USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 44
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 44
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work as a Works Project Administration project, and Mayor La- Guardia lifted the first shovelful of earth. A trestle was built from Rikers Island over Bowery Bay to the airport for use in transporting the great mound of cinders, ashes and rubbish from the Department of Sanitation's huge dumps on the Island to the airport for use as fill. The 105 acres was extended by filling out into Bowery and Flush- ing Bays until the acreage totaled 558. Seventeen million cubic yards of fill were moved. Large hangars and a fine administration building were erected. By 1939 the filling and construction project was so huge that it was employing 23,000 men. On October 15, 1939, the "New York Municipal Airport" at North Beach was dedicated with great ceremony by Mayor LaGuardia while large squadrons of Army and Navy airplanes circled overhead. Several years later the name was changed to LaGuardia Airport and as such it has risen rapidly to first place, the busiest airport in the world.
The figures are astonishing. In the year 1946 the transatlantic departures and arrivals alone included 3660 flights with a total of 104,000 passengers arriving or departing on these international flights. But the overall total of arrivals and departures for the year at LaGuardia Field, including the domestic as well as foreign flights, were 197,000 flights carrying over three million passengers. The air- port handled many more passengers during the year than all of the marine ships entering and leaving New York Harbor.
The future shows no signs of leveling off at these figures. La- Guardia Field is already saturated and cannot expand. Hence, even a greater airport is in the making. Idlewild Airport on the shores of Jamaica Bay is already well along toward completion to take care of the great future of air transportation. It was dedicated by President Truman, Governor Dewey and Mayor O'Dwyer on July 31, 1948. But as it is part of the future instead of the past, it can find no place in this history except the comment that it gives assurance of Long Island's continued high place in air transportation far into the coming years.
So much for air transport or the business of flying. There is another phase of flying which cannot be overlooked in surveying the Long Island activities-that of pleasure flying.
A great wave of enthusiasm for pleasure flying swept the entire country after Lindbergh's flight. The public suddenly became air- minded. Many small flying clubs and private airfields sprang up in every state. Before they were well established, however, the depres- sion came and few survived more than a year or two.
On Long Island, however, there survives a unique and outstand- ing club, the Long Island Aviation Country Club of Hicksville. For twenty years it has been the model for combining the pleasures of a country club with those of the personal airplane. Founded in 1928, it had a membership list which read much like the Blue Book. W. K. Vanderbilt, C. V. Whitney, W. A. Rockefeller, Harry Guggenheim, Nelson Doubleday, J. B. Forrestal, Douglas Fairbanks, F. Trubee Davison, C. A. Lindbergh, Grover Loening and Sherman Fairchild were a few of the charter members.
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Republic P-47N Thunderbolt
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Republic Amphibian "Seabee" in Test Flight
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Under the leadership of Charles Lawrence of Baldwin, designer of the Wright Whirlwind engine, as its first president, a clubhouse, hangar, tennis courts and swimming pool were constructed. A fine all-turf field was laid out and on June 29, 1929, it was dedicated with an accompanying air exhibition. Since that time the annual garden parties and air shows, at which the manufacturers of personal air- planes have demonstrated their latest models, have been one of avia- tion's top social events. The club has always kept an atmosphere of the country club rather than the hangar and repair-shop atmosphere of the usual private flying field. Its success has made it world re- nowned and it will undoubtedly be the pattern for many such organi- zations in the future.
There are numerous other airfields on Long Island, among them MacArthur Airport south of Lake Ronkonkoma in Islip Town. This field was developed by the U. S. Civil Aeronautics Authority during 1942. Grumman and Republic each have large test fields adjacent to their plants.
In Suffolk County there are Suffolk Airport, a privately owned field near Riverhead; Suffolk County Airport, developed by C.A.A .; Easthampton Airport and several smaller privately owned fields.
The story of Long Island aviation cannot be closed without add- ing a brief section on the local airplane manufacturing activities. During the recent years of World War II, the aviation manufacturers have brought as much fame and honor to Long Island as did the flyers of the previous decades.
The building of airplanes on Long Island has been continuous since the earliest days when the inventors designed and constructed their own airplanes in the local hangars. The first substantial project, however, was the construction in 1918 of the Curtiss Engineering Laboratories in Garden City. Glenn Curtiss himself moved from Buffalo to Garden City to head it up. Curtiss was much more inter- ested in airplane development than in war production and hence he left his big war plant in Buffalo in competent production hands so he could undertake special developments on Long Island. One of these was the secret long-range airplane for bombing Germany. Although not completed before the Armistice, it later became famous as the NC Fying Boat. After the war, the Garden City plant continued to turn out new models, a series of Curtiss racers which won the Pulitzer prizes each year from 1922 to 1925, and a sturdy line of training airplanes.
Shortly after the end of the first World War, young Lawrence Sperry left his father's gyroscope company and founded the Lawrence Sperry Aircraft Company, starting in an old factory in Farmingdale. Here he built one of the earliest amphibians. Then, in collaboration with Alfred Verville, he built the Sperry-Verville racing airplane in 1922. This low-wing monoplane was the first to have a retractable landing gear. It broke the world speed record in the Pulitzer race in that year only to be beaten a half hour later by another Long Island airplane, a Curtiss racer built at Garden City.
L. I .- II-28
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Grumman TBF Avengers
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Grumman Hellcat
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Then came the Sperry Messenger, a small general-utility airplane, which the Army adopted for message carrying. It was so easily handled that Sperry commuted regularly in it from his home in Garden City to his factory. He kept it in his garage, using a nearby vacant field for taking off and landing. Occasionally he even landed in the street. After Sperry's untimely death in 1923, when he was drowned in the English Channel, the company was dissolved and soon Sherman Fairchild took over the old factory. Fairchild's aircraft and engine activities grew rapidly and in 1927 he moved to a larger building of the Fulton Motor Truck Company just outside of Farmingdale. Fairchild manufactured airplanes and engines here until 1932. At this time he separated the airplane and engine activities, moving the airplane division to Hagers- town, Maryland, and continuing the engine division at Farmingdale as the Ranger Aircraft Engine Division. During the war years the Ranger plant expanded greatly and produced many thousand air- cooled, in-line engines for training planes as well as a great variety of components for the airplane companies.
Another company which was caught up in the terrific demands of the war years was the Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brooklyn. For twenty-five years prior to Pearl Harbor the company had carried on in the instrument development field with an average of less than a thousand employees. Suddenly the demand for airplane instruments, bombsights, aircraft gunsights and radar taxed the company so that it quickly outgrew its Brooklyn plant and five other leased factories in Brooklyn. By 1941 it was apparent that much more space was necessary. A site was chosen at Lake Success in Nassau County and in less than a year's time a huge modern plant of over two million square feet was constructed. Sixteen thousand employees were trained and put to work on the most advanced types of aircraft instruments and armament in the new plant. In all plants combined-Brooklyn, Lake Success, and an aircraft radar factory and laboratories in Gar- den City, Sperry employed a wartime peak of 32,000 persons.
There were many other smaller Long Island companies making accessories or components for the Air Force program. Edo Company of Port Washington, Liberty Aircraft Products Corp. of Farmingdale, Fairchild Camera Company of Long Island City, Kollsman of Elm- hurst, are just a few of the many who contributed to the war effort in the air.
The most noteworthy airplane manufacturing enterprise is, how- ever, the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation of Bethpage. Truly a Long Island story, we must go back to the first air meet at Belmont Park in 1910 to find there among the interested spectators a fifteen-year-old youngster from Huntington who had ridden his bicycle many miles to see the airplane races. His father ran a carriage shop in Huntington. Hence, it was natural that Leroy Grumman, with his aptitude for making things and his fascination with the airplane, should go to Cornell, obtain an engineering degree, plunge into World War I and come out of it a Navy pilot. After a short tour of duty at the Navy aircraft factory in Philadelphia, Grumman joined the Loen- ing Aero Engineering Corporation as General Manager. Grover
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Loening's company had been located at Long Island City, but he had moved to New York, where he was turning out his well-known amphib- ians. Here Grumman became acquainted with another Long Islander, Jake Swirbul of Sag Harbor. In 1929 Grumman and Swirbul decided to start their own company on a small scale. They set up in an empty garage at Baldwin, did general repair work, and designed an amphib- ian float which could be added to any Navy scouting plane to convert it into an amphibian. With this came the first Navy orders. Expan- sion caused them to move, first to a hangar in Valley Stream and then a year later, in 1932, to a larger plant in Farmingdale in which Fair-
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Republic P-84 Thunderjet
First AAF jet fighter in 600-miles-per-hour speed class with range of over 1000 miles, ceiling above 40,000 feet
child had been building airplanes and engines. Here a series of suc- cessful Navy fighter planes were produced. In 1937 Grumman, again crowded, built and moved into his own plant at Bethpage, a fortunate move, as it gave him just enough time to become established there before the great demand of supplying Navy fighter planes for World War II fell upon them.
From the new Bethpage plant came the first groups of now world- famous "Wildcats", with which the Navy aircraft carriers entered the war. These fighters performed so well that after Pearl Harbor the demand rose immediately to thousands. The Grumman plant expanded from 700 employees in 1939 to 21,000 in 1944. Ninety per cent of these workers were Long Islanders - housewives, farmers, clerks, butchers, gas station proprietors. All were trained in special schools and became efficient participants of one of the most successful and important production feats of the war. The Grumman fighters were feared on all the oceans and turned in such outstanding group records as 223 Jap planes brought down with the loss of only 2 Grum- mans. During the war the even more effective "Hellcat" was put in
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production. This was followed by the twin-engined "Tiger Cat", first seen at Okinawa, and the "Bear Cat", which also just reached the fighting before V-J Day. The war ended luckily just as Grumman ran out of names of fighting "cats". Progress did not stop, however, and the year 1947 closed with the announcement of their first post-war airplane, a jet-fighter, the "Panther", with a speed of "somewhere over 600 miles an hour".
At about the same time that Grumman moved into Farmingdale, another small company was struggling for existence by trying to create for the Army Air Corps the fastest fighter in the world. This company, founded in 1931 by Alexander P. Seversky, a well-known inventor and pilot, also settled in Farmingdale. All during the nine- teen thirties, Seversky designed, built and broke speed records with his high-speed fighters. The Army Air Corps bought small quantities of them, but Air Corps appropriations suffered like everything else during the depression years and Army business did not boom.
So, in 1939, the Seversky Aircraft Company was reorganized, refinanced and became the Republic Aviation Corporation. Still stick- ing to the problem of producing a fast pursuit plane, Republic created and the Army accepted, in 1940, the first P-47, better known as the "Thunderbolt". This airplane became as famous in the Army as the "Wildcat" was in the Navy. Between the years 1941 and 1945, over 9000 Thunderbolts were delivered to the Air Corps by the Farming- dale factory. Republic also employed 25,000 persons at its wartime peak.
The total number of workers who served during the war years in the Long Island aviation plants was 90,000 persons. In 1939, before the war, the total number of employees in those same companies was only 5000 persons. It is to the great credit of Long Island that 84,000 men and women either left non-essential businesses or took manufac- turing jobs for the first time in their lives, to help out the local aviation companies in meeting the tremendous responsibilities which were placed upon them by the war.
Now, as the Island settles down in the post-war era, things will be different. The aviation companies are not reverting to their pre- war size, but will remain approximately three times as large.
Grumman is starting to manufacture its jet-propelled "Panther" for the Navy. Republic has also produced a post-war, jet-propelled pursuit ship for the Air Forces: the P-84 or "Thunderjet" which is just going into production.
So Hempstead Plains, for many years familiar with the throb of airplane engines and propellers, now resounds to the roar of jet airplanes, heralds of a new era in the air. At Lake Success, in a por- tion of the large Sperry plant, Long Island is acting as host to the United Nations. The flags of fifty-seven nations fly from the poles around the oval in front of the administration building. The delegates meet in fine assembly halls constructed in the very space where mili- tary airplane instruments were assembled during the past war.
It is hoped that through the United Nations Organization the world, including aviation, can find a way to devote its energies to peaceful pursuits.
CHAPTER XLIII
Duck Industry LEROY WILCOX
D UCK raising is a highly specialized industry in Suffolk County, where over six million ducks, or about one-half of all the ducks in the United States, are produced annually. Much has been written about the present-day management of Long Island duck farms in books, magazines and newspapers. Booklets which cover the field rather thoroughly, have been published by the United States Department of Agriculture, State experiment stations and feed manufacturers. Therefore I propose to confine this article mainly to the early foundation of the industry on Long Island and especially to show the growth in each village. As far as I know this historical information has never been compiled and published before, with the exception of that dealing with one or two farms.
Probably the first recorded facts dealing with the raising of ducks on Long Island was published in the book Cottage Economy by William Cobbett, at London in 1824. Cobbett was a famous English radical who lived in exile the greater part of 1817 and 1818 at Northi Hempstead, Long Island. In his book under the heading of "geese" we find the statement: "How is it that you see such fine flocks of fine geese all over Long Island (in America)". Under the heading of "ducks" he wrote: "They are, in Long Island, fatted upon a coarse sort of crab, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but woe unto him that has to smell them when they come from the spit; and as for eating them a man must have a stomach indeed to do that! When you come to fat ducks, you must take care that they get at no filth whatever. I buy a troop when they are young and put them in a pen and feed them upon oats, cabbages, lettuce and water and have the place kept very clean. My ducks are, in consequence of this, a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know anything of".
This "horse-foot fish" no doubt is the Horseshoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus (Linnaeus). Cobbett's statements would probably indi- cate that Long Island farmers were interested in growing market ducks as early as 1820. These first ducks were common or so-called "puddle" ducks of rather small size. Common domestic ducks of a variety of colors were brought over from Europe to the United States by the early settlers.
Micajah R. Cock in his The American Poultry Book published in N. Y. in 1843, states: "that of the 45 species of ducks found in Europe and America only two have been so completely domesticated as to be rendered subservient to the uses of man. These two are, 1. Anas (Gymnathus) moschata, Muscovy Duck, a native in its wild
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state of the tropical regions of America and 2. Anas boschas, or Mallard, the stock of our common tame duck".
There are three classes of ducks - the meat class, the egg class and the ornamental class. Ducks in this country are used almost exclusively for meat. In the meat class are the well-known breeds, Muscovy, Rouen, Aylesbury, Cayuga and Pekin.
The Muscovy was introduced into the United States about 1840 from South America where it is a native of Brazil. The incubation
One of Over Thirty Duck Farms on Long Island
period for Muscovy eggs is thirty-five days while it requires only twenty-eight days for other domestic species.
The Aylesbury is a white duck very similar to the Pekin and was introduced into the U. S. about 1849. This duck originated in Aylesbury, England about 1700. This is now the popular market duck in England.
The Rouen originated from Rouen, France and was introduced into the U. S. about 1850. It has similar color markings as the wild Mallard.
The Cayuga Duck originated in Cayuga County, N. Y. about 1850 and is solid black in color.
The Pekin Duck which is the renowned "Long Island Duckling" of today was introduced into the U. S. from China in 1873. The
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Pekin has the same standard weights as the Aylesbury. In 1888 the following standard weights were adopted: Old drake, 8 pounds; old duck, 7 pounds; young drake, 7 pounds; young duck, 6 pounds. In 1910 the weights were increased one pound in each class.
Probably all domesticated ducks, with the exception of the Mus- covy, are descended from the wild Mallard, since they are charac- terized by the recurved tail feathers of the drake, a feature which no wild species besides the Mallard possesses. Moreover the wild Mallard Anas platyrhyncnos is the most plentiful and best known species of the Anatinae, which are fresh-water or surface-feeding ducks, and is widely distributed in the north temperate countries of both hemispheres. When the Aylesbury, Rouen, Cayuga or Pekins are crossed with wild Mallards the offsprings are not sterile but perfectly fertile which would seem to be proof that these domestic breeds all came originally from the wild Mallard.
In the December, 1908, issue of Farm Poultry (Boston, Mass.) an article on growing market ducks on Long Island states: "Long Island geese and ducks are said to have had a reputation in the New York market long before the great expansion of interest in poultry which began between 1840 to 1850. I recall several instances to the celebrity of the domestic aquatic fowl of Long Island in files of agricultural papers of that period".
Duck raising was not a full-time industry until about 1880 to 1885; before that, raising ducks was a side line to farming or fishing. Prior to 1870 there had been several farms partially devoted to the production of ducks for the market. These farms were mostly on Long Island or the territory immediately adjacent to New York City from which came the only demand worth serious consideration and that demand almost entirely from the foreign population which had brought from the home shore a taste for waterfowl. The flesh of these carly ducks was of poor quality, the birds were small in frame and had very little flesh-carrying capacity. The better development of the industry was waiting first for a suitable duck which did not appear until the Pekin was introduced in 1873. Before that time the white Muscovy is said to have been the favorite. In January 1886 Eugene O. Wilcox of Speonk (the writer's father) had 39 Muscovy breeders and 67 Pekins. In January 1887 he only had 5 Muscovy breeders but had 165 Pekins. Warren W. Hallock of Speonk also had Muscovies in 1885 as he purchased six drakes from my father in September. Stephen B. Wilcox of Speonk (son-in-law of W. W. Hallock and brother of E. O. Wilcox) also had some Muscovies in 1885. Many of the early duck raisers in Remsenburg also had Muscovies. The Aylesbury was not unknown but it had the general reputation in America of being rather delicate. Crosses were made of the Pekin with Aylesbury and other breeds but the pure Pekin was found to be much better adapted for commercial duck farming.
After extensive research I believe that The Poultry World (Hart- ford, Conn.) in the November, 1873, issue was the first poultry publication to announce the introduction of the Pekin Duck into the United States. There is an illustration of two Pekins on the front cover of this issue; probably the first time they were illustrated in
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this country. William Clift of Mystic Bridge, Conn., had a short article on the importation of the Pekins ; he also had an advertisement which read as follows: "Imperial Pekin Ducks. A few pairs for sale, at $20.00 per pair. Eggs in Spring, $10.00 per dozen".
In the April, 1874, issue of The Poultry World, Mr. Clift had an article: "Pekins were brought to this country from China by Mr. James E. Palmer of Stonington, Conn., and landed in New York on March 14, 1873".
The July, 1874, issue of The Poultry World gives credit to "Mr. McGrath of the firm of Fogg & Co., engaged in the Japan and China trade," for having discovered the Pekin duck in China in 1873.
In the August, 1874, issue of The Poultry World, Mr. Clift re- ported: "Not far from thirty female birds are laying eggs this season. With the usual loss in hatching and rearing, there will not be more than 500 young Pekins raised and the number may not reach 400. A large number are already sold and the demand will far exceed the supply. The imported birds of last year began to lay in Feb. this season".
At the Connecticut State Poultry Exhibition at Hartford, Dec. 16- 19, 1873, the first exhibit of Pekin Ducks in America was held. Pekins were exhibited at the Western New York Poultry Exhibition, at Buffalo, Jan. 14-21, 1874. Pekins were in the 1874 American Standard of Perfection, adopted ten months after their first appearance in this country. There is probably no other case of a breed of poultry being given such recognition within a year of becoming known in this country.
In April, 1875, Mr. Palmer received a second lot of Pekins, four drakes and six ducks. The lot is said to have contained several birds superior to any in the first importation. One of the ducks weighed, when she commenced laying, eight pounds nine ounces; and the largest drake weighed ten pounds two ounces. In July, 1875, Col. M. Eyre, of Napa, Cal., then the most prominent poultry fancier of the far West, received a consignment of six birds - what were left of a dozen secured for him in China by a brother-in-law. So far as can be learned these three importations, in which were brought only twenty ducks that survived to be used as breeders, constituted the entire foundation stock of Pekin ducks brought to America up to that time.
After their introduction into the United States Pekins spread quite rapidly throughout the East and Middle West. They were advertised for sale in Illinois and Iowa in the American Poultry Journal of August, 1880. In the June, 1882, issue they were adver- tised in Kansas and Ohio and in the October issue breeders were advertised for $5.00 per pair in Indiana.
The writer's father, Eugene O. Wilcox, kept records of his early start in the duck business at Speonk in 1883. As far as I know these are the only records left by a Long Island duck raiser giving us information on such matters as the first incubators, price of ducks, feed and feathers and names of some duck raisers back in the early eighties. In his inventory of breeding stock for January, 1884, Pekins were listed as breeders, but just when the first ones appeared on
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