A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 148

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188

USA > New York > A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 148

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Our county retains its great physical at- tractiveness. It is abundant in scenes of picturesque beauty. It has no mountains ; but close at hand, throughout its whole length of nearly a hundred miles from the line of Nassau county to Montauk Point and Fisher's Island, we see the grandeur and the sublimity of the ocean, which surpasses the impressive- ness of the unchanging mountains, because it is alive with the movement and partakes of the magnificence of the illimitable heavens. And everywhere, throughout our bounds, the eye is delighted with charming pictures of hill and valley, lakes and rivers, and all forms of in- lets, coves and bays.

The terminal moraine of the Arctic glacier is the firm rampart ( from end to end of our county) that gives strength and stability to all its parts, and under its abiding protection the gentle plains spread their sunny slopes to the life-giving breezes of the ever-changing sea. Here Nature has permitted no lack of variety and beauty, and no scarcity of fruitfulness for the support, the comfort, the enjoyment of man. And all these resources, which Nature has so amply provided, the people of our coun- ty have in these fifty years past been making more available and valuable.

The northern half of the county is sig- nally diversified. It contains every form of hill and dale which the forces of ice and water and gravitation can produce. From hundreds of pleasant elevations one beholds on Sound and bays and inlets the inextinguishable laugh which Homer saw on the face of the sea be- fore the drop serene veiled his and Milton's eyes.

There are nowhere choicer sites for ele- gant country homes than our whole north shore presents from Huntington to Orient, not to mention our Fisher's Island.

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

Men are greatly affected by the climate in which they live. It may be cold, hot, dry, moist, rare or dense. In many places, as in our own county, the climate depends more or less upon the presence or absence of for- ests. In many parts of our county the half century has seen forest land converted into fruitful fields. But this advantage has pro- duced no want of balance in our healthful cli- mate. Tens of thousands of trees for fruit, shade and beauty, with shrubs and vines for ornament and use, have well supplied the ab- sence of common trees. Villages that fifty years ago were in the summer season scorch- ing in the glowing sun now resemble pleasant parks adorned with goodly trees of resplend- ent variety and attractiveness. The desert has become paradise. Furthermore, many of these well-adorned villages have doubled their size since 1850. The people of the county have changed far more than the soil they occupy or the healthful and genial air which they breathe.

The bringers of Christian civilization hither two hundred and fifty years ago were nearly all people of pure English blood. There were among them a few French, Scotch, Welsh and Dutch families. The French appear in the names of L'Hommedieu, Diament (Dimon), Fithian, Pelletreau, Sal- lier, Boisseau. The Scotch are seen in Muir- son, Blythe, Gelston. The Welch in Floyd, Wines, Lloyd, The Dutch in Schellenger and others.

After the greater part of Long Island was torn governmentally from its kindred New England in 1662 the people here were doubly isolated. The Sound and the ocean were less a barrier than the repulsive government and the uncongenial population of New York. Hence our people lived signally within them- selves for several generations. The county produced its own men and women-its own farmers, mechanics, merchants, sailors, fisher- men, ministers, lawyers, doctors. It produced, also, in great measure its own food, clothing, utensils, buildings and other supports and comforts of its citizens. It asked no favors and received little benefit from the great world beyond it. This somewhat undesirable but thoroughly natural state continued until near the middle of the century which has just ended.

For two hundred years young people had swarmed from the teeming hive. Few persons from abroad had made their homes within

its bounds. Now and then a young man, who, for trade or toil, had gone forth and found the treasure of his life elsewhere, returned with his bride. But cases of this kind were rare. For Suffolk county girls were then, as they are now, good enough for any man. When this uncommonness of our condition terminated, the population of our county was about 37,000. In these fifty years it has nearly doubled its resident citizens. During the summer, including visitors and cottagers, it is above 100,000.

The rate of increase in wealth has been far greater than in population. An indica- tion of this fact is seen in the establishment of banks. The county, it is supposed, had no bank in it fifty years ago. It certainly had no savings bank. It now has two national banks in Greenport, one in Sag Harbor, one in Southampton, one in Riverhead, one in Pat- chogue, one in Babylon, one in Port Jefferson, and one or more elsewhere. There is a pri- vate bank in Easthampton, one in Sag Har- bor, one in Riverhead, and others, it may be, in different places.

The Southold Savings Bank was organ- ized in 1858. This has been followed by the organization of those of Riverhead, Sag Har- bor and Patchogue. These savings banks now have six millions of dollars deposited in them. It is believed that the Suffolk county deposi- tors in savings banks equal in number one- tenth of its whole population, as many as half the men who voted last year at the election for county officers. Furthermore, our citizens have millions of dollars invested in life in- surance. It is needless to conjecture how many millions they have in Government bonds and in other bonds and stocks.

Many causes have been active to effect the changes already indicated. The building of the railroad from one end of the island to the other brought into the county a small army of men born on the other side of the sea. Many of them saw the fitness of the land to reward industry, to afford health, and to make pleas- ant living. They set up their banners all along the road, and they have not ceased for half a century to call their kindred and coun- trymen effectively to their standard. These and their descendants are now an important part and element of our people. The railroad has notably fostered a change in the agricult- ure of the county by making quick and ready access to the best markets for the produce

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of the soil. And this change has summoned a multitude of men of alien birth to work the ground. The facilities. of travel by cars and steamers between the great emporium and our beautiful shores and villages, with their ocean waters and health-giving air, have brought hither in ever increasing throngs the summer visitors who have profoundly affected our na- tive citizens and rural ways.

The opportunities for thrift and gain of riches here have also led many other classes of persons to build their homes within our bounds.

These enlargements of the life of our coull- ty have not turned away our people from ag- riculture as their chief employment. They are well pleased with the ways of Cincinnatus and the Master of Mount Vernon. But they have revolutionized the methods of their fa- thers. These gave a large part of their tinie and strength to the work of gathering fertil- izers for their fields. The seaweed of the ocean, the grass of the bays, the sedge of the marshes, the fishes of the briny deep, and even the leaves of the trees were diligently and toilsomely collected to be used in giving heart to the land and making it yield fruitful har- vests.

The products of the soil in those days were little else than grain, potatoes, turnips and hay. Step by step the farmers have had recourse to chemically prepared fertilizers and to the raising of a wide range of marketable crops. The vast regions of the West and Northwest of our country have made the cultivation of grain on Long Island unprofitable. Formerly Suf- folk county land, in broad fields, raised wheat and rye and oats. For these crops its occupa- tion is gone.

On the other hand, our nearness and fa- cilities of access to the great markets in the populous cities of New York and New Eng- land enable our farmers to raise and sell green crops to advantage. Strawberries, cranber- ries, cabbage, cauliflower, and kindred veget- ables, as well as various fruits, have come to be a prominent part of the sources of our sup- port and wealth. Increase of this kind of in- dustry and profit has come from the ever-in- creasing accession of summer guests and cot- tagers and from the multiplication of factories for canning fruits and vegetables in the neigli- borhood of their growth.

All of this transformation has been ani- mated and fostered by the beginning which

invention has made in the creation of mani- fold and effective agricultural implements. The farmer of fifty years ago, if he should now return to us, would not know the names of half the tools and utensils that his son now em- ploys. He could not name a monkey wrench ; and the boys of to-day will hereafter use more implements of future invention than all that now exist. The weeder, the mower, the tedder, the reaper, the binder, the thresher, the sifter, the planter, the drill, the digger, and others, separate or combined, and with or without steam power, have come after the hoe, the spade, the plow and the harrow, but there are many more to follow that have not yet been invented. These inventions have already made the farmer's life easy and pleasant in com- parison with his toilsome days and weary nights five decades ago. He does not now sling' a peck of wheat over his shoulder, trudge over soft, uneven, plowed ground, and scatter the seeds with his ever swinging and ever increasingly weary arm. He pours his grain into a box, mounts his seat behind his fine span of horses, says to them "go," and the drill does the rest.

Next to the cultivation of the soil the most interesting industry of our country for these years has been the building and use of sea- going vessels. The departments of productive activity dependent upon navigation and fish- ing, or included in them, were in full vigor, operation and fruitfulness at the beginning of the period under review. The shipyards of Greenport, Patchogue, Port Jefferson, Setau- ket, Stony Brook, Northport and other places in the county were scenes of skillful and profitable employment, where capable design- ers and draftsmen and expert mechanics cre- ated the finest crafts that pierced the waves and delighted the hearts and justified the pride of seafaring men. Every year these yards sent forth both sloops and schooners of shapely beauty and excellent fitness for profitable use or healthy pastime. Some of these yards also built brigs and barks and barkentines-vessels that asked no favors of any others of their respective classes that sailed the sea.

In the midst of this prosperity came the union of British lords and American slave masters with the infernal purpose of destroy- ing our nation. They lighted the highways of the ocean with our flaming ships and swept from all the courses of foreign commerce our

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

whole merchant marine. These things are said

"Lest we forget-lest we forget."

This violent outbreak of the confederacy of envy abroad and oppression at home made the soaring eagle of our Suffolk county ship- yards a feeble bird witlı broken wings. Our beautiful flag of stars and stripes-the red, white and blue-that waved so proudly on our clipper ships in all the commercial ports of the globe, disappeared from human vision there like a vanishing cloud that shrinks away from the heavens under the burning rays of the noonday sun.

But, though the field of foreign commerce was lost in the flames which British and Con- federate ambition kindled, all was not lost. There remained, as in the hero of Milton's sublime creation, the unconquerable will :

"And courage never to submit or yield And what is else not to be overcome."

The coasting .rade and the fisheries con- tinued to be available ; and our vessel-builders made the best of these important and valuable remainders. In the harbors along the Sound, and at Greenport and other places, the enter- prise of our shipwrights-no other workers are more enterprising than they-rose to the height of the demand made upon their genius and diligence.

But unhappily they had in those days to fight another battle, which soon became a somewhat unequal contest. It was the de- fensive battle of the wind against the invad- ing power of steam. It was essentially the same kind of a combat which steam is now compelled to wage against the encroaching power of magnetism. It is said that when Edi- son crossed the ocean he could not sleep dur- ing the voyage. This was not due to the ceaseless tossing of the ship which conveyed him, but to his inability to see how he could harness the forces of the waves-old Nep- tune's steeds-and make them work. for man under human control and direction on the land. Well, he need not be too much cast down; for doubtless the whole globe is a magnet, and Edison, Bell and Marconi and others are following Henry and Morse and showing how it can be put into harness on both land and sea.

The Hon. Lewis A. Edwards, of Orient,

one of our society's in memoriam members, was a man whose soul was commensurate with the stateliness of his physical frame and with the dignity and winsomeness of his bearing and manners. Not a small part of his well- earned and comfortable fortune was at one time invested in sailing vessels. I remember distinctly how he said to me: "I formerly be- lieved that steam would never master wind upon the high and open sea for the convey- ance of freight. I believed that the inex- pensiveness of the one would be more than a match for the greater constancy and certainty of the other. But I have changed my mind. The last two years have decided the battle, and the steamers have won the victory." That was perhaps twenty-five years ago, and our Suffolk county shipwrights were building sail- ing vessels.

Furthermore, this was not the only battle fought and lost which affected the shipbuild- ers of the county. Another contest was that of iron and steel against wood, and the triumph of the former, while our shipwrights were generally workers in wood. To maintain their business and make it profitable they had to unite in themselves the daring of the mariner, the courage of the soldier, the venturesome- ness of the merchant and the genius and skill of the engineer. One fact shows their eminent ability : they have at no time ceased to build seafaring vessels-crafts of nearly every kind, rowboats, fishing smacks, pleasure yachts, scollopers, sloops, schooners, barks, brigs. The trader has given employment to hundreds of men ; and they have matched in the excellence of the fruits of their toil that of the worthy architects, builders and mechanics who have erected houses, barns, mills, bridges and other structures which have within the last fifty years utterly changed the face of the county for the better so far as this can de- pend on the work of men's hands. For the period in review has made nearly all things new in the villages not only, but also on tlie farms. Advance and improvement in size, style, surroundings are seen everywhere. In- crease in wealth has made the delightful change not more than the growth and progress of intelligence and the elevation and refinement of taste.

.The builders of houses have perhaps made no more remarkable advancement than men in other employments have manifested. In every department of mechanic arts are seen

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SUFFOLK COUNTY.

the gratifying improvements of the half-cen- tury.

In other directions may be seen noteworthy changes in the employments and conditions of our industrious and thrifty fellow citizens.

Within the last decades many poultry farms have been established. From some of these severally three or four thousand ducks are sent to market every year. Others yield one or two thousand each. Changes for the better in the incubators and other apparatus as well as in the buildings, and the business generally, have been made and continue.

The whaling business in Suffolk county culminated a few years before the beginning of our half-century. One of the causes which depressed it was the transfer of California from Mexico to the United States, and the dis- covery of abundance of gold there. The fasci- nation of luck always had an influence in drawing men to the pursuit of whales. It is true that courage, coolness, skill and strength were required in striking them, but even with these manly qualities there was much uncer- tainty in capturing them. Furthermore, there was no full assurance of finding them even in the most likely places. The business always contains an element of fisherman's luck.

The pursuit of gold in California pre- sented at not a few points a striking re- semblance to the pursuit of whales. The suc- cessful pursuers must be enterprising, brave, resolute, venturesome, patient in hardships and capable of immense endurance.

So our adventurous men fifty years ago made their way to the Pacific coast for gold. Nearly an hundred sailed under Captain Henry Greene in one ship. Many others went to try their fortunes by other means of ven- veyance. The experience which they acquired in that distant region-then far away-af- forded them no little advantage on their re- turn home. Some, alas! never returned. Their burial place is like that of Moses. The change in the method of fishing for men- haden a few years later gave to the same sort of men desirable employment. During the first half of the century these fish were mainly taken by Suffolk county people in huge seines cast around them and drawn to the shore. They were used in a crude way to enrich the fields. Many millions were thus taken and used every year. Sometimes a million were caught and landed at one haul, making seven hundred tons or more. The seines were drawn

ashore with the fish by horses. It was not till 1850 that these fishes were steamed for the extraction of oil from them. The building of factories for this purpose soon led to a new method of fishing, which is used in the deep water of the bays, the Sound and the ocean. The seines of several hundreds of feet in length are discarded and shorter nets are used. These are cast around a shoal of fishes and then drawn together like a purse, and hence called "purse nets." From these purses the fish are scooped out and conveyed to the factories.

These developments caused the invention of new models for seagoing vessels, which were constructed, especially steamers, accord- ingly. The mental originality, ingenuity and constructiveness applied to the business are extremely commendable, and the various parts of the business now employ millions of cap- ital and many hundreds of men. In its pres- ent models, it is wholly a creation in the last half-century, and is a signal illustration of the methods by which creating Mind has pro- duced the advance and diversity of Nature.

All the wealth which comes from the busi- ness is drawn from the boundless treasures of the sea-far more inexhaustible than any mines of the earth; and if the product should be multiplied a thousand fold the illimitable sources of it would not be perceptibly di- minished.

It is time to look at some other aspects of the life of our county. Thirty-nine years ago the leaders of the slave masters of our country began a war to divide and destroy our nation ; to stop the flow of the Mississippi uu- vexed to the sea. The national government called all patriotic citizens to defend tite life of the nation. The young men of Suffolk county heard the call. They did not lag and scheme for commissions, but many of them resolutely accepted the hardest and most dan- gerous service. They were ready to risk their lives around the dear old flag that had proudly floated from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, over courthouses and capitol, over forts. and arsenals, and over American ships in every commercial port of the globe. Their mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts were as patriotic as they dared to be, and bore up under the burden of their ab- sence and the peril or loss of their lives.

The flowers that deck the graves of our heroes, and the starry flag that waves over

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

them, and the tender and grateful remem- brance which we cherish for them with each returning spring time in the cemetery of every village of our county, attest the devotion and the unselfish love of country which the men and the women of old Suffolk have shown.

They died not in vain. They laid down their lives that the nation might live, and that righteousness, freedom and Christian ex- cellence might flourish on earth. And no lips can speak the wonders of that prosperity, wealth, power and glory which have come like a new creation from the rescue of the nation in whose behalf they gave their precious blood. The fruits of their virtues, toils and death have made our country the astonishment of the world.

Fifty years ago there were three news- papers published in the county-perhaps four or five. The last Year Book of our Society contains the names of twenty-three now pub- lished. We have seen a score of these out- shoots of the press in twice as many years bloom and wither. They derive their origin and support mainly from political partisanship and show plainly the character of their par- entage. They put to rout the oral gossips and perform a desirable function in the social life of our villages.

One cannot present a full list of the list of the authors, native or resident, of this county, who have in these five decades published sep- arate volumes. An incomplete list includes the Rev. Drs. James B. Finch, Enoch C. Wines, Edward Hopper, William P. Strick- land, Samuel E. Herrick, Egbert C. Lawrence, Samuel H. Kellogg, Allen Page Bissell, Epher Whitaker, William Force Whitaker, Joseph Newton Hallock, John Balcom Shaw, Robert Davidson, the Rev. Messrs. Alanson A. Haines, Abraham S. Gardiner, James Coote, Edward Warriner, Jacob E. Mallmann, Sam- uel Whaley, Charles E. Craven, Joseph H. Young, Phineas Robinson, John Reid, Charles Hoover, the Hon. Henry P. Hedges, the Hon. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., Prof. Eben N. Hosford, Prof. Alonzo Reed, Prof. Edward R. Shaw, Prof. Isaac F. Russell, Archivist George R. Howell, Frank A. Overton, M. D., Isaac Mc- Lellan, David Philander Horton, John O. Terry, Alonzo Foster, Mrs. Mary L'Homme- dieu, G. Horsford, Mrs. Ella B. Hallock, Miss Cornelia Huntington, Miss Mary B. Sleight, Miss Mary Hubbard Howell, Miss Anna Reeve Aldrich, Augustus Griffing, David

Gardiner, Richard M. Bayles, William S. Pelletreau, Charles B. Moore.

Many artists have made their respective homes in various parts of the county, and their famous school at Shinnecock Hills is the gathering place of scores of them during a long season from spring to autumn every year.

Yacht clubs, golf clubs, fishing and guu clubs, and other organizations for sports and pastime, give zest and pleasure to the coun- try life of hundreds of cottagers. These and the cyclists have made their first conspicuous appearance in the half-century.

So have the brave and skillful life-savers at the long line of stations which the nation has established along the coast. To obtain this service for humanity my friend, William A. Newell, M. D., Governor of New Jersey, and subsequently of Washington Territory, had himself elected to the Congress of the na- tion, and made it his chief concern there to secure the passage of a law to begin and es- tablish the service which Sumner I. Kimball, Superintendent, has so worthily directed and promoted.

The schools of the county have become less numerous than formerly, and have lost in some measure their individual traits of char- acter. They have generally approximated an uninteresting and typical sameness of manner and quality.

The public schools having become a part of the machinery of the political parties, with extreme power of taxation, and millions of money in the hands of a few central operators, to be used for their purposes every year, these schools have a character distinctly unlike those of earlier days. They have been effective in gradually closing the academies that were formerly sources of intellectual life in the sev -- eral villages of Easthampton, Remsenberg, Bellport, Southampton, Franklinville, River- head, Mileir's Place and elsewhere.

These academies were generally taught by able and ambitious young men of liberal edu- cation, whose instruction, impulse, example and inspiration animated and impelled their bright pupils to aim at excellence and noble ends. These teachers sometimes entered upon other pursuits and won eminence, distinction and honor in walks of professional usefulness. Thus they led onward an attractive and aspir- ing procession of worthy followers. Their day is past.

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 148

Author: Ross, Peter. cn Publication date: 1902 Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1188

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188