Street signs might seem insignificant to many people. But travelers on East Broadway in Woodmere might come across Longworth Avenue — named for the Longworth family, on of the Five Town’s earliest families.
Daniel J. Longworth arrived from Athlone Ireland with his wife and family in the 1850s. Together with his brother, William Henry Longworth, he built up 200 acres of farmland — land known today as Hewlett Bay Park and Woodsburgh.
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Broadway in Hewlett began as a smaller church on Ives Road on land owned by the Longworth family. Robert Longworth Jr., a current-generation descendant, said there was no established Catholic church in the area when the family settled there. Instead, they used a large estate in the Lawrence portion of Woodsburgh where priests would come once a month for Irish Catholics.
“Finally, around 1870, [Daniel J. Longworth] said he’d build the church,” Longworth Jr. said. “You use it for a church as long as you want.”
Daniel J. Longworth also became a charter member of the Hewlett Fire Department in 1891. He joined alongside his nephew, Daniel Lawrence Longworth. The department’s first building — which Longworth Jr. said resembled a large barn — stood on Franklin Avenue.
Longworth Jr. said relatives once used the department’s old hand pump, which remains visible in the firehouse lobby at 25 Franklin Ave., in Hewlett.
After Daniel J. Longworth died in 1897, Logworth Jr. said, the family’s farm was divided among relatives and gradually sold off. The land attracted the attention of Joseph Auerbach before developers from New York City purchased large portions of the land to create what became Hewlett Bay Park.
“Rumors of a big deal in Hempstead Township and a new colony,” Longworth Jr. said while reading from an old newspaper clipping. “Many people back then tried to gain control of that meadowland. It was a big deal.”
The family’s story later attracted the attention of Millicent Volono, a former reference librarian at Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library, who created a picture book about Five Towns history in 2010. Volono met with the late Robert Longworth Sr., whom she described as very knowledgeable about the family’s history.
One story involved Longworth Sr. as a young boy tending to the cattle on the family farm. Volono recalled him describing how he chased cows down Broadway that would escape from where they were grazing.
“The book has given people a perspective on what Hewlett used to be,” Volono said.
When the Longworth family sold their land, they moved to a 200-acre farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, where they grew crops including tobacco and corn.
Longworth Jr., who now lives near Virginia Beach, said he only recently began uncovering the depth of the family’s history after a distant cousin of Longworth Sr. contacted out.
“I never knew the depths of it until I really started digging into this genealogy stuff,” Longworth Jr. said. “[The distant cousin] found the exact ship and time they came over from Ireland, and that’s what piqued my interest.”
