USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 23
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 23
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Daniel Miner Lord, a sophomore at Amherst College, taught dur- ing the winter of 1827-28. During his short term, the schoolhouse was burned. After completing his engagement as teacher, he returned to college and finished his course in preparation for the ministry.
During the winter of 1828-29, Richard Floyd Nicoll, a native of the island who had preached in the island church and elsewhere, taught in the new school. In 1829, the teacher was Usher H. Moore. He was followed by George Gorham who taught from May 30, 1830 to May 31, 1831. During 1832 and 1833, George H. Havens was the teacher. He was succeeded by two men named Pellet and Buckley in 1839. In 1844, Levi Preston of Greenport was the teacher.
David E. Kinnie served as teacher for a number of years after Mr. Preston. His wages in 1846 were $25 a month. He was a son of Deacon William Kinnie who had moved to the island in the early forties with his family to take charge of the Lord farm at Menantic. Teacher Kinnie had as his assistant Gloriana Griffing, her wages in 1852 being $30 a month. Some years later, she removed to California where she married Thomas Johnston.
The teachers between 1853 and 1864 included Marcellus D. Loper, Mary C. Griffing, Isabella Griffing, Julia E. Bowditch, G. P. Reynolds, Maggie Case, Henry Manwaring, Charles Chester, Harriet W. Havens, M. Louise Bowditch, Charles J. Barnes and E. Sarah Havens.
When a new schoolhouse was built in 1868, Dwight L. Beebe was principal and Mary C. Payne his assistant. Miss Payne became the wife of Benjamin P. Conklin of Shelter Island. Wellington E. Gordon, having taught here in 1871 and 1872, later as principal at Patchogue, became one of Long Island's outstanding educators.
The first library on the island was conducted by Helen Kinnie, daughter of Deacon Henry Kinnie and sister of David Kinnie who taught the island school in the early '40s. Her assistant was Esther A. Tuthill, mother of Town Historian Lillian Loper, and a descendant of Edward Cartwright. At one time Ella Sanford Cartwright was
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librarian. In the fall of 1885 when a library was founded by Prof. Eben Norton Horsford, his daughter, Cornelia Horsford, became the first president of the library, holding the office for many years.
The library books were first kept in the Old Store, a typical country store kept by Archibald R. Havens and Martin L. Prince. Here the farmers gathered to play checkers and listen to tall tales told by sailors, soldiers and others. Arthur S. Cartwright and Bryon Griffing also conducted a general store at the Center until May, 1878. Another store stood for a great many years near the Prospect dock long before the island became a summer resort. At one time it was kept by Joseph E. Skillman, who married Emeline Chase, daughter of Squire Chase.
When the Old Store building was destroyed in 1891 and the library books went up in smoke, Cornelia Horsford donated a build- ing site and her father gave the money for new books. The new library, erected in 1891, was efficiently served by a Library Club whose efforts paid off the mortgage. Later a group known as the Research Club raised funds for an addition to be used as a museum. The Horsford family, of which more will be stated later on, has always been a generous supporter of the institution.
In 1850 Daniel Wells and sons of Greenport established a fish factory at Chequet Point for steaming the oil from bunkers which they purchased from seine fishermen of Orient and East Marion. Soon however the nearby residents protested against the odor caused by this industry and threatened suit. Wells insisted that it was the smell of money for the fishermen as well as for him, but nevertheless he finally moved the plant to the land of Squire Chase beyond White Hills. Seventeen years later, the Shelter Island Grove and Camp Meeting Association, which had begun to develop what is now Shelter Island Heights, forced the fish plant to again move, this time across the water to East Hampton Town.
Between 1851 and 1875 as many as sixteen oil rendering plants sprang up on the shores of Shelter Island. In 1860 Hallett & Fulder of Riverhead built a factory at Dinah's Rock, near the present village of Dering Harbor. Sold in 1864, this factory was thenceforth used for making phosphate. About 1860 another fish factory was built by Gavitt & Law of Rhode Island near the mouth of Coeckles Harbor. It was soon thereafter acquired by Captain Benjamin Conkling Cartwright, a local resident, and moved to Bunker City on Ram Island Beach. About 1865, two factories were built at the foot of Burns Avenue near the shore of Coeckles Harbor, one by King, Rogers & Company and the other by local men.
Clark & Tuthill of Greenport first erected pot works on Ram Island Beach. These were afterwards moved to the valley between Dinah's Rock and Hay Beach Point. About the same time pot works were erected on Ram Island Beach by Corwin & Vail of Riverhead and Downs Brothers of the same place. George and Benjamin Horton and William Y. Fithian, all of Southold, in 1867 erected a steam rendering plant where now stands the Monastery of the Passionist Fathers. In the early seventies, this plant was moved to Napeague Harbor near Montauk.
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Captain Jacob A. Appleby of Southold in 1867 built fish works at Ram Head, which were sold the following year to Henry Ackley & Company and were destroyed by fire in 1871.
Captain Cartwright carried on the business at his Bunker City location under the name of the Peconic Oil Works until 1882 when he sold out. The plant of Hawkins Brothers of Jamesport at Bunker City was the largest on the island and the last to disappear. It was sold in 1900 to the Atlantic Fishery Company which owned a large factory at Promised Land on the south side of Long Island.
In 1871, a company of Brooklyn Methodists acquired about two hundred acres of land on the highest and most picturesque part of the island for camp meeting purposes. It was on the west side of Dering Harbor. A large part of the land was purchased from Rebecca Chase, widow of Squire Chase who had died fourteen years earlier. The Chase homestead stood where now stands the home of Dr. Donald Currie.
When the railroad came to Greenport, Squire Chase expressed the hope that some day a city would arise on his beloved heights whose chief characteristic would be sobriety. He accordingly staked out lots on his farm and called the development Sobrie. He sold a few lots, but it was for others to see partial realization of his dream and to profit by increased values.
Among the incorporators of the Shelter Island Grove and Camp Meeting Association were John E. Searles, William M. Little, John French, Samuel Booth, John E. Searles, Jr., William T. Hill and Foster Pettit. Prominent in the association in its early history was Frederick A. Schroeder of Brooklyn, president and treasurer. He was founder of the Germania Bank of Brooklyn, later called the Fulton Bank. His superintendent in the Shelter Island project was Wesley Smith. The name of the company was changed in 1886 to the Shelter Island Heights Association.
A five-story wooden structure with one hundred sixty rooms, called the Prospect House, was opened in the early summer of 1872, with a party to which the public was invited. In the grove above the hotel a preacher's stand and wooden seats were constructed for camp meeting purposes. Some cottages were erected for use that first season and many residences for summer and all-year-round abode have since been erected. Camp meetings were held for the first eight or ten years.
The Prospect House was remodeled and modernized several times during its history. After it had been used for seventy years, in the last week of June, 1942, the day it was to have been opened for the summer, it was destroyed by fire.
In 1872 a number of Massachusetts men organized as the Shelter Island Park Association and bought land from Prof. Horsford on the opposite side of Dering Harbor from the Heights. Here the fol- lowing summer they opened the Manhansett House as a rendezvous for yachtsmen. The House was partially burned on August 13, 1896, was rebuilt but in May of 1910 was completely consumed by flames. It was never rebuilt and the Association's land eventually became the
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incorporated village of Dering Harbor, a choice residential section. The village now has a fire house, built in 1931, and a "town hall".
Up to the time of Lawyer Samuel S. Gardiner, the title to the Manor property had descended through three generations of Sylvesters and two generations of Derings. Gardiner married Mary Catherine L'Hommedieu, daughter of Ezra L'Hommedieu of Southold, a great- grandson of Nathaniel and Grissell (Brinley) Sylvester, the island's first settlers. Their daughter Mary married Eben Norton Horsford, famous scientist, scholar and historian. At his wife's death, Pro- fessor Horsford married her sister, Phoebe Gardiner, from whom he inherited the Manor property. He subsequently acquired considerable additional land and did much to publicize the island as a summer resort. At his death the Manor property descended to his daughter, Cornelia Horsford, who by her will provided for its continuous maintenance.
The estimated population of Shelter Island today is 1100 which increases to approximately 3500 during the summer. The assessed valuation of the island is $3,600,708 which is considerably below the real value. There is but one small, quite exclusive incorporated vil- lage in this island town. It is known as Dering Harbor and was incorporated in 1916. Its population of less than fifty rises to several hundred during the summer months. Its assessed valuation is $375,570.
RIVERHEAD TOWN
Riverhead, the shire town of Suffolk County, was until 1792 the backyard of the parent town of Southold. It received its name from what was as late as 1804 but a "miserable hamlet" near the mouth or head of Long Island's largest and longest river, which, meandering from its source in Brookhaven town, empties into the bay that lies between the two eastern Forks of the island. River and bay both bear the same Indian name, Peconic, meaning "a small place".
The land and meadow on both sides of the river, Southold on the north and Southampton to the south, comprised the Indians' Aque- bogue, the land at the head of the bay or the cove place. That which became Riverhead town extended west some fifteen miles to the Wading River and northward five miles from the Peconic River to Long Island Sound.
Between 1661 and 1680 the people of Southold town divided among themselves their Aquebogue meadows and forest, of little value then, without even bothering to record the transfers. The first allotment reached nearly to the present village of Riverhead. The lots, thirty- eight of them, extended from bay to sound and each comprised from two hundred and fifty to three hundred acres. They were taken by John Budd, Richard Clark, Henry Case, Margaret Cooper (widow of Thomas), William Hallock, Barnabas Horton, Joseph Horton, Samuel King, Thomas Mapes, Edward Petty, Joseph Sutton, John Swezey, Richard Terry, Thomas Terry, John Tuthill, John Tucker, William Wells and Barnabas Wines.
Some fifteen years thereafter there was a second and a third such division. The second covered the site of the future village of
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Riverhead and westward almost to the Wading River. These were the so-called "great lots", sixty rods wide extending from the Peconic River to the sound, containing about four hundred acres each, liberally measured.
There were forty-four of these lots and they went to twenty-four owners. Among them were three new family names. Colonel Isaac Arnold had come to Southold in the early sixties of the seventeenth century. Josiah Bartholomew had been a carpenter in the city of London. Widow Hutchinson of Lynn, Massachusetts, came about the same time as Arnold.
The third division which seems to have covered the original plot of the village of Wading River, was allotted at the same time as the second. There were forty-eight lots in this division, each containing three and a half acres. They were taken by twenty-seven persons. John Harod was a new name in this list. In 1680 he purchased four more of these lots. His name is perpetuated in Harod's Point near Wading River.
In 1711, the lands between Fresh Ponds (Baiting Hollow) and Wading River in the form of forty-six lots were divided among twenty-two proprietors. In this fourth division of Aquebogue land John Lore took eight lots, Richard Lore six, Francis Brotoe five, John Harod five, Jonathan Harned two, Mathias Corwin two and Stephen Bayley two.
The public business of the old town of Southold, the western part of which became Riverhead town, except during the Revolution, was transacted at town meetings held at Southold village, far removed from the Aquebogue and Riverhead territory. The few residents in the western part of the town often found it difficult to get to the annual spring town meeting as the distance was great and such roads as there were would often times be impassable. Consequently, their political voice was weak.
Finally on January 11, 1792, a few of the leading men of the Aquebogue area brought the matter before the State Legislature. Benjamin Horton and some others merely asked for an act providing that town meeting be held at Southold and Aquebogue in alternate years. Peter Reeve and others, however, demanded that the Legislature take a leaf from Solomon and divide the town. John Wells and another group played for time and sought a postponement of the matter to the next session.
Two months later, on March 13, an act was passed dividing Southold into two townships. The west line of the land of Richard Howell became the dividing line between the old and the new town. This line is perpendicular to the general trend of the shore of the Sound at the north. It was called the "eleven o'clock line", because one's shadow falls along it about an hour before the farmer's dinner time. Parallel to it are all the north and south lanes still extending across the two towns, even in the village of Riverhead.
Thus did Riverhead town come into being. Organized April 3, 1792, it was governed for its first two years under the laws of Southold town. Its first town meeting was held on the above date at the home of John Griffing. David Terry acted as moderator and David Conkling
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clerk. The first supervisor chosen was Daniel Wells. The other town officers selected were: clerk, Josiah Reeve; assessors, John C. Terry, Joseph Wells and Benjamin Terry; commissioners, Jeremiah Wells and Spencer Dayton; overseers of poor, Daniel Terry, Zacheriah Hallock and Daniel Edwards; overseers of highways, Nathan Youngs, Eleazar Luce, Rufus Youngs, John Corwin, Zophar Mills, Peter Reeve and Merritt Howell; collector, Sylvanus Brown; constables, David Brown, Abel Corwin and Benjamin Horton.
At a special town meeting, May 29, 1794, regulations were adopted restricting the free range of sheep and cattle on the common land and in the highways. Two pounds were provided for, one at Baiting Hollow on land of John Calvin and the other at Aquebogue on land of Isaac Wells. The pounds were to be forty feet square with a seven- foot fence around them. Jeremiah Wells was to build them at about twenty-five dollars each. Tavern licenses were granted to Timothy Lane and Daniel Hallock who each paid $1.25 for his license.
The justices of the peace of Suffolk County at General Sessions held in September, 1727, sought an act of the Colonial Assembly enabling them to erect a "Convenient Court house and Gaol in the most Commodious place at or near a Place commonly called by the name of the head of the River Aquaboug (Aquebogue) or Pekonnik (Peconic)."
This was to settle a dispute between Southampton and Southold as to which town should have the building. Back in the spring fol- lowing the organization of Suffolk County in 1683, the Court of Ses- sions meeting at Southampton had ordered that a prison house be provided at Southold. Accordingly, the people of Southold converted their old first meeting house into the required prison and built them- selves a new edifice for religious purposes. Southampton's older jail house was also continued in use for almost a century so the courts continued to be held alternately at Southampton and Southold.
It was enacted by the Governor's Council and General Assembly on November 25, 1727, that the "freeholders, inhabitants, residents and sojourners" in the county be assessed the sum of four hundred pounds to be collected one half by March 25 following, and the remainder by April 1, 1729. The collectors were paid nine pence on the pound for their services.
With the funds so raised the first County Hall and Jail at River- head was erected on the north side of Main Street on the site of the present Perkins building. David Horton lived in the court house and kept the jail. The governor and Provincial Assembly on July 12, 1759, passed an act providing that the supervisors should thereafter meet there on the last Tuesday in October. The County Court sat at the Hall twice annually. Litigants, witnesses, jurors, lawyers and even the judges brought food for themselves and for their horses or oxen.
This first county court house at Riverhead was little used for at least three quarters of a century. Fifteen years after its erection a traveler described it as a "decayed, wooden building." In 1804, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, while touring the Island made the same observation. By 1825 the business of the courts had
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so expanded, however, that the old building had to be enlarged and remodeled.
Riverhead town meetings were held in these county buildings until 1873, after which they were held in a brick building belonging to John Downs. In 1829 and for several years thereafter religious services were conducted in the court house. During the years 1853 to 1869 town meetings were opened with prayer. Sometimes there was a reading from the Bible on such occasions.
In 1854 the site on which the present court house stands on Grif- fing Avenue was purchased and here a county court house and jail were erected of brick and stone the following year. Consisting of two stories and basement, it cost $17,800. It was seventy-five feet wide by fifty feet deep and on its first floor were jury rooms and rooms for the town supervisors. Also on the first floor and in the basement were living quarters for the sheriff and the jailer.
The jail was a separate, small two-story octagon stone building about thirty-six feet in diameter. It stood in the center of the jail yard at the rear of the Court House, which formed one side of the yard. A high board fence surmounted with spikes was erected on the three other sides.
This jail was found to be inadequate fifteen times by as many grand juries and finally was remodeled and enlarged in 1881. It was continued in use until 1910 when the present jail was erected. The massive stone blocks used in the construction of the old jail are now to be found in various parts of Riverhead village. Some of them fence the front yard of the present county buildings. Others lie along property on Second Street where stood the residence of George M. Vail.
The court house built in 1854-5 was remodeled during 1897 and the jail was entirely rebuilt. At the same time an office was pro- vided in the court house for the county treasurer whose records until then had been kept in a corner of the Perkins store. The court house was destroyed by fire on April 16, 1927, and many records were lost, following which the present county buildings were erected on the site. The original weathervane from the first County Hall of 1729 and the cornerstone of the second Court House of 1855 are preserved in the Suffolk County Historical Building, also at Riverhead.
In the original County Hall sold in 1859, Joshua Smith of Smith- town sat as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas and General Ses- sions of the Peace. He was succeeded by Thomas S. Strong of Brookhaven and he by Jonathan S. Conklin of East Hampton. They were all laymen. The last presiding judge in these courts under the old State Constitution was Hugh Halsey of Southampton.
The first term of the Common Pleas was held after the Revolu- tion on the last Tuesday of March, 1784. Among the side or county judges were: Nathaniel Potter, Moses Rolph, Charles A. Floyd, Richard M. Conklin of Huntington, Richard Wheeler, Joshua B. Smith of Smithtown, John S. Mount, Simeon C. Miller, John M. Williamson, Daniel G. Gillette, of Patchogue, John G. Floyd of Brookhaven, David Warder of Riverhead, Ebenezer W. Case of Southold, Henry Landon of Southold, John P. Osborn of Southampton, and Samuel
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Phillips of Sag Harbor. The latter was sheriff of the county and proprietor and editor of the Republican Watchman newspaper.
Capital punishments in Suffolk County since the close of the Revolution include: John Slocum, horse stealing, September 4, 1786; William Erskine (colored), rape, October 5, 1791; William Enoch, murder of wife, January 12, 1835; John Hallock, murder of colored man, July 2, 1836; Samuel Johnson, murder of wife, July 6, 1841.
Nicholas Behan who murdered James Wickham and the latter's wife at Cutchogue, June 2, 1854, was hanged in the jailyard of the first County Hall on December 15, following the crime. He was buried in an unmarked grave in "Egypt", south of Riverhead. The post-hole axe with which the crime was committed is a gruesome relic preserved at the Suffolk County Historical Building. To this trial, before Judge Selah Strong, came so many people from all parts of the Island that a company of militia from Sag Harbor in com- mand of P. R. Jennings was detailed to keep order. Ogden Hoffman, Attorney General of the State and Alexander Hadden prosecuted the case while S. D. Craig represented the prisoner.
No other executions took place at the old jail. The next in the county was the hanging of Francis Asbury Hawkins in 1888. He was a clerk in the store of his uncle, Seth R. Clock at Bay Shore. He shot and killed his mother, Cynthia Hawkins, a wealthy woman, on the night of October 1, 1887, near Bay Shore, because she objected to his marriage. Wilmot M. Smith was the District Attorney and Robert S. Petty the Sheriff. David B. Hill was Governor at this time. The old gallows in the cellar of the Court House was unfit for use so one was borrowed from the Tombs in New York City.
For its first 163 years Suffolk County had no permanent location for its records. Prior to 1846, papers affecting property in the towns of Huntington, Smithtown, Brookhaven, and Islip were recorded at the west end of the county with the County Clerk. Those affecting property in the five eastern towns were recorded with an assistant county clerk who sometimes resided at Sag Harbor or Bridgehamp- ton. These assistant clerks served from about 1815 to 1843. They were not elective officers. J. Wickham Case of Southold village, after serving one term as assistant county clerk, was elected county clerk in 1843 and re-elected in 1846. He was the first clerk to occupy the County Clerk's office building at Riverhead. He had been a teacher at the Huntington Academy in 1825-6.
The first County Clerk's building was erected in 1846 at the west corner of Main Street and Griffing Avenue. It was a one-story, fireproof brick building about twenty by thirty feet. When after twenty-nine years it had outgrown its capacity it became the first home of the Riverhead Savings Bank. Twenty years thereafter it became the first home of the Suffolk County Historical Society.
It was in 1875 that the second building for the use of the county clerk was erected just to the northeast of the Court House. Used also by the surrogate, it was 30 x 50 feet, two stories high and built of pressed brick from the plans of Tappin Reeve of Brooklyn. The building committee was composed of Supervisors Nicoll, Ketcham and Wood. In 1895 the building was increased to twice its former
Sound Avenue Congregational Church, Riverhead
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size. In 1929, following the erection of the present Court House, the surrogate's office was removed to that building, and the County Clerk's building was remodeled for the exclusive use of the clerk.
The records of the County Clerk begin in 1669. All deeds from 1687 to 1714 are contained in a small book of 167 pages designated as Liber A of Deeds. Another small book contains a record of wills and proceedings pertaining to the settlement of estates from 1691 to 1733. Lost for many years, this book was found in 1871 by Thomas S. Lester of Southold among papers of Ezra L'Hommedieu of that place who was county clerk for twenty-six years prior to his death in 1811. Lester's father had studied law with L'Hommedieu and was executor of his estate.
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