N.N. “Rock” Smith

From Long Island Antiquities by Gabriel Furman

Upon this island, and especially in the central portions of it are very many families of the name Smith, and so numerous did they become at an early period of this settlement, that it was thought necessary to distinguish the various original families by some particular name. thus we have the Black Smiths; the Blue Smiths; the Bull Smiths; the Weight Smiths, and the Tangier Smiths.

Of the Rock Smiths there are two distinct families. One originally settled between Rockaway and Hempstead, some ten or fifteen years before the settlement of the first white inhabitant in Setauket, who derived their name from the contiguity to Rockaway. The other located themselves in Brookhaven and obtained their appellation from their ancestor erecting his dwelling against a large rock which still remains in the highway of that town