USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 1
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01125 9535
Ques . $ 45.00
LONG ISLAND
A History of
TWO GREAT COUNTIES NASSAU and SUFFOLK
#1004 44
(Watercolor by Cyril A. Lewis)
The Whalers' Presbyterian Church, Sag Harbor, 1844, designed by Minard Lafever
LONG ISLAND
A History of
TWO GREAT COUNTIES NASSAU and SUFFOLK
Edited by PAUL BAILEY Founder-Publisher of The "LONG ISLAND FORUM"
VOLUME I
LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 1949
1
Introduction 1176001
I N COMPILING this history of suburban and rural Long Island, the editor's chief aim has been to meet the need and satisfy the desire of the average reader. The many contributors, each of whom is a recognized authority on his particular subject, have understood from the start that the goal was to create a work which would be read with interest by the general public and which would at the same time be useful as a source of reference.
The idea of such a work being produced, not by a single author, but by a group of specialists, each drawing from his own particular fund of knowledge and presenting it in his own way under his own name, has, we believe, seldom if ever before been applied in the local field. Not only should this policy tend to insure a more authoritative coverage of each subject but the variety of individual styles would seem to lend an interest not always found in historical works. These advantages, in the editor's opinion, offset the occasional instances of the same subject matter's being handled by more than one author. In such cases it has been deemed preferable to permit double coverage with the idea of having each chapter a complete narrative in itself.
Needless to say, the editor fully appreciates and gratefully ac- knowledges the splendid cooperation of those loyal Long Islanders whose sacrifice of time and effort has alone made this work possible. With them he joins in the hope that these volumes will do justice to the story of an island which, in the words of Washington Irving. written in a much earlier day, "is quite a mine of local history."
Previous works on this subject, including the most recent, that of Henry Isham Hazelton published in 1925, have all practically dis- appeared from the shelves of the book marts and, rated as items for the collector, are out of circulation as far as the general public and the average reader are concerned. Fortunately some public libraries have had the foresight to procure and preserve many of these items but they are not usually loaned out.
This condition has contributed to the historians themselves being so little known. One frequently, for instance, comes upon references to Benjamin F. Thompson, to Silas Wood, Nathaniel S. Prime, Henry Onderdonk, Gabriel Furman, Pelletreau, Flint, Armbruster, Munsell, Bayles, Whitaker, Tooker, and other island historians, but just who these narrators were, when and where they lived, and what else they did besides write history has too seldom been told.
It is not generally known, for instance, that Daniel Denton, Long Island's first English historian, so-called, was the son of the Rev. Richard Denton, one of the early Presbyterian ministers of Hempstead. Time and again historians have confused father and son in fixing the authorship of the earliest treatment of the island by an English resi- dent, published in 1670 and lavishly entitled "A Brief Description of New York, formerly Called New Netherlands, with the Places
30.00
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INTRODUCTION
thereunto Adjoining, together with the Manner of its Scituation, Fer- tility of the Soyle, Healthfulness of the Climate, and the Commodities thence Produced, also Some Directions and Advice to Such as Shall go Thither; An Account of what Commodities they shall Take with Them; the Profit and Pleasure that May Accrew to them thereby, likewise A Brief Relation on the Customs of the Indians There."
The confusion which has arisen in regard to the identity of the two Dentons is shown in Martha B. Flint's "Early Long Island" which states that "Daniel Denton, son of the Rev. Richard Denton, was author not only of his Description of New York, but of a small Treatise of about 355 pages, 8 vo., stiled A Divine Soliloquy". As a matter of fact, the Treatise was written, not by Daniel Denton, author of the island's first factual work, but by his reverend father. Of the latter, Thompson's History has this to say: "Mr. Denton was born of a good family at Yorkshire, England, in 1586, educated at Brase- nose College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1623 and was settled as minister of Coley Chapel, Halifax, for seven years".
The foregoing quotation would have it that Richard Denton had, at graduation, reached the somewhat ripe age of thirty-seven. Sim- ilarly, Venn's Alumnae Cantabrigensis records that in 1621 the elder Denton was Sizar of St. Catherine's and in 1623 received his A.B., the same year taking unto himself a wife.
The Rev. Richard Denton spent nineteen years in America, then returned to England and died there in 1662 or 1663, his age then, according to Thompson, being seventy-six. However, according to "The Genealogy of the Descendants of the Rev. Richard Denton of Hempstead, L. I.", edited by the late George D. A. Combes from notes prepared by William A. Eardeley and published in 1936, Richard Denton was born, not in 1586 as stated by Thompson, but in 1603. This would have made his age at death fifty-nine or sixty and at graduation twenty instead of the ripe thirty-seven.
The son, Daniel Denton, was born in 1626 at Yorkshire, England, and journeyed to America with his father in the fleet of Winthrop in 1630 when Daniel was but four years of age. Five years later he accompanied his father to Watertown and in 1641 to Stamford, Con- necticut. It was not until 1644, when the future author was eighteen years of age, that he came with his father to Hempstead, L. I., and with him participated in its founding, rising by 1850 to the post of town clerk.
In 1656 Daniel Denton and his brother Nathaniel were among those who settled Jamaica and the former was chosen town clerk to serve this new community, according to the very first entry in the Jamaica Town Records, 1656-1751, page one, which reads:
"A Town Meeting held of ye Town ye 18th of February 1656. Daniel Denton chosen to write and enter all acts and orders of public concernment of ye Town and is to have a daie's work a man for ve said employment." Again on February 27, 1658, it was entered that Daniel Denton "shall be town clerk for ve ensuing year & to have off some 30 st. & off others a guilder".
Daniel was elected magistrate of Jamaica in 1662, the year that his father died in England. Two years later Daniel's name appears
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INTRODUCTION
as one of several grantees of a large tract of land in New Jersey, near the present city of Elizabeth. This same year he was appointed Justice of the Peace by Governor Nicolls, almost immediately upon the English taking over the Dutch colony of New. Netherlands. In this office Daniel represented Jamaica at the historic Hempstead conven- tion of 1664-65.
Visiting London in 1670, Daniel Denton prepared and attended to the publication of his work, a pamphlet obviously designed to persuade Englishmen to migrate to America and especially to Long Island, the natural resources of which were described in glowing language by the author.
"The greatest part of the Island," he wrote, "is full of timber, as Oaks, white and red, Walnut-trees, Chestnut-trees also * Maples, Cedars, Saxifrages, Beach, Birch, Holly, Hazel, with many sorts more." The island's fields and woodlands were, Denton declared, "so curiously bedecke with Roses and an innumerable multitude of delightful flowers, not only pleasing the eye, but smell, that you may behold Nature contending with Art and striving to equal, if not excel, many Gardens in England."
To quote further from this first "history" and, undoubtedly, the island's first real estate prospectus, "The herbs which the country naturally affords are Purslain, white Orange, Egrimony, Violets, Pen- niroyal, Alicampane, besides Saxaparilla very common, with many * more *
* Nay, did we know the virtue of all these Plants and Herbs growing there (which time may more discover) many are of opinion, and the Natives do affirm, that there is no disease common to the Country, but may be cured without Materials from other Nations".
"The Fruits natural to the Island," wrote Denton, "are Mul- berries, Pesimons, Grapes, great and small, Huckelberries, Cramber- ries, Plums of several sorts, Rasberries and Strawberries, of which last is such abundance in June, that the Fields and Woods are died red; Which the Countrey-people perceiving, instantly arm themselves with bottles of Wine, Cream and Sugar, and instead of a Coat of Male, every one take a Female upon his horse behind him, and so rushing violently into the fields, never leave till they have disrob'd them of their red colours, and turned them into their old habit."
Upon returning to America and Long Island, Daniel Denton found that in his absence his wife had been unfaithful, a charge to which she confessed, and a bill of absolute divorce was granted Denton by Governor Lovelace and his Council. The divorced spouse thereupon married Major Daniel Whitehead by whom in due course she had six children.
As for Denton, he removed to New Jersey and in 1673 was serving as a magistrate at Piscataway. The following year he disposed of his property there and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he became Town Recorder and school teacher. There, on April 24, 1676, at the age of fifty he took a second wife, one Hannah Leonard, age seventeen, and their first child, Hannah, was born a year later.
Back at Jamaica in 1684 with his large and still growing family, ยท Denton was again chosen Town Clerk and in 1689 was commissioned
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INTRODUCTION
Clerk of Queens County in which Jamaica was located. Although the year of his death is not known, an entry in the Jamaica town records of March, 1696, refers to "Daniel Denton, late of Jamaica, Seanor, now deceased".
In the case of Long Island's first English pamphleteer, not only has little been written about Denton's life, but few people have had the opportunity to read, or even see his small but notable work in its original form. Only twenty-one copies are believed to be extant of the first edition although a number of reprints have from time to time been made, the most recent in 1937 by Columbia University Press, with complete bibliographical notes by Victor Hugo Paltsits, a thorough student of the subject.
A copy of the original edition of 1670 was sold in London in 1824 for eighteen shillings. Twenty-two years later another copy brought $31, while in 1900 a perfect copy of the tract was sold in London as part of the library of Lord Ashburton for 400 pounds or about $2,000. The Columbia College Library prizes a copy which it purchased some years ago in a batch of pamphlets for ten dollars, but a copy once held by the New York State Library was lost in the Albany Capitol fire of 1911.
Not until the year 1824 did a work purporting to be a history of Long Island appear in print although much had by then been written, and some of it published, on a less comprehensive scale, dealing usually with a community or a church. It was in 1824 that Alden J. Spooner, a printer located in Brooklyn, brought out a 66-page pam- phlet by the Hon. Silas Wood of Huntington, entitled "A Sketch of the First Settlement of the Several Towns on Long Island - With their Political Conditions, to the end of the American Revolution". Two years later Spooner produced a 111-page edition of the work and again in 1828 a third edition which by then had grown to 184 pages.
Alden J. Spooner as well as his father Alden contributed greatly to the recorded story of Long Island in a number of pamphlets which they printed in their plants at Sag Harbor and Brooklyn. Some of these pamphlets are now highly valued items of Americana.
Although Silas Wood is perhaps best known for his historical writings, he was an outstanding lawyer, a legislator in both state and nation and a statesman whose interest in public affairs extended be- yond the shores of his native island.
Born September 14, 1769, in the same picturesque West Hills section of Huntington Town where fifty years later the immortal Walt Whitman was to first see the light of day, Silas Wood was the son of Joshua and Ruth Brush Wood of humble circumstances. After attend- ing the local school, he was in due course admitted to Princeton College from which he graduated at the age of twenty to spend several ensuing years as a tutor there.
Although he did not immediately prepare himself for the bar, he was an intense student of public affairs and in 1794, at the age of twenty-five, issued his first work, a pamphlet of 36 pages entitled "Thoughts on the State of the American Indians".
The following year he was elected to the New York State Assem- bly from Suffolk County, in which office he served four years during
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INTRODUCTION
which period he made a study of State government. In 1802 he married Catherine Huyck, but the following year, on their way to Montgomery County, the young wife died in childbirth, her infant son succumbing three days later, and Silas Wood buried them beside the trail "without civilized assistance".
Not until 1810, when he was forty-one years of age, was Silas Wood admitted to the bar. For a brief spell he practiced in New York City but in 1813 returned to his beloved Huntington and from there in 1817 he was elected to Congress, serving the Long Island district for five successive terms. It was just previous to his entrance into the national field that, in 1816, he issued his "Brief Statement of the Claim of Huntington to Cap Tree Island, Oak Island and Grass Island in the South Bay," a 16-page pamphlet published in Brooklyn, the scholarly reasoning of which greatly increased the young lawyer's prestige and no doubt had some bearing on his being chosen for Congress.
Referring to Silas Wood, the candidate for re-election in 1826, The Portico, Huntington's local newspaper, declared : "For experience and abilities; for true patriotism and conscientious discharge of duties, he is entitled to the support of the rational part of the inhabitants of Suffolk".
Wood had by then, while serving as Representative, issued his Long Island history, first in 1824, and two years later in a second, larger edition upon which The Brooklyn Star commented: "The work now embraces a mass of very interesting particulars relative to the early settlement of every town on the Island. . . It also includes biographical sketches of distinguished men and a political history of the most interesting periods. The work will perpetuate and hand down to posterity very many facts and incidents which would other- wise have been buried in oblivion."
Having remained a widower for twenty-six years, Silas Wood in 1829 married Elizabeth Smith, daughter of Josiah Smith of Long Swamp in the town of Huntington. The one child born to them, a daughter, died in 1832 but the mother lived until 1859, surviving the historian by twelve years.
There are students who consider Silas Wood the most profound if not the most prolific of the Island's historians. The only copy extant of his first work, the 36-page pamphlet of 1794, "Thoughts on the State of the American Indians," is now owned by the Henry E. Iluntington Library and Art Gallery of San Marino, California, which in 1923 purchased it for $130. Copies of Wood's "Brief Statement of the Claim of Huntington to Cap Tree Island, Oak Island and Grass Island in the South Bay," 1816, are owned and highly prized by the Long Island Historical Society, Brooklyn, and the Long Island Collec- tion at East Hampton, L. I.
The Huntington Historical Society, whose headquarters stands within a few miles of Silas Wood's birthplace, owns a rather exten- sive collection of his material including his own personal copy of the 1828 edition of the island history, also a copy of the original 1824 edition as well as a copy of his sketch on Huntington Town, published the same year. Copies of the latter became rare shortly after publi-
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INTRODUCTION
cation as the greater part of the edition was stored in a Huntington building that was destroyed by fire.
The Huntington Historical Society likewise owns a volume which Silas Wood had had bound for his wife and which contains not only the Huntington Town sketch and the island history, 1828 edition, but copies of six speeches which he delivered before Congress and which were printed in Washington.
Outstanding among the published histories of Long Island are the three editions of Benjamin F. Thompson, the first of which ap- peared in 1839 in a single volume. It was followed four years later by a two volume edition. He planned a still larger work and in 1849 had released its prospectus when death occurred. The additional data which he had by then collected finally appeared in 1918 in three volumes published under the editorship of Charles J. Werner.
Thompson's is by far the best known and most widely quoted of the island's histories. Appearing in its original form fifteen years after Silas Wood's Brief Sketch, it presented a much more extensive coverage of the subject.
Like Silas Wood, Benjamin F. Thompson achieved success in the legal profession before assuming the role of historian. Like Wood, he was a native Long Islander, born to the hilly farmlands of Suffolk Country's north shore. Thompson's birthplace was Setauket where, in a house which still stands, he entered the world May 15, 1784, the son of Dr. Samuel Thompson, local physician, and Phebe Satterly, daughter of Jacob Satterly of Setauket. Dr. Thompson had served as Captain of the first Company of Colonel Floyd's Long Island Regiment in the Revolution and came from an old and highly respected island family, as also did his wife.
Benjamin F., the first born of this union, became the sole sur- viving offspring when a younger sister, Hannah, died in infancy. There were, however, several other children by the Doctor's second wife, Ruth Smith. Following a period of schooling in Setauket, the future historian at the age of ten entered Clinton Academy at East Hampton, returning the next year to Setauket from whence he shortly entered the then newly established Academy of Huntington. Con- tinuing his studies there and also under the Rev. David Ely in Con- necticut, young Thompson at the age of eighteen entered Yale College only to terminate his studies there at the end of the first year, owing to financial reverses suffered by his father.
From this time on Thompson pursued preparations for medicine as best he could and eventually entered the profession. He practiced for ten years in and around Setauket, at the same time preparing for law. Not until the age of thirty-seven, however, was he finally admitted to the bar. Like Historian Silas Wood, who had not become a lawyer until his forty-first year, Thompson had devoted the earlier part of his adult life to varied activities including a goodly measure of public service.
In 1810 the young medical doctor married Mary Howard, daughter of the Rev. Zachariah Greene. The bride was then but sixteen, ten years younger than her husband. Her father was the minister of the Setauket Presbyterian Church, a post he occupied for sixty-one years.
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In 1811 Dr. Thompson was appointed assistant county clerk of Suffolk County and in 1812 was elected to represent the county in the State Assembly. The following year, with the country again at war with England, Thompson was appointed by the federal government to serve as collector of its taxes and internal revenues for the counties of Queens and Kings. Resigning this post in 1815, he was the following year appointed postmaster at Setauket, serving in that capacity until 1824.
In 1826 Thompson was elected to the office of district attorney of Queens County, having by then moved his residence from Setauket to Hempstead in that county. He held this post for ten years, ful- filling the duties of the office, to quote the Long Island Star of Febru- ary 18, 1836, "with energy and fidelity". To further quote this leading newspaper of its day, Mr. Thompson "added a decision of character, and a tact and facility in the dispatch of business, we should be glad to see much oftener exhibited among our law practitioners".
The year before he became district attorney, Mr. Thompson published a 300-page volume entitled "The Justices Guide" as a reference in legal procedure for justices of the peace, an office in which he had also briefly served.
From 1836 on, while enjoying an ever expanding law practice, Benjamin F. Thompson gave more and more of his time to compiling the history he had long planned. When finally in 1839 the volume was published, it was dedicated to his fellow historian, Silas Wood. Printed at Thompson's own expense, its publisher was Eli French of New York. The small edition was quickly disposed of, almost entirely to those who had subscribed in advance.
The second edition of Thompson's history, consisting of two volumes and published in 1843, was dedicated "to the officers and members of the New York Historical Society". It was produced at the joint expense of the author and his publishers, Gould, Banks and Company of New York, and was sold out completely within a year, Thompson later writing that an edition "three times as large could have been disposed of."
In February of 1849 Benjamin F. Thompson wrote to Thaddeus W. Harris, librarian of Harvard University: "The manuscript of my third edition of the history of Long Island is ready for the press, and I am only waiting the procuring of a sufficient number of subscribers to warrant the publication. The second edition is exhausted and the amount and value of the new material make me desirous of printing a more complete work, before I die." He passed away the following year and was buried in the churchyard of the Presbyterian Church at Hempstead.
The manuscript which he had prepared for publication went to the youngest of his four children (two sons and two daughters), Edward Z. Thompson, whose daughter, Miss Julia H. Thompson, made it available for the three volume edition of 1918. Today this work is much more highly appraised by students if not collectors than either of the earlier editions.
At the time Thompson was preparing his second edition, two other prominent Long Islanders were also engaged in compiling local
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INTRODUCTION
histories. They were Henry Onderdonk, Jr., of Jamaica, and Nathanie.' S. Prime of Huntington. The former confined his endeavors pretty much to his native Queens County, while Prime's forte was a thorough knowledge of the island's churches which he turned into an ecclesi- astical history.
Contemporary with Thompson, Onderdonk and Prime, as well as with Silas Wood, who died in 1847 at the age of seventy-eight, were two outstanding Brooklyn historians. Henry C. Murphy, publisher of the then newly founded Brooklyn Daily Eagle, served as mayor of that city and for a time was minister to Holland. Here he had access to original records of the New Netherlands colony of which Brooklyn had been a part. It was information obtained in Holland which prompted him to write his Brooklyn history. Gabriel Furman com- piled his "Antiquities of Long Island" some twenty-five years before the manuscript, which had become lost, was found by Frank Moore and published in 1875.
Among Long Island historians of the 19th century was a native of Middle Island, a small farming community in the heart of Suffolk County. Richard M. Bayles was born March 23, 1846. Educated in the common schools of the county and at Northville Academy, he took up surveying which led him into the field of title searching. This in turn aroused his interest in genealogy and finally he made his debut as a full fledged historian with the publication in 1874 of a volume entitled "Sketches of Suffolk County." Eight years later his more comprehensive "History of Suffolk County" appeared.
Unlike most of the island's historians, however, Richard M. Bayles chose further fields to explore. His history of Greene County, N. Y., was published in 1884, followed shortly by histories of the towns of Essex and Haddam in Connecticut. He also wrote a history of Yon- kers, N. Y., and one of Richmond County, Staten Island. Newport and Providence in Rhode Island later received his attention as did other parts of New England. Nevertheless, Richard M. Bayles remained a resident of Middle Island and there he spent the latter years of his life rusticating amid a large collection of books and newspaper files.
Unique among the Island's local historians was Augustus Griffin of Oyster Ponds (now Orient), then as now one of the smaller com- munities of Southold Town. Griffin's Journal, published in 1857, has since become a valuable piece of Americana as well as a fruitful source of data for subsequent historians.
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