Brian O’Connor, a Northport author and historian, will give a lecture on Thursday, October 29, at 7:00 pm in the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Reichert Planetarium – John Sloss Hobart: Revolutionary Patriot and Statesman.
He will draw on his forthcoming book on John Sloss Hobart (1738-1805)—a Northport/Eaton’s Neck lawyer and historical figure who played a significant role in New York’s support of the Declaration of Independence. Hobart’s legacy remains deeply connected to Eaton’s Neck and Long Island’s Revolutionary history.
O’Connor is also the author of Death by Fire and Ice: The Steamboat Lexington Calamity (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2022), which recounts the tragic sinking of the Lexington in 1840 in Long Island Sound’s worst maritime disaster.
Hobart, as a member of the New York Provincial Congress, voted on July 9, 1776, to approve the Declaration and directed New York’s delegates in Philadelphia to join the other colonies in declaring independence. He helped draft New York’s first state constitution and was appointed as one of the first three judges on New York’s Supreme Court of Judicature – its highest court – on which he served until 1798. He then went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and federal judge, leaving a lasting legacy in both state and national history.
Brian E. O’Connor, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., received a B.A. in Government and Politics, magna cum laude, from St. John’s University and a J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law, where he served as publications editor of the law review. After beginning his legal career with a clerkship on the New York Court of Appeals, he became a partner in a prominent Wall Street law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, LLP, where he specialized in complex commercial litigation for thirty-eight years before retiring in 2017 as the firm’s general counsel. He lives on Eaton’s Neck in Northport, New York, with his wife, Helen.