USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 21
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 21
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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
In 1888 Daniel Y. Hallock, a native son of the town, devised a weeder and also a mechanical potato digger. These contrivances were at first ridiculed, but in improved forms they have revolution- ized farming here. Theretofore weeds were hand hoed and the tubers were laboriously turned out of the earth with a fork. Tractors and gang plows have displaced horse drawn single moldboard plows which the farmers formerly followed on foot for many weary miles and dragged around the furrows end with herculean effort.
163
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
Only small quantities of potatoes were shipped to market until about seventy-five years ago. As late as 1900, steamers that plied through the Sound picked up barreled potatoes at Southold wharf and at Orient Point. For several decades thereafter, the railroad had a monopoly of transporting farm crops and fish to market. Now the bulk of East End products is hauled in bags and crates directly to New York City by motor trucks over concrete highways.
The early settlers were for the most part horny-handed men. Among them were weavers, millers, rope makers, well diggers, masons,
----
----
Village House, Orient Home of the Oyster Ponds Historical Society
brickmakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and ship carpenters. They came from a section of England largely engaged in farming and were attracted to the town by the advantages which its extensive shorefront afforded for fishing and commerce. The building of ships and the cultivation of oysters gradually expanded into big business. James Monsell of Greenport is credited with being the first to begin the planting of oysters at Pipes Neck.
A half century or so ago the inhabitants of the town were nearly all descendants of the old settlers, with little mingling of blood other than English in their veins. Many sturdy Irish immi- grants, who came east to lay the railroad tracks, remained and became permanent residents. In later years, immigrants from East- ern Europe have taken up much farm land. The automobile has brought many new home owners from the west end of the Island and beyond.
Notwithstanding, however, the infusion of these new elements in recent decades, the old settler stock still predominates. Probably Southold town remains as homogeneous a community as may be
164
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
found on the continent. The present State Senator, Schuyler Went- worth Horton, is a direct descendant of Barnabas Horton, one of the first settlers.
Though for nearly three centuries a part of New York, this far flung protege of the early New Haven Colony still remains by reason of generic and historical antecedents very much a bit of New England transplanted across the Sound.
Southold town today has little semblance, however, except in its New England flavor, to the remote town of scattered hamlets which
(Sketch by Cyril A. Lewis)
Doorway of Samuel Huntting house, Sag Harbor, built about 1830
struggled through the colonial period and the early years of America's nation- hood. It is now a well governed town- ship of modern com- munities, successful farms, beautiful homes and excellent roads.
Among its institu- tions are the Eastern Long Island Hospital at Greenport, the North Fork Country Club at Cutchogue, the Oyster Ponds Historical Society and Museum at Ori- ent, the Whitaker Memorial Collection at Southold, and the Marine Museum in the old Horton's Point lighthouse. Within the township today are six banks. The Southold Sav- ings Bank, the oldest
bank in the county, opened for business July 5, 1858, in a little back upstairs room of the Huntting house. In 1861 it moved to the home of Jonathan W. Huntting. Its third quarters and first building was erected in 1891. It is now the Cahoon Memorial Library. In 1927 the bank took possession of its present fine building. The presidents of this splendid old institution have been Rensselaer T. Goldsmith, Barnabas H. Booth, Jonathan B. Terry, Silas F. Overton, Henry W. Prince, Clarence C. Miles, Jonathan N. Hallock and Daniel H. Horton. Its first treasurer was Henry Huntting who was followed by H. How- ard Huntting, Frederick K. Terry and Rensselaer G. Terry.
The First National Bank of Greenport opened in 1864 with a capital stock of $50,000. In 1868 a brick building was erected as its
165
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
headquarters. Grover S. Adams was its first president, an office now held by Fred Corey. The People's National Bank of Greenport was organized in 1884 with a capital stock of $50,000 and the following officers: S. Wells Phillips, president; Thomas F. Price, vice-presi- dent; C. F. Norton, cashier, and directors : S. Wells Phillips, Thomas F. Price, George F. Tuthill, F. C. Prentiss, J. Madison Wells, James S. Allen, Benjamin F. Norton, Isaac Reeve and C. F. Norton.
The Mattituck National Bank & Trust Company, founded as a State bank in 1905 with a capital of $25,000, increased its capital to $100,000 in 1930 and was granted a national charter with trust powers.
The Horton-Wickham-Landon-Case House, Cutchogue Built by Benjamin Horton in 1660
The Bank of Southold was organized in 1908 with a capital stock of $25,000. The First National Bank of Cutchogue was opened for business July 14, 1924, with preferred stock of $10,000 and capital stock of $25,000.
A few Baptists came to Southold Town from Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1810 and held services in various villages. They finally built a meeting house on the road from Greenport to Oyster- ponds. It was done by general subscription and was opened to all Christians, though chiefly used by the Baptists. Dissensions arose and for a few years no regular Baptist services were held although the place was occasionally visited by ministers of that denomination.
In 1831 eight Baptists organized under the leadership of David James and the following year with forty-nine members united with the New York Baptist Association. They soon thereafter built a church at the head of Main Street, Greenport. C. E. Hiscox became pastor in 1873 and in 1874 a chapel was built. Hiscox, resigning in 1880, was followed by G. H. Frederick, E. S. Wheeler and Edward Lowe. Hiscox returned in 1886 and continued as pastor until 1889.
166
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
Greenport's growth has been quite different from that of most villages. First incorporated in 1838, it was reincorporated in 1868 and again in 1894. Having become a thriving port under the name of Sterling, as Greenport it experienced still greater expansion in area, population and industry. Hiram Bishop in 1829 bought the shipyard property owned by Captain Nathaniel Tuthill at the foot of Tuthill street, now Central avenue, and conducted the business until 1855. William Webb ran the first livery stable here. John Cook was among the earliest to operate a ship chandlery. Stranahan's
(Photo Courtesy of The Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress) Fleet-Goldsmith-Kendrick House, Cutchogue
at the junction of Main Street and Post was an early store. The first house on Main Street was built by Henry Beebe. The first house on First Street, after the new Greenport was laid out, was built in 1844 by Captain Henry Merrill. Among early storekeepers near the dock were Walter Havens and John Lewis.
In addition to the Clark House, opened in 1831, the Wyandank Hotel and the Peconic House, the largest in Southold Town, were opened in 1845. As early as 1818, what became known as the Kinder- garten Building was erected on the North Road for the children of Sterling, East Marion and Ashamomoque. Later Greenport erected a school on First Street for its own children. In 1879 a grammar school was erected on South Street and in 1904 Greenport's first high school was built where in 1910 the present edifice was erected.
Far to the east of Southold Town proper and separated from its shore by many miles of sea, lies Fisher's Island, still a part of the town. Discovered in 1614 by Adrian Block, John Winthrop
167
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
obtained a grant of the island in 1640 and built a home there for his family. He it was who later founded New London and became the first Governor of the colony of Connecticut. The island remained in the Winthrop family until 1869. Today, with its large Mansion House, tennis courts, yacht clubs, golf courses and bathing beaches, it is a famous summer playground.
On Fisher's Island is located Fort H. G. Wright. There are a considerable number of all-year-round residents who, by the way, visit the mainland usually by way of New England. The island, however, is quite self sufficient with its farms and stores, a high school employing eleven teachers, St. John's Episcopal Church, Union Chapel and Our Lady of Grace R. C. Church. In its number of churches, Fisher's Island is typical of the town of which it is a remote part.
In addition to the churches on this little island and five which serve the colored residents in various parts of the town, Southold has Roman Catholic churches at Southold, Greenport, Mattituck, Cutchogue and a Polish Catholic church at Cutchogue; Presbyterian churches at Southold, Cutchogue, Mattituck and Greenport; Methodist churches at Southold, Orient, Cutchogue and Greenport; Episcopal churches at Greenport and Mattituck; Baptist churches at Greenport and East Marion; a Congregational church at Orient; a Lutheran church at Greenport and a Universalist church at Southold.
Today the estimated population of Greenport is 3,259 while its assessed valuation is $3,289,412, Thus this village has more than a quarter of Southold Town's estimated 12,046 population and a large percentage of the town's total valuation of $24,864,154.
SHELTER ISLAND
The genesis and development of Suffolk's tiniest town is dif- ferent from that of any of the neighboring East End towns. Its history does not begin either with the organization of a religious society or with the making of a social compact in a thatched roof building at the head of a lane near the water front. Its first residents were not motivated by pious enthusiasm nor did they have dreams of a political Utopia.
The island was not settled by a group of hewers of wood who dug their own cellars and erected their own abodes. By general agreement the settlement of Shelter Island began when a rich young Englishman and his bride of tender age, well educated for their time, accompanied by a retinue of workmen, servants and slaves, ensconced themselves in the depths of the forest which then covered the island.
They were the scions of Royalists and political refugees. Their families were loyal supporters of Charles I and had been separated and dispersed. Nathaniel Sylvester and Grissell Brinley, married in 1652 at London, journeyed soon thereafter to the island by way of the Barbados in the West Indies.
No town meeting was held on Shelter Island until 1730 and then under mandate. No meeting house was erected until 1743. It was a small affair indeed, built under the sponsorship of a grandson of the
168
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
two first white settlers. There was no religious organization on the island until after the American Revolution. The only clergyman known to be resident on the island until the nineteenth century was a privately employed and unordained chaplain. No headstone marks the grave of any person buried on the island prior to 1720.
The island to which the Sylvesters came in 1652 lies in the bite between the north and south branches of eastern Long Island, about a hundred miles from New York. It is about halfway between Montauk Point and Riverhead, the seat of Suffolk County.
It is about six miles long and four miles wide, with numerous coves and harbors indenting its shoreline, forming many small penin- sulas and necks of land, one of which is misnamed Little Ram Island and, further on, Big Ram Island.
Protected from the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound by Gardiner's Island to the east, by the Hamptons on the south and Southold on the north, Shelter Island is well named. The Sylvesters, having there found refuge from the political turmoil of England, they in turn provided succor to numerous victims of persecution in other parts of the colonies.
When James Farrett, agent for the Earl of Stirling, was given his choice of any ten thousand acres in the Long Island domain as payment for his services, he picked Shelter Island and Robins Island, both near Peconic Bay. The former for a time thereafter was known as Farrett's Island. The agent, however, never lived on it. He was a traveling salesman and during his peregrinations made some pseudo land transfers, collecting what down payments he could for titles which had later to be confirmed by the red men who claimed owner- ship by prior and long standing possession. His funds running low, Farrett, on May 18, 1641, transferred Shelter Island to Stephen Goodyear, a merchant and owner of vessels, who already had a small holding of land and a house at Ashamomoque in Southold town on the other side of "Manhansett River". During Goodyear's ownership for about a decade the island was known as Goodyear's Island.
Goodyear soon became Deputy Governor at New Haven and on June 9, 1651, disposed of the island. The purchasers were four pros- perous merchants engaged in the sugar business at the Barbados, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Rouse, Nathaniel Sylvester and the lat- ter's brother, Constant Sylvester. The price paid was sixteen hundred pounds of muscovado sugar, the approximate equivalent of less than one cent per acre. The island's timber, so easily transportable by water to the West Indies, was of great value to these sugar mer- chants for making hogsheads.
Rouse, who hailed from the neighborhood of Southwold, England, on May 8, 1656, sold his fourth interest in the island to Ensign John Booth and sailed for the Barbados. There Rouse and also Constant Sylvester established themselves. Nor did Middleton ever make his home on Shelter Island.
Booth in time sold his quarter interest in the island for 700 pounds sterling to Nathaniel Sylvester and became a landholder in Southold town. Sylvester, on September 12, 1662, transferred this
169
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
quarter interest to his brother Constant, thus making the owners of Shelter Island two Sylvesters and Thomas Middleton.
When Farrett visited the island in 1638, he had found it occupied by the once powerful Manhansett tribe of Indians and claimed to have bought their rights to the land. The Sylvesters were not long on the island, however, before the Indians of Sachem Neck questioned the Sylvester title as it affected their own right to hunt and fish. The matter was taken before the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England assembled at Hartford, and as a result the three white owners were obliged to reimburse the Indians which they did on December 7, 1652. Cockenoe, who acted as the interpreter and spokesman for the Manhansetts before the Commissioners, is said to have been the same Cockenoe who so faithfully served John Eliot in translating the Bible into the Indian tongue.
Not all the Indians left the island following the purchase of 1652. As late as 1749 there was a large Indian village on Sachem's Neck. In 1790 many of their homes here were destroyed by fire. The last of the race on Shelter Island was an aged squaw, Betty Tobs Caesar, who died in 1835.
Nathaniel Sylvester, who alone of the four purchasers chose to live on the island and who finally became its sole owner, was the son of Giles Sylvester who with his wife, five sons and two daughters emigrated during the English Revolution to Holland. There Giles Sylvester died and his widow and their children moved to the Bar- bados. Nathaniel's brothers were Peter, Giles, Joshua and Constant.
Giles and Joshua followed Nathaniel and his bride Grissell Brinley, to Shelter Island, but Giles soon returned to the Barbados to become in time a member of the Governor's Council. Here he died in 1671. Joshua, after living with Nathaniel a few years, moved to Southold. Peter who married Mary Brinley, a sister of Nathaniel's wife, remained in England and died there in 1657. Anne Brinley, elder sister of Mary and Grissell, married Governor William Cod- dington of Rhode Island. Francis Brinley, brother of Anne, Mary and Grissell, settled at Newport and became the founder of the Brinley family in America.
Nathaniel Sylvester and his bride of sixteen years landed from the Barbados at Newport near which their ship was dashed to pieces on the rocks of Conanicut Island. All on board, however, were saved, including the servants, but many of the household articles which they had brought from England were lost.
Undaunted, Sylvester procured a shallop and with his wife and servants finally reached Shelter Island where he established a home in the spring of 1652. Having sent on ahead a shipload of building material and household equipment, he built a substantial house in the north-central part of the island that stood for eighty years. Bricks for the chimneys had been brought from Holland; doors and windows from the Barbados and England. That first house was succeeded by the present Sylvester Mansion, erected by Nathaniel's grandson, Brinley Sylvester, in 1737.
When in 1664 the English took possession of New Netherland and the Duke of York was given jurisdiction over all of Long Island,
170
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
the Sylvesters obtained from Richard Nicoll, Governor of the colony, confirmation of their title to Shelter Island with manorial privileges including "perpetual" exemption from taxation, for which immunity, dated in May, 1666, Nathaniel Sylvester paid one hundred fifty pounds, "one half in beef and the other half in pork."
For some years thereafter, Nathaniel continued to share title to the island with his brother Constant, a resident of the Barbados, and Middleton, living in England, but when in 1672 the Dutch recap- tured the colony they classified the two absentee proprietors as enemies and confiscated their interests. These shares Nathaniel Sylvester acquired from the Dutch governor, Anthony Colve, for five hundred pounds. As sole owner, he thereupon renamed his insular estate Sylvester Island.
When the Dutch attempted to exact an oath of allegiance from all English towns in the province, Sylvester, whose island was not yet a town, counseled Southold, East Hampton and Southampton "by all means to submit." At the same time he asked the Dutch to settle the question by peaceful means. Southold, however, appealed to Hart- ford for protection and Governor Winthrop of Connecticut dispatched Ex-governor Wyllys and Fitz John Winthrop to Southold with "necessary attendants."
Meanwhile, after a rough trip through the Sound, several Dutch commissioners rounded Oysterponds Point and arrived at Shelter Island, November 6, 1673. Spending that night at the Sylvester Manor House, in the morning they crossed the bay to Southold and asked that the inhabitants be called together. Thereupon Wyllys advised Cornelius Steenwyck, the Dutch commissioner, that the people of the East End must remain subject to the King of England. The Dutch commissioners were then rowed back to Shelter Island to spend another night with the Sylvesters after which they returned to New York.
When the following spring Governor Colve sent some fifty soldiers to Shelter Island to collect the five hundred pounds which Sylvester had agreed to pay for full ownership of the island, another attempt was made to force Southold to acknowledge Dutch sov- ereignty. When Sylvester visited Southold to present the Dutch demands he found English troops headed by young Fitz Winthrop who sent word to the Dutch that they would be received as persons "that disturb his majesty's subjects." This ended the adventure.
Captain Nathaniel and wife raised a family of six sons and five daughters in their island home. Giles, the eldest son, was named after his paternal grandfather and in time became the owner of four-fifths of the island, the other fifth being inherited by his brother Nathaniel 2nd. The latter married Margaret Hobart of East Hamp- ton, daughter of Isaiah Hobart, and disposing of his interest in the island, removed to Newport to become a merchant. Brothers Con- stant, Peter and Joshua, named for their father's brothers, died with- out issue, leaving their inheritance to Giles.
Their sisters were named Patience, Grissell, Elizabeth, Anne and Mercy. Elizabeth married Jonathan Brown of Shelter Island. To Grissell her young English fiance who died left her his entire estate.
171
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
The following year she married James Lloyd of Boston after whom they named their future resident estate near Huntington, Lloyd's Neck.
There being no meeting house on Shelter Island until 1743, the Sylvester family, on occasion, attended Sunday service in the church at Southold of which John Youngs was pastor. Near the landing at Southold harbor lived Benjamin L'Hommedieu, an exiled Huguenot. More than once, on a Sunday, he observed the canopied barge of the Sylvesters, propelled by six negro rowers, approach the shore where some of the founders had landed. More particularly was his attention attracted by the charms of the Sylvester sisters. Patience Sylvester became the bride of Benjamin L'Hommedieu in 1694. Their son, given his father's name, married, June 14, 1731, Martha Bourne, daughter of Ezra Bourne of Sandwich, Massachusetts. To them was born Ezra L'Hommedieu, lawyer, legislator, farmer and churchman of Southold who married Mary Catherine Havens, daughter of Jonathan Nicoll Havens of Shelter Island. Ezra L'Hommedieu eventually became owner of the Sylvester estate and also of the Lord estate at Menantic on Shelter Island.
Captain Nathaniel Sylvester, the first resident proprietor of the island, died in 1680, twenty-eight years after he and his wife Grissell came there to live. A monument to his memory on the edge of Woodstock Grove near the head of Gardiner's Creek was unveiled July 17, 1884. Woodstock was the name of the ancestral home of Grissell's family, the Brinleys, in England. The exact location of Nathaniel and Grissell Sylvesters' graves is unknown.
Although Captain Sylvester had bequeathed his island to his five sons in equal parts, in 1695 Giles, the eldest, having become proprietor of four-fifths thereof, sold one-fourth of his share or one-fifth of the island to William Nicoll, brother of Matthias Nicoll, first mayor of New York. Upon the death in 1704 of Giles Sylvester without issue, William Nicoll inherited from him another fourth of his estate, which made him owner of two-fifths of the island.
Thus it was that Sachem's Neck came into the possession of the Nicoll family by which it was held for two hundred and fifty years, owned successively by three Nicolls of the name of William, father, son and nephew of the latter, all of whom served in the Colonial Assembly, the first for twenty-one years-sixteen years as Speaker; the second for twenty-nine years-nine years as Speaker, and the third for nine years.
Their ancestor, Matthias Nicoll, mayor of New York, was a brother of the first English Governor, Richard Nicoll. William Nicoll I, patentee of nine thousand acres in the town of Islip, was the first clerk of Queens County. He prosecuted Jacob Leisler, the adven- turer and self appointed Governor, before the court of which Colonel John Youngs, son of Southold's first pastor of the same name, was a member. William Nicoll I moved to Islip in 1701 and served in the Assembly until his death. In early life, he married a daughter of Jeremias and Maria Van Rensselaer of New York. He died Novem- ber 20, 1723, leaving a number of children. To his son, William Nicoll II, he bequeathed all his estate on Shelter Island.
172
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
The latter became the first supervisor and foremost man of his time on Shelter Island. Moving there as a young lawyer about 1726, having just graduated from Yale, he became the owner of Sachem's Neck, now known as Sherwood's Forest. In 1739 he was elected to the Assembly. When he died childless in 1768, William Nicoll III, son of his brother Benjamin, not only inherited the estate but was chosen to succeed his uncle in the Assembly. The latter is known as "Clerk" Nicoll because he was clerk of Suffolk County for twenty-six years.
Nathaniel Sylvester II in 1698 sold to George Havens one thou- sand acres covering the central portion of the island as far as West Neck. George Havens was the son of William Havens, a Welshman who came to America about 1635 and settled on Conanticut Island near Newport. George moved to Shelter Island with his wife, Eleanor Thurston, and their seven children, February 25, 1706. After his death, Eleanor married Thomas Terry of Southold.
As long as the island was controlled by a few proprietors, there was little increase of population. When a large portion of it was subdivided, other families settled on the island, among them Bowditch, Congdon, Conkling, Crook, Dickerson, Manwaring, Payne, Parker, Preston, Prince, Sherman, Smith and Tuthill. The population doubled between 1730 when the town was organized and 1771 when the first census was taken. Names of 1730 which had disappeared by 1771 are Sylvester, Hudson, Vail, Hopkins and Gilman. In their places appeared Dering, Sawyer, Case, King, Duvall and Horton with Havens still the predominating name.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.