About Us
History is cool™
The history of the Island of Manhattan is in truth, our lost American history.
ISLAND™ is the remarkable voyage of discovery that begins with Henry Hudson’s momentous & tragic quest to find the shortcut to China in 1609 to 1909 when transplanted New York publisher William Randolph Hearst is conceiving what would become what we now call “modern media.”
Our world, our America, was not born at Plymouth Rock nor in Jamestown, VA. It didn’t start in “New France” or what we now call Quebec, Canada, let alone at the Spanish colonies at St. Augustine, FL or at Santa Fe, NM. But rather, the America that we know today was born in the first half of the 17th century on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
Created and hosted by actor, writer and New Yorker Chance Kelly, the series illustrates how this place is an island unto itself, not just geographically, but idealistically, philosophically and spiritually. Island uncovers our true lost American history. It examines the city’s effect on religious and personal freedoms throughout the world.
Chance’s own heritage is central to much of this story directly as his great, great, great Uncle Honest John Kelly himself emerged from the slums of Five Points to become one of the first Irish-Catholic Congressmen in 1855, and would later reform the reeling Tammany Hall in the wake of the Boss Tweed era. John Kelly was a fiercely courageous advocate for oppressed immigrants from everywhere.
ISLAND™ is the character-driven portrait of the inimitable souls responsible for a place founded on capitalism but perpetuated by infectious and unapologetic measure of tolerance.
Climb aboard this voyage of discovery as we tell this epic story, over three centuries, of the forging of the epicenter of the universe. Researched, written and produced by Chance Kelly and Dr. Jaap Jacobs.
History is cool™