Land Surveyor in Fishers Island, Suffolk County, NY

The island was called Munnawtawkit by the Pequot Indians. Adriaen Block was the first recorded European visitor, and he named it Vischer’s Island in 1614 after one of his companions. It remained a wilderness for the next 25 years, visited occasionally by Dutch traders.

John Winthrop the Younger obtained a grant of Fisher’s Island in 1640 from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, “reserving the right of Connecticut if it should be decided to be theirs.” He simultaneously applied to the Connecticut General Court for a similar grant in order that there might be no flaw in his title. The title was given to him in the following words, which are copied from the records of a General Court held at Hartford, Connecticut, April 9, 1641:

Upon Mr. Winthrop’s motion to the court for Fisher’s Island, it is the mind of the court that so far as it hinders not the public good of the country, either for fortifying for defense, or setting up a trade for fishing or salt and such like, he shall have liberty to proceed therein.

Winthrop lived only one winter on the island. He was named governor of the Connecticut Colony 1657-58 and 1659-76, and he used the island to raise sheep for food and wool. He died in 1676 and his son Fitz-John installed a lessee farmer from England on the island named William Walworth. Walworth brought a system of cultivation that was continued on the island for nearly 200 years. He established farmland out of the heavily forested island. Walworth and his family vacated the island nine years later due to the threat of pirates. Fishers Island remained in the Winthrop family of Connecticut until 1863, when ownership passed to Robert R. Fox, and then to Edmund and Walton Ferguson, also of Connecticut.