. He concluded that Winnecomac meant pleasant field, good land or fine country.

The translation seemed appropriate when Richard Mather Bayles included Commack in his book “Historical and Descriptive Sketches of Suffolk County” back in 1874.

Bayles wrote, “It is an ancient settlement, and is located in the midst of a rich agricultural district. The surface is level, or slightly rolling, and the soil heavy, and nearly every acre improved and under a high state of cultivation.”

The days of agriculture may be part of the past, but centuries later, residents continue to travel between the townships of Huntington and Smithtown with ease.