Q. What is Jamaica, Queens, named after? The Caribbean island?
A. Nope. Beavers.
Jamaica
wasn’t the settlement’s first name. In 1655, English colonists from
Massachusetts and eastern Long Island established a town, Rusdorf, in
the area the Dutch called Rustdorp (“rest-town”).
By the end of the 17th century, after the English takeover of the colony, the English had renamed it Jamaica.
According to “The Neighborhoods of Queens” by Claudia Gryvatz Copquin,
the word is believed to have been derived from the Jameco, or Yamecah,
Indians who first lived there; “jameco” is the Algonquin word for
“beaver.” There is a Beaver Road in Jamaica, but it is north of Jamaica
Bay, where the Jameco Indians lived along the shore.
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