USA > New York > Suffolk County > Riverhead > History of Suffolk country, comprising the addresses delivered at the celebration of the bi-centennial of Suffolk county, N.Y., in Riverhead, November 15, 1883 > Part 5
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37
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS AND CHRISTIAN CULTURE.
even called by opprobrious names. We are certainly nearer to the age of gold to-day. This century is not so theological as the last, but it is more religious. Men have learned to allow each other the same liberty in re- ligious theory and modes of worship as in politics and methods of farming. They have learned that neither a neighbor's judgment nor piety is to be impugned because he sees certain facts at a different angle from their own and draws his inferences accordingly. To no part of our land probably. has greater blessing come from the great Wesleyan movement than to Suf- folk county. Seen in advance, it was looked upon with apprehension as a division, and consequently a weakening of the fagot. It was really a pro- cess of multiplication and enlargement. It gave us two regiments for one in every town; not crossing each other's line of march, but enlisted in the same cause and fighting the same enemy. They came into the field-these Methodists-light-irmed, with lively music, making rapid charges, going where the old-fashioned heavy artillery could not, and with their swift and rattling fire doing no slight execution. How much have they done to break up a fatalism, which was almost Mahommedan in its grasp upon the hearts of good men, and which often furnished lazy and bad men their best excuse for continuing in their ways of sin and listlessness.
I have not been able to learn that any Sunday school was started in this county earlier than that which was instituted in Southampton by Rev. Peter H. Shaw, in 1821. It seems strange to us now that such a move- ment should ever hive been regarded as an innovation of very doubtful ex- pediency. And vet goo.l people opposed it on various grounds They said that it was a novelty. They and their fathers had got along well enough without it. It was enough if the district school-teacher on every Saturday morning made his scholars say the catechism. A school, too, on Sunday was an infringement on the sanctity of the Sabbath. It was the en- tering wedge. It required the performance of labor which would soon ob- literate all distinction between common and holy time. As if children were not to be lifted out of the pit of ignorance, or it were not lawful to do good even on the Sabbath day! But how has wisdom been justified of her children ! The church has learned the lesson how much better it is to go quietly into the orchard and gather the delicate fruit by hand than it is to wait for some gale to come and shake it bruised and broken to the ground.
Suffolk county has had an honorable part in the institution of great re- forms. No man probably had more to do with the inception of the tem- perance movement throughout the land than Dr. Lyman Beecher. And it was during his East-Hampton pastorate that the fire was kindled which in a few years swept through the county and burnt the wretched side-board social tippling habit out of multitudes of Christian households. Ministers and people had been pretty much alike. The jug and the decanter held a place almost as respectable and were regarded about as indispensable as the Bible and the catechism. It is quite customary now to have a calendar of Scripture that shall furnish a text for every day in the year. It was far more common at the beginning of this century to fortify against every day's de- mands by a morning dram. "My spirit was greatly stirred," says Dr. Beecher, "at the treatment of the Indians by unprincipled persons who sold them rum. One man would go down with his barrel of whiskey in a wagon to the Indians and get them tipsy and bring them in debt. He would get all their corn and bring it back in his wagon. In fact he stripped them, Then in winter they must come up twenty miles, buy their
38
RELIGIOU'S PROGRESS AND CHRISTIAN CULTURE.
own corn and pack it home on their shoulders or starve. Oh, it was hor- rible! horrible! It burned and burned in my mind, and I swore a deep oath to God that it should not be so. I didn't set up for a reformer, but I saw a rattlesnake in my path and I smote it."
And the same lusty hand smote down another rattlesnake. The mur- der of Alexander Hamilton at the hand of Aaron Burr aroused his wrath, and in its white heat he forged there at East-Hampton those discourses which needed no repetition, but swept out forever from the Northern mind that false standard of honor which demanded blood-atonement for real or fancied insult.
In no respect, perhaps, is the contrast between this century and the last so great as in the systematic and unceasing benevolence which charac- terizes our religious life. It would seem as if every form of human want material and spiritual had now its own organized charity. Pipes are laid from the reservoir of the churches' wealth to almost every species of neces- sity. They are not kept as full as they ought to be, nor as full as they will be when men shall have come under the full pressure of the constraining love of Christ. But the brotherhood of all men, irrespective of race or color, or language, or condition, is asserting itself. A want pressing with- in the polar circles announces itself almost instantaneously in the tropics. The whole earth has become sentient. Nervous cords cover it as it were some mighty organism quick with tender feeling. Suffolk is not a frag- ment of Long Island, but a member of the world. It has felt the throb- bings of most distant pain. It has responded with generous aid. To the ends of the earth have gone its money, its bread, its Bibles; yea, its living teachers-its own life blood. Through agencies our fathers never dreamed of, but for which they nevertheless faithfully prepared the way, and for which the honor is due more to them than to their children, through Bible, and tract, and missionary, and Sunday-school, and temperance societies, the old Puritan faith is spreading like leaven in the meal. That same old faith is getting into the world's secular life. Dropping its hardness it has become facile and fusile, using the sunbeam rather than the blast to work its way. It runs along the lines of good neighborhood. It asserts itself in wholesome law. It makes itself felt in the elevation of social customs. It rises in the increasing intolerance of untruth and unrighteousness. It glows in the charitable fellowship of men who think diversely in non- essentials. It compels more and more the assent of men to the supreme excellence and beauty of Christly character. This, sons and daughters of Suffolk, is your best inheritance-the faith of your Puritan ancestry. It made them brave. It has made you prosperous. It will make your chil- dren what you wish them most to be, high-minded, pure, and safe.
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE
-IN-
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
GON. ENRY
HEDGES.
TN these centennial exercises the subject assigned to me was "The Devel- opment of Agriculture." Agriculture, new and old, what it was two hundred years gone by, and what it is now in Suffolk county.
From 1639, when Lyon Gardiner made the first English settlement in the county of Suffolk, and within the present bounds of the State of New York, other colonies were founded at Southampton and Southold in 1640; in East-Hampton in 1649, and extending to Shelter Island, Setauket, Smithtown and Huntington, soon thereafter covered by charter the terri- tory of the county of Suffolk. At the organization of the county in 1683, forty-four years had passed since Gardiner came to his island. This coun- ty comprised about two-thirds of the territory of Long Island. of 1875 gives the area thus:
The census
Improved,
woodland,
other,
total,
Kings county, acres,
9, IIO
600
1,174
11,090
Queens county, "
117,686
29,736
24,561
171,983
Suffolk county,
156,760
102,550
129,135
388,445
Total area,
571,518
One-third is
190, 506
Area of Kings and Queens is
183,073
Area of Suffolk over one-third is-acres
7,433
The precise population of the State or county in 1683, I have not as- certained. There was a partial statement in 1693, and the apportionment of militia to each county, thus:
City and county of New York,
477
Queens county,
580
Suffolk
533
Kings 66
319
Albany 66
359
Ulster county and Dutchess,
277
Westchester county,
283
Richmond
104
Total, 2,932
40
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
Suffolk was the third county in the colony in the Quotas. In 1698, 1703 and 1723, the population is thus given:
1698.
1703.
1723.
New York,
4,937,
4,436,
7.248.
Queens county,
3,565,
4,392,
7,191.
Suffolk
66
2,679,
3.346,
6,241.
Kings
66
2,017,
1,915,
2,218.
Albany
66
1,476,
2.273,
6,501.
Ulster
2,923
Dutchess
1,384,
1,669,
1,083.
Richmond,
727,
504,
1,506.
Orange,
268,
1, 244.
Westchester,
1,063,
1,946,
4,409.
Total,
17,848
20,749
40,564
These results show that Su.folk County in population wis the third in the State in 1693 and 1733. and the fourth county in 1723. A similar com- parison will show that by the census in 1731 and 1737 this county held the same rank. In 1746 and 1749 it was the third; in 1756 the fifth, and in 1771 the sixth county of the State in numbers. In these periods reaching over almost one hundred and forty years, when the State was largely agri- cultural, the population of this county, chiefly so sustained, was nearly one-sixth of that in the entire State. In 1790 it was the eighth county, and contained 16,440 out of 340, 120 in the State-a little under one-twentieth of the whole amount. On the 17th day of May, 1683, the tax of the province of New York was fixed at £2556 4s. od., and was apportioned thus:
£
S.
(l.
The city and county of New York to pay
434
IO
00
County of Westchester,
185
I5 00
City and county of Albany,
240
00
00
County of Richmond,
66
185
15
00
County of Ulster,
..
408
00
00
Kings County,
308
08
00
Queens County,
. 6
308
08
00
County of Suffolk,
434
IO
00
* Dukes County,
40
00
00
County of Orange
IO
00 00
Thus at the organization of the county its farmers were taxed to piy over one-sixth part of all the taxes paid in the then ten counties of the province of New York, and as much as the city and county of New York, an | more than any other county that alone excepted. Unless the county of Suffolk was then a productive territory, agriculturally, the tax was un- equal, oppressive and unjust. Assuming its equality, it is given as an evi- dence that even then agriculture had so far progressed that in wealth, in substantial comfort, in ministry to the necessities of mankind, this county as an agricultural county stood even with the then commercial metropolis of the province, and second to none in the province. In 1693 Queens
*NOTE .- The County of Dukes comprised Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and the Eliza- beth Islands.
.
41
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
County furnished the highest number of militia men by 47, Suffolk County the next highest number by fifty-six over the number assigned to New York, which latter county came then third on the list of Quotas.
In the Journal of the Legislative Council of New York, under date of September 28, 1691, I find a memoradum of the Address of the House of Representatives, setting forth their sense of the displeasure of Almighty God for their manifold sins "by the blasting of their corn," etc., and an order that the first Wednesday of every month, until the month of June following, be observed and kept a fast day, and that proclamation be is- sued through the government to enjoin the strict observation thereof, and that all persons be inhibited any servile labor on the said days. Thus the uncertainties of unfavorable seasons, sometimes occurring now, clearly prevailed widely at that early day.
In the Journals of the same Council. under date of October 16, 1738, among the bills read before the Council is one entitled " An act to en- courage the destroying of wild cats in Kings County, Queens County and Suffolk County." By an act of February 16, 1771, a like provision ap- plied to Suffolk County, and later, up to the first constitution of the State, and acts passed under it, similar provision was made, until the matter was, after the Revolution, devolved, by statute passed March 7th, 1788, upon the several towns in the State. Thus, for nearly one hundred and fifty years, the agriculture of the county, from its infancy, contended against the depredations of wild animals, as well as the blights and mildews of ad- verse seasons.
Through all this period it encountered a greater obstruction in the method of conducting it. In all early settlements, when the axe clears the forest and the plow inverts the virgin soil, where ages of repose have stored up treasures of fertility, those treasures appear for years unexhausted and inexhaustible. It so seemed to the first settlers on the Mohawk Flats, in the Genesee Valley, in the vales of Ohio, on the prairies of the far West- and it so seemed to our ancestors on the shores of Long Island. They cropped field after field with little, and oftener no manure; they fenced large farms; they plowed, and raising more oats, and little wheat, and more rye, left the land unseeded with grass for eight, ten or fifteen years, hoping that rest would restore the exhaustion of cropping. Up to the time, and long after the Revolution this skinning process went on all over this county and Island. What manure was made, and that was small in quantity and poorly cared for, was applied on the few acres of mow land, and was thought to be wasted if put on pasture. The vast old pasture lot, com- prising often one-half the area of the whole farm, impoverished and skinned, produced a few old bayberry bushes, such few weeds as worn out land could grow, and the everlasting five-fingers and briers. Nine pasture lots in ten were blackberry lots in my early days. This skinning process, that run down the averages of wheat per acre on the Mohawk flats, in the Gen- esee Valley, and through Ohio, to twelve or thirteen bushels, was per- petuated here for nearly two hundred years. The pasture where I, when a child, was sent to bring home the cows, was such a vast waste that often in a fog I was lost for a time and could find neither cows nor the way to them or to my home. With all the abundance of fish in the waters, I find no evidence that they were caught and applied as a fertilizer to any notice- able extent until after the Revolution. The application of fish, ashes, bone dust and other fertilizers, to any considerable extent, upon the farms
42
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
of this county, with few exceptions, dates within the last sixty years. Within that time the production of grass, grain and root crops in the coun- ty, I think, must have been more than doubled by the increased and in- creasing application of fertilizers.
So little change occurred in the modes of farming and farm life that the farm and farmer of 1683 might well stand as a picture for those of 1783- the same tools, the same methods, the same surroundings. Grass was cut with the scythe, raked by a hand-rake, pitched by the old heavy iron fork; grain was reaped with the sickle, threshed with the flail and winnowed with a riddle; land was plowed with a heavy wooden framed plough, pointed with wrought iron, whose mole board was protected by odd bits of old cart wheel tire; harrows were mostly with wooden teeth; corn hills were dug with the hoe; the manure for the hill was dropped in heaps, carried by hand in a basket and separately put in each hill. The farmer raised flax and generally a few sheep. Threshing lasted well into the winter, and then out came the crackle and swingle, knife and board. The flax was dressed, wool carded, and the wheel sung its song to the linen and woolen spun in every house. The looms dreary pound gave evidence that home manufacture clad the household. From his feet to his head the farmer stood in vestment produced on his own farm. The leather of his shoes came from the hides of his own cattle. The linen and woolen that he wore were products that he raised. The farmer's wife or daughter braided and sewed the straw-hat on his head. His fur cap was made from the skin of a fox he shot. The feathers of wild fowl in the bed whereon he rested his weary frame by night, were the results acquired in his shooting. The pil- low-cases, sheets and blankets, the comfortables, quilts and counterpanes, the towels and table cloth, were home made. His harness and lines he cut from hides grown on his farm. Everything about his ox yoke except staple and ring he made. His whip, his ox gad, his flail, axe, hoe and fork-handle, were his own work. How little he bought, and how much he contrived to supply his wants by home manufacture would astonish this generation.
The typical farm house of 1683 and 1783, were much alike. It was a single house unpainted, the front two, and the sloping rear roof made that one story. Four Lombardy poplars, tall, slim and prim, its sole orna- ment in front. The well pole, a few feet in the rear of the kitchen, pointed . 45 degrees towards mid heaven-underneath swung the bucket,
" The old oaken bucket,"
immortal in song. Two small windows, of 6x8 glass, dimly lighted his front room. A large beam ran across its upper wall. Houses then were built to stay. The floor was uncarpeted. The chimney and fire-places were capacious masses of masonry, looking with contempt upon the Lilli- putian proportions of like structures of these modern times. The mass of chimney and oven and fire-places contracted into an entry what would otherwise be a hall. The front stairs zig-zagged and turned, and wound and squirmed towards the upper rooms. Over the fire-place hung the old King's Arm, with flint-lock wherewith he had brought down deer and wild ducks, and brant, and geese in no small numbers. Outside hung his eel spear, clam and oyster tongs. Close at hand was the upright hollow log that was his samp mortar. The barn-yard was near, and in view of the kitchen, and on the farther side his small barn. One roof sloped down low in the yard, and on that in the cold winter's day he spread his sheaves of flax
43
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
to dry for crackling. All-day he labored in the fields. In the long autumn and winter evenings he husked corn and shelled the ears over the edge of his spade. No horse-rake; no corn sheller; no horse pitch-fork; no horse- mower or reaper-the life of the farmer was literally a battle against the forces of nature for little more than the actual necessities of subsistence, and with the most rude and unwieldy supply of weapons for the war. The mo- notony of his life was relieved by hunting and fishing in their season. The farmer raised rye and corn, rarely wheat, for bread. He ate fresh pork while it lasted, and salt pork while that lasted. Corn was pounded into samp; ground into hominy and meal; baked or boiled into johnny-cake, Indian bread, griddle-cakes, pudding, or what the Dutch called "sup- pawn " and the Yankee "hasty pudding;" and in a variety of ways eaten with or without milk. In some shape corn was a chief article of diet. Rye bread, the chief bread, and wheat bread a rare luxury. Oysters, clams, eels and other fish, with game of the forest or fowl of the air, helped out the supply of food in the olden time. The statistics of ancient agriculture, if to be found at all, is not accessible to me. I turn to the State census reports of 1865 and find:
Improved acres in New York State, " Suffolk County,
14,827,437 148,661
Unimproved acres in New York State,
10,411,863
" Suffolk County, 230,556 1-2
Showing that Suffolk County contains a trifle less than one-hundredth part of all the improved lands in the State, and over one-fiftieth of all its unim- proved lands. The extensive beaches and woodlands of the county consti- tute its unimproved lands.
The same census reports thus:
Corn.
New York State, acres plowed, Suffolk County,
632,213 1-4 16,460 1-4 Wheat.
Bushels harvested. 17,987,763 1-4 580,015
Bushels average.
N. Y. State,
66
399,918 3-4
5,432,282 1-2
14
Suffolk County,
56
10,563 1-4 Oats.
199,941 1-4 short 19
N. Y. State,
1, 109,910
19,052,833 I-4
over 17
Suffolk County,
10,945 Rye.
289,575
over 26
N. Y. State,
66
66
234,689
2,575,348 3-4 short II
Suffolk County,
66
66
5,353
61,555 1-2 over 17
N. Y. State,
66
189,029 3-4 498 Turnips.
3,075,052 3-4 over 16 over 28 14,095
N. Y. State, Suffolk County,
..
8,123 7-8
1,282,338
over 157
66
66
689 1-4
160,457
232
N. Y. State, Suffolk County,
66
66
Potatoes. 235,058 1-4 3,439 1-2
23, 236, 687 3-4 over 98 292,738 over 85
N. Y. State,
Acres of grass cut. 4,237,085 3-4 34,577 3-4
Tons cut. 3,897,914 1-8
short I ton. over 66
Suffolk County,
34,758
New York State, neat cattle,
Suffolk County, 66
I, 824,221 18,792
28
35
Barley.
Suffolk County,
44
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE. ·
Hogs slaughtered. lbs.
New York State,
706,716 128,462,487
Average. 181
Suffolk County,
13,942 3,060,602 219
Cattle slaughtered for beef.
New York State, 221,481 1-4. Suffolk County, 2,447
Value of farm implements and machinery.
New York State, $21, 189,099. 75. Suffolk County, $407, 257. Fertilizers purchased.
New York State, $838, 907. 52. Suffolk County, $294,429.40 The value of poultry owned in 1865, and of poultry and eggs sold in 1864, in twelve counties, is thus: Value.
Poultry sold in 1864.
Eggs sold ın 1864.
Albany,
$52,466 30
31,016.40
34,957.61
Cayuga,
52,911 75
41,696.50
44,772.00
Columbia,
59,816 00
31,195.05
33,125. 14
Dutchess,
77,194 00
76,326.50
52,059,50
Monroe,
53,977 33
38,706.05
33,743.98
Onondaga,
49,251 05
34,607.28
+5,978.84
Orange,
63,410 00
32,101.24
36,858.36
Queens,
79,597 00
80,035.00
45,960.00
Saratoga,
52,576 53
36,500.81
45,082.91
Ulster,
55,292 12
29, 277. 20
36,601.30
Westchester,
75,643 75
45,068.46
41,346.53
Suffolk,
47,708 75
47,120.00
57,003. 13
The results of these figures make this showing a fraction less than one- hundredth part of all the improved lands in the State'lie in the county of Suffolk. If that county produces one-hundredth part of all the aggregate product of the crops in the State that shows, other things being equal, that the farmers of Suffolk County understand their business at least as well as the average farmer. If the land of our county be reckoned poorer than the average in the State, that fact will not lessen the force of the figures, or de- tract from the greater credit due to Suffolk County farming, provided that production comes up to the average State production. At the outset it appears that of all the tools and machinery used in farming in the State, Suffolk County held in value about one-fiftieth part-showing that the Suf- folk County farmer was up to the average twice over in the value of me- chanical appliances in his business.
Suffolk County purchased over one-third of all the fertilizers in the State, and more than any other ten counties. Suffolk County kept over one-hundredth of all the neat cattle in the State, and slaughtered over that proportion of all the cattle slaughtered therein, showing that her system of agriculture returned to the soil very largely the products, and was no skin- ning process; that the corn, oats, roots and grass were fed to domestic animals, and thereby the elements of fertility were restored to the soil.
Although these figures show an average for the county per acre of 13 bushels of potatoes less than the State average, they show more on all other productions. The average of the county over the State is, per acre in corn. 7 bushels; wheat, 5 ; oats, 9; rye, 8 ; barley, 12 ; and turnips 75 bushels. This county raised nearly one-thirtieth of all the corn raised in the State; more than one-thirtieth of all the wheat, over one-seventieth of all the oats, nearly one-fortieth of all the rye, over one-eighth of all the turnips, and
45
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
nearly one-eightieth of all the potatoes. It produced nearly one-fortieth of the total pork, and our average weight of hogs exceeded that of the State by 38 pounds. Suffolk County is credited with less poultry in 1865 than any of the twelve counties I have named, but sold more in 1864 than any counties in the State except Queens and Dutchess. Suffolk County beat all other counties in the State on eggs, and sold nearly $5,000 more than Dutchess County, which is the next highest on the list.
The census of 1875 gives these figures:
Improved lands in the State, acres, 15,875,552
Unimproved lands in the State, acres,
9,783,714 156,760
Suffolk County, improved lands,
unimproved lands,
332,685
The relative proportion of lands in the State and county remained nearly as in 1865:
Value of all stock in the State,
$146,497, 154
Suffolk County, 1,879,073
tools and implements in the State, 44,228, 263
66
66
Suffolk County,
541,158
Value of all farm buildings other than dwellings,
In the State, $148,715, 775. In Suffolk County, $2, 161, 675
$1,767,352
Area mown in the State-acres, 4,796,739
66 Suffolk County, 38,744
5,440,612
Hay produced in the State, tons .. " Suffolk County 41,980
CORN. - The State produced 20, 294, 800 bushels; Suffolk County pro- duced 582, 690.
OATS .- The State produced 37, 968, 429 bushels; Suffolk County pro- duced 280, 566.
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