Hempstead Tutors

About Hempstead

The town of Hempstead has done a particularly good job of preserving its history. According to Hempstead tutors, many papers dating back from as early as the town’s founding in 1644 have been restored; they include over 80 documents, maps and volumes. The town has invested much time and resources into the ongoing preservation of documents for future generations. The town was awarded a grant and has its own vault in Town Hall with steel shelving that now houses many documents. A full-time role was created for an archivist to sift through the thousands of paper documents and organize what should be kept and what should be destroyed. Those papers and records that were deemed to be Valuable, and historically significant were selected to be kept and filed in the vault. Hempstead tutors say that it is currently possible to have access granted into the vault and frequently students via school trips, and other organizations that support young people set up scheduled visits to be accompanied on a tour through the archives. Many find this tour fascinating as not only do they get to se original documents including Civil War enlistment records, school records etc they also can see visual evidence in the form of original photographs from history in their village. This us particularly interesting for those whose families have been living in Hempstead for generations as potentially the records and photographs may contain the name of a distant relative and provide some insight into a personal history.

The tours that are free to attend are conducted by a historian, who help to present the historical documents and images to enable the visitors to develop a better understanding of how history has shaped the town that they live in today. It begins showing the clear roots of the springing-up of Hempstead in a very rural and agrarian landscape. Also covered in the tour, they also attempt to clarify some of the mystery surrounding the naming of the town. Whether it indeed is named after the Dutch; as many early documents refer to Hempstead as Heemstede, and several of the patentees of Hempstead were Dutch originating from towns near Heemstede Castle in Holland, or if it derived from the town of Hemel Hempstead in the United Kingdom, which is the hometown of the town’s co-founder John Carman. They also make an effort to enlighten students on the developments in local politics and how that shaped the town over the hundreds of years since it was founded in 1644.