Author: Furman, Garrit
Biography:
FURMAN, Garrit (1782-1848: ancestry.com)
pseudonym Rusticus
Furman's poetry celebrates country life on and around Long Island NY, where he and his wife (unidentified) and children had a summer home. A wealthy businessman born and settled in New York City, he purchased an estate that included a small island, Mott Island, in 1815, and built a mansion there. The island was renamed Furman Island; the house was demolished in 1899. Besides the poetry, he published prose fiction (Redfield, 1825), reminiscences (Long Island Miscellanies, 1847), and a farce (The Falls of the Genesee, 1831) set in the area. He died there on 6 June 1848. Furman was partly responsible for the transformation of his rural idyll into an urban eyesore in the course of the nineteenth century. His business interests included a toll road across the island which brought traffic and industry--notably a bone-boiling plant, a manure plant, and a horse-rendering plant--within a decade after his death. The island is no longer an island but a part of the New York borough of Queens. (ancestry.com 4 Sept. 2025; Sharon Seltz and Stuart Miller, The Other Islands of New York City [2011] 233-4) HJ