The above taken from THE NASSAU COUNTRY HISTORICAL JOURNAL/A Quarterly Devoted to Nassau County Life and Letters./ Vol.XVIII/ Summer, 1957,/No.3

Richard Denton, the founding minister of Stamford and erroneously referred to as such for Hempstead, was termed by Cotton Mather a Yorkshire man who had previously ministered there at Halifax Magnalia Christi I:398). Hempstead's present- day expert, Arthur S. Wardwell, has kindly sent for this article the names of Yorkshire men from Halifax and vicinity who were among the fifty original proprietors of Hempstead: Thomas Armitage {Bradford}+, John Lum and his half-brother Jonas Halstead, John Strickland, the five Woods (Edmond {Shelf} Jonas {Oram}, Jonas {Halifax}, Jeremiah, and Timothy), Robert Dean, and Stephen Hudson; among the later arrivals there were the Rev. Richard Denton and his three sons about 1656, Richard Brutnell, Jonas Holdsworth, and Alexander Knowles. The discovery of Rock Smith's 1674 deposition and the use therein of the Scottish term "liner" is perhaps suggestive of a similar origin near the English-Scottish border.

(Taken from Genealogies of Long Island Families., Vol. II, John Smith of Hempstead, New York, Beginnings of the "Rock" Smith Family.)