Heritage

The Long Family on This Coast

The longer telling of where the family comes from. Nearly four centuries on this coast.

Colonial Founders

Some lines back to the colonial settlement of Rhode Island. Stukely Westcott was among the original thirteen settlers of Providence with Roger Williams in 1638, and is documented as a direct ancestor through the Swift maternal line.

Other lines back to the original purchasers of Nantucket. Tristram Coffin made the purchase from the Mayhew family that founded Nantucket as an English settlement in 1659. He is documented as a direct ancestor through the Coffin maternal line.

For the Tristram Coffin lineage in detail: longfamilyarchive.com/ancestors/tristram-coffin

The Whaling Migration

The Coffin and Folger lineages anchored Nantucket through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the whaling industry shifted toward Fair Haven and New Bedford in the nineteenth century, the families followed the work to the mainland.

Benjamin Franklin’s mother was Abiah Folger of Nantucket. Through the Folger line, his family and mine connect. The exact cousin relationship is documented in the archive.

This is how the family moved from the island to the coast where I live and work.

For the Franklin cousin connection in detail: longfamilyarchive.com/cousins/benjamin-franklin

The Irish Side

Another line came from Ireland in the nineteenth century. Coogans and Manions arrived in Rhode Island in the 1860s and 1870s, settled in Warwick and West Warwick, worked the print mills, raised families, and built standing through generations of work.

By the third generation, the line had married into the political families of southeastern Massachusetts.

For the Coogan and Manion lines in detail: longfamilyarchive.com/lines/coogan

Recent Generations

My grandfather, John Joseph Long, served 24 years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, from 1956 to 1980. He helped found Long and Parent Insurance Agency, played a role in establishing Bristol Community College, and corresponded with both Kennedy brothers. A 1956 letter from Senator John F. Kennedy congratulating him on his first election survives in the family archive, signed by hand “Jack.” A 1966 letter from Senator Edward Kennedy survives as well, with the typed salutation crossed out and “John” written in by hand.

My father, John Patrick Long, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1984 and practiced for more than three decades before his death in 2020.

My paternal grandparents built a home in Westport Point in the 1960s, on the river. The house at 2042 Main Road, where my brothers and I gather now with the next generation, came to the Long family through marriage in the 1980s.