JESSE KETCHAM

Inscription

JESSE KETCHAM
1734-1826. REV. WAR PATRIOT,
1ST REG., SUFFOLK CO. MILITIA.
DEACON FOR FIRST CHURCH IN
BABYLON. EARLY RESIDENT, AREA
THEN KNOWN AS NEGUNTATOGUE.
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2026

Jesse Ketcham was born in 1734 in Huntington, New York, on Long Island. He is believed to have served in the French and Indian War before marrying Temperance Brush in 1761. During the Revolutionary War, Ketcham enlisted in 1776 in the First Regiment of the New York Militia under Captain John Wickes.

After the war, Ketcham purchased land in the town of Huntington, which at the time spanned the entire width of the island from the north to the south shores. This territory included the present-day areas of Babylon and Lindenhurst. The region’s early settlers referred to the local Native Americans as the Massapequa, and each of the eleven peninsulas, or necks, along the south shore retained names derived from Native American languages. Land deeds from 1789 and 1791 identify Ketcham’s property as being located within the town of Huntington in a specific neck known then as Neguntatogue. This neck is part of modern-day Lindenhurst (as of 2026). Jesse and Temperance established a homestead in the area.

In 1798, Jesse and Temperance Ketcham were among the twelve founding members of the first Presbyterian church of Islip and Huntington South, where Jesse was elected as the first deacon. When the congregation later divided into two separate entities, the Ketchams remained active in the Huntington South branch, which became the Babylon congregation.

While the town of Babylon did not officially separate from Huntington until 1872, the area where Ketcham resided was being referred to as Babylon as early as 1803. Lindenhurst eventually formed from a portion of Babylon. Consequently, the land Jesse Ketcham inhabited in the Neguntatogue neck was originally part of Huntington, later considered Babylon, and is located in Lindenhurst as of 2026. Jesse Ketcham died in 1826 and is interred in the Babylon Rural Cemetery alongside his wife.