THE
INDIAN PLACE-NAMES
by
William Wallace Tooker, 1911
Coram, a farming hamlet in
Brookhaven on the old country road near the geographical
centre of the town. Another small settlement about two
miles southeast is known as 'Coram Hills." Many of
the Long Island historians derive the name from one of
the native chiefs. Munsell, e.g., from Coraway. This name
appears on a deed of 1673 as Coraway. In an order to
Richard Woodhull, dated Aug. 13, 1677, we find:
"that the new way designed and ordered in Governor
Nicoll's time through the middle of the Island (the old
country road) … bee nott only remarked but clear of
brush, and that hee settle a farm about Mon Corum."
Again in 1730: " wee have layed oute to John Smith
the land ranted to William Satterly about WinCoram."
Modernly Coram or Corum . Coram or Corum Hill is found in
Huntington Conn. Wine Corem occurs in a deed of 1736.
"At or about Moncoram" shows that the range of
hills which rises up so plainly from the plains north of
Patchogue now known as the Coram Hills was the locality
intended for a farm. The same name occurring in
Connecticut applied to a hill shows that we must look to
some characteristic of the hills for its meaning.
Therefore instead of eing derived from some Indian chief,
I regard it as the equivalent of the Massachusetts
Monouhkoiyeum "a valley," "low
country," shortened into Moncorum and afterwards
into Coram. It probably referred to a passage between the
hills or some valley near them.
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