Jonah Miller exhibit opens at Rocky Point Historical Society art show

Seated before a large exhibit panel at the Hallock Homestead Museum in Rocky Point Saturday, Joanne Sonderling, of Selden, marveled at a handwritten mortgage record that went unnoticed in archives for 200 years.

The document memorializes the sale of some 270 acres to Jonah Miller, a farmer who led a small enclave of Black and Indigenous farmers in Rocky Point, for $528 in 1804.

Sonderling, 65, said she was struck by how "industrious" Miller must have been to achieve land ownership at the time.

"It shows that there were Indigenous people and Black people who were thriving on Long Island, long before any civil rights activism," Sonderling said.

The records, on display at the museum through the end of the year, are part of an effort to uncover more information about the largely overlooked rural settlement.

Entitled "Journey of Jonah Miller," the exhibit formally opened Saturday during the Rocky Point Historical Society's third annual art show, which featured artisan vendors and tours of the pre-Revolutionary Cape Cod farmhouse built in 1721.

It's the culmination of more than a year of research stitching together critical documents that tell a previously untold history, Newsday reported last month.

"They're threading a whole storyline of their lives and the generations that follow," Sonderling said. "This is a really beautiful thing to know about where we live."

Charles Bevington, of Rocky Point, helped lead the research effort into Miller and the farmers' enclave. He presented the findings to more than 50 visitors throughout the afternoon Saturday.

His research showed Miller worked a variety of jobs, from thrashing flax to cutting firewood, for pennies a day.

Some of Miller's life details remain unknown, but that's part of the fun, Bevington said.

"Once you start looking into all of that, it puts more of the pieces of the puzzle together," he said. "The goal is to bring to life a person from 1805, 1810, that you don't have photographs of. You don't have a lot of information, but now we have a lot more stories."

Saturday's fair had something for everyone. One visitor admired original locust beams in the home while another gazed at a pollinator garden on the grounds.

Tours also covered the region's communications history, as the Rocky Point pine barrens once contained 450-foot radio towers that could transmit signals across the ocean, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Another room focused on a schooner that wrecked nearby off Hallock Landing in 1901.

Upstairs, visitors learned about Colonial life and crafts and viewed slave quarters. Census records on display show the Hallock family enslaved nine people in 1790.

Syed Sadiq, 78, visited the museum for the first time and was moved by the stories.

"We definitely learned a lot, all the history going back to the 1700s," Sadiq said. "Especially to learn that slaves used to live here in this house. It's good to know [the] history."

Elvia Reynolds, of Hempstead, who was selling handcrafted mixed-media art outside at the festival, took a moment to view the exhibits.

She didn't know there was a settlement of Black farmers in the area, but wasn't all that surprised.

"Even if it's hidden, it's part of the DNA," Reynolds said.