About
The Watering Place is a location with a very long and rich American history. The name – Watering Place – was given by early colonial navigators and Dutch merchants to the place on Staten Island where a stream flowed down from the inland hills and emptied into the New York harbor. Here ships anchored to replenish their water supplies. Prior to the first European explorers the Munsee-speaking Indians frequented this place. In their later interactions with the European settlers they referred to themselves as the Delaware Indians and today they are more commonly known as the Lenape Indians. Names often do change over the course of time. Today the Watering Place is known as the Tompkinsville and St. George area of Staten Island.
The Watering Place is arguably one of the most historic places on Staten Island. Many things happened here. The Watering Place was once a British camp during the French and Indian war and again during the Revolutionary war. But perhaps the most notable historic event that took place here was the operation, for six decades (1799 – 1858), of a Quarantine and Marine Hospital. The Quarantine, as it was often called, served several functions including to receive the massive number of immigrants coming to America well before the establishment of Ellis Island. The Quarantine came to an abrupt end, however, when Staten Island residents, fed up with the fear of infectious diseases spreading beyond the walls of the Quarantine grounds, destroyed the buildings in a great conflagration.
There are some connections to the Seton Hall story too. A lot of what is known about the Lenape Indians comes from the work of the late Seton Hall professor Herbert Kraft. When the Quarantine Grounds opened in 1799 the first health officer was Dr. Richard Bayley. He was a well-respected physician, professor of anatomy and surgery, and humanitarian who played a significant role in the early approaches to quarantine and in gaining a better understanding of infectious disease. He was also the father of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton and the grandfather of Seton Hall’s founder, Bishop James Bayley.
This project blog site will tell the story of the many historical events that took place at the Watering Place. But the project is not just about history. The Quarantine story, for example, provides insight into scientific thinking (e.g., how ideas about disease changed). Interestingly, the Staten Island Quarantine is also directly connected to the birth of federally-funded biomedical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) was born on Staten Island in a nearby federal facility when a scientist was hired to establish a laboratory to find a way to reliably diagnose cholera. The laboratory was successful and it was moved to Washington DC.
Additional content on historical men and women associated with the Watering Place will be added to this project gradually. Explore the names below for a preview:
Michael Vigorito, PhD
Department of Psychology
Seton Hall University