USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 20
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 20
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About this time a new religious enthusiasm was felt in what had long been the exclusive ecclesiastical domain of Calvinism. Adherents of Methodism had been driven underground during the Revolution due to the unwarranted suspicion that they might be Loyalists, their society being an offshoot of the Church of England. Some time after the close of the war there were a handful of unorganized Methodists in the town. Conspicuous among them was Widow Abigail Ledyard Moore who conducted a tavern as a means of supporting her numerous brood. She and others occasionally traveled of a Sunday to Upper Aquebogue to attend services at the Congregational Church there in preference to the church of their ancestors at Southold.
One day in 1795, Rev. Wilson Lee, a native of Delaware of not too rugged a constitution, appeared at the door of Mrs. Moore's house. He was a Methodist itinerant preacher making his way from New London to New York. At the solicitation of Mrs. Moore, he preached to a group of willing listeners. His text was: "They that turned the world upside down have come hither also." A class of twelve was soon formed. Thus did Methodism take root in Southold to become the mother church of that denomination in the town. For more than twenty years thereafter local Methodists held their meetings for the most part in the home of Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Rebecca Peters and Uncle Peter Vail. Sometimes they were permitted to meet in the brick school house with the permission of Ezra L'Hommedieu.
Rev. Joseph Hazard, pastor of Southold's Presbyterian Church, in 1803 preached a sermon on the text "Even now, there were many anti-Christs, including these that went out from us, because they were not of us," and when three years later he ended his pastorate here the membership had dwindled to fifty-six of whom a large part were slaves with no family names.
His successor was the Rev. Jonathan Huntting who, following his graduation from Yale, had studied theology under Rev. Lyman Beecher at East Hampton where his father, Rev. Nathaniel Huntting,
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had served as preacher. At Southold young Huntting was soon installed in a new church edifice which is the present building some- what remodelled. It was then the only church building between Oysterponds and Cutchogue. Not until 1833 was Greenport's Presby- terian Church organized with seventeen members.
Besides bringing one of the first carriages to Southold, Mr. Hunt- ting brought as his bride Julia Sayres, daughter of Abraham Sayres of East Hampton. They became the parents of four 'sons who lived to fill important places in local affairs. William, their eldest, a graduate of Amherst and Princeton, married Frances Maria Moore, eldest daughter of Colonel Jeremiah Moore, a prominent farmer near Greenport. Jonathan W. Huntting, the second son, became a merchant, postmaster, town clerk, justice of the peace and school commissioner. The third son, Edward, served as elder of the church of which his father had been pastor, while Henry, the youngest, became justice of the peace and was for many years the first execu- tive officer of the Southold Savings Bank.
As early as 1683 the town had begun to support its poor, auction- ing them off to those who would maintain and employ them at the least cost to the town. The old Presbyterian parsonage became at the time of Mr. Huntting's pastorate the town's first poor house which the town purchased in 1815. The first keeper was Joel Overton, others who followed being Stephen Bailey, Samuel Tuthill, Nathaniel Boisseau, William Horton, William Wines, William Prince, Miller Wood, Elam Potter Horton, Sceptor Hallock, Benjamin Tuthill, Jonathan Youngs, Grover Cook, James Richmond and B. Franklin Booth. When a county poor farm was established at Yaphank in 1871 and the county system of caring for the poor was adopted, the town's last poor house was sold to Daniel T. Terry.
In 1818 Southold Methodists built a meeting house 25 by 35 feet at the corner of Main street and Boisseau avenue. Its seats were long slabs sawn from oak logs. The text of the sermon at the laying of the corner stone was quite appropriately: "Who hath despised the day of small things?" For a long time the little structure remained unfinished and presented a plain and poverty stricken appearance, but by 1834 there were Methodists enough throughout the town to form a circuit extending from Oysterponds Point to Riverhead with Southold as the central station. In August of that year the first camp meetings were held in a grove at James- port. Southold's Methodist preacher, Rev. Eben S. Hebbard, was something of a healer of the body as well as the soul and as he rode the circuit he distributed pills of his own making.
Not long after the Methodists first began to organize, Universal- ism was also first expounded at Southold by one Rev. John Murray. Rev. Theodore Miller, known as "Priest" Miller, also ministered to the local Universalists at the "Sodom" school at Locust Grove, near Peconic. Walt Whitman taught in that same school house for a time, with somewhat indifferent success. The first edifice of the Uni- versalists, still in use, was erected during 1836-7 by William D. Cochran on Main Street, opposite Tucker's Lane.
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Among the charter members of that church were Lawyer Joseph Hull Goldsmith of Southold and Augustus Griffin of Orient. Griffin, twenty years later, as a nonagenarian, was to publish his "Journal", a compendium of personal recollections, traditional lore and genea- logical and historical data. It is a book now scarce and highly prized. Lucretia Tuthill, his wife, was one who had traveled often, during the pastorate of Rev. Hazard of the First Church, with Abigail Ledyard Moore to attend "new light" services at the Upper Aque- bogue Church.
Griffin was a native of Southold village, having been born on Hallock's Neck near the L'Hommedieu home. He was a descendant of Jasper Griffin who came from Wales about 1675 and purchased a small farm near the founders' landing. With his parents, Captain James and Deziah (Terry) Griffin, as a boy in his teens Augustus Griffin lived in the L'Hommedieu mansion during the latter years of the Revolution while L'Hommedieu and Augustus' grandfather, Samuel Griffin, were refugees in Connecticut. In earlier days, at grand- father Samuel's inn near town harbor. Benjamin Franklin had stopped over night while on a trip through Long Island. and on the follow- ing morning Samuel had taken the renowned Philadelphian across the Sound to New London. The grandson Augustus had the rare distinction of voting for both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for President.
The first academy at Southold was build in 1834 by Cochran William who shortly thereafter erected the Universalist Church. It was opened in May. 1835, with Selah Hammond as teacher. He was shortly succeeded by Rev. Ralph Smith, son of Epenetus Smith. pastor at Smithtown. In 1837. Coddington B. Palmer took charge and French and Latin were introduced to prepare the students for college. Palmer was succeeded in 1840 by William Barnes who was followed by Julia Wells. Giles Waldo and others. Rev. Joshua King Ingalls while pas- tor of the Universalist Church also served as principal for three years.
In 1841. Southold village was enlivened by a three-day debate between Rev. Ingalls and Rev. Joseph Hanson, pastor of the local Methodist Church, as to the Scriptural basis of the doctrines of their respective denominations. Many people came from long distances in horse drawn vehicles and listened intently until late hours. It is believed. however, that no preconceived opinions were changed one wit as a result of the oratorical efforts of the pulpiteers.
The Methodists at this time were still holding their meetings in the little building on the hill at the other end of the village and Rev. Ingalls was living in the home of Elam Potter Borton, one of his parishioners and keeper of the town poor house. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church was Rev. Alonzo Welton.
In 1850-51 Rev. Daniel Knappen, pastor of the Universalist Church, served as principal of the academy, but thereafter it was closed until 1858 when it was revived with George W. Dickinson as principal. The following year Cordello D. Elmer of Rome, N. Y., a graduate of Union College, became both proprietor and principal.
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He changed the name to the Collegiate Institute and continued to conduct the school until the summer of 1862.
At that time the young men of the community. as volunteers. draftees or substitutes, were going to Southern battle fields. Among them was John J. Riddell, editor of the Suffolk Weekly Times at Greenport and Principal Elmer took over the editorship of his newspaper. The academy building finally became St. Patrick's Catholic Church and as such was used until the present fine edifice of that faith was erected in 1927. The building has since been removed.
(From watercolor by Cyril A. Lewis. )
A Glimpse of Greenport
Greenport, the largest though youngest village of importance in the town, is located on what was part of a tract of several hundred acres of land granted in 1662 to Colonel John Youngs. prominent son of the first pastor of the town. All that part of the village north of Broad Street was originally known as The Farms. The creek to the eastward of the village was first known to boatmen as Winter Harbor, being so called because it did not freeze over in the severest winters as did Town Harbor at Southold. Later the creek became known as Sterling Creek, getting its name from Long Island's first patentee.
The first mention in the town records of Sterling, the settlement along the westerly side of the creek, is a reference to land ownership there in 1766 by Jonathan Conkling, west of the lands of Lieutenant Constant Booth. The latter, a descendant of the first John Booth. conducted an inn at the head of Sterling Lane which led down to the mouth of the creek. At Booth's Inn Washington stopped in 1757
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while on his way to Boston. Among the few other houses on the southerly side of the lane were the homes of Daniel Harris and Henry Webb and the tavern of Captain George Webb on a window pane of which George Whitefield in 1764 scratched with his diamond: "One thing is needful."
In the early part of the nineteenth century the eastern part of Sterling was a farm owned by Captain David Webb, son of Captain Orange Webb. At the death of David Webb his "valuable messuage, farm and outlands" were sold at public auction, March 23, 1820, by his executors. Augustus Griffin, thirty-seven years later to write his Journal, was the auctioneer. The farm had previously been divided into lots and "accurately surveyed for the better convenience of purchasers." The successful bidders were David T. Terry, Silas Webb and Joshua Tuthill.
By 1825 Sterling began to assume shipping importance. Two years later Main Street was laid out and at its foot a wharf was built by Nathaniel Corwin who was then fitting out the first whaling ship to sail from this port. Abimail K. Reeve, a cooper of Cutchogue, thereupon located here to make casks for whale oil. At the same time the first set of marine railways was built. By 1831 two whaling ships and a number of smaller vessels employed in the fishing and coasting trade were being outfitted at Sterling and Alvah S. Mulford opened the first store near the Main Street wharf.
In 1831 the Clark House was opened on the west side of lower Main street by Captain John Clark who had commanded the packet Adorna. Over the fireplace of his hostelry was painted this intri- guing line : "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Many celebri- ties scanned those lines as guests during almost a century. After the death of Captain Clark the hotel was conducted by Mrs. Clark and later by their daughter, born in the hotel, Betsy Clark Post. Following her death the hotel was closed in 1928. Part of it is now the village police station.
In the early 1800's mail came to town on horseback from Brooklyn, once a week. For a time Uncle Sammie Vail of Southold, who saw service in the War of 1812, was the carrier. Salter Storrs Horton was the postmaster there in 1835 when stages began bringing the mail twice weekly. The driver was Joseph Hull Conklin, a native of Ashamomoque. He would dump all the mail onto a table at each post office. Local letters were sorted out and the others returned to Conklin's bag. For every letter received the addressee paid a shilling postage.
In stagecoach days Sterling's post office was in a school house west of the tollgate at the junction of Moore's lane and the Kings Highway (the North Road) which ran westerly from Oysterponds. Colonel Jeremiah Moore was then postmaster at Sterling. When the Post Office Department asked for another name, as there were other Sterlings. Greenhill was first chosen but at a public meeting at the Clark House on June 23, 1831, the name of Greenport was finally adopted. Captain Clark who then became postmaster con- ducted the office in the basement of his hotel. It was one of only twenty-four post offices on Long Island at that time.
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Packet steamboats began running to and from Greenport in 1836. The village was incorporated two years later. That year there were four whaling ships sailing from the port. This industry reached its zenith here in 1846 when there were about 250 dwellings in the village. It began to wane just before the gold rush to California in 1849 and ended for Greenport in 1860. The last whaleship to said from here was the Italy. In the fall of 1884, however, as a reminder of past glories, a whale swam into Greenport harbor in the wake of the old ship Ohio being brought here to be wrecked for her copper. Incidentally, the Ohio's figurehead of Hercules now stands on Montauk Highway just west of Canoe Place Canal. In 1882 Congress appropriated $46,000 for a breakwater to protect Greenport harbor but it was not completed until eleven years later.
Captain Clark, proprietor of the Clark House and village post- master, together with Joshua Hallock, Barnabas Wines, Oliver Corey and Henry H. Terry, in their capacity as assessors of the town, predicted in an official communication published in The Long Island Star, of Brooklyn, August 10, 1835, that when the Island had railroads and was better known Greenport would become a favorite resort for men of enterprise.
The panic of 1837 put a stop to the projected extension of the Long Island Railroad to the North Fork. But in the summer of 1843 the project was renewed primarily for the purpose of providing a quicker route by rail and steamer from New York City to Boston. Some delay was caused in deciding what course the road should follow through the Island and also upon the location of the eastern terminus.
There were obstacles in the way of running to the water at Greenport. James Tuthill and others of New James' Port wanted the ferry for New England to start from Jamesport near the head- waters of Peconic Bay. Quite a distance was graded for that purpose. Lawyer Joseph Hull Goldsmith of Southold village urged the feasi- bility of the Inlet north of what is now Peconic. Consideration was also given to the idea of running the tracks to Hog Neck to the south of Southold village. For a time there was thought of termi- nating the line at Pipes Neck, west of Greenport, in the vicinity of where Captain Sunderland and his associates had landed more than two centuries before. The first survey headed towards Horton's point, north of Southold village, but Greenport was finally decided upon.
By July 13, 1844, tracks were laid through Southold Town as far as Horton's Lane in Southold village. In the evening of that day, George B. Fisk, president of the railroad company; James Brooks, vice president; James Shipman, civil engineer in charge of con- struction; David Fanning Brown, and other officials of the company were brought to that point. Their small car and locomotive were left at the end of the track in care of a gang of workmen while the officials were taken to Greenport in private conveyances where they stayed until the following Monday.
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Sunday morning, July 14, Rev. George F. Wiswell, fresh from Union Theological Seminary, preached as a candidate for the pastorate of Southold's First Church. His audience was small and none too attentive. Many who would ordinarily have been attracted by tlie presence of a new preacher in the high pulpit were overcome that day with the desire to view the counter-attraction a short distance around the corner. Crowds gathered to observe, ponder and dispute while the railroad officials fished in Gardiner's Bay. The minister received his call and the tracks were soon laid to Greenport.
Two weeks later and two days before the regular service on the extension from Jamaica was inaugurated, a special train, running in three sections, rumbled its noisy way to the terminus at Greenport. Among the guests on this train were Brooklyn's Mayor Sprague, ex-Mayor Talmadge and Warren Richmond and Barnabas H. Booth, natives of Southold who had become leading businessmen of the west end city. Others were. Augustus Griffin and his nephew, Nathaniel T. Hubbard, a prominent merchant of New York City. Also in the company was a descendant of Southold's first minister, one John Youngs who was destined to be elected governor of the State four years later.
A large tent had been erected just west of the present depot where ample food and refreshment were provided, including forty baskets of champagne and half a cask of brandy. William Thorn- hill of Greenport had been engaged as caterer. Greenport's first cornet band enlivened the occasion and frightened many horses hitched to nearby trees.
The first Boston train which left South Ferry, Brooklyn, Friday morning, August 9, connected with the steamer Narragansett at Green- port for Stonington, Connecticut. From there passengers traveled by rail to Boston. The following day the steamboat New Haven connected with Norwich, Connecticut, and so the alternation was con- tinued. Meanwhile, the first passenger accommodation train left Greenport Monday, July 29, with John Smith conductor. Later a train left the eastern terminus for Brooklyn on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, returning on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Except at Greenport no station rooms were provided at the East End villages. Passengers at Southold depended upon the hospitality of a nearby tavern. At what is now Peconic an eccentric bachelor lived alone in a small house near the tracks, and that stop- ping place was consequently first called Hermitage. At Southold it was expected that the trains would stop at Tucker's Lane leading to the bend in the Main street where stood Moore's Tavern. How- ever, Horton's Lane, the next road to the east, became the stop. There a superannuated car set upon a foundation of rejected railroad ties long served as the station. Lawyer Goldsmith thought the stopping place ought to be changed from Horton's Lane to Boisseau Avenue in the eastern part of the village. About 1876 a freight house was built at Southold where the present station now stands. Theretofore a room in a nearby dwelling house owned by William H. Wells was used for storing freight. For a time, Allen A. Goodliff, a civil engineer, was in charge of the railroad in the vicinity.
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In 1848 the traffic between New York and Boston by way of Greenport collapsed due to the construction of an all-rail route on the New England mainland and Greenport slumped back to building small boats and marketing fish, clams and oysters.
By 1850 the first little meeting house of the Southold Methodists was "very much in decay", and it was sold to Captain Benjamin Wells for $180. It afterwards became The Strangers House, then a beer saloon and finally a store. In its place was erected at the center of the village an edifice which is now attached to the present church building erected in 1902.
Back in 1851 a tall, spare man of thirty-one years, just graduated from Union Theological Seminary, arrived at Southold. He was Rev. Epher Whitaker and had come to assume the pastorate of the old First Church. He became a dominant influence in Southold Town as well as in the Long Island Presbytery. In 1866 he was instru- mental in the founding of a second academy in the village with the backing of Henry Huntting, secretary-treasurer of the then recently organized Southold Savings Bank, and Captain Theron B. Worth, a retired whaler of Peconic. The first teacher was Elbert Wilmot Cummings of Palmyra, a graduate of Hamilton College, who was followed successively by Martin D. Kneeland, Thomas A. Abbott and James R. Robinson. Dr. Whitaker's eldest daughter, Miss Sarah, also served the academy as teacher as did her cousin, Lemuel Whitaker. During its career the academy graduated a number of young people who attained exalted stations in public life and in the business world.
Dr. Whitaker, though not a native of Long Island, became greatly interested in the history of Southold town and in the genealogy of its families. From his research he compiled and published a History of Southold's First Century. Upon retirement, after a pastorate of over forty years, he purchased the former home of Lawyer Ira H. Tuthill adjoining the academy which he and others had helped to build and to sustain. At this home, which he called The Anchorage, he died in 1916 at the age of ninety-six, having spent sixty-five years in the parish. In his memory, a historically minded group in Southold a few years ago established the Whitaker Memorial Collection with the purpose of gathering and preserving data per- taining to the history of the town. At Orient, also, has recently been incorporated the Oysterponds Historical Society for a similar purpose, with its headquarters in the one time home of Augustus Griffin. At Greenport has also been organized The Sterling Historical Society.
The town, on September 27, 1850, belatedly by at least a dozen years, celebrated its bicentenary by appropriate religious services in the First Church in the forenoon with dinner in the first academy building followed by numerous toasts. (See Wood in Long Island Forum, February, 1947.)
It was at the instigation of Dr. Whitaker that the town in the summer of 1890 celebrated the 250th anniversary of its settlement. Four years later the annual town meeting, which had been held continuously for two centuries and a half was discontinued.
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Southold Town's first newspaper, the Republican Watchman, was brought to Greenport in 1844 by Samuel Phillips from Sag Harbor where he had established it eighteen years before. In 1852 its man- agement was assumed by his son, S. Wells Phillips, whose wife was Helen M. Case, daughter of Captain Nathaniel Case. In 1858 young Phillips sold the newspaper to Henry A. Reeve, then a man of twenty-six who remained its publisher for fifty-eight years.
Reeve, a lawyer, was a Copperhead Democrat during the Civil War and for his public utterances was imprisoned by the federal authorities. In 1869, however, his fellow Islanders elected him to Congress. Subsequently he served as Assemblyman and for many years as supervisor of Southold Town, strongly Republican though it was. He died in 1916 at the age of eighty-three, respected for his learning and his fearless attitude in public matters.
Samuel L. Bennett and Herbert M. Hawkins having acquired the Watchman from Reeves' estate, sold it in 1924 to Rev. Howard E. Mather who also acquired the Mattituck Reporter and combined the two as the Watchman-Reporter. It was purchased in 1940 by Frederick C. Hawkins who combined it with his Southold Traveler.
The Suffolk Times was established at Greenport by John J. Riddell in 1862. Subsequent publishers were Buell G. Davis, William R. Duvall, Lucius C. Young, Lewellyn F. Terry, Ralph Thomas, John L. Kahler and, finally, the present owner, F. Langton Corwin, a descendant of Matthias Corwin, a first settler.
The Long Island Traveler, established at Cutchogue in 1871 by Lewellyn F. Terry and the Rev. Nathan Hubbell, was soon moved to Southold. A subsequent owner was Russell L. Davison who sold to Frederick C. Hawkins, its present publisher. Martin B. Van Dusen bought the Traveler in 1877, having moved to Southold from Broome County. He conducted it for a decade before selling it to Edward F. Tabor, poet and lawyer, who about 1890 sold it to Joseph N. Hallock, destined to remain its publisher for the next forty years. Descended from an early settler, Hallock also served a long period as town clerk and two terms as Assemblyman. In 1932 he was elected president of the Southold Savings Bank.
Southold has become a town of highly specialized farming in recent years. Land formerly devoted to growing grain and fodder and for pasturing stock is now used for potatoes, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peas, beans and the like. Most of the woodland has been cleared. Small farms have been combined so that motor propelled machinery may be advantageously used.
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