Treasure

   In what may be a tedious subject to the outside reader, to myself, this topic is ever-present, always there, always tugging at my shirt sleeve, saying, “Is it done yet?  Is it done yet?”

   “No, it is not done yet!” I belch, and continue to belch.  The “it” is my book.  My freakin’ book, which I started compiling for in 2014, and which I signed a contract for in November 2017. 

   

   "It" is my burden, my 154,000-word burden, hopefully, soon, a 40,000-word (or more) masterpiece.  My masterpiece.  No one knows what I know about this topic. Yet, a very few, a dwindling few give a darn about it.  Hardly anyone cares.  I can hear the people say, “American history?  What’s that?  Whose history is it anyway?  I don’t care about anything that happened 244 years ago.”  Nonetheless, I must do it.  This may be the last time someone will care about this portion of our American and Long Island City history before it is rewritten, or cast aside like the classics that the modern generations no longer read.  And upon publication, I will have to hawk the book to people who may not or don’t care about America and sell my soul just to sell a few copies.  It’s sad, but I have doubts about the darn thing even before it is finished.

   The work of an historian is time-consuming, as the study of time would, of course, be; and it is also very gratifying.  Yet, I cannot believe that so much time has elapsed in this process.  Days, weeks, months, and now years have elapsed.  I must press on.  To not finish is an absolute failure. 

   

   On a happier note, I have been able to peruse, review, and scrutinize well over 50 maps and scores of books, documents, paintings, and period sketches, all in search of my LIC history.

   One sketch, entitled, “View of the opening of our Batterys at Hell Gate upon the rebel works around Walton's House on the island of N. York. 8 Sept. 1776,” by Archibald Robertson, is from the New York Public Library Digital Collection.  Myself and one colleague, the Executive Director of the Greater Astoria Historical Society, both thought this view of the Hell Gate was from the northeast, looking southwest.  The image copy that we had at GAHS was a small print from inside a book from 1955, whose author reprinted the image.  The sketch was low resolution making it hard to discern any detail, save for what was described.  Well, while analyzing a map of the Astoria peninsula and Horn’s Hook (Gracie Point) cannon batteries, I was able to distinguish exact cannon battery locations and their directions of fire.  This map was entitled, “A Plan of the Narrows of Hells-gate in the East River, near which batteries of cannon and mortars were erected on Long Island…,” by Charles Blaskowitz.

   As I compared the very detailed map to the NYPL’s high resolution sketch, both created in 1776 by British cartographers, I was able to orient the sketch to be from Hallett’s Cove’s southern shore facing northwest towards the south shore of the modern-day Astoria peninsula and beyond, to the American battery on Horn’s Hook on Manhattan Island.  The sketch of the British artillery positions at Hallett’s Point in Queens perfectly matched the map.  Our little mystery, on-going for some time now, is finally solved.  Both images will be in the book, whenever it comes out. 

   

   And so goes the very miniscule and minute triumph of the historian.  The triumphs that a very few, besides the Astoria historian or resident, while give half of a hoot about.  It’s like finding a fossil.  It may be interesting for a twenty-word blurb on page 35 of any newspaper, only to fall off the pages by day’s end.

   I have dear family and friends that do not give a “rat’s ass” (sorry, this is a family page) about the history that I study, yet, lecturing to and discussing such things with like-minded Revolutionary War scholars, authors, and enthusiasts, is most rewarding. 

  

   My “treasure” is the uncovering of little-known or unknown facts, and to impart them to the (small portion of the) masses that want to learn about their history, the truest and most accurate history of revolutionary western Queens County, now Long Island City, that I can provide.

Richard Melnick, July 4, 2020.