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Ancient cultures of indigenous peoples had lived in the area for thousands of years. At the time of European contact, bands of the Lenape (Delaware) nation inhabited western Long Island and the areas along today’s New York Harbor and adjacent New Jersey, as well as further south down the coast, through present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware, and along the Delaware River. They spoke an Algonquian language. By 1600, however, the band inhabiting this local area was called the Matinecock (Metoac), after their location.

Glen Cove was used as a port by the English, and for those coming and going further inland to New England. On May 24, 1668, Joseph Carpenter of Warwick, Rhode Island, purchased about 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) of land to the northwest of the Town of Oyster Bay from the Matinecock. Later that year, he admitted four male residents of Oyster Bay as co-partners in the project-the brothers Nathaniel, Daniel, and Robert Coles along with Nicholas Simkins. The five young men named the settlement ‘Musketa Cove Plantation’, musketa meaning “place of rushes” in the Lenape language.

In the 1830s, steamboats started regular service on Long Island Sound, between New York City and Musketa Cove, arriving at a point still called The Landing. As the Lenape word Musketa was incorrectly associated with the English word mosquito, in 1834, residents changed the name officially to Glen Cove; this was said to be taken from a misheard suggestion of Glencoe (referring to Glencoe, Scotland or Glencoe, Nova Scotia).