Does anyone know who Jones Beach, LI is named after?
The park is named after Major Thomas Jones of Massapequa, a Long Island landowner in the early 1700s. Major Jones was born about 1665 on Straubane, in The Kingdom of Ireland. He moved to Warwick, Rhode Island from the British Isles by way of Jamaica, in the West Indies. In 1702, Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York, commissioned Major Jones Captain of the Militia in Queens County, New York on Oct. 20; in that same year on Oct 14, 1704, he was appointed High Sheriff of Queens, and on April 3, 1706 he was appointed Major of the Queens County Regiment. Governor Hunter, of the Province of New York appointed him Ranger General of the Island of Nassau (Long Island), which gave to him the monopoly of the whale and other fisheries from the north to the south shore of the island. This commission was dated Sept. 4, 1710. Major Jones died Dec. 13, 1713, and was buried in a a small grave yard on the banks of the then called Brick House Creek, now called Massapequa Creek.
