"People may drive by our Historic Complex all the time, but they might not have ever been in our buildings," Historical Society of the Massapequas president Charles Mackie told Newsday before the 2024 Apple Festival. His point holds for anyone who has stopped at the light near 4755 Merrick Road. The white church with the cemetery around it is one of the most familiar sights on the road, and it is also one of the least visited.
This fall, the Society's schedule lists the Apple Festival for Saturday, October 17, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Old Grace Church and the Historic Complex. The apples bring people in, and the open buildings are the reason the Society holds it. Newsday described the festival as an open house where Old Grace Church, the Delancey Floyd-Jones Free Library and the Elbert Floyd-Jones Servants Cottage are all open free of charge. Walk through all three in order and you can follow how one family's private estate on Merrick Road turned into public places that volunteers now keep running.
What has been on the tables
The Society hasn't published a 2026 vendor list, so the best guide is what past festivals offered. Newsday's 2024 preview and the Oyster Bay Today listing for 2025 show a steady format:
- Apples: five varieties picked in Rockland County, sold in bags of six
- Produce: Long Island vegetables from out East, including broccoli, cabbage and eggplant
- Pies: apple, pumpkin, blueberry and cherry, plus slices with coffee
- Lunch: hot dogs, chips and drinks sold by the Society
- Market: handmade crafts, jewelry, jams and artwork
- Kids: a craft table with games, art projects and coloring, plus children's games in 2025
- Raffles: basket raffles and a 50/50
- Music: the Banjo Rascals, playing instrumental folk under a tent
The Banjo Rascals have played the festival for years. In 2019 the Society's festival page listed their set from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., along with face painting, trash-and-treasure tables and copies of the Society's own book. Craft vendors pay the Society $75 for a 10-by-10-foot space. Admission was free in 2024.
The festival has been around a while. Patch covered an Apple Festival at Old Grace Church in 2011, and by 2013 it was calling the event the Society's annual fundraiser. So every bag of apples and every pie slice helps pay to keep open the buildings sitting behind the tables.
Old Grace Church, built so a family could stay home on Sunday
The Floyd-Jones story here goes back to 1696, when Thomas Jones came to the Massapequas and received 6,000 acres from his father-in-law, Thomas Townsend. He and his wife, Freelove, built a brick house in 1697. Nearly 150 years later, the family's descendants still had to ride by horse and buggy to St. George's Church in Hempstead for Episcopal services. Long Island Press reported in its 2016 history of the site that Grace Church was built to end that trip.
The Society's church history lists who did what in 1844. Thomas Lawrence chaired the organizing group, Henry Hone served as secretary, Elbert Floyd-Jones raised the money, and General Thomas Floyd-Jones donated the land. The first building had clapboard siding and diamond-shaped leaded-glass windows. It was later enlarged to seat 150 people, and shingles and extra trim were added while the Rev. William Wiley was rector.
Since then, the church has moved step by step from family chapel to public landmark:
- 1860s: the vaulted ceiling and altar window are added
- 1905: a rear porch, more pews, heating and electricity
- 1960: the congregation moves to a new church after 116 years in this one
- 1981: the old church is deconsecrated
- 1983: it is added to the National Register of Historic Places
There are two cemeteries here, with different owners. Grace Church owns the burial ground around Old Grace, and the Floyd-Jones family owns the cemetery behind it. Thomas and Freelove Jones were reinterred in the family cemetery in 1892, along with two of their children. Thomas died in 1713 and Freelove in July 1726. The family cemetery is still in use. Long Island Press identified a 2009 burial in the family cemetery as the most recent Floyd-Jones burial.
The library that served Massapequa alone for 56 years
The church was a family project the community could also use. The next building was a gift to the public from the start. In 1896, Colonel Delancey Floyd-Jones built the first public library in the Massapequas. He paid Coleman Williams $60 for the lot and paid a carpenter $530.10, and his relatives supplied the books, tables, shelves and fireplace equipment.
It's a small building, and it mattered a great deal. According to the Society's history, it was the area's only public library from 1896 to 1952. Readers used candlelight until electricity arrived in 1907, and Edward Floyd-Jones left the library $2,500 in 1932. The building turns 130 this year, and volunteers still staff it. Today's Massapequa Public Library has its Central Avenue building and a Bar Harbour branch. For 56 years, one room on Merrick Road did that job.
The cottage that crossed Merrick Road
The third building wasn't originally on this side of the road. The circa-1870 cottage housed servants on Elbert Floyd-Jones's estate. The Society started planning to save it in 1984. In July 1986 it moved the cottage across Merrick Road onto a parcel provided by the library trustees. The Society's library history describes that land as leased. A 2010 Patch account by Society trustee George Kirchmann says the trustees donated it.
Kirchmann gave the moving date as July 8, 1986. Over the next two decades, he wrote, volunteers rebuilt the interior, reshingled and painted the outside, put on a roof, ran utilities and furnished the rooms. The Town of Oyster Bay designated the cottage a historic site in 1989. The Society now describes it as part historical recreation and part museum.
That makes the cottage the clearest example of what this site has become. The family built the church and the library and handed them to the community. The cottage was saved by volunteers, who moved it, rebuilt it and kept it up. When you buy a pie on festival day, you're supporting that same volunteer work.
Before you go, and what else is on the fall calendar
The Society labels its 2026 dates "tentative." The festival poster linked from its site still shows October 17, 2025. Check the schedule page at massapequahistoricalsociety.org or call 516-799-2023, the number in Newsday's listing, before you head over. None of the festival listings mention parking.
If you can't make the 17th, there are other chances to get inside these buildings or enjoy a fall afternoon nearby this season:
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sat., Oct. 3, 2 p.m. | Book talk: "Westpoint at Gettysburg" with Dr. Paul Semendinger | Old Grace Church |
| Sat., Oct. 17, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. | Apple Festival | Old Grace Church and the Historic Complex |
| Sat., Oct. 24, 1–4 p.m. | Town of Oyster Bay Family Fall & Halloween Festival | Marjorie R. Post Community Park, Unqua Road |
| Sun., Nov. 22, 2 p.m. | Society speaker presentation, general meeting at 12:30 p.m. | Old Grace Church |
| Sat., Dec. 12, 1–4 p.m. | Holiday Open House | Old Grace Church and the Historic Complex |
The Town's festival at Marjorie R. Post Community Park is free. According to the Town's flyer, it has games, inflatables, photo spots, a U-pick pumpkin patch while supplies last, and food trucks with specialties for sale. The Society's own season ends with the December open house. Its other big outdoor event of the year, the Strawberry Festival, was on its 2026 schedule for June 13.
Christine Biordi was born and raised in Massapequa and is raising her family here, so the buildings on Merrick Road are part of the hometown she knows. If the cottage's 1986 move across the road has you thinking about your own house and what it's worth today, Christine Biordi is glad to put together a free home valuation, built on the same local knowledge that keeps her attached to the Old Grace Church corner every October.
