Staten Island's 3 new ferry boats won't hit the water until 2019 at the earliest.. But Mayor DeBlasio says he knows what one of them will be named.
As NY1's Lindsay Tuchman reports, the name will highlight a piece of African American history in the borough.
After 10 years, Staten Islander Rich Richmond finally made his way to the Sandy Ground Historical Museum in Rossville.
His trip was inspired by last week’s announcement by Mayor DeBlasio, that one of three new Staten Island Ferry Boats will be named for the historic site. It’s one of the oldest free black settlements in the U.S.
"Sandy ground is part of the ethnic fabric of Staten Island that is just not that well known I think to the general public,” he said.
After slavery was abolished in New York City in the 1820s, free African-Americans from Maryland sought security on Staten Island, and brought their oyster farming business to Sandy Ground.
Sylvia Moody Dalessandro is the executive director of the Sandy Ground Historical Society as well as a descendant of one of the first people to live here.
"Staten Island offered a safe place for African-Americans to come, and build a community,” she said. “And given that opportunity, that's what they did."
The oysters may not be growing in the water on the island anymore but Sandy Ground will still be making an impact on the water with the ferry, but also potentially an impact nationwide.
"We think that this is not only a Staten Island story, and a New York story, we think it's an American story,” Dallesandro said. “And by naming the ferry boat the Sandy Ground, it certainly is going to make people curious as to what that name means."
Curious just as Richmond was, and what de Blasio thinks tourists will be.
"The idea was to honor the rich heritage of Staten Island of NYC,” he said at the town hall.
Many relatives of the original Sandy Ground settlers still live nearby, and soon their rich heritage will be sailing across the New York Harbor.