Home of John Whitman
Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, New York
Marker Inscription
Home of John Whitman, built in 1692, now a barn. "New" house, built in 1810, home of Jesse Whitman, grandfather of Walt Whitman.
The Story
The oldest part of this homestead was raised in 1692, when Huntington was a small colonial farming town; it was later demoted to a barn after a "new" house went up in 1810. That newer house belonged to Jesse Whitman — grandfather of Walt Whitman, who was born nearby in the West Hills and grew into one of America's greatest poets. The family's deep roots in this Long Island landscape helped form the writer who would later sing of the young nation itself.
Why it matters
These weathered buildings tie the everyday life of colonial Long Island to Walt Whitman, whose verse gave America one of its defining literary voices.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The oldest part of this homestead was raised in 1692, when Huntington was a young colonial settlement of farmers working the fertile ground of the West Hills. A house built that early speaks to a family already putting down deep roots in the Long Island soil.
By the time the "new" house went up in 1810, the world around it had changed profoundly. The colonies had become a nation, and the early republic was finding its feet. The older 1692 structure was demoted to a barn — a common fate for a first home once a family prospered enough to build something grander.
So this single property holds two Americas at once: the fragile colonial outpost of the late 1600s and the confident young republic of the early 1800s, standing side by side on the same ground.
People & events
The 1810 house belonged to Jesse Whitman, and his significance reaches beyond his own lifetime. He was the grandfather of Walt Whitman, who would grow up to become one of the most important poets America has ever produced.
Walt Whitman was born nearby in the West Hills in 1819, into a family whose presence in this landscape stretched back generations. The rolling farmland, the woods, and the nearness of the sea were the world of his boyhood before the family later moved toward Brooklyn.
Decades later, that early landscape surfaced in his poetry. When Whitman published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he wrote with a deep feeling for the American land and its ordinary people — a sensibility rooted in exactly the kind of place his family had farmed for well over a century.
Its place in the American story
America's story is often told through cities and famous events, but much of its character was formed in rural places like this one. The long continuity of a single farming family here mirrors the settling of the whole country.
What gives the site its special resonance is the line it draws from colonial farm life to one of the nation's defining literary voices. Walt Whitman's verse celebrated democracy, the common person, and the sweep of the American landscape — and those themes did not come from nowhere.
They grew, at least in part, from ground like this: a place where an ordinary family lived close to the land for generations. In the weathered timbers of an old homestead you can glimpse the soil from which a great American poet sprang.
If you visit
Look first for the contrast between the two structures — the very old and the merely old — and let the dates sink in. A building from 1692 has stood through nearly the entire American story, and here it survives as a humble barn.
Then think about the poetry. This is a landscape that helped shape a writer who would try to put the whole young nation into verse, and there is a quiet thrill in standing where his family's roots ran so deep.
If you are following the West Hills' literary heritage, this homestead pairs naturally with the wider countryside around it. Take your time, notice the lay of the land, and imagine the fields and woods as they were when this family worked them.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Walt Whitman
- · Jesse Whitman
- · John Whitman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
West Hill School
Town of Huntington, NY
Established in the 1700s, this modest neighborhood schoolhouse taught Huntington's children until it finally closed its doors in 1912. For nearly two centuries, one-room district schools like this were the backbone of American education, where a single teacher led pupils of every age. Its long working life stretched from the colonial era to the dawn of the modern age.
SUNY Farmingdale
Town of Babylon, NY
When Farmingdale opened its doors in 1912, Long Island was still a patchwork of farms and small towns, and the new state school was built to serve them directly — beginning life as a state institute focused on agriculture and the practical trades that the downstate region depended on. Over the following century it grew from those working-class roots into a full college within the State University of New York system, the oldest public college on the island. Its campus in the Town of Babylon marks more than a hundred years of New Yorkers learning skills meant to be carried straight back into their communities.
Theodore Roosevelt
Village of Cove Neck, NY
By the time Theodore Roosevelt lent his name and energy to the Boy Scouts, he was a former president living at Sagamore Hill, his beloved home in this corner of Long Island's Cove Neck. In the final years of his life he took up the local post of Scout Commissioner for the Nassau County Council, championing the young movement's blend of outdoor rigor and civic character that so mirrored his own creed of the 'strenuous life.' This plaque, raised by Nassau County's Scouts in 1953, honors that connection more than three decades after his death in 1919.
Edith Hay Wyckoff
Town of Oyster Bay, NY
For more than half a century, Edith Hay Wyckoff chronicled life on Long Island's Gold Coast from the newsroom of The Locust Valley Leader, the weekly paper she edited and published from the close of World War II until 2001. In an era when few women owned or ran newspapers, she made the Leader a record of her community's births, deaths, controversies, and small triumphs. In 1946 she also founded the Locust Valley Boys Club, extending her civic reach from the printed page to the lives of local youth.