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Smithtown is bordered on the north by Long Island Sound, the west
by Huntington, the south by Islip and the east by Brookhaven, and lies
in the western part of Suffolk County, approximately 50 miles east of
New York City. The town's 55 square miles includes 30 miles of
shoreline and 2,766 acres of parkland. The current population is
approximately 113,000.
Smithtown is named after its founder, Richard Smythe.
Mr. Smythe was an English subject who first settled in Southampton.
After being banished from that town in 1656, possibly for
religious reasons, he settled in Setauket for nine years. Then in
1663, it is believed, he purchased the land that became known as
Smithtown from Lion Gardiner. Mr. Gardiner had been deeded
the lands by Chief Wyandanch, Sachem of the Long Island Montauks, after
Mr. Gardiner helped the chief get back his kidnapped daughter from
a party of raiding Narragansett Indians. A Royal land patent was
officially issued in 1665 to Richard Smythe.
Richard Smythe built his home on the site of a Nissequogue
Indian village near the intersection of River and Moriches Roads
in what is today the Village of Nissequogue. (The home is no longer
standing.) Smythe and his wife, Sarah, had nine children: Jonathan,
Obadiah, Richard, Job, Daniel, Adam, Samuel, Elizabeth and Deborah.
All the sons, with the exception of Obadiah who drowned in the
Nissequogue River in 1680, settled near their father and raised
families of their own.
After Richard Smythe and his wife died, the lands comprising
Smithtown were divided among their children. In 1735, the lands
were further subdivided among their grandchildren in approximate
fifty acre parcels. Generations of these families have remained
in the area populating Smithtown with many direct descendants of
Richard Smythe.
(Source: Smithtown... Yesterday and Today, John Motta, ed.,
Published for the Town of Smithtown by Pulsar Communications,
1988.)
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