USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 24
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 24
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
Up to the time of the Revolution the settlements within the pres- ent limits of Riverhead town were Wading River and Baiting Hollow near the Sound and to the south Riverhead and Aquebogue. There were yet no such places as Jamesport, Northville nor Franklinville. For long years Riverhead village was isolated from the rest of the town. No direct road connected Riverhead with the Middle Country Road, then the principal through highway. For more than seventy- five years after it became the county seat about the only outsiders who came to stay were the unwilling guests of the sheriff.
Aquebogue, now known as Upper Aquebogue, about three miles east of the Court House, was formerly the site of an Indian village. Now it is the center of a continuous settlement along the south road. Lower or Old Aquebogue, further east on the same road, is now Jamesport, the name first applied to the settlement at Miamogue Neck, now called South Jamesport.
Jep (Jasper) Vail in 1822 lived at Riverhead and kept a store at Aquebogue, opposite the Steeple Church. From here he supplied sloops that came up Meeting House Creek with groceries and supplies. Jep had some peculiar methods of doing business. If a customer tendered a dollar bill for a half dollar purchase, he would cut the bill in half, retain one half and await the other half until another fifty cent purchase was made.
Before the advent of the railroad there was a tavern at Aque- bogue where travelers going to New York by boat would spend the night before continuing their journey. About the time the railroad came through, John Downs kept a store at the place and bought potatoes, wheat, oats, rye, corn, eggs and butter of the farmers. In the spring he purchased calves and in the fall, dressed pork. He soon began shipping carloads of assorted farm products to the city for articles needed by the farmers.
In the 1860's Benjamin F. Wells who kept a general store at Aquebogue, had large sheds filled with boards brought by boat to Indian Island and then scowed up Meeting House Creek to his dock above the railroad tracks.
Old or Lower Aquebogue, now Jamesport, on the South Road leading east through Southold Town, is six miles from the county seat and at the head of the road leading to South Jamesport, the original Jamesport, on Miamogue Neck. Lower Aquebogue was settled about 1690. Long years before there was a Jamesport the
190
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
old community had a general store, a blacksmith shop, later a school house and a church.
When the railroad came through this section, a station was located about halfway between Lower Aquebogue "at the road" and the set- tlement on the bay. Previously, the Methodists had established a camp meeting at this intermediate point. Near Jamesport Station, later came a lumber yard, a coal business and a pickle factory.
At the time a post office was established at Lower Aquebogue to serve an area of about three miles along the main highway as well as the village at the bay, the old community formerly known as Lower Aquebogue was given the name of Jamesport. Later, when the origi- nal Jamesport on the bay was granted a separate post office, it had to accept the name of South Jamesport.
As late as 1833 there was not a single white habitation at what is now South Jamesport. A sandy and swampy lane ran south from the road at Lower Aquebogue to a spit known as Miamogue Point jutting out a half-mile into Great Peconic Bay. A small remnant of the Miamogue Indians then lived there. The Point was practically the head of navigation, as no vessel of any size could go farther up the shallow reaches of Peconic River toward Riverhead.
James Tuthill thought this an ideal place for a whaling port and a commercial center and here laid out what came to be called James's Port. Within five or six years there were about forty dwellings erected on the Neck and by 1843 several whaleships made it their home port.
To accomplish his purpose, Tuthill sold his share in the family farm to his brothers, George and David, borrowed money and bought the Miamogue tract. Here he laid out streets and sold lots. David and George Tuthill helped their brother James with their teams and constructed a road through the swamp, with two rude culverts over the creek, straight to the Main road at Lower Aquebogue. With the aid of his friend, Oliver Albertson, James Tuthill built the first house which served both as an inn and his residence. Next, a house was built for Albertson. The firm of Tuthill & Albertson then built a wharf and a store for a ship chandlery and general merchandise busi- ness. Directly across from Albertson's house a third house was built by Albert Youngs.
Tuthill sold additional land to both Albertson and Youngs to raise money for his enterprises. Later he sold his interest in the store and dock to Youngs who still later acquired Albertson's inter- est in these projects. Youngs' business was finally inherited by his son Albert after whose death the store was closed, about 1905. Oliver Albertson Hawkins, a grandson of Oliver Albertson, now keeps a store at the head of the road while Jedediah Hawkins 2nd lives in the house that his great-grandfather, Oliver Albertson, built. In the old days customers came to Jamesport from both forks of the East End by catboat and small sloop to purchase supplies at its chandlery.
One winter the ice, driven by a heavy gale, carried away the old dock built by Tuthill & Albertson. The farmers thereupon organized a cooperative share company and built a new dock which was used
191
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
for thirty or forty years for the shipment of farm produce and for receiving shiploads of coal and fertilizer.
James Tuthill's dream of a whaling port like Sag Harbor and Greenport did not materialize and when the farmers began to ship their products by railroad the dock at Jamesport gradually fell into disrepair and finally went out in a storm in the 1880's.
There was one bright flash of illusory hope for Jamesport just after the end of Tuthill's dream, when the Long Island Railroad com- pany thought to locate its eastern terminal there. But before the grading had been completed the bay froze up and the projectors of the railroad thereupon decided to use Greenport with an ice-free harbor as its terminal.
Although Jamesport was a failure as a whaling port, after the Civil War Miamogue Neck became the headquarters of the menhaden fishery business of Riverhead town. For twenty years or more this enterprise was the chief source of income of the East End, next to farming. Another source of income was the catching of scallops in Great Peconic Bay. This business, however, proved a deterrent to the summer resort business as the mountains of shells produced an odor offensive to urban nostrils.
There have been several summer hotels at South Jamesport. On the site of Tuthill's inn the Miamogue Hotel and two later hotels on the same site have been burned. The Sunnyside House which stood south of the Miamogue Hotel was run by Halsey Corwin and his wife Arletta until purchased by Seymour Corwin and removed. The Bayside House was owned by Benjamin Jones, son of Hewlett Jones, the village cobbler, a number of whose descendants still reside in Riverhead Town. Captain Edward Downs built the Great Peconic Bay House in the early eighties at about the time his brother James built a hotel nearby. The coming of the Downs family brought new life and activity to the community.
In 1814 Nathaniel Downs and some of his neighbors made a draw seine for netting porgies and other fish. When they caught more than they could use for food they spread them on the land. This led to a company being formed to own and operate what was called a twelve-right porgie seine, together with three boats having a com- bined capacity of from ten to fifteen thousand fish.
In 1818 the company was enlarged to sixteen rights and four boats with a captain and a clerk. When a haul of fish was made the clerk notified all having rights in the seine to come and cart home their share. In 1828 there were five companies of sixteen rights each operating from Indian Island to Simmons Point which at that time extended some fifty rods into Peconic Bay, with banks eight feet high. Here a seine was owned by Nathaniel Downs. John Hallock was his captain and Sylvester Howell clerk.
At Jamesport four sons of Daniel Hawkins, a coastwise mariner, having retired from the sea went into the business of reducing bunkers to oil and fertilizer. They built a fish factory on Shelter Island and another on Barren Island in Jamaica Bay. Captain Ebenezer Hawkins managed the one and Captain Simeon Hawkins the other. A third brother, Captain Edward, retired early to his
192
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
farm, but Captain Jedediah Hawkins stuck to the fishery business and with Ebenezer and Simeon built two seine houses on the beach at Miamogue Neck where seines were repaired, new ones made and boats repaired, all of which gave work to many Jamesport men. For them- selves the Hawkins brothers each built a stately home at Jamesport, all of them still standing.
A political contest between brothers Edward and Simeon in 1889 attracted state-wide interest. Captain Simeon had started out in life as a Democrat but at the outbreak of the Civil War renounced Demo- cratic principles and later served as town supervisor, superintendent of the poor, two terms in the State Assembly, and finally in the State Senate. In 1889, Captain Edward Hawkins, a life long Democrat who had held no office, wrested the office of Senator from his brother Simeon in a district normally Republican.
In early days herds of cattle were driven through the north side of the Island to the markets of New York. When they reached a pond northwest of Riverhead village the animals were allowed to feed and drink. A few miles beyond the Fresh Pond hills the cattle and their drivers had to wade Red Creek. Hence the local derivation of the names of the villages of Baiting Hollow and Wading River. Wading River was called Westhold by its settlers who came from Southold. It was later called Red Creek and Red Brook.
Something more than a century before there was a Riverhead town, the trustees of Brookhaven in town meeting, November 17, 1671, agreed that there should be a village at Wading River. From Setauket came Daniel Lane, Jr., who was allotted land convenient to the water. Others who came from Brookhaven's oldest settlement were Elias Bayles, Joseph Longbottom, Francis Muncy, Henry Perring and Thomas Smith. Not long after, from Southold came Stephen Bayley, John Conklin, Jr., Theophilus Corwin, Matthias Corwin, John Gold- smith, David Horton, Jonathan Harned, John Howell, John Lore, Richard Lore, Daniel Terry, Abraham Whitear, Benjamin Youngs, Richard Youngs, the Browns, Colonel Carnold and one Halsey.
The original boundary line between the towns of Brookhaven and Southold ran due north to the Sound from a certain pepperidge tree that marked the head of the Wading River. The tree stood where now is a marker at the northwest corner of the Presbyterian Church property. The territory east of the creek belonged to Brookhaven.
About 1708 the creek itself became the western bounds of Southold town. It seems that one John Rogers, a townsman of Brookhaven, had become a public charge in Southold town to which he had removed. Southold thereupon sought to collect the cost of his support from the town from whence he had come. In settlement of the matter Brook- haven released its right in the land and meadow on the east side of the creek, also paying four pounds in current money to James Reeve of Southold town.
Wading River, situated in the extreme northwest corner of River- head town, was once regarded as among the most industrious villages of the county. Near it is Red Creek, so named from the color of the
193
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
sand over which it flows, and by the Indians, Pauquaconsuck, inter- preted by some as meaning "where we come for clams."
At one time Wading River was an important shipping point for east end cattle. As many as ten thousand head were sometimes herded in the neighborhood of Horn Tavern where the present land- locked pond was in those days an inlet to the Sound. Here the cattle were loaded on boats. Great quantities of cordwood were also shipped from landings on the Sound shore and another on Alonzo Hulse's farm. The wood was cut during the winter months and hauled to some convenient place near the shore. Schooners were beached at high tide and the farmers were called by some youthful Paul Revere wlio galloped from farm to farm. When the tide was at its lowest wagons loaded with wood were driven alongside the vessel and the wood passed aboard. The vessel would float off with her load at tlie next flood tide.
Henry Perring in 1675 built and operated a grist mill at Wading River. Later, his son-in-law named Woolly came into its possession and it was long known as Woolly's Mill. In 1706 John Roe, Jr., built another mill at Mill Pond, which was in continuous use until toward the end of the nineteenth century. Captain George Hawkins was the last to operate it. The old millstone and a few rotting timbers now mark the spot.
A tannery was built near the river in 1710. There were also a wheelwright shop, a blacksmith shop, a cutlery factory, a candy fac- tory, a cider mill, and many stores, at different periods in the history of the village. The land in the vicinity was fertile and consequently the village grew rapidly and prospered.
In the forepart of the nineteenth century Wading River built some vessels for the coastal trade. They were launched from two shipyards, one at the west landing near the mouth of the river and the other at the east landing near the present public bathing beach.
At just what time settlements were first made along the North Country road in the eastern part of Riverhead town is not definitely known. It is probable that they are at least as old as the settlement at Wading River to the west. For a distance of some twelve miles along the road there is an almost unbroken settlement of farm houses, comprising Baiting Hollow, Roanoke and Northville.
Baiting Hollow, in early times called Fresh Ponds, three miles east of Wading River, is believed to date from 1719. Cutting and shipping cordwood and farming were the principal early occupations pursued here. From Jericho Landing, on the Sound shore, great quantities of cordwood were shipped.
Roanoke's name is believed to have been adopted from the island and river Roanoke in North Carolina. A post office was established here about 1872 but has been discontinued.
Northville, now the heart of a wealthy potato growing district, lies westward along the Country Road for about eight miles from the Southold town line. No part of Riverhead town has increased so much and so rapidly in agricultural wealth as Northville. David Downs and his brother both built brick cisterns on their farms in 1853 for watering stock and soon other farmers did likewise. About
L. T .- I-13
194
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
1857 a post office was established here and given the name Success. Mail is now delivered from the Riverhead post office.
At one time all the land north of Northville, from Luce's Landing to Roanoke Avenue, about a third of the way down from the Sound cliffs, was fenced in for a common pasture. Here every farmer was allowed to pasture livestock according to the number of acres he owned.
In 1899 an iron pier was built at Luce's Landing for the purpose of making it something more than a mooring for local sailboats. The farmers hoped to attract coastwise vessels which would transport their produce to New York, eighty miles distant by rail, at less than the railroad charged.
The project was sponsored by the Riverhead Agricultural Society. In August, 1899, the Northville Land & Pier Company was incor- porated by Henry L. Hallock, Oliver F. Wells, Orvis H. Luce and George E. Luce, all of Northville. One enthusiastic farmer put a thousand dollars into the venture. Most of the rest of the stock was taken locally in subscriptions of one hundred dollars. The first direc- tors were John B. Case, Henry Case and John C. Judge, all of Brooklyn. The pier, three hundred ninety-six feet in length, was built by the Cases who had recently completed the iron pier at Coney Island. Lumber was made into rafts and towed to the site by steam- boats. Iron spiles were sunk and the work was completed in the spring of 1900.
The pier proved a great attraction for amateur fishermen as it extended into the deep water of the Sound, but it was a failure for shipping as it was too exposed and at low tide approachable only by vessels of light draught.
A government appropriation of ten thousand dollars was sought for a breakwater to provide sheltered mooring but without success. Finally, having stood for only four years, the pier was completely destroyed in February, 1904, by moving ice which snapped the iron spiles like clay pipestems and deposited the deck of the pier upon the beach.
Calverton in the southern part of Riverhead town, an especially fine farming country, was once called Hulse's Turnout and later Bait- ing Hollow Station. Its fresh water bogs formed by tributaries of the Peconic River made it ideally situated for the culture of cran- berries. There was once a grist mill here known as Conungum Mills and farther down the river a bone-meal factory. Today it has many flourishing farms.
The settlers near the Head of the River in the Aquebogue dis- trict early utilized water power in sawing logs, grinding grain and fulling wool. John Tucker of Southold, probably the pioneer settler at Riverhead, in 1769 was given the privilege of setting up a saw-mill near the mouth of Peconic River. He was known variously as Lieutenant, Captain and Squire and had served as Deacon of the Old First Church at Southold where his name is perpetuated in Tucker's Lane which extends from Budd Monument to the North Road. He also shared in the division of the Aquebogue lots which extended from Sound to Bay.
195
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
The title to the greater part of Riverhead village is traceable through John Tucker, a grandson of Deacon Tucker, to and through John Parker, Joseph Wickham, Abigail Wickham, Parker Wickham, General William Floyd, Stephen Jagger and Thomas Fanning. In 1711 the grandson of the first John Tucker sold to John Parker one of the original four hundred acre tracts. This with an adjoining lot of the same size that Parker had bought, together with a lot belonging to Widow Margaret Cooper, constitutes the present business section of Riverhead village.
In 1690 John Griffin and others erected a saw-mill a mile east of the village on what was called Saw Mill Creek. On April 4, 1693,
Corwin House, Aquebogue
Southampton Town gave John Wick three acres on the south side of Peconic River near Riverhead on condition that he full cloth for that town and Southold. The latter property was later acquired by Josiah Albertson who conveyed it January 2, 1828, to Abraham Luce, Jr., and Isaac Swezey. In 1843, Swezey and the Howell heirs sold the fulling mill to David C. Wells who continued it until 1856 when it was acquired by Nathan Corwin. Eventually under the ownership of Charles Hallett it became a moulding and planing mill in which strawboards were also manufactured. Meanwhile in 1848 Isaac Swezey had dug a canal over eighty rods long and floated his grist- mill lower down the river.
At the Upper Mills, one mile above the village, there were estab- lished at various times a grist mill, a saw mill and a fulling mill all owned and operated in 1797 by Richard Albertson and later by his son. In 1828 John Perkins acquired water power rights and estab- lished an industry whereby homespun wool could be taken to his plant
196
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
and be returned home as finished cloth. The business was assumed in 1866 by John R. and J. Henry Perkins, sons of John Perkins. By then it had grown into one of the most important industries in the county.
J. Henry Perkins was born at Riverhead, April 8, 1839, and died January 29, 1902. He attended the Franklinville Academy, was sheriff in 1871 and served for twelve years as county treasurer, the office of which was located in one corner of his retail store which had been founded by his father.
In 1797 Jeremiah Petty built a forge several miles up Peconic River for making bar iron. It later became the property of Solomon Townsend whose father-in-law, Peter Townsend, had made one of the several iron chains which were stretched across the Hudson River dur- ing the Revolution to block the British warships from West Point.
In the Townsend ledger appear many names of residents of River- head and vicinity of a century and a half ago. They bought not only bars of iron, but also rum and molasses in exchange for calves and potatoes. Some were paid for work at the dam and for hauling "mettle" (pig iron) from "Injun Island," at Aquebogue where it was brought by vessels. Among the names are Peter Brown, William Corwin, Isaac Dayton, Gilbert Davis, Graham Edwards, David Griffin, Samuel Hand, Jr., Doxsey Lane, Nathaniel Petty, Isaac Reeve, Jonathan Reeve, Richard Robinson, Joseph Swezey, Caleb Wells, Jeremiah Wells and Shadrach White.
A Mr. Pratt once conducted a bone button factory at the Upper Mills near which the Griffin brothers ran a chocolate factory. Filling the ice houses was also an important winter occupation along the river. Today a number of duck ranches are located on the river, among them the world's largest.
Sloops were also built on the shores of the Peconic River, among them the McDonough in 1815 by Hubbard and Wells Griffing who also built the sloop Pacific in 1825. David Davis was also a builder of small vessels there.
James B. Slade's fertilizer works, where he made meal from bones, was situated near the canal on the way to Dandy Point. Boys of that time earned money the hard way by collecting old bones which they sold at the "bone yard" for a cent a pound.
Charles M. Blydenburgh, born at Bay Shore, located at River- head in 1871, and built many of the carriages used in these parts. His place of business on Peconic Avenue was later taken over by William F. Morell. There the latter's son, George K. Morell, now has an automobile business. Blydenburgh first secured employment as a wheelwright in a small shop on what was then Bridge Street with Anderson & Pugsley, carriage makers. Blydenburgh became famous for his carriages known as the Montauk, Duall, Speedway, Outing and Roanoke. He married Kate L. Corwin, daughter of Hubbard Corwin of Riverhead. Blydenburgh served also as com- missioner, a director of the Suffolk County Bank and president of the Riverhead Savings Bank.
George W. Earl started an organ factory in 1868 in Riverhead and about the same time a cigar factory was established here by
197
SUFFOLK'S NORTHEASTERN TOWNS
Newins, Phelps and Griswold. The products of the factory were sold throughout the Island from vehicles drawn by four horses. In 1883 Newins and Griswold founded separate factories.
J. Henry Newins, the senior member of the old firm, was treas- urer of the county at one time. Elijah Griswold, a pioneer in the manufacture of cigars at Riverhead, served as postmaster during the Cleveland administration.
Nearly thirty years after the Revolution the only houses in River- head village were the Griffing Hotel and the homes of Joseph Osborn, David Jagger and William Albertson, owner of the grist mill. By 1825 Riverhead boasted the stores of Elijah Terry, William Jagger, and William Griffing, Jr., Moses Cleveland's shoe shop and Jedediah Conklin's blacksmith shop. In 1832 there were about thirty houses scattered along the main road.
In 1840 of the forty houses in the village, only one or two stood west of the home of Dr. Thomas Osborn, the site of the Hotel Henry Perkins. Griffing Avenue was but a cart lane and where the county buildings are now located there were thick woods. Mulford Moore was the blacksmith of that time, Daniel Terry was keeper of the jail and Isaac Swezey was grinding grain across the river. Herman D. Foster, Elijah Terry and Nathan Corwin conducted country stores. Captains Harry Horton, James Horton and Edward Vail were run- ning vessels. William and David Jagger were strong advocates of temperance. By 1845, beside the Court House, an academy and three churches, the number of private dwellings had grown to about seventy and there was a population of nearly four hundred.
In 1874 the village had the county buildings, the Agricultural Fair grounds and buildings, two grist mills, two moulding and plan- ing mills, a paper mill, three hotels, twenty stores, a cigar factory, a considerable number of shops and offices, and a population of about 1600. By the Centennial Year of 1876, business and population had greatly increased. Besides some twenty stores there were three pharmacies, four dentists, four butcher shops, five doctors, six lawyers, five churches and a Union Free School. In 1881 the Village Improve- ment Society was organized with John S. Marcy as president and George F. Stackpole secretary. New streets were opened, shade trees set out and private and public grounds ornamented and improved.
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.