Brantingham, New York, is a hamlet just within the western border of Adirondack National Park. A bucolic community, Brantingham primarily exists as a lakeside camping resort.
The topography of the area today known as Brantingham was carved out of retreating glaciers during the last ice age several thousand years ago.
The first human settlers of the area were the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois nation. One of the most famous Mohawks was British Revolutionary War officer and tribal chief Joseph Brant, who, despite his name, had no part in the founding of Brantingham.
Brantingham's first U.S. settlers arrived in 1792 as part of Brantingham’s Grant, one of the nine land partitions that would eventually constitute Lewis County. Portions of the town of Watson were used in 1828 to establish Brantingham, which was named after Thomas Hopper Brantingham, the original owner of the land grant.
According to his contemporaries, Brantingham was “a man unworthy of trust and destitute of honor.” So, the residents of Brantingham decided to rename their town after popular New York Congressman John Greig in 1832, with a small portion of the renamed town near Brantingham Lake continuing to be called Brantingham.
According to the 2000 US Census, the hamlet has a population of 689.
