Ellis Island the region. The oyster beds remained a major source of food for nearly three centuries. Landfilling to build the railyards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey eventually obliterated the oyster beds, engulfed one island, and brought the shoreline much closer to the others. During the colonial period, Little Oyster Island was known as Dyre's, then Bucking Island. In the 1760s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the island's scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant possibly from Wales, around
Liberty Island for ferry service to and from the island. At the time of European colonization of the Hudson River estuary in the mid-17th century, much of the west side of Upper New York Bay contained large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster beds, a major source of food for the Lenape native people who lived there at the time. Several islands were not completely submerged at high tide. Three of them (later known as Bedloe's/Love/Liberty, Ellis, and Black Tom) were given the name Oyster Islands ("oester eilanden") by the Dutch settlers of New Netherland, the first European colony in the Mid-Atlantic