USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 47
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 47
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During the Civil War, thousands of Queens County men volun- teered for service, towns raised money to pay a bounty to volunteers, and citizens contributed their services to help the soldiers. Here were Camp Todd at Flushing, Camp Woodhull near Queens Village, Camp Buckingham at Richmond Hill, and one at Union Course.
Jamaica, incorporated as a village in 1814, was the first on Long Island, while Flushing was incorporated in 1837. Maspeth and Spring- field remained hamlets for generations. The real growth of Queens County began about the latter half of the nineteenth century. Im- provements in transportation and the desire of city dwellers to escape the crowded conditions in New York combined to bring many families to this county to establish their homes.
The Long Island City area was the first to feel this influence for it was the most accessible to New York. Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point, and Blissville by 1850 had become recognized villages, with Astoria (incorporated in 1839), Douglaston, Queens Village, White-
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stone and College Point starting to grow about this time. Ridgewood, Middle Village and Glendale developed from many Brooklyn families moving across the line into Queens County.
Rockaway suddenly boomed during the 1860s and 70s with settle- ments at Seaside, Hammels, Holland, Bayswater and Arverne, in addition to Far Rockaway, which had begun to develop a short time before. The 1870s and 80s comprised the period of development for central Queens. Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, Morris Park, Dunton and Hollis were built around Jamaica; Murray Hill at Flushing, and Woodside and Steinway beside Long Island City. This latter area had grown so rapidly that it was incorporated as a city in 1870.
Greater growth came with improved transportation to New York, which permitted commuters to live in the suburban villages of Queens County. Urban influence was felt here more and more until finally New York City took steps to absorb this and other adjoining areas. In 1894 a plebiscite was taken on whether or not to consolidate present Queens County with Brooklyn, Staten Island, New York, and the Bronx. The vote in Queens County was almost two to one in favor, although the proposition was lost in Flushing. However, the result was determined by the total vote, not by communities, so on Jan- uary 1, 1898, the towns of Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica, the Rockaway portion of Hempstead, and Long Island City were consolidated into New York City as the Borough of Queens.
At the same time, by special legislation, the easterly portion of the original Queens County of 1683 became the County of Nassau, containing the towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay.
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CHAPTER XIII
Hempstead Town
H EMPSTEAD TOWN was founded 1643-44 by a group of Englishmen who, unlike the founders of most other English settlements in Long Island, abandoned the security of a shore that lay within easy sailing of New England for an inland wilderness even then being swept by Indian warfare. This group gathered at Stamford in Connecticut whence in 1643 its leader, Richard Denton, sent two emissaries across the Sound to the Dutch-held westerly part of Long Island, there to obtain town rights from Director-General William Kieft of the province of New Netherland and to purchase title thereto from its Indian proprietors.
That the English settlement of Mespat (later Newtown), founded the year before some miles to the west by Francis Doughty and followers from New England, was razed by savages while Hempstead was still aborning, did not deter the latter's emissaries, Robert Fordham and his son-in-law, John Carman, from completing their mission. Having traversed the island from north to south shore, they made contact with the Rockaway Indians, who dwelt near the ocean, and soon thereafter began bargaining with the one-eyed chief Tackapousha whose influence dominated several so-called tribes in this part of the island. As a result, the following historic deed was negotiated December 13, 1643.
Be it known to all men by these presents that we the Indyans of Marsapeague, Mericock, and Rockaways, whose names are here underwritten, have put over, bargained and sold unto Robert ffordham and John Carman, Englishmen, all that half-part or moiety of the Great Plains, lying toward the south side of Long Island, to be divided or measured by a direct or straight line from our present town plott, northward, and from the North End of the line, to run with a right line East and West, to the uttermost limits of itt, and from both ends to run down with a straight line to the South Sea; with all the woodlands, meadows, marshes, pastures and appur- tenances thereunto belonging, contained within that compass of the said lynes. To have and to hold to them and their heirs and assigns forever. In witness thereof wee have here- unto sett our hands the day and yeare first above written.
This deed, bearing the mark of Tackapousha as sachem of Marsapeag, together with those of Jorrane, Panaman, Remos, Wamis, Whanege, and Gerasco, failed, it seems, to adequately specify the bounds of the vast tract which was to eventually comprise the town. Nor did the instrument specify what if anything was paid the Indians for their land, a discrepancy which was to cause misunder- standing for some years to come between the town and Tackapousha,
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being the oldest Presbyterian Church in what is now New York State This church dates from the establishment of Hempstead in 1643-44 under the leadership of its first minister, Richard Denton, thus
Christ's First Presbyterian Church, Hempstead
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shrewd bargainer in the interests of his people. Described by some writers as crafty and stubborn, he did at least employ these traits to effectively protect what he believed to be the Indians' birthright. Not until the spring of 1644 did Richard Denton and the bulk of his followers arrive at Hempstead and in November of that year Director-General Kieft issued a town patent requiring. the settlement of one hundred residents within five years and granting a few meagre concessions towards local self-government and the right to worship freely.
Although Robert Fordham, John Carman, John Strickland, John Ogden, John Lawrence and Jonas Wood were alone mentioned as patentees, the original founders of the town also included Richard Denton and his four sons, together with Robert Coe, Richard Gildersleeve, Edmund and Jeremiah Wood, Thomas Weeks, John Seaman, Thomas Armitage, Simon Searing, John Ellison, John Smith and his son John, Jr. Included also by some authorities although their names do not appear in the town records as such, are Andrew Ward and Mathew Mitchel.
The first of the founders to arrive located the "town spot" in what is now the village of Hempstead between two converging streams and here erected a stockade, a few simple homes and, probably where the Episcopal rectory now stands, a meeting house in which Richard Denton was to preach. From this "town spot," located at the south- erly edge of the Hempstead plains, footpaths and sandy lanes were soon radiating to an increasing number of homesteads, each sur- rounded by its large tract of tillable land and rich pasturage.
Christ's Presbyterian Church was not only the first house of worship in Hempstead, but the earliest of its denomination in America. According to Henry Onderdonk, Jr., the town was settled in 1644 by "Presbyterians and Independents who built a house of worship and maintained a minister by a town rate." The town used this building for public meetings as well as for church purposes and paid fifty pounds a year to the preacher who was, from the beginning of the settlement until 1659, Richard Denton, "an honest, pious and learned man," and a community as well as church leader. The first meet- ing house, completed in 1648, stood at present Fulton and Franklin streets. In 1679, under Mr. Denton's successor, Jonas Fordham (1660- 83), the town erected a larger meeting house, 30 x 24 feet, 12 feet high, with a lean-to on either side. Three years later the town built a parsonage where the Episcopal rectory now stands and here Hem- stead's third minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Hobart, took up residence in 1682 to serve a congregation which by then represented several denominations. It was such a congregation which obliged Mr. Hobart in 1691 to take legal steps to force the town to pay his salary.
This was an era of political and religious unrest and Hempstead became one of the most religiously restless towns in the colonies. When in 1695 the Ministerial Act made the Church of England the official church of the colonies, thereby depriving all other denomina- tions of official support, Hempstead Presbyterians were forced to meet in the homes of members until 1722 when their own meeting
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house was built near the site of the town's first meeting house in which Richard Denton had addressed his flock more than seventy years before.
Meanwhile in the official town house from which other faiths had been ejected by the Ministerial Act of 1695, St. George's Epis- copal Church had become a strong factor in the community, first under the pastorate of the Rev. William Vesey, who resigned in 1697 to become rector of Trinity Church in New York where he remained for half a century and among whose stalwart parishioners was Captain William Kidd. In 1704 the Rev. John Thomas became rector of the "parochial school of Hempstead" which two years later received as royal gifts from Queen Anne a prayer book, chalice, and paten, all still preserved at St. George's.
Mr. Thomas's outstanding rectorship terminated in 1726, in which year the town granted a half-acre plot for a building "wherein to perform divine service according to the usage of the Church of England." This edifice, dedicated in 1735, was the nucleus of St. George's present building. Here between 1742 and 1761, the son of Rector Samuel Seabury, also named Samuel, was schooled and prepared to become America's first native-born Episcopal bishop.
Christ's First Presbyterian Church of Hempstead likewise had a distinguished career during the colonial period. From its own first meeting house of 1722 it moved in 1762 to a larger place of worship on Fulton Avenue where the present great white church stands. Appropriated by the British during the Revolution in which to stable their horses, this second building was later retrieved and again used for services. Destroyed by fire in 1803, it was replaced with a finer structure on the same site, this to be removed in 1846 to become the present parsonage and to make room for the present beautiful church building.
In 1793 St. George's built its present rectory on the site of its former rectory and was given a town grant for "all the land in front of the Episcopal Parsonage down to the brook." This present rectory is one of Hempstead's most imposing residental structures.
It is a far cry from Hempstead on the east coast and San Francisco on the west coast of America, but in 1849, during the Gold Rush, the Rev. Sylvester Woodbridge, resigning as minister of Christ's First Presbyterian Church, trekked across the continent and established his denomination in the western city where today Presbyterian headquarters are established in the Woodbridge Build- ing, named for the former Long Island pastor.
From the start, Hempstead, unlike some other towns, acted wisely in both the allotment of individual grants to its citizens and in the retention of a very great part of the plains as common pastur- age to be allotted later as population increased. Original shares consisted of "fifty propriaty lots and fifty blanks," each proprietor receiving three plots of twenty-two, fifty and one hundred acres, while those without proprietory status were awarded fifty acres each, a provision calculated to attract new residents.
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Prior to 1664 when New Netherland passed to the English crown, town meetings frequently made grants not only to newcomers but to some of the original settlers who paid, if not in public service or open-house hospitality, at a rate of eighteen pence per acre English money or its equivalent in future crops. Then, too, as in other towns, there were "squatters" who simply took possession of what land they wanted by moving in, thus appropriating some six hundred acres in all before the, town put an end to this form of piracy.
From its Commons the town frequently granted plots to artisans whose residence was desired because of their special skills being in demand. Similar grants were also made to new arrivals whose residence was needed to meet the minimum population figures stipu- lated in the charter. Occasionally a sizable plot was awarded to some colonial official whose goodwill might prove helpful to the town's interests. The Commons nevertheless continued to comprise an important portion of the town's total area throughout the colonial period and for some decades thereafter.
Two of the town's largest landowners during its earliest years were John Seaman and Robert Jackson, the former having settled at what is now Wantagh contemporary with or even prior to the - establishment of the "town spot." Both Seaman and Jackson, some authorities maintain, made separate purchases of their extensive tracts along the south shore directly from the Indians, and the . former's 2200-acre plantation was not actually combined with Hemp- stead, according to these authorities, until the Dongan patent of 1685 made it a part thereof. Nevertheless Seaman as well as Jackson was active in town affairs and did much to foster its development in various ways, including that of propagation. Seaman, twice-married, had sixteen children, while Jackson produced an almost equally large number of offspring.
Other early leaders of the town were Daniel Whitehead and John Hicks whose son Thomas received a patent in 1666 for 4000 acres at Great Neck and who in 1683, when Queens County was established as one of the thirteen original counties of the province of New York, became its first county judge. He died at the age of one hundred, leaving more than three hundred descendants, among them the fore- bears of Elias Hicks, founder of the Hicksite Quakers.
The Hewlett family founded Merrick and later the village of Hewlett on the Rockaway peninsula, which was owned in great part by the Pearsall family after whom Lynbrook was originally called Pearsall's. In 1659 the Raynor family, settling at Freeport, gave that place the name of Raynortown, while on the north shore Richard Cornell (called also Cornwell and Cornwall) in 1676 established a plantation on Manhasset Neck which included the now famous point of land later to be named Sands Point from the Sands family which settled there.
Still another settler of these parts within the original town of Hempstead was Governor Richard Nicolls' secretary, Matthias Nicolls, who established an estate at the head of Manhasset Bay, while Adam Mott located on Cow Neck in 1650 and the Kissam family on nearby Mad Nan's (or Madnans) Neck in 1678.
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Other early families of Hempstead Town besides those already mentioned were Valentine, Ashman, Thorne, Bedell, Sammis, Birdsall, Rushmore, Chapell, Pine, Clowes, Pettit, Ellison, Peters, Hendrickson, Osborne, Jaycocks, Marvin and Smith, the latter being so numerous as to be divided into the Rock Smiths who lived at Merrick, the Blue Smiths, Little Smiths, Shoe Smiths, Nan Smiths, and House Smiths, none of whom had any known relationship with the equally famous Tangier and "Bull" Smiths of Brookhaven and Smithtown respec- tively in Suffolk County.
(Photo Courtesy of The Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress) Carman-Irish House, Hempstead
The Tredwell, Townsend, Titus and Willis families which settled Westbury and East Williston as well as other inland parts of Hemp- stead Town; Thomas and Christopher Foster and Simon Searing, whose large estate became the nucleus of the village of Searingtown; Captain Thomas Topping, John Lawrence, Robert Coe, John Ogden and Jonas Wood were also among the town's early landowners.
Not until 1657 was the Indian deed of 1643 finally confirmed by Tackapousha, together with other Indian spokesmen, and then only by a town payment of forty-two pounds in cattle, wampum and mer- chandise. The confirmation bearing the Indians' respective marks and the signatures of Richard Gildersleeve, John Seaman and John Hicks as witnesses and dated July 4, 1657, failed however to specify boundaries, thus causing still further agitation which was finally brought to a satisfactory conclusion in May 11, 1658, with the signing of the following rider:
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We the Indians Above written Doe heareby Acknowl- edge to have received of the Magistrate And Inhabitants of Hemsteede, All our pay in full Sattisfaction, for the tract of Land soulde unto them According to the Above and within written Agreement, And According to Pattent And Purchase, The General Boundes is as followeth,
Beginning At A place called Mattaharetts Bay, And soe running upon A direct Line from North to South And from Sea to Sea, The Bounds running from Hemsteed Harboure due Easte to A pointe of treese Adioying to the Lands of Robert Williams, where we Left marcked treese, the same Line running from Sea to Sea, The other Line beginning at A Marcked tree standing at the East End of the Greate Plaine, And from that tree running upon a due South Line, And at the South Sea by a Marcked tree made in A neck. ยท called Maskutchoung, And from thence upon the same line *
to the South Sea. * Hereby binding us and our suc- cessors, to cause them to enjoy the same peaceably without any molestation or interruption, for them their heirs and successors forever.
The clarification of town boundaries was effected during the administration of Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, he of the wooden leg and equally hard cranium whose stubborn misrule did nothing to stay the threatened conquest of the Dutch province by the English, which came to pass in 1664. The English residents of Hemp- stead, like those of Newtown, Gravesend, Flushing and Jamaica, under Stuyvesant came to hope for and finally to further the conquest .. This sentiment was fostered by Captain John Underhill, so-called "gentleman soldier of fortune"; John Scott, swindler extraordinary, and other agitators whose personal interests might be served by English invasion.
Under the Dutch, Hempstead Town was permitted to elect magis- trates, a clerk, five townsmen, a pounder and certain other local officials including cattle-keepers and a hay warden, but their tenure was in every case dependent upon Stuyvesant's approval. A tax amounting to about ten per cent of farm income was imposed upon the town's freeholders, but the director-general was usually at wit's end to see that this and other taxes were collected. Never was the total tax warrant forthcoming and seldom were receipts sufficient to justify the cost of collecting. Finding his threats of reprisal futile, Stuyvesant finally agreed to accept one hundred skepels of wheat annually in lieu of Hempstead's share of the provincial tax warrant.
The certainty of English invasion not only encouraged the people of Hempstead to ignore Stuyvesant's mandates but it weakened the director-general's resolve to enforce them. When Connecticut by virtue of its charter of 1662 laid claim to the island as a whole, the residents of Hempstead responded favorably and a year later, despite Stuyvesant's remonstrances, officially repudiated his authority with- out however embracing that of the New England commonwealth. In
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this situation the town eagerly joined a general uprising engineered by John Scott. Although unsuccessful, this unauthorized, flamboyant rebellion disclosed the defenseless position of the provincial govern- ment and undoubtedly influenced Stuyvesant to meet at Hempstead in March, 1664, with the Connecticut emissaries, Captain John Underhill, Adam Mott and Daniel Denton (son of Richard), and formally accept the secession of the English towns on Long Island, as well as Westchester, pending further negotiations on a national basis.
Recognizing no such stay, Connecticut thereupon proceeded to take over the township governments by jailing John Scott and replac- ing the magistrates whom he had appointed with men more agreeable to its plans. Governor Winthrop came from Connecticut to direct these plans but before the reorganization was consummated Stuyvesant capitulated to the British fleet whose commander Richard Nicolls thereupon became governor of the province of New York with Long Island a part thereof.
The Town of Hempstead, after twenty years of Dutch rule, now faced more than a century of English colonial jurisdiction, an era ushered in by what has since come to be known as the Hempstead Convention, which the new governor called to order on the last day of February, 1665. Its purpose was to adopt laws and otherwise provide for the administration of the province and its towns, each of which was directed to send two duly-elected representatives to participate in the proceedings. The towns which sent delegates were Southold, East Hampton, Southampton, Seatalcott (Brookhaven), Huntington, Oyster Bay, Hempstead, Jamaica, Gravesend, Newtown, Flushing, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Flatbush, New Utrecht and, from the mainland, Westchester.
Hempstead's delegates were John Hicks and Robert Jackson who, like their colleagues from the other towns, were later roundly condemned by their constituents for not having prevented the enact- ment of the so-called Duke's Laws sponsored by Governor Nicolls and giving his office dictatorial powers.
The convention adjusted various town boundaries, renamed cer- tain of the towns, and divided the province into shires of which Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester comprised Yorkshire. This shire was in turn divided into ridings, three in all, Hempstead being included in the North Riding, present Suffolk County comprising the East Riding, and the island's westerly towns being in the West Riding.
Over each riding was placed a high sheriff, Captain John Under- hill, of Hempstead, among them, and a deputy, both of whom were named by the Governor and made answerable directly to him. Of the several courts established, the highest, known as the Court of Assizes, consisted of the council, the high sheriffs and the justices, together with the Governor who appointed and could remove them at will as, for that matter, he could other officials. Thus what little representative local government Hempstead had managed to acquire during two decades of Dutch rule was wiped out by Nicolls by means of the Hempstead Assembly, to be regained step by step over a period of years and by constant struggle.
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In 1669, this town and several others from Oyster Bay west- ward, jointly petitioned the governor for legislative representation and other seemingly justifiable concessions, but without avail. When three years later New York was threatened by a Dutch fleet these towns showed little concern and by their reluctance to join the defense, which they did belatedly, contributed to the province passing back into Dutch hands. But during the Dutch occupation which lasted little more than a year and was terminated by international treaty, the Long Island towns were quite as reluctant to take the Dutch oath of allegiance, remaining loyal to the English crown whose protection the east end towns sought and received through Connecticut.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1683, more than nine years after England had retrieved the province, that her then governor, Thomas Dongan, a devout Roman Catholic, instructed by King James who was swayed by the admonitions of William Penn, directed the towns to send four representatives each to a meeting of their riding. The ridings in turn chose two delegates each, to attend a general assembly which, convening October 17, 1683, proceeded to adopt a bill of rights, called the "charter of liberties and privileges" which decreed "that no person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, shall at any time be any wayes molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences of opinion, or matter of religious concernment who do not actually disturbe the civille peace of the province, but all and every such may at all times fully enjoy his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religions."
The general assembly, having elected Matthias Nicolls speaker, also abolished the shires and ridings and divided the province into twelve counties, three of which, Kings, Queens and Suffolk, shared Long Island. The other original counties were New York, Ulster, Albany, Dutchess, Westchester, Orange, Richmond, Duke's and Corn- wall. A court, with jury when demanded, was established in each town, an annual court of sessions in each county, a court of oyer and terminer having general jurisdiction, and a supreme court of chancery for the province, comprised of the governor and council, from which appeals lay to the king.
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