The Lesser-Known Islands of New York Contest: The City Room Pop Quiz

The Lesser-Known Islands of New York June 22, 2007 NY Times My grandma, Ms. Gregory was a nanny for the caretaker on one of them, “Bedloe’s Nanny” I heard her called. I was on Governors Island to do geoarchaeology around the National Parks Service part. It was almost empty, the Coast Guard groundskeeper said that it’s said some of the South’s ordnance is buried in the other part, and once Walt Disney was AWOL when he missed the ferry there in WWI. A former “Swivel” captain, the ferry there once so-named told me the plans for D-Day were kept in a safe there in the mansion, meeting him and his wolfhound by Miller Field, Staten Island, on another “archeology” survey (federal spelling). We dug into the moat of Fort Jay, built by Columbia University students in appreciation of the “Jay Treaty” and first SCOTUS Chief Justice, his place could use some work too. One island missing from the photo contest was blown up for the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Bridge and I read it once held prisoner the son of General Robert E. Lee in the Civil War, or was that Fort Williams where Disney was on Governors? One of the islands, Brother, is where the Civil War National Guard unit based in the Bowery near Germania Hall, (where Kate Mullaney, sitting next to Susan B. Anthony, was the first woman elected to union management) was mustered out after the Draft Riots, its officer in "courts martial", and after they were called out in defense of Washington, D.C., having marched there. National Guard once meant that not “state militia”.

Is that why the NY Times called Governors Island “Sleeping Beauty”?