Stony Brook Assembly

The Stony Brook Assembly was an evangelical organization that held a series of annual summer Bible Conferences and camp meetings in Stony Brook, NY on Long Island from 1909 to about 1958. Nationally and internationally known speakers led conferences covering religious, educational, and social topics. The assembly was also the parent organization which founded The Stony Brook School to use its grounds outside of the summer months. Though the assembly eventually dissolved, the school still remains today.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a number of summer religious retreats and camp meetings were founded following the tradition of the Keswick movement in England and the Chautauqua movement in the United States. Other notable conferences were founded at such places as Chautauqua, NY, Winona Lake, IN, and Northfield, MA, grew in popularity as places of physical rest, entertainment, and spiritual renewal.

In 1906 a prominent group of predominantly Presbyterian ministers and laymen united to establish a summer Bible conference enterprise in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The group was led by the Pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, NY, the Rev. Dr. John Fleming Carson. Among the handful of sites considered for the endeavor were southern New Jersey and the Poconos, but in 1907, after having visited the north shore of Long Island, Carson settled on the hamlet of Stony Brook. Land was acquired directly across from the Stony Brook branch of the Long Island Rail Road. This allowed easy transportation for the approximately ten million people living in the New York metropolitan area, fifty-five miles away. The nearby Stony Brook harbor could also accommodate sailboats carrying guests from Connecticut and other parts of New England across the Long Island Sound. The first meeting began on July 3, 1909 in a large tent pitched on the lawn of Carson's home on Christian Avenue. Despite the stormy weather, which tore the tent, the conferences were an immediate success. Though the first conference had 707 registered guests, 3,869 people in all were in attendance. By the next summer, an auditorium accommodating 1,000 people was erected on the assembly grounds. At the time it was the largest building on Long Island. Today the auditorium is known as Carson Auditorium.

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