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Farmingdale is an incorporated village on Long Island within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 8,189 as of the 2010 Census. , the mayor was Ralph Ekstrand. The Lenox Hills neighborhood is adjacent to Bethpage State Park and the rest of the town is within a fifteen-minute drive of the park. It is also approximately 37 mi (59 km) southeast of Midtown Manhattan and can be reached via the Ronkonkoma Branch of the LIRR. The Long Island Expressway and Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway are the best way to reach Farmingdale from the city and the mainland. [edit] History
The first European settler in the area was Thomas Powell, who arrived in 1687. On October 18, 1695, he purchased a tract of land from three Native American tribes. This is known as the Bethpage Purchase and includes what is now Farmingdale, as well as Bethpage, Melville, North Massapequa, Old Bethpage, Plainedge, and Plainview. One of two houses he built in the area (circa 1738) still stands on Merritts Road in Farmingdale. In the 1830s, anticipating construction of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), land developer Ambrose George purchased a large tract of land between a community then known as Bethpage and an area in Suffolk County known as Hardscrabble. He built a general store in the western part of this property which he named Farmingdale. When the LIRR started service to the area in October 1841, it used the name Farmingdale for its latest stop, here, on the line it was building to Greenport. Stagecoaches took people from the Farmingdale station to Islip, Babylon, Patchogue, Oyster Bay South, and West Neck (Huntington area).
In 1899, Mile-a-Minute Murphy rode a bicycle along the Long Island Rail Road's Central Branch through the Farmingdale area at a mile a minute. For many years, the town celebrated its birth with the annual Hardscrabble Fair, with music, food and games. It was normally held in May. [edit] Research Tips
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