Raynham Hall Museum

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Join Preservation Long Island for the #jupiterhammonproject which will incorporate these new discoveries in a more relevant and equitable interpretation of Joseph Lloyd Manor, one of Preservation Long Island’s historic houses and a site of Black enslavement. September 19 will bring scholars together to discuss his writings in detail. You can sign up through Preservation Long Island's events page or on their website.

This fascinating scholarly new book on Jupiter Hammon, "America's First Black Poet," by Stanley A. Ransom, includes a beautiful long-lost poem transcribed by Raynham Hall's Phebe Townsend (1763-1841), and discovered in an archive by our historian four years ago. Were it not for her carefully copied version the poem might have been lost forever! Written in 1770, the untitled poem, written about early American nonconformist leader Anne Hutchinson, includes the lines, "Twas from... the dust at the first word/Yea, from the Earth she came/And to the dust though in the Lord/Go Earth to Earth again." It's gratifying that it is now part of Hammon's history, as well as ours at Raynham Hall. #jupiterhammon #blackhistory #blackhistorybooks #RaynhamHallMuseum #RaynhamHall #OysterBay #NY #LongIsland #americanhistory #History #Revolutionarywar #housemuseums #thisplacematters See more

For more than a decade starting in the 1870s, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and his family rented Tranquility, the house depicted in this painting, which was less than a mile east of the center of Oyster Bay village. Theodore Roosevelt grew to love the natural beauty of the area during his summers here and it eventually led him to settle down in Oyster Bay with his wife and family after college. Painting: Richard Montgomery Conklin. Tranquility, ca. 1858. Oil on canvas. Collection of Raynham Hall Museum. #RaynhamHall #RaynhamHallMuseum #OysterBay #NY #LongIsland #history #museumfromhome #museummoemntofzen #theodoreroosevelt #sagamorehill

In 1851, Solomon Townsend II, commissioned his nephew, the architect Edward H. Thorne, to remodel and enlarge the colonial house, which was considered old fashioned by the middle of the 19th century. Thorne created a fashionable Victorian villa in the Gothic Revival style. He added a wing with steeply pitched gables, a tower with a porte cochere for carriages to pull under, projecting bay windows and open piazzas or porches. The additions doubled the size of the house, resulting in a large, sprawling residence of twenty-two rooms. #RaynhamHallMuseum #RaynhamHall #OysterBay #NY #LongIsland #americanhistory #History #RevolutionaryWar #CulperSpyRing #housemuseum #thisplacematters #MuseumfromHome #ThrowbackThursday #Victoriana #GothicRevival