John Ledyard was among the earliest residents of Long Island to live in distant places. His Journal of Cook's Voyage is considered a valuable contribution to the history of exploration. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his autobiography:  "In 1786, while at Paris, I became acquainted with John Ledyard." He described him as "a man of genius, of some science, and of fearless courage and enterprise." These qualities carried Ledyard to Spain and to Russia.
    Thomas Jefferson supported John Ledyard in a dream to be the first recorded person to cross the American continent on foot. His plan was to go through Russia, cross into Alaska and walk to the Mississippi River. He planned to do it almost alone. He took two hunting dogs as companions. It seemed like a wild plan but who knows it might have worked had not Catherine the Great arrested him in Siberia.
    Ledyard's college career was a short and restless one. He chafed at the narrow academic offerings. In the spring of 1773 he chopped down a huge white pine near the banks of the Connecticut River and hacked out a 50-foot long, 3-feet wide dugout canoe - having learned this skill while living with the Iroquois. One of his Dartmouth Indian classmates carved him a paddle and with it he shoved off down the river carrying with him only two books for casual reading: the Greek Testament, and Ovid. Shortly after he left he wrote a letter to Wheelock in which he said, "Farewell, dear Dartmouth, may you flourish like the greenbay tree."  In all he had spent less than one year at Dartmouth.
   No matter what else is said it can be said with some certainty that this early Long Island resident, John Ledyard, travelled farther on land and sea around the globe than any other human being of the 18th century. At Gibralter he enlisted then deserted from the British Navy; served in the British Army and later as a British Marine. He sailed to the Barbary Coast, to the West Indies, and reported for duty with the famous scientist and explorer Captain Cook in Plymouth, England. With Cook he saw the Canary Islands, Cape Verde Island, the Cape of Good Hope, Tasmania, New Zealand, Tahiti, and what was later to become California and Oregon, Nootka Sound, the Bering Sea, Unalaska Island, the eastern coast of Siberia, China, and Java, all the while absorbing as much as he could of the native cultures. On land he walked through some of Scandinavia and almost two-thirds of the way across the vast Russian land mass before being arrested, returned under guard, and evicted to Poland. Quite a walk from Southold, Long Island!!