HUNTINGTON, a town of Suffolk county, N.Y., U.S.A., on the north shore of Long Island ; served by the Long Island rail road. The population in 1930 was 25,582.. Along the sound are the villages of Huntington, Cold Spring Harbor, Centerport, and Northport, noted for their fine country estates. At Cold Spring Harbor are biological laboratories of the Carnegie Institution and a State fish hatchery. The principal occupations of the township are market-gardening, oyster fisheries and shipbuilding. The first settlement was made in 1653. From 1662 to 1664 the territory was under the jurisdiction of Connecticut. Tradition claimed, er roneously, that Nathan Hale was captured by the British near Huntington, Sept. 21, 1776. Benjamin Thompson (Count Rum ford) occupied the village towards the end of the Revolution, and built a British fort. Walt Whitman was born in Huntington, where in 1836 he established the weekly newspaper The Long Islander (still published) which he edited for three years.