This history of Jericho has a two-fold purpose.  Its primary intention is to serve as a community information source for all who seek knowledge of Jericho’s rich background, and for the numerous students who are assigned research on their home town of Jericho, and need a concise reference tool.  This book records the original identity of a community that should never be lost in the changes and bustle of modern development.

My second intention has been to provide a personal history lesson for myself.  When I became the Local History Librarian for the Jericho Public Library about 1991, our extensive archives were already in place but had no “finding aids” to tell me what they held.  Working part-time each week I spent several years just inventorying the amazingly rich contents of the collection.  That work gave me an ongoing history lesson on Jericho and the rest of Long Island as well.  I still learn something new every day from people who ask questions that I can’t answer, and I‘m always relieved to find there is still an interest in the “Old Jericho.”  I am particularly thrilled at the questions asked by students at my annual local history lecture.  The curious ones are the impetus for the extensive research that went into this book.  The text of this little history comes from many different papers I researched and compiled to answer inquiries on local topics about which, as Local History Librarian, I needed to know.  It will never be a complete history, and probably will have to be revised in the future as more intriguing new facts continually come to light.  But for now I hope it will serve the purpose for which it is intended.

                                                                 Betsey Murphy
                                                    Local History Librarian