The Klan represented resentment, Mr. Smith said, adding: ''It was not racial hatred. It was almost an immigration issue. Probably nonachievers of families that had lived here a long time, who resented those who had better fortune than they.''

The Klan was evident in Huntington and throughout Long Island in the 20's, said Mitzi Caputo, curator of the Huntington Historical Society, which published ''Suffolk, a Pictorial History'' by Christopher Vagts in 1983. That book states that racism was part of the Klan creed.

''They wore open or no hoods,'' Miss Caputo said. ''Businessmen and residents of Catholic and Jewish faiths were harassed. There were courageous individuals who stood up and decried what the Klan stood for.''

One of those was Lawrence F. Deutzman. His daughter Muriel Spahr, who lives in Smithtown, recounted how her father had interrupted a Klan meeting at the Assembly Hall on Main Street. '' 'He strode into the closed meeting,'' Mrs. Spahr is quoted by Mr. Gish as having said, ''and told the local Smithtown members gathered that they should 'be ashamed of themselves for having such a meeting and that they should go home to their families.' ''

Mr. Deutzman, owner and publisher of The Smithtown Messenger, returned to his home, where later in the evening ''the family endured the expected -- a burning cross was set on their lawn.''

By the early 30's, Mr. Gish said, such confrontations had slowly eroded the credibility of the Klan. The town was too diverse for the Klan to remain powerful.

Slavery was also a sensitive topic, Mr. Smith said. Thirty-eight of the 44 families in the town were slave owners in 1776, Mr. Gish writes, until steps were taken toward voluntary manumission in the early 1800's. He approaches the topic with photographs and accounts of the contributions that slaves made to the community and their styles of life.