USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 11
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 11
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
After two years John Bowne returned to Flushing and the worst of persecution ceased in New Netherland.
90
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
Hannah Bowne preached both here and in England and to John Bowne's house in Flushing came George Fox in 1672 to visit and to preach, to gather such a crowd of listeners that the house could not hold them and they met together under the wide-spreading branches of an oak tree. Fox's Oak, as it was called for many years, has gone now but John Bowne's house, built in 1661, still stands in Flushing, lived in by his descendants today.
[In October, 1945, the Bowne house was dedicated as a shrine to religious freedom. It is now open to the public under the sponsorship of the Bowne House Historical Society.]
6004-A Borme House Flushing
The Bowne House, Flushing, Home of Quaker John Bowne
As the home of John Bowne was a Quaker refuge on western Long Island, so the home of Nathaniel and Grissel Sylvester on Shelter Island at the eastern end offered welcome to persecuted Quakers. Sylvester Manor was a haven on Long Island as Swarth- more Hall was a haven in England, and some came to Sylvester Manor who had strength to go no farther and were buried within the Manor garden, like Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick.
James Bowden in his History of the Society of Friends says that "except on Shelter Island and in the colony of Rhode Island there was not at this time a rock in the colonies of North America on which a Friend could land without being persecuted."
Today within the entrance of Sylvester Manor stands a monu- ment to Nathaniel Sylvester. On its south side it bears record among other things, of-"The suffering for conscious' sake of Friends of Nathaniel Sylvester. Most of whom sought shelter here including George Fox, founder of the Society of Quakers and his followers."
91
THE QUAKERS OF LONG ISLAND
Half yearly meeting at Oyster Bay on May 23, 1671, was a great occasion. John Bunnyat, a travelling Friend and preacher from England, on that occasion presented them with a letter from George Fox promising to visit them shortly.
Enclosed was a copy of his Paper of Advice, The Basis of the Discipline of the Society of Friends, together with an unbound book about 11 x 7 inches in which minutes were to be kept. So the earliest existing minutes and perhaps the earliest written minutes of an American Quaker meeting was recorded that day in this book.
George Fox was with them at the next Half Yearly Meeting May 23, 1672, according to his diary, having first visited Gravesend and Flushing.
He preached from a granite boulder still to be seen on an estate in Oyster Bay, bringing courage and inspiration to those who had been trying to follow and spread his teaching. After which he pro- ceeded to Shelter Island, where, according to his diary, "mosquitos abounded."
He returned to Oyster Bay in August of the same year and the following October we find record that Anthonie Wright deeded a piece of land on which to build a meeting house. Thus Oyster Bay has the distinction of being the first Long Island settlement to build a Quaker Meeting House and encourage other groups of Friends to do the same.
The Oyster Bay Friends together with those at Matinecock and Locust Valley were part of a continuous chain extending down the center of Long Island, having meetings at Jericho, Westbury, Beth- page, Jerusalem.
Travelling Quaker ministers, women and men, continued to come from the mainland and England. They must have needed every ounce of their enthusiasm for the cause to cope with some of the discomforts they encountered as they made their way from meeting to meeting. Often they were comfortably lodged at the home of other Friends but frequently they stayed where best they could.
Here is a typical extract from a diary kept by one travelling preacher dated July 23, 1702:
"From Staten Island we landed within night on Long Island near a small house of a poor Dutchman who had only one bed; and he laid me down a coat on the floor and a little chair at one end of it with a pillow upon it, so that I lodged but very indifferently, besides there were fleas and mosquitos a-plenty. However, I was well contented, the presence and healing virtue and goodness of the Lord being with me. I got good water to drink, but little victuals; and in the morning set forward and missed my way several times, they being generally Dutch people in that part of the Island whose directions in the ways I could not well understand."
There is no space here to tell the interesting history of individ- ual Meetings on Long Island or the substantial and constructive work which Friends have accomplished at home and abroad, the schools
92
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
they have established or their work with Negroes. One must speak, however, of the early Quaker's attitude toward slavery.
The holding of slaves, or indentured servants, was once an accepted custom in this country.
Friends at first were not forbidden to own them, the matter was made one of individual responsibility, left to their own conscience.
Friends Meeting House, Glen Cove, Built in 1725
Gradually with their strong convictions of spiritual equality, more and more became "concerned" over the matter and there is record of individual manumissions on Long Island long before the Revolu- tion. Moreover, no slave was given his freedom without adequate provision being made for his welfare.
Many of these early manumission records are still to be found on Long Island. One dated Cow Neck (Manhasset) 3rd Month 15 day 1776 reads :
I, Phoebe Dodge of Cow Neck, having for some years been under concern of mind on account of holding negroes as slaves and being possessed of a negro woman named,
93
THE QUAKERS OF LONG ISLAND
Rachel, I am fully satisfied it is my duty, as well as a Christian act to set her at liberty, and I do hereby set her free from bondage.
Phoebe Dodge
Witness Adam Mott Stephen Mott
In 1760 John Woolman, a gentle but forceful preacher against slavery, aroused such sentiment against the practice that before the Revolution few slaveholding Quakers remained on Long Island.
In later years when slavery became a national question the part played in the Underground Railroad by Jericho Quakers is well known. The same Phoebe Dodge who freed her slaves likewise was a preacher among Friends, and in 1752 had "divine drawings in her mind to travel to England." The records of the Westbury Meeting dated 2nd Month 26th day 1752 say she had "the consent of her husband to go and the approval of Friends."
On her return Phoebe Dodge brought testimonials from Wales and the ministers and elders of London stating that "she has visited the meetings of Friends in diverse parts of this nation and her labors of love in the service of the Gospel has been comfortable and edifying and her conversation as becomes a minister of Christ."
In like manner, eighty and more years later, Rachel Hicks of Westbury began her ministry in this country, travelling as far west as Indiana, new and rough country in those days which might well tax a sturdier person than Rachel Hicks.
In her memoirs written by herself, she modestly says "I have made no account of the number of miles I have travelled or meetings I have attended, fearing it might seem like boasting."
The years of the Revolution brought new hardships to Long Island Quakers. Since they steadfastly refused to take any part with the fighting forces they were made to suffer in various ways, and their goods and chattels were confiscated for the use of the army.
Throughout the British occupation of Flushing the meeting house was variously used as prison, barracks, hospital and storehouse, naturally suffering considerable damage thereby. Similar treatment was accorded other meeting houses in these parts. At the close of the war the repairs were cheerfully paid by various Meetings, all reimbursements from the British being steadfastly refused.
During the Revolution, Yearly Meeting which had always been held in Flushing was transferred to Westbury. Since 1794 it has been held in New York.
In the year 1748, was born at Rockaway one whose name was destined to go down with that of George Fox, in the history of Quakerism. This was Elias Hicks, by trade a carpenter and surveyor. He married Jemina Seaman of Jericho, settled on a farm there, and helped to build the Meeting House near by. As a young man Elias Hicks had a "hungering mind" and seven years after his marriage we find in the records of the Westbury Monthly Meeting that on the 29th of the Fourth Month 1778 he was recommended by that Meeting as a minister.
94
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
From that time on for the next fifty years, Elias Hicks' life was devoted to the cause of the Society of Friends. He travelled literally thousands of miles afoot and on horseback preaching at various Meetings and keeping a diary as he went. He was a tireless worker and a fearless preacher. There is evidence as Elizabeth Bond writes, that Elias Hicks had not only a hungering mind, but that he had in marked degree the open mind, and that he accorded to others liberty of opinion. It is said he was unwilling that his discourses be printed,
Friends Academy, Locust Valley
lest they become a bondage to other minds. He wrote to his friend William Poole: "Therefore every generation must have more light than the preceding one; otherwise, they must sit down in ease in the labor and work of their predecessors." Among other things he was deeply concerned with the question of slaveholding and might be said to have been a power behind the act of 1817, becoming fully effective in 1827, which abolished slaveholding in New York State.
In the latter years of his ministry however, difference began to arise in the midst of the body of Quakers between those who followed the more advanced and liberal teaching of Hicks and those who clung to certain tenets carried over from the established church and called themselves Orthodox.
Differences increased bringing bitterness and misunderstanding in their wake until in the year 1828, to the distress of Friends, the so-called "separation" came, the Orthodox going their way to set up
95
THE QUAKERS OF LONG ISLAND
their own Meetings and Discipline and the followers of Hicks con- tinuing their own Meetings, being known, thenceforward, as Hicksite Quakers.
Long Island Quakers, as a majority, remained Hicksites and there was little or no break in some of the Meetings. In Westbury however, the Orthodox withdrew and built their meeting house adjoin- ing the old one. Meeting was held in both houses until a few years ago when the few remaining Orthodox returned to share in the Hicksite Meeting. The two houses still stand side by side.
Today services are held in the Brooklyn Meeting House and in Flushing, Matinecock (Locust Valley), Manhasset, Westbury, Jericho and Bethpage. There are two large schools supported by Friends on Long Island: one in Brooklyn, another in Locust Valley.
As years have gone on Quakers have become more liberal in matters of dress and pleasures, but the principles of their faith remain steadfastly the same and they are ever ready to take their share in any constructive work for the good of their country and community.
Under the auspices of the American Friends' Service Committee their work for relief and rehabilitation abroad during both the 1st and 2nd World Wars has been outstanding in its scope and efficiency. Throughout the 2nd World War the Westbury-Jericho Friends' Sew- ing Group alone sent more than 2000 new and used garments over- seas yearly. This was typical of the contribution made by Long Island Quakers.
Friends live comfortably and well but simply, without show or extravagance and with reverence for the traditions associated with the fine old homes that have come down to many of them.
The men and women who built these simple, spacious homes generations ago may have lacked color in their garments and wor- shipped in a church gray and plain to bareness, but they put a glory of color into their flower gardens and cherished their trees and orchards and wide fields as gifts from God.
With the exception of the Bowne house at Flushing, which has now been made a national shrine of religious freedom, none of these homes is left at the western end of Long Island; the city has crowded them out. But behind great old trees along the Jericho Turnpike in Westbury, around the ponds and the crossroads at Jericho, and tucked away on by-lanes in Locust Valley and Oyster Bay such old homes and gardens still exist as a reminder to us of "those who, led by the inward voice, have bequeathed the goodly inheritance of their memories to their descendants."
-
CHAPTER XXIV
Methodism on Long Island REV. ALSON J. SMITH
D R. N. S. PRIME in his History of Long Island tells us that in 1656 a woman in Easthampton complained that "her husband had brought her to a place where there was neither gospel nor magistracy." She immediately discovered that she was wrong about the magistracy for the town fathers sentenced her "to pay a fine of three pounds or stand one hour with a cleft stick upon her tongue" for her insubordination. But Methodists, at any rate, would have agreed with her as far as the absence of the gospel was concerned. No Methodist voice was raised in hallelujah on Long Island until the year 1764, and on the whole length of the island from Wallabout to Montauk there was no church building consecrated to Methodist worship until 1785.
Methodism came late to the old island, and when it did come it had a hard row to hoe. The "Independent", or Congregational- Presbyterian churches of the early Puritan settlers were firmly entrenched in most of the settled parts of the island, with a sprinkling of Church of England establishments here and there, and the Dutch Reformed pastors were zealous in the areas adjacent to Manhattan. And when the Methodists did arrive they had to bear a weighty burden that had kept their mother church, the Church of England, from spreading extensively-their British ties. Not until some time after the American Revolution was New York and Long Island Methodism able to shake off the taint of Toryism.
The first Methodist sermon to be delivered on Long Island was by one of the most talented preachers who ever lived-the eminent colleague of John Wesley's, the Rev. George Whitfield. Whitfield, burning with evangelical fervor, made a trip to Boston by way of Long Island in the year 1764, and between January 23rd and February 3rd of that year he preached at Easthampton, Bridgehampton, Sonth- old, and Shelter Island. A great revival was beginning in that year on eastern Long Island, and the probability is . that Whitfield had been invited to preach by the local clergy of the Independent churches. His headquarters during this preaching tour was the mansion of Thomas Dering, Esq., of Shelter Island, a devout Presby- terian layman. After concluding this series of sermons, Whitfield embarked across the Sound from Southold and preached in New London, Norwich, Providence and Boston.
Doubtless a good many people were converted by the eloquent Whitfield during his tour of eastern Long Island, but we have record of only one-Samuel L'Hommedieu, Esq., who died at Sag Harbor on March 7, 1834. L'Hommedieu's family in later years recalled hear- ing him speak of his conversion by Whitfield, and of helping to con-
L. I .- II-7
An Old Photograph of Sag Harbor's Methodist Episcopal Church
99
METHODISM ON LONG ISLAND
struct a raft to convey Whitfield and his horse and carriage from Southold to Shelter Island.
From New England Whitfield wrote at least two letters to his host, Thomas Dering, both enthusiastic about the revival on Long Island. In the last one, written from Boston and dated May 2, 1764, Whitfield exclaims: "And is Shelter Island become a Patmos?" It hadn't-quite, but the seed had been scattered and some of it had fallen on good ground. Whitfield had not tried to set up Methodist societies, but he had preached a lively Methodist gospel, and when the first Methodist circuit-riders came out to eastern Long Island from John Street Church in New York after the American Revolution they found many who remembered Whitfield's preaching and were eager to be enrolled as members of Methodist societies.
It was two years after Whitfield's tour, and on the other end of the island, that Methodism as such took root.
In the year 1766 Captain Thomas Webb, a Methodist local preacher recently retired from the British army, began preaching in New York. Webb was a picturesque-looking man, powerfully built, and with a patch over one eye. He invariably preached in his scarlet uniform and laid his sword beside the open Bible, a practice which was held against him and the Methodists a few years later when scarlet uniforms became decidedly unfashionable. In spite of these theatri- cals, however, Webb was a gifted preacher. He began preaching on Long Island at the home of his wife's parents in Jamaica in 1766 and organized a small society there, the exact number of members and date of organization being unknown. However, we do know that by 1768 he was also preaching at Newtown, half way between his "in-laws" house in Jamaica and John Street Church in New York. Preaching at Newtown was in the home of James Harper, a young Englishman whom Webb had known in England, and the house was located in the fields on what is now Metropolitan Avenue. By the end of the year 1768 Webb estimated that about "twenty-four were justified" in Newtown, of whom twelve were Negro slaves. His preaching was at its best about this time-"a fire and hammer to break the flinty heart".
It was here in the "New Towne", in the section now known as Middle Village, that the real beginning of organized Methodism on Long Island must be recorded. It was here alone on Long Island that Wesley's friend and missionary, the Rev. Joseph Pilmoor, preached in 1770; it was here that the Rev. Francis Asbury, later Bishop Asbury, preached in 1772, and it was here, largely through the munificence of the same James Harper in whose house the early preaching took place, that the first Methodist meeting house on the island, and one of the first in the New World, was erected in 1785 at the corner of Dry Harbor and Juniper Swamp roads.
The American Revolution dealt a grievous blow to the Methodist work on Long Island, and after the American defeat at Flatbush in 1776 and the subsequent British occupation it became impossible for the Methodist preachers in New York to visit the new societies on the island. Not until 1784 were the circuit riders again able to cross fron Manhattan. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to have
100
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
carried on Methodist work during the war anyway, for, as previously mentioned, Methodism was associated in the public mind with Britain. John Wesley himself had rebuked the American colonists for their revolt against the king, and many of the Methodists in New York and the middle colonies were known Tories or Tory sympathizers. Two founders of John Street Church in New York, Philip Embury and Barbara Heck, had fled to Canada together with a large part of the congregation, and, while the great majority of Methodist preachers were loyalists and some even fought in the Revolutionary armies, the Tory coloration of the whole Methodist movement was distinct enough to make it inadvisable to try to carry on extensive missionary work during the war.
Once the war was over, however, the circuit riders returned to Long Island. They were pleasantly surprised to discover that, while the Jamaica society had withered on the vine, the one at Newtown was still flourishing and a new Methodist group was established farther out on the island at Winne-Commack. This latter society had been organized by Methodist local preachers in the British Army of Occu- pation, and was holding its meetings in the home of a tailor who had subsisted during the war by making uniforms for the British. The society at Newtown, too, had been ministered to by Methodist local preachers with the British forces. Little wonder that their loyalist neighbors looked askance at the Methodists!
In the year 1784 the "Christmas Conference" at Baltimore initiated the beginning of systematic Methodist work in America, and the Rev. Philip Cox was appointed to the supervision of the work on Long Island-said "work" consisting of the two small societies at Newtown and Commack, with a total of some two dozen members, half of them were Negro slaves! But Cox entered into his new appointment in good spirit, and before a year was over he had organ- ized two more societies, at Searingtown and Hempstead Harbor (now Roslyn). At the former place he had preached in the home of Hannah Searing, an aged widow, and the name of Searing was henceforth to be closely associated with the development of Methodism in that part of the island, just as the name of Harper was in Newtown and Brooklyn and the name of Raynor in the central part. It was at Sear- ingtown that the second Methodist church on Long Island was erected, in 1788, and this church still stands as the oldest Methodist edifice on the island. The house of Coe Searing, in which Bishop Francis Asbury preached in 1787, is also still standing in Searingtown and is occupied by a faithful member of the Searingtown church.
In the following year, 1785-86, the Rev. Ezekiel Cooper, who had been converted as a boy by Freeborn Garrettson and who was later to become one of the leading figures of early Methodism in America, was appointed to the Long Island circuit. He promptly organized two more societies, at Musketo Cove (now Glen Cove) and Near Rockaway, or "Clinktown", a community five miles south of Hempstead Village which was located in the section now a part of Rockville Centre. By the end of the year 1786 Cooper was able to report six societies and 154 members in good standing. He also reported a somewhat invid- ious comparison between the brethren at Searingtown and those at
101
METHODISM ON LONG ISLAND
Near Rockaway: "The people at Searingtown" he said, "are some- what more wealthy and intelligent than those of Rockaway, but are destitute of the saving knowledge of Christ".
In 1789 the people at Commack built a church-the third on the island-which is still standing and in use today. This church and the active society at Commack were to be rallying points from which
----
(Photo by Fred Kull)
Methodist Church at Searingtown, 1785
Methodism spread over the central part of the island. In 1790 the Near Rockaway society built a church, and it was in the burying- ground of this little church that the 139 victims of the terrible ship- wrecks of the winter of 1836-37 were buried. (The Bristol, inbound from Liverpool to New York, broke up in a gale on Far Rockaway beach on the night of November 21, 1836, with a loss of seventy-seven lives. The barque Mexico, also inbound from Liverpool to New York, was wrecked on Hempstead Beach, near what is now Seaford, on the night of January 2, 1837, with a loss of sixty-two lives.) Most of the victims of these two disasters were Irish immigrants and Roman Catholics, and it is one of the ironies of fate that they should be interred in a Methodist burying-ground.
In 1790 the struggling society which had been established in Brooklyn by the Rev. Woolman Hickson in 1787 became a part of the
102
LONG ISLAND-NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
. Long Island circuit, and in 1791 the Rev. Benjamin Abbott and the Rev. William Phoebus were assigned to the circuit. In 1791 one or the other of them-probably Abbott-organized a society at Patchogue. This society built a church jointly with the Congregationalists, Presby- terians, and Baptists in 1794 and the four groups continued to use the same building until 1831, when the Baptists and Presbyterians "ran down". The Congregationalists bought the old building and the Methodists went ahead and built a church of their own, which was opened for services in 1833.
It was just thirty years after George Whitfield's initial sermon at Southold that a Methodist preacher was heard in that part of Suf- folk County. In June of that year three good women were praying in a house in Southold for a Methodist itinerant to visit that region. One of the three, Mrs. Abigail Ledyard Moore, was sure that the Lord had heard the prayers and would answer. So she was not sur- prised a few days later when a strange man in the garb of a Metho- dist circuit-rider rode up to her door. It was the Rev. Wilson Lee. She opened the door and said, "Thou blessed of the Lord, come in." A congregation was soon gathered and the Rev. Mr. Lee preached from the text "These that have turned the world upside down have come hither also". The following year Southold was entered on the list of preaching places for the Long Island circuit, and after a great revival in September of that year the Rev. John Clark organized a class. In 1818 there was another great revival in the course of which seventy persons were converted, and a church was built.
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.