Everyone, in fact, shopped in Hempstead Village, the oldest community in Nassau County. While Mineola was the seat of county government, Hempstead was where you went for almost everything else. To the English settlers in 1644, it was the place where several converging streams provided rich irrigated pasturage for cows and oxen. With a whole island to choose from, they settled in the spot where St. George's Church now stands, facing Front Street. Presbyterian followers of the Rev. Richard Denton, they built a meeting house to serve for both town meetings and religious services.
Historians differ on the derivation of the name.
Other historians trace the name to the Dutch Heemstede, since the Dutch were there before the English. The Dutch were at war with the Indians, and the first English settlers found themselves in a dangerous paradise. Seven Indians charged with stealing pigs in 1644 were confined in Fordham's cellar. New Netherlands Gov. William Kieft sent 120 soldiers, who dealt savagely with the native population. All seems to have been peaceful by 1665 when the new English governor, Richard Nicolls, who had dislodged the Dutch the year before, called a convention in Hempstead, the largest and richest of the English settlements, according to historian Bernice Schultz Marshall.