Q. Roosevelt Island was formerly called Blackwell’s Island. Who was Blackwell?

A. Blackwell’s Island, named for a family that farmed it for generations, was midway in a long succession of names for the 1.75-mile-long island in the East River.

According to the Encyclopedia of New York City, the island was called Minnehanonck by the Indians (translated in different references as either “Long Island” or “It’s nice to be on the island”) and Varken Eylandt (“Hogs Island”) by the Dutch. Wouter Van Twiller, an early governor of New Netherland, bought the island for the colony in 1637 from the Indians, as he had done with Wards, Randalls and Governors Islands.

In 1668, the island was bought by a British captain, John Manning, who lived there ignominiously after briefly surrendering the new British colony of New York to the Dutch during the Anglo-Dutch wars.

The island was inherited by Captain Manning’s stepdaughter, Mary Manningham Blackwell, and was deeded by the early 1700s to Robert Blackwell, Captain Manning’s son-in-law, who lived and farmed there. A farmhouse built by one of his descendants, James Blackwell, dating from 1796 to 1804, still stands on its original site several blocks north of the Queensboro Bridge. A city landmark owned by New York State, it was restored in 1973, deteriorated in the 1990s and is being re-restored, according to the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, which hopes to use it again as a community center.