USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 30
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 30
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There have been many famous names in the town's past. Besides Captain John Dayton of the Revolution, John Howard Payne, Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward, Julia and Catherine, scores of others could be mentioned, among them Julia Gardiner of Gardiner's Island, who married President John Tyler.
Other Gardiners occupied high places in the life of the country. Dr. Ebenezer Sage practiced in East Hampton and Sag Harbor in
(Courtesy Mrs. Roswell Eldridge)
Chapel Theatre, Formerly a Union Free Church, Great Neck
the late 1700's and was Congressman in the year 1812. He wrote long letters containing stories of his day.
We especially like the story of Amy Mulford who went to a dance on board a British ship as her father diplomatically advised. George Sterling, who became California's poet laureate, was a Sag Harbor youth. His home was in the small corner of that village which belongs to East Hampton Town.
Poetess Cornelia Huntington lived in East Hampton village as did several famous members of the Tile Club, the Morans, St. John Harper, the Herters, and Childe Hassam. John Drew lived here for some years.
As to East Hampton being the birthplace of John Howard Payne, author of Home, Sweet Home, there is a difference of opinion. His father occupied at least three different houses in East Hampton while teaching at Clinton Academy. Afterwards he moved to New
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THE HAMPTONS OF SUFFOLK
York. If not a native of East Hampton, Payne at least spent part of his early life here. And here stands the Home, Sweet Home which undoubtedly inspired him to write his famous ballad. It was pur- chased by the village in 1927.
In East Hampton village are a country club with a history of more than a half century, a riding club, a yacht club and a tennis club. In 1927 the million and a half dollar Montauk Manor was opened to the public. In 1928, $16,000 was spent in improving Three Mile Har- bor. Three years later, $55,000 more was voted for dredging.
After the 1938 hurricane, which all but destroyed the big elms arching over East Hampton's Main Street, nearly $100,000 was spent on restoration. An efficient and ever-watchful Ladies' Village Improve- ment Society has accomplished much for the village.
Soon the three hundredth anniversary of the settlement of East Hampton Town will arive. In place of a savage wilderness the town is now dotted with thriving villages. It boasts many fine roads, even through the sandy Northwest woods, a water supply unsurpassed in purity, reliable banking, wide well-groomed streets, the well-known Village Green, flanked by windmill, Clinton Academy, the Library, Home, Sweet Home and the Samuel Mulford house. A short distance away is the State-marked site of the first little colonial church and the Lyman Beecher homestead. There, too, are the later Episcopal Church and the still later Guild Hall, both blending beautifully with the old.
The creditable East Hampton Star was founded in 1885 by Walter Burling, and in 1895 came the extension of the Long Island Railroad and its first trip to Montauk. The water works was born in 1899, the electric light company in 1902, and in 1903 the East Hamp- ton National Bank, now consolidated with the Osborne Trust Company.
Twenty-five years later land jumped in price a thousand percent and a small Montauk hunting club sold its holdings for $120,000. East Hampton village is indeed one of the island's most attractive com- munities but no more attractive than the progressive township of which it is a part.
CHAPTER IX
Town of Brookhaven OSBORN SHAW Historian, Town of Brookhaven
S PANNING the middle of Long Island from the Long Island Sound on the north to the Atlantic Ocean on the south, is the large area of the Town of Brookhaven which comprises 387.48 square miles of the western half of Suffolk County, according to official figures furnished by the Brookhaven Town Planning Board. Included in these figures are 63.98 square miles of underwater, town-owned lands and 7.918 square miles covered by incorporated villages. The area of the Town is considerably greater than that of either Nassau or Queens Counties and is about five times greater than that of Kings County. Brookhaven and Oyster Bay are the only towns to extend entirely across Long Island. The assessed valuation of privately owned properties within the Town for the 1945-1946 tax year was $48,326,652 including $11,359,128 in the incorporated villages.
According to the Federal census of 1940, the population of the Town was 32,117, but the great influx of new residents within the last few years and the steady increase in the birth rate, have very greatly added to that number. This population is distributed among six incorporated villages-Belle Terre, Bellport, Old Field, Patchogue, Poquott and Shoreham-and thirty-six unincorporated villages and communities, Center Moriches and Port Jefferson being the largest. The Town has sixteen railroad stations and there are now thirty-two separate school districts and five joint school districts with adjoining towns. There are also 974 miles of town-owned roads used by the public and maintained by the Highway Department, exclusive of the roads within the incorporated villages or the State and County high- ways, with an additional twenty-five or thirty miles of old, disused roads which are gradually being opened up and repaired as the need for them is indicated. This mileage of actually used town roads is greater than the distance between New York City and Chicago, St. Louis or Atlanta and lacks but ten miles of being equal to the rail- road distance between New York and Jacksonville, Fla.
Brookhaven has the second largest river on Long Island wholly within its bounds. This river is invariably known in the records as the Connecticut or East Connecticut, but in recent years it has errone- ously been referred to as "Carman's River", due to the fact that Samuel Carman, Sr., and his heirs at one time maintained a mill, dam and roadhouse and owned property for a comparatively short distance along its west bank at South Haven. The Indian name is stated to mean a "long tidal river" which is an appropriate designa- tion for a stream extending half way across the Island. In former years, it afforded water power for several grist, saw and fulling mills
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as far up as what is now the south part of Middle Island. Part of Peconic River is also in Brookhaven and it forms several miles of the boundary between the Towns of Brookhaven and Riverhead as does Wading River creek at Wading River.
The Town has approximately twenty miles of shore on Long Island Sound and about thirty miles of coast line along the Atlantic Ocean bordering the Great South Beach. This Beach is a long, narrow strip of wind-swept sand dunes and salt meadows known in previous years as the South Beach, but in later years as the Great South Beach and Fire Island Beach. Its official name, adopted by resolution of the Town Trustees in December, 1935, is Great South Beach, and the recent and careless custom of referring to it as "Fire Island" is a confusing misnomer-Fire Island being the name of a small island not far from Fire Island Inlet and about opposite the village of Islip. Between the Beach and the mainland are the South Bay or Great South Bay and the East or Moriches Bay-the two extending for nearly half the length of Long Island. These bays are connected by a narrow, navigable strait called the "Narrow Bay". On 4 March, 1931, an inlet broke through the Beach at Cupsogue about opposite East Moriches and the inlet was considerably widened by the bad hurricane of 21 September, 1938, at which time great waves and tides wrought havoc all along the Beach and part of the mainland. Brookhaven's jurisdiction in both of the south-side bays and the Great South Beach extends from the Southampton Town line south of Eastport, as far west as Nicoll's Point at Great River in the Town of Islip on the mainland and a little beyond Point o' Woods on the Beach; hence, a part of the Beach and Bay is opposite the eastern part of that Town.
The north shore of the Town is equally well favored by having its Flax Pond, Mount Sinai Harbor, Old Field or Conscience Bay, Setauket Harbor and Port Jefferson Harbor, all of which connect with the Long Island Sound. Conscience Bay is joined to Port Jeffer- son Harbor and Setauket Harbor by "The Narrows" around the upper part of Strong's or Little Neck and the three have a common entrance into the Sound through a stabilized inlet. Port Jefferson Harbor is especially well protected and adapted for handling a great amount of shipping and its importance as a commercial distributing center is steadily increasing.
A low range of hills extends from west to east through the north central part of the Town, and between them and the hilly section immediately adjoining the Sound there is a level plateau of excellent, heavy loam well adapted to farming, vegetable growing, grains and fruits. South of the hill range, the soil is of lighter texture but also well adapted to vegetables and the cereals and especially legumes, hay grasses and melons. Along the south shore, the surface is gen- erally level and in some places along the south bays there are large extents of salt meadows which were greatly valued in olden times for the meadow hay which they produce. The geographical center of the town is near West Yaphank and is about 53 miles from New York City.
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Brookhaven Town has the Towns of Smithtown and Islip on the west, and the Towns of Riverhead and Southampton on the east. Prior to 1792, when Riverhead was formed from the western part of South- old, the latter Town was also Brookhaven's adjoining neighbor. In shape, the Town might be compared to two oblongs of equal size and shape with the upper or northern one resting upon the lower or southern one and ex- tending about a quarter of its length west of the lower one. The reason for this peculiar shape is due to the fact that two of the Long Island Indian sub-tribes or family groups owned all the lands, meadows and waters now embraced within the limits of the Town. These two groups were the Setal- cots or Setaukets who owned the northern part and the Unkechaugs who owned the south- ern part. The latter "tribe" has been erro- neously stated to have been the "Patchogue Tribe" but all documen- tary evidence is that the tribal name was Un- kechaug.
The territory owned by the Setalcots began at Cutsquensuck or Stony Brook adjoining the "Nessequake lands" of Smithtown and ex- (Photo Courtesy of The Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress) tended eastward to the lands of the Corchaugs First Congregational Church, Centereach or Cutchogues at a pep- peridge tree at the head of the Red Brook or Wading River, and north from this tree to the Sound and south from the tree to the Peconic River and the middle of the Island. From Stony Brook and the Sound, the tribe owned to Ronkonkoma and the middle of the Island.
The territory of the Unkechaugs began at the small stream known as Namkee between Blue Point and Bayport, or the eastern boundary of the Secatogues of Islip, and ran eastward as far as the western boundary of the Shinnecocks of Southampton, at Seatuck Creek in Eastport. The Unkechaugs also claimed the Ocean as their
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south boundary and the middle of the Island as their north, but as the latter boundary was also the south boundary of the Setalcots, there is good reason to believe that along this common boundary there were marked trees, probably extending from Lake Ronkonkoma to the headwaters of the Peconic River at Manorville.
The lands of Indian tribes can be determined fairly accurately from the deeds that they gave and from a survey of the deeds given by the Setalcots and Unkechaugs, it is evident that their ownership was identical, and no more than what is now contained within the bounds of the Town of Brookhaven, except for a comparatively small piece of the Setalcots' land now forming the northwest corner of the Town of Riverhead at Wading River, which originally belonged to Brookhaven but which was ceded to the Town of Southold in 1709, to settle a dispute concerning the keeping and support of one John Rogers.
Both the Setalcot and Unkechaug Indians with their sachems were federated with the other sub-tribes on Long Island under the protection of one great chief or governor who was also the sachem of the royal Montauk tribe. The arrangement appears to have been similar to what it was in Germany, prior to the first World War, when the King of Prussia-one of the states-was, at the same time, the Kaiser or Emperor of all Germany, with the kingdoms of the other states under him. At the time of the settlement of Brookhaven, Wiandance (Wiandanch) of Montauket or Montauk was the Chief Sachem while Warawasen (Warawakin or Warawaky) was Sachem of Setalcot and Wenecoheage (Wendeheage) was Sachem of Unke- chaug. "John" Mayhew and Massetuse appear to have succeeded probably as joint sachems of Setalcot, followed by Guy (Gie or Gy) who was sachem in 1675 and 1683 and probably much longer. Follow- ing Wenecoheage, Tobaccus became Sachem of Unkechaug and sold property as such in 1664. He died sometime between 1693 and 1700. He was succeeded by Wyangonhott who, in 1703, is stated in a con- firmatory deed he gave for land in East Moriches, as being the Sachem of "the Plantation of Indians belonging To a Place Com- monly Knowne by the name of unquachauge". If any succeeding sachems followed Guy and Wyangonhott, there does not appear to be any record of them. All of these sachems and their tribesmen seem to have been friendly and cordial in their relations with the white settlers who came to live in their midst and the first three books of the Brookhaven Town records contain many entries of contracts and deals made between the Indians and white settlers, especially whaling agreements. One agreement was made by Guy, the Sachem, to stub five acres of land and cut little trees as big as one's leg! That he was trustworthy is attested to by his having been rented John Roe's horse for thirty years ( !) and to set a post and rail fence in payment. He certainly set a good example for his fellow tribesmen. One Indian was known as "Honest Tom"; another as "Mr. Wood- hull's Tom"; Wocous had his cattle earmark recorded; Toby became a carpenter's apprentice, and "Whatnews" was the Unkechaug Indian constable of Sequatauke in Mastic: Both the north and south
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side Indians were good off-shore whalers and there are many docu- ments to show how much of this industry or "design" they carried on off the Atlantic coast of Brookhaven for their white employers. And, incidentally, it was this industry which prompted the first white settlements in Occumbomuck (Bellport) ; the Fire Place (Brookhaven village) and in Mastic because of the nearness of these places to the South Beach and Ocean.
The recorded history of the Town of Brookhaven begins on the 14th day of April, 1655, when "Articles of agreement and a firme bargaine" were made by Warawasen, Sachem of Setauket, with the joint consent of himself and fourteen of the next of his kindred who sold to John Scudder, John Swesie, Jonathan Porter, Thomas Mabbs, Roger Cheston and Thomas Charls, a tract of land with all meadows, upland and timber trees adjoining the bounds of Nessaquake [Smith- town] and from there eastward "with a river or great napock nerly nemaukek". The tract of land conveyed by this peculiarly worded deed is described by the late John H. Innes of Mount Sinai in an article appearing in October, 1935, in New York History, the quarterly journal of the New York Historical Association, as covering the land stretching from the modern Stony Brook to Port Jefferson Harbor and containing about thirty-two square miles. The meaning of the Indian words in the deed is obscure but that Mr. Innes appears to be correct in deducting that Port Jefferson Harbor and the small stream which flows into it, is the meaning intended by the Indian words, seems confirmed by an intelligent half-breed Algonquin Indian, who examined a copy of the deed for the writer and informed him that merly nemaukek means "nearly straight up and down"-nerly being a misspelling of the English word nearly and napock being probably intended for neapauke or "a water place"-as defined by the late William Wallace Tooker of Sag Harbor in his Indian Place-Names on Long Island. As the east side of Port Jefferson Harbor has banks and cliffs nearly straight up and down and as the harbor is certainly a great water-place, the Indian description could easily apply to it. Added to this, is the fact that nine years later, when the young Town wished to acquire the tract from Mount Sinai eastward, another Indian deed was obtained which would not have been necessary if the first deed of 1655 had conveyed east of Port Jefferson and the harbor. The south and west bounds are not clearly stated in the deed but evidently are included in the vague wording, "as by trees being marked doth appear". The location of the trees is better defined and cleared up by the confirmatory Indian deed of 1675, where we learn that the present Smithtown line was the west, and the middle of the Island was the south boundary.
The agreement made by the Sachem with his fourteen tribes- men and the six white buyers on that April day of 1655, that either party would notify the other of any plotting or intended harm "to the end that peace may be maintained amongst us", was faithfully kept by both contracting parties and their descendants. The deed concludes by specifying that payment of the goods named shall be made within one month, and this is the only clue as to the probable
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date when the white settlers arrived and brought with them the pur- chase price of 10 coats, 12 hoes, 12 hatchets, 50 muxes (brad awls for drilling wampum), 100 needles, 6 kettles, 10 fathoms of wampum, 7 "pepx" of powder, a pair of child's "sockings", 10 pounds of lead and 1 dozen knives.
These articles and the names of the buyers and of the sachem, are copied (except for spelling) from the original deed and two ancient copies of it, all carefully preserved in the Brookhaven Town Clerk's office, and it will be noted that what has been often stated as "7 chests of Powder" is actually but seven "pepx" or what is appar- ently an abbreviation of pipestones-the bowl of an Indian smoking pipe when used as a measure. The amount of powder above named would therefore not have been much more than seven teaspoonfuls.
Of the six white men who made the first purchase, we learn from the New Haven and Southold records, that John Scudder, John Swesie (Swezey), Thomas Mabbs (Mapes) and Roger Cheston were living in Southold and it is quite probable that it was with the approval of that Town that they negotiated for the new settlement to be made at Setauket. "Jonathan" Porter (whose name appears as Porter only in the old copies) is believed to have come from Massa- chusetts but of Thomas Charls, little is known. Roger Cheston and Thomas Mabbs only returned to settle at Setauket and as the names of Scudder (later of Huntington) and Swezey do not appear in the Brookhaven records until some years later, and also as Porter's and Charls' names never appear, it is reasonable to suppose that four of the six men and their two witnesses, George Tonge and John Cosby (whose name is illegible on the original deed), both of whom are unknown in the Brookhaven records, were acting as purchasing agents for others, possibly in Connecticut. From the date that the deed was given until a little more than two years later, nothing what- ever is known about the little group of pioneers who settled at Setauket.
It was probably late in April or early in May of 1655, when the settlement began and the huge job of felling trees, building houses, clearing land and planting crops, so as to survive through the coming winter; and then, during the following year, enlarging their fields, improving their cabins and living conditions, building shelters for cattle, sheep and hogs (which were imported at an early date), plant- ing and harvesting the second year's crops and, perhaps, giving help to what new settlers may have joined them, as well as probably building a boat or two to connect them with the older settlements on Long Island and in Connecticut in case of necessity, that little time or thought was left for them to record their names or actions even if such a rare item as paper was at hand on which to write them down and we are fortunate that there has been recorded and pre- served records as early as those found in the first book of town records. The earliest dated entry occurs on original page 24 and appears on page 126 of the printed copy known as Vol. I. This entry reads as follows: "At a Towne meeting the first of August 1657 it was agreed vpon that when the towne shall haue Thirty ffamilies then
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then they [will be] willing to pay 60 pounds p yeare to the main- tanance of a minnester".
Brief as this entry is, we learn from it that there were less than thirty families; that an organized government-the New England form of a pure democracy where the voice of the people was expressed in town meeting-had been established; that there was no minister among them; that they were too poor to raise £60 (about $150) a year; and that their desire to have a spiritual leader and teacher was of such importance that it became their first recorded decision. If anything more is needed to show how small the religious-minded group was who planted the Town of Brookhaven, it will be found on the same page as the above. It reads: "It is ordered that the Old feild fence shall be mad by the middell of march next ensuing-to beginn at Consiens [Conscience in Old Field] & runs westward to the clifts as it is staked out in p portions folowing
" 1 Hennery Perren [Perring] 12 william ffance [Fancy]
2 Roger Cheston 13 James Cock
3 Robert Acreley [Akerly]
4 Alexander Brian
15 Thomas mabs [Mapes]
16 Richard Odell [Woodhull]
17 Richard Smith ["Bull"]
18 John Dier
19 Tho: Perce [Pierce]
S [blank ]
9 John Chachum [Ketcham]
20 John Underhill
10 [blank]
21 Samuell Sherman
11 Tho Tharp [Thorp]
22 Hen : Rogers"
While the entry and the list of names is without date, it is one of about the Fall of 1660 or five years after the plantation was begun. This is obvious from the fact that Arthur Smith (the Quaker), No. 6 on the list, who had to leave Southold, was admitted a townsman of Brookhaven in December, 1659, and Roger Cheston, No. 2 on the list, sold out in October, 1661, and removed from the Town. It will be noted that the list, which is the oldest of any Brookhaven list, contains but twenty names, with provisions being made for twenty-two and it undoubtedly contains the names of the original with a few additional men who, with their families, planted the future Town of Brookhaven at Setauket, along its Mill Creek, around its Green and adjoining its Harbor at which time their Indian neighbors retired to the upper part of nearby Little (Strong's) Neck.
The two entries above quoted entirely disprove the statements in Thompson's and other histories of Long Island and also repeated by myself in the introduction written for the printed edition of Book A of the Brookhaven records, that the number of adult planters as stated by Thompson was "fifty-two which were shortly increased to fifty- five". The records show that in 1661, there were but twenty-two and they were given six-acre planting lots in the Old Field. By 1668, the number had increased to only thirty-five when the names are given of those who shared in "the first lootments [allotments] that was in the towne" made that year and the year previous. The Brookhaven
14 William Crumwell
5 Edw: Rouse
6 Aurther Smith
7 Thom: Harlow
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rate lists printed in Vol. II of the Documentary History of New York give but thirty-one names in 1675 and fifty-two in 1683, but the original tax list of 1701, preserved in the Town Clerk's office, has the names of 75 taxpayers and landowners; hence, it is evident that it was not until sometime between 1683 and 1701, that the number of 55 proprie- tary names was attained. The list of the fifty-five names given in Thompson's history, according to the records, is, in reality, a mixture of names of such various dates that it must have been compiled by taking what names he found on the several lists in the first book of town records which does not end until late in the year 1675.
Some excuse for this and his other numerous errors may be that when writing about his native Brookhaven, Thompson depended too much upon some of the hazy, old and unreliable traditions that had been told him and also because the script of the first three books of town records is very difficult to read. The first book is especially diffi- cult; entries were made in a hit or miss manner without any thought of chronological order and many are entered without dates and some are even written with the book upside down; the spelling is often very bad, and some of the early recorders or scribes made entries on the tops of the pages with the succeeding recorders adding entries of later dates under them, so that even with the book now copied, indexed and in printed form, it is very confusing and requires time and patience to peruse. A mistake once made is often repeated and so it is with those which were carelessly though unconsciously made by Wood, Thompson and Prime; they still are copied !
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