Are You An Eastchester History Buff?

Calling all "History Buffs", as Eastchester, Tuckahoe and Bronxville prepare to celebrate 350 years of common history in 2014, a committee of local historians are looking for volunteers to help put together a book to mark this milestone.

Headed by Eastchester Town Historian Richard Forliano and Bronxville Village Historian Eloise L. Morgan, the committee hopes to produce a publication that will, “acquaint Eastchester residents with their shared history, highlight new information about Eastchester’s past that has been unearthed in recent decades, and relate to all three communities that make up the town,” Forliano explained.

“The actual form and content of any publication will depend on volunteer interest in researching and writing on various topics,” said Morgan.

Possible topics include the Eastchester Covenant of 1665 and its role as a founding American document, the industrial and commercial development in the area in the 1850s, how Anne Hutchinson came to settle on land that eventually became part of Eastchester, separating fact from fiction about Eastchester’s relationship to the Bill of Rights, or Eastchester’s volunteers in the Civil War.

“Any one of these topics could be a book all by itself,” Forliano noted, “but we plan to focus on particular time periods or events within the larger concepts in order to keep the effort manageable.”

Forliano intends to write about the ethnic and racial makeup of the community in the early 1900s—including the Italians and African Americans who moved to Tuckahoe, the artists and professionals who settled Lawrence Park, and the Irish who were the largest and most politically active group—a topic that he has been researching for some time.

Morgan will explore why and where the town borders grew and shrank over the centuries, beginning with purchases from Native Americans and British land grants in the 1600s and continuing through later losses of territory as Mount Vernon incorporated separately, New York City absorbed southern Eastchester into the Bronx, and Bronxville and Tuckahoe each formed separate villages within the larger town.

Suggestions for other topics are welcome and the publication committee plans to avoid merely repeating what has already been published and to footnote citations to source materials.

The book is only one of many activities and events planned for the community’s anniversary celebration in 2014, under the auspices of a 350th Anniversary Committee chaired by Eastchester Town Clerk Linda Doherty and former Bronxville Trustee Robert Riggs.

Anyone interested in participating in the preparation of this historical and informative publication—writing, research, fact checking, editing, collecting illustrations, creating graphics, and the like—are urged to email Richard Forliano at clancy5@optonline.net or Eloise Morgan at rcmelm@aol.com.

The committee will help volunteers identify primary and secondary source materials and provide other assistance and with a publication target of 2014, the group hopes to have drafts of the various articles by mid-2013.

“It sounds like a long time,” said Morgan, “but given the amount of work to do, it feels like tomorrow.”