From Captivity to Freedom:
Long Island During the
American Revolution

Conference on Friday, October 5, 2007
9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Charles B. Wang Center
Stony Brook University

Featured Speakers

Edwin Burrows
The Prisoners of New York
Over 20,000-plus Americans were held by the British in New York during the Revolution, under conditions so atrocious that the mortality rate often reached 70 percent or more. Dr. Burrows will discuss this topic in-depth and also raise questions about how this aspect of the war has been remembered, forgotten, and remembered again since the Revolution.
Edwin Burrows is the co-author of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 and Distinguished Professor of History at Brooklyn College.

Natalie A. Naylor
Surviving the Ordeal: Long Island Women during the Revolution
With the exception of one or two women such as the legendary Anna Strong, women are almost invisible in most accounts of the Revolutionary War on Long Island. Some women became refugees in Connecticut, but many remained on their native island and endured the ordeal of more than seven years of occupation. Women kept households and farms operating despite the military frequently requisitioning animals, grain, and wood. Although some were tormented by plundering soldiers and rebels, and others had to quarter British officers, most women survived the ordeal.
Natalie A. Naylor, Professor Emerita, Hofstra University, taught Long Island and American History and was director of the Long Island Studies Institute from its founding until she retired in 2000. She has served as editor of the Nassau County Historical Journal since 1996.

Alan Singer
Revolutionary New York Debates Slavery
Dr. Alan Singer is a professor of secondary education and the director of social studies education at Hofstra University. He is the author of Social Studies for Secondary Schools ( 2003) and editor of a 268-page secondary school curriculum guide titled New York and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance.

John G. Staudt
A Social History of Long Island during the American Revolution
Dr. Staudt will present a broad overview of the Revolution on Long Island and highlight different aspects of the struggle including the development of allegiances and the mobilization prior to the Battle of Long Island (Brooklyn), the British occupation and resulting lawlessness, wartime refugees, the Patriot insurgency, and transformations resulting from the war.
John G. Staudt teaches at Hofstra University and the Wheatley School in Old Westbury. He has published numerous articles and reviews and has lectured extensively on topics relating to Long Island history and the American Revolution.

Gerard Sztabnik
The Spies of the Revolution (Documentary)
Often forgotten by history, in the 18th century operatives from Long Island fought in a secret war filled with encrypted messages, double agents and secret aliases. In this investigative docudrama, the manners and methods in which George Washington's covert spy ring conducted espionage and helped the patriots to win the war is told through a series reenactments and interviews.
Gerard Sztabnik graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2007.
He is the writer, director, and producer of The Spies of the Revolution.

Hosted by Stony Brook University Libraries and
the Long Island Historical Journal.

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General Washington's Spies on Long Island and
in New York by Morton Pennypacker.
In 1939, Pennypacker identified Robert Townsend
as the spy known to Washington only as "Culper Jr."

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