Month: March 2012

Pg 40: 52: CHECKACHAGIN: a brook in the town of Oyster Bay, Queen’s Co., flowing northeasterly into Beaver Swamp Creek. Two of the variants from the records of the town are Chaugren, Chogorin. – Geo. W. Cocks, Esq., of Glen Cove, informs me that he remembers it as a boy fifty years ago, colloquially, as lt Choggin. ” The name is a personal one from one of the chiefs, ” Chechagon alias Quaropin,” mentioned in an Indian deed of January 9, 1683. (Thompson’s L. /., vol. i., p.489.)
Pg 206: 331: QUARAPIN: a round swamp in Huntington.  The name refers to “where Quarapin, an Indian, formerly planted”.
Pg 216-217  351: RUGUA : a swamp in the town of Babylon, near Copiag Neck. It is found in the Indian deed of the “Baiting Place” purchase, 1698, viz.: “So running eastward to ye head of Rugua Swamp” (H. R.). This is another instance where a swamp takes its name from the aboriginal dweller on its banks. That swamps were frequently chosen by the Indians for their dwelling places is proven frequently in the early records of the town; for instance, a deed of 1698 says: “a parcel of land within the bounds of Huntington by a swampe comonly called ye round swamp where Quarapin formerly planted” (H. R., vol. ii., p. 37). Nearly every swamp in the vicinity of Sag Harbor examined by the writer has a shell-heap on its northern slopes showing Indian sojourners in time past.