In Old Southampton 9780231884211

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IN

OLD

S O U T H A M P T O N

ON

W I N D M I L L

H I L L

IN

OLD

SOUTHAMPTON BY A B I G A I L F I T H I A N

HALSEY

W I T H A F O R E W O R D BY

NICHOLAS MURRAY

BUTLER

N E W Y O R K : MORNINGSIDE H E I G H T S : 1 9 4 0 C O L U M B I A

U N I V E R S I T Y

PRESS

COPYRIGHT COLUMBIA

Foreign

agents:

UNIVERSITY

Bombay,

PRESS,

NEW

YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey

Amen House, London, Road,

1940

India;

MARUZEN COMPANY, LTD., 6

Tori-Nichome, Manufactured

Milford,

E.C. 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Tokyo,

Nicol

Nihonbashi,

Japan

in the United States of America

M Y SISTER, LIZBETH HAL8EY HISTORIAN OF T H E T O W N

WHITE

OF S O U T H A M P T O N

BEGAN T H E S E STORIES IN

I923-I932

1932

IT HAS B E E N A LABOR OF LOVE TO C O M P L E T E T H E IN HER MEMORY

SERIES

F O R E W O R D

P O R T I O N of the eastern end of Long Island which is known as the Hamptons has a charm all its own. The circumstances surrounding its first settlement some three hundred years ago and the sturdy character of those who first made their homes in this part of the New World have combined to give it a history of singular interest. It would be difficult, probably impossible, to find any more typical population which we like to call American than that which has inhabited the Hamptons from their first settlement until the present time. This collection of facts and anecdotes relative to Southampton will have abundant interest and charm for a wide circle of readers, both in this country and in England. These pages will open the door to a much fuller and better comprehension of the conditions under which these settlements were made and of their relation to the life and influences of the mother country. Miss H a l sey is to be congratulated not only upon the deTHAT

[vii]

F O R E W O R D

lightful way in which she has told these stories, but upon the careful study and research which has given them that accuracy and completeness of detail which please the reader and satisfy the scholar. NICHOLAS MURRAY Southampton, L o n g Island September l,

1939

BUTLER

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T

I

WISH

to acknowledge my debt to the follow-

ing: George Rogers Howell, The Early of Southampton,

L. I. (2d edition, 1887) ; James

Truslow Adams, History ampton

of the Town of

( 1 9 1 8 ) ; Harry D . Sleight, Sag

in Earlier Days

( 1 9 3 0 ) , and The

ery on Long Island to Connecticut

Harbor

Whale

Fish-

of 1776 from hong

Island

( 1 9 1 3 ) ; Jacqueline Overton, Long

Island's

Story

Address

Delivered

( 1 9 2 9 ) ; H e n r y P. Hedges, on the

26th

of

184Q, on . . . the Two Hundredth of the Town of East Hampton S. Pelletreau,

South-

( 1 9 3 1 ) ; Frederic Gregory

Mather, The Refugees

History

History

"Southampton"

of Long Island

An

December, Anniversary

( 1850) ; W i l l i a m in Peter

Ross,

(3 vols., 1903; Vol. I

by Ross, Vols. II and III by P e l l e t r e a u ) ; Records of the Town of Southampton,

The

edited by

W i l l i a m S. Pelletreau; Isabel M a c B e a t h Calder, " T h e Earl of Stirling and the Colonization of Long Island," in Essays in Colonial History sented to Charles McLean

[ix]

Andrews

Pre-

( 1 9 3 1 ) ; Sir

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T

William Alexander and American Colonization, edited by Edmund F. Slafter (Publications of the Prince Society, 1873) > Everett J . Edwards and Jeannette Edwards Rattray, Whale Off! (1932).

CONTENTS

Foreword, by Nicholas Murray Butler

vii

Acknowledgment

ix

The Settlement

3

The Olde Towne

11

Old Streets

24

The Early Church

37

Old Laws

48

Schools

58

Everyday Life

68

Unwillingly to New York

87

Offshore Whaling

100

Revolutionary Days

110

Index

133

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

On Windmill Hill

Frontispiece

Conscience Point, North Sea Harbor

10

Thomas Sayre House, Built in 1648

21

House Built by Thomas Halsey, Jr., about 1660 Presbyterian Church, Built in 1707

27 45

M a p Showing the Division of the Town of Southampton among the Proprietors Southampton Academy

55 65

An Old-Time Fireplace; Kitchen of the Herrick House Stephen Sayre, from an old miniature

71 95

Whaling, from an old print

107

Ponquogue Light

131

I N

O L D

S O U T H A M P T O N

T H E

S E T T L E M E N T

THE

MEN w h o in

1 6 4 0 settled

Long

Island,

English

were

Southampton,

Puritans w h o

had

earlier come to L y n n , Massachusetts, some f o r f a i t h and some for fortune. In L y n n they h a d f o u n d settlers arriving f r o m E n g l a n d in greater and greater numbers and land in Massachusetts g r o w i n g scarcer. W i t h the cooperation of

Gov-

ernor J o h n W i n t h r o p of the Massachusetts B a y colony, they bought a tract on L o n g Island f r o m the agent of

the E a r l

of

Stirling and

"there

erected the twenty-third t o w n called Southampton, by the Indians, A g a w a m . " T h e name S o u t h a m p t o n has been used f r o m the earliest days of the settlement. It is first f o u n d on the thirtieth page of the t o w n records under the date of A p r i l 6, 1 6 4 1 — - t h e day of the

first

t o w n meeting. It was p r o b a b l y adopted in honor of

Henry

Wriothesley,

Earl

of

Southampton,

w h o , as treasurer of the V i r g i n i a C o m p a n y , w a s active in the colonization of America.

[3]

THE The

SETTLEMENT

eastern end of Long Island had

been

known to white men for many years before 1640. W h e n that intrepid Hollander, Adriaen Block, built his little ship, the Restless,

and

pushed

through H e l l e G a t f r o m M a n h a t t a n Island, he sailed eastward between Connecticut and a pleasant land to the south. A f t e r modestly leaving his name on the small island east of M o n t a u k Point he turned his course westward and proved that the pleasant land was surrounded b y water. H e gave it the name it still b e a r s — L a n g e E y l a n d t . T o the Indians it was Paumanack. B u t that name was to be lost, and their lands were destined to pass to another race. Although the D u t c h early settled the west end of Lange E y l a n d t , the eastern part of it remained a wilderness until 1639. T h e n L y o n Gardiner, captain of Saybrook Fort on the Connecticut

River, bought his Isle

of

W i g h t f r o m the M o n t a u k Indians and brought his f a m i l y there. H i s little daughter, M a r y , was the first child of English parentage born within the bounds of N e w Y o r k State. T h e English had been aware of L o n g Island since 1633, when Governor W i n t h r o p of Boston had sent a bark, the Blessing

of the Bay, on a

journey southward. T h e captain had reported an island over against Connecticut fifty leagues long

[4]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

— t h e east part ten leagues from the main, the west not a mile. By the favor of Charles I, W i l liam Alexander, Earl of Stirling, became the owner of the island in 1636. The next year he gave power to his agent, James Farret, to dispose of the lands. The original undertakers of the Southampton venture formed their Company in Lynn early in 1640. They put their money into a vessel and took the risk and management of the business of the settlement. "Divers of the inhabitants of Linne,"

wrote

Governor

Winthrop,

"finding

themselves straitened looked out for a new plantation, and going to Long Island, agreed with Lord Stirling's agent there." The nine original undertakers were: Edward Howell, leader; Edmond Farrington; Edmond Needham; Thomas Sayre; Job Sayre; George Welbe; Henry Walton ; Josias Stanborough; and Daniel Howe, captain of the vessel. Eleven other heads of families joined the company before they set sail for Long Island: Allan Bread; John Cooper; Thomas and John

Farrington;

Thomas

Halsey;

William

Harker; Philip and Nathaniel Kyrtland; Thomas Newell; Richard Odell; and Thomas T e r r y — i n all, twenty men and their families. Before the company left Lynn the undertakers

C5]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

signed the following declaration, "Know all men whome these presents may concern that whereas it is expressed in one Artickle that the power of disposinge of lands and Admission of Inhabitants into our plantation shall at all tymes remaine in the hands of the said undertakers, to us and our heirs forever, that our true intent and meaninge is that where our plantacion is layed out by those Appointed according to our Artickles that there shall be a church gathered and constituted according to the minde of christ that then wee doe freely lay downe our power both of orderinge and disposeing of the plantacion and receaving of Inhabitants or any other thinge that may tende to the good and welfare of the place at the feete of Christ and his church." The next thing the company did was to obtain from Farret permission "to sitt downe upon Long Island . . . there to possess improve and enjoy eight miles square of land . . . to them and theire heyres forever . . . And that they are to take their choise to sit down upon as best lyketh them and also that they and their associates shall enjoy as full and free liberty in all matters that doe or may concern them or conduce to the good and comfort of them or theires both in church order and civill Governmt."

[6]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

This deed is dated April 1 7 , 1 6 4 0 , * and on the back of it Governor Winthrop states that he is reluctant to part with the colonists, but his advice being asked he thinks " f o u r bushells of the best Indian come then growing" should be paid yearly in rent to the Earl of Stirling. Plans were promptly made, and a small group went ahead to select a site f o r the settlement. T h e little sloop with eight men, one woman, and a child, started for an unknown destination. They were all young men and had faith in G o d and in their ability to subdue the wilderness. It is easy to surmise that Governor Winthrop was anxious to gain a foothold on Long Island to counteract the Dutch influence, because Farret and H o w e guided the colonists to the west part of the island in the region of Manhasset B a y , which is called in the Dutch records Schout's B a y . These records give a f u l l account of "some foreign strollers"— eight men, one woman, and a child—who landed at Schout's B a y and began to build two houses. Penhawitz, the Indian sachem of the region, reported to the Dutch authorities in N e w Amster• Isabel MacBeath Calder ("The Earl of Stirling and the Colonization of Long Island," in Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews) gives a new interpretation of the dates of old patents concerning the settlement of Southampton. I have preferred that given by George Rogers Howell and earlier authorities.

[7]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

dam that the English had pulled from a tree the arms of " T h e i r High Mightinesses" and carved an "unhandsome f a c e " in their stead. In the house of the Honorable Director of the New Netherlands, on the eighteenth of M a y , J o b Saars [ S a y r e ] , George W e l b e , J o h n Farrington, William Harker, Philip and Nathaniel Kyrtland were examined. J o b Sayre's testimony is typical of all. H e said he was born in Bretfortstheir [Bedfordshire] England,

he was

twenty-eight

years old, and had come to Long Island from Lynn, Massachusetts, under the authority of the English and M r . Foret [Farret] to plant and build dwellings, and that others were to come. When asked who pulled down the States' arms he "did not know for certain" but thought M r . Foret [Farret] or Lieutenant H o w e had done it. When asked who had carved the fool's face, he did not know. Others went further and did not believe that any of their people did it. Still others laid the offense at the door of M r . Farret and Captain Howe, who meanwhile had sailed away to R e d Hook [ N e w H a v e n ] with the sloop. Finding the six men not guilty of w i l l f u l trespass, the Council dismissed them, after exacting from all the willing promise to depart and never return. T h e two houses were l e f t unfinished, and when the sloop

[8]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

returned Captain H o w e retraced his course eastward down Long Island Sound. Whether these eight men, one woman, and a child sailed directly to North Sea Harbor or whether other colonists joined them we do not know, but we know that three weeks later, on June 12, 1640, they received Farret's deed, which definitely ceded to them "all those lands lying and being bounded between Peaconeck and the eastermost point of Long Island with the whole breadth of the said Island from sea to sea." H e had taken into consideration the fact that heretofore they had been driven off by the Dutch "in the place where they were by me planted to their great damage." H e states also that he has "received from them 400 lbs. sterling in payment of the patent." T h e said Edward Howell, Daniel H o w e , Job Sayre, and associates were to have absolute power to erect wholesome laws and ordinances among themselves, the only stipulation being that they should yield to His Majesty one fifth of any gold or silver found in their plantation. Daniel Howe's sloop entered Peconic B a y and anchored under the high sand dune known as Homes H i l l . T h e small boats found an inlet into a landlocked harbor later known as North Sea. Entering the harbor the settlers soon found their

[9]

THE

S E T T L E M E N T

way to a finger of meadow and upland on its western side where they finally landed. Tradition tells us that the first woman who stepped ashore said, " F o r conscience sake, we're on dry l a n d ! " The place has ever since been called Conscience Point. Here today stands a boulder of native stone, placed by the Southampton Colonial Society and bearing the inscription: " N e a r this spot in J u n e 1640, landed colonists from L y n n , Mass., who founded Southampton, the first English settlement in N e w Y o r k State."

[ 1 0 ]

T H E

O L D E

T O W N E

are called the First Settlers, but they found these shores already settled by a native race. Thirteen Algonquin tribes roamed the Islands. W a m p u m was the coin of the realm. There were four tribes at the eastern end ruled by sachems related to each other—the Montauks about East Hampton, the Manhassets on Shelter Island, the Shinnecocks in Southampton and vicinity, and the Corchaugs near Southold. These tribes made a stronghold against the intrusion of tribes from the mainland. Wyandanch of the Montauks was the sachem in chief. Through his friendship with Lyon Gardiner and through their own fair dealing the white men at Southampton were to have immunity from Indian wars so frequent in New England. THE

EARLY

COLONISTS

Nowedanah was the Shinnecock chief. The sachem's house spoken of in old records was at the head of the harbor where Edward Howell and his company landed. T o those Indians digging clams or fishing along the shores of Peconic

[11]

THE

OLDE

TOWNE

B a y the sloop of the white man must have looked like a great bird hovering over the waters. I t is easy to picture them, half-fearful, half-curious, gathering on the shore as the palefaces landed on Conscience Point. Some one of the colonists must have understood a little of the Indian tongue. Perhaps one of the Indians in the sachem's wigwam that day was Cockenoe de Long Island, the Montauk Indian who had helped John Eliot translate the Bible into the Algonquin. At any rate terms with the Indians were soon made. Later, they were confirmed by a deed. For sixteen "coates" and sixty bushels of corn to be paid after the harvest of 1 6 4 1

the Shinnecock Indians ceded to the

English the eight miles square of land mentioned in the Farret deed. That was to begin "by the . . . place where the Indians hayle over their canoes out of the North bay to the south side of the Island, from thence to possess all the lands lying eastward betweene the foresaid boundes of water." In the territory ceded the Indians reserved the right to hunt and fish. The colonists on their part promised to give the Indians protection from their enemies. B y the aid of an Indian guide the whites made their way southward over the Indian trail that [

12]

THE

OLDE

TOWNE

has become North Sea Road. From the hills above the harbor they could glimpse the Atlantic Ocean, called by the Indians the South Sea. In a little valley at the head of the water we call Old Town Pond these early settlers made their first homes, and here they lived for eight years in the Olde Towne. The site of their first settlement could have no finer monument than the Southampton Hospital which stands today on the slope above Old Town Pond. The first shelters must have been dugouts— "cellars" they are called in the old records. T o make a dugout the householder dug a square pit in the ground, cased it in with timber, and lined it with the bark of trees to prevent the caving-in of the earth. This cellar was floored with plank and roofed with bark or green sod. These dugouts probably carried the settlers through the first winter. The first concern of the colonists after selecting the site of the village was the spring planting. Although the planting was late that year, enough of the summer was left for raising one crop of hay and oats and Indian corn. Fortunately the debt to the Shinnecocks was not due until the second autumn. The Indians gave the settlers corn for their planting and showed them how to

[13]

T H E

OLDE

T O W N E

fertilize it with fish. W i s e in many things, the Indians knew that the most fertile soil was behind the beach banks. Here on the Little Playne the white men planted their corn. There is a tradition that the land of the Little Playne had been cleared and was an Indian field. T h i s extended from O l d T o w n Pond on the east to T o w n Pond on the west, from the Gin on the north to the ocean on the south. T h e land as they occupied it has been diminished in width one half since the settlers planted their first crop. T h e other half lies in the Atlantic Ocean. Accounts of storms of 1812,

1815,

1916, and 1938 give testimony to

this encroachment of the sea. T h e Shinnecock Indians made good neighbors. Their wigwams were built of grass beside the creeks and bays from which they derived much of their food. Sebonac, near the site of the present National G o l f Club, was one of the Indian forts. T h i s was really a stockaded village, and shell heaps and Indian relics have been found there from time to time. W h e n the road was opened to the C l u b in 1923, two Indian skeletons were unearthed near the creek at Bull's Head, as well as several clay pipes and copper spoons of the 1660 period. Quogue was the winter home of the Shinnecocks,

and

Canoe

Place

[ 14]

[Niamuck]

re-

THE

OLDE

TOWNE

mained an Indian camping ground for more than two hundred years. The Indians not only taught the English how to plant and fertilize the corn but showed them, also, how to make a porridge called Nausaump. Samp porridge "became exceeding wholesome for English bodies," the old record says, and in later years sea captains declared they could tell that they were off Southampton when the offshore wind brought the sound of the samp mortars. Although the Indians were friendly, we must not forget that some of the Southampton settlers had experienced the Pequot wars in New England. The Shinnecocks paid tribute to the Pequots because of former conquests, and the New England tribes were always inciting the Long Island tribes to attack the whites. Only Wyandanch's friendship guaranteed peace with the red man. It is not surprising then that in the first town meeting held in Southampton "it is Ordered that noe man shall give or lende unto any Indians, either gunnes, pistols, . . . powder, shott, Bullets Matches, Swords or any other engine of Warre whatsoever. Upon payne of the forfeiture of his whole . . . estate." N o man was allowed to buy land of the Indians without consent of the General Court. It was ordered, too, that "half

[15]

THE

OLDE

T O W N E

the inhabitants . . . keep centinel in the town . . . while the other half . . . have liberty to goe about their planting." Every man had to serve his watch in the common field while the others worked, and whosoever should be found sleeping after he had taken charge of the watch was "liable to the censure of four lashes of the whippe by the Marshall or else forthwith to paye ten shillings." Autumn came, "the tyme that every

man's

Indian corne shall be carried home from the playne." T h e settlement was heartened by the arrival of their minister, the Reverend Abraham Pierson, a young Cambridge man who had just been ordained in Massachusetts. More than any other one man except Edward H o w e l l he helped Southampton to survive the first winter. H i s signature is first on the Indian deed dated December 13, 1640. T h e deed is signed by seven white men and bears the marks of six Indians,—"these in the name of all the rest." Farret's confirmation of the Patent, July 7, 1640, speaks very definitely of the "eight miles square of land . . . that now lie in said bounds being layed out and agreed upon. It is to begin at a place westward from Shinnecock . . . where the Indians drawe over their cannoes out of the north bay to the south

[ 16]

THE

OLDE

T O W N E

side of the island, and from there to run along that neck of land eastward the whole breadth between the bays aforesaid to the easterly end of an Island or neck of land lying over against . . . Mr. Farret's Island" [Shelter Island]. T h e Indian deed gives the same boundaries, states that sixteen coats have been already received, that the threescore bushels of corn are to be paid upon l a w f u l demand the last of September, 1641. It speaks of the "old ground formerly planted." T h e term "old ground" at that time meant ground already cultivated by the whites in contrast to the term "Indian fields" which referred to lands planted by the Indians. This is proof in the deed itself that the settlers raised crops during the summer of 1640 and that the Indians generously waited until the second harvest to collect their full payment for the land. During the first four years of the settlement the thirty or forty families living in Southampton formed a small republic. From the beginning they had maintained the principle of self-government. Southampton was their country, and the people worked to secure justice for every man. T h e town meeting was the highest authority—legislative, judicial, and executive. In it all freeholders had a vote. Each undertaker who had paid five pounds

[17]

THE

OLDE

T O W N E

into the purchase of the vessel was entitled to a house, a planting lot, and a farm. T h e Farret deed definitely states that the freedom of fishing and fowling and navigation was to be common to all. But if one man sold out to another he might not divide his land but must sell it all together and with but one house on a lot. Of

the first company only Edward

Howell,

Thomas and Job Sayre, Thomas Halsey, John Cooper, and Josias Stanborough (who came in 1644) made permanent homes. The Farringtons went to Flushing; Thomas Terry to Southold; Daniel Howe took up land in East Hampton, where his name appears a few years, then disappears from the records. The others returned sooner or later to New England. But during the next few years their places and lands were taken by W m . Barker, William Barnes, Richard Barrett, John

Bishop,

Robert

Bond,

John

Bostwick,

Thomas Burnett, David Carwithy, Ellis Cook, John Cory, Fulk Davis, Samuel Dayton, Christopher Foster, Thomas Goldsmith, John Gosmer, James Hampton, John Hand, James Herrick, Thomas Hildreth, John Jagger, John Jennings, John Jessup, Anthony Ludlam, John Lum Loom),

Robert Merwin, Richard

Mills,

(or

John

Moore, John and William Mulford, Robert Nor-

[ 18]

THE

OLDE

T O W N E

ris, John Ogden, John Oldfields, Richard Post, Henry

Picrson,

Thurston

Raynor,

Rogers, Robert Rose, Richard Smith, Stratton, Thomas Talmage, Thomas

William Richard Topping,

W i l l i a m Wells, John W h i t e , Isaac W i l l m a n , and John Woodruff. T h e eight years in the O l d T o w n e were the most important years in the life of Southampton. There is little of the everyday life of the people set down in the town records, and time has obliterated all trace of the oldest houses and buildings; yet the lay of the land is preserved in the old streets, and still "round it is cast like a mantle the sea." T h e building of the first houses, the planting and harvesting of the crops, the coming of the minister, the first town meeting, and probably the beginning of the meeting house mark the first year. In 1644 Edward H o w e l l ' s mill was built " a t Meacox to supply the necessities of the town." Under the same year is recorded an event of still greater importance and doubtless of even greater necessity. The Southampton colony voted to join with the River T o w n s for protection. O n March 7, 1644, "it was voted and consented unto by the Generall Court that the T o w n e of Southampton shall enter into Combination with the jurisdiction of Connecticute."

[19]

THE

OLDE

TOWNE

In 1645 it was ordered that the five pounds due the town f r o m the Farrington brothers "shall be layed out for the providing of a prison." A l though T h o m a s H a l s e y and T h o m a s Sayre were fined for their "contemptuous carriage" on leaving the town meeting, and Isaac W i l l m a n was rebuked f o r "speaking in a passionate manner" about the sea poose, and Arthur Bostock

was

"censured by the Court of Magistrates for chall e n g i n g M r . Stanborough to fight with h i m , " there is little record of the use of the prison. T h e site of the first church is well marked on M e e t i n g House Lane, but the site of the first prison is forgotten. B y the year 1648 the settlement had grown too large for the Olde T o w n e , and we find the inhabitants in their town meeting considering a town plot and "also . . . such home accomodations as may be most suitable to the comfort, peace and wellfare of this plantation as touching the proportion to every man in his taking up according to his valuation and that there be men apointed forthwith to divide the same." In the beginning E d w a r d H o w e l l and his company were the town. T h e y owned the land purchased from the E a r l of Stirling in proportion to the shares each man had taken: one hundred and

[20]

THE fifty

OLDE

TOWNE

pounds was a f u l l share; fifty pounds, or

one-third of a share, was for many years the smallest division. Newcomers were admitted only with the approbation of the original company, and great care was taken not to admit those w h o might be undesirable neighbors. T o those w h o were admitted parcels of land were usually sold, but sometimes they were given in return for definite service to the town. A l l land that remained undivided

belonged

to the

original

company,

"their heirs and assigns forever." Such was the origin of proprietor rights. On June 1 1 ,

1647,

one year before the colonists moved, it was ordered " b y all the inhabitants of this towne, this daye, that this town is to bee divided into fortie house lots, some biger, some less — as men have put in a share." W h e n the town was moved a tract of land was laid off in the G r e a t P l a y n e f o r "in comers." A stranger coming into the town owned only w h a t he bought and had no share in the undivided lands. W h e n in 1 7 1 2 a complete account was made of all proprietor rights, the woodland contained in the town was divided b y lot according to the shares owned by

original

families. Later the Quogue and T o p p i n g

Pur-

chases were divided in the same w a y . T h e long M a i n Street of Southampton today,

[22]

T H E

OLDE

T O W N E

winding from the ocean to the woods, follows the general plan of Towne Street of 1648. Besides his home lot of three acres, on which he might build but one dwelling, each householder had twelve acres for his farm and about thirty-four acres of meadow and upland with a certain number of shares in the undivided commonage or common land. None of the houses built in

1648

stands today; the old Sayre house, torn down in 1 9 1 1 , was the last to survive of the houses built by the original settlers. Y e t some of the homes of sons of the first settlers still stand and give to us of a later generation a very real conception of the sturdy character and farseeing faith of the men who built them.

[23]

O L D

THE

FIRST

STREET

S T R E E T S

in Southampton must have

been Old Town Road, east of Old Town Pond and running south to the beach. On it and around it the settlers built their first homes, dugouts, later replaced by houses of hand-hewn timber. Here they lived for eight years and laid the foundations of the town which three hundred years later is still Southampton. While there are no traces of the old houses, tradition tells us that Edward Howell, whose manor house in Buckinghamshire, England, still stands, built his home on the north comer of Wickapogue Road. The Reverend Abraham Pierson's house stood on the south corner. Wickapogue Road ran eastward from the Olde Towne. The Indian name of Wickapogue means "at the end of the pond or waterplace." The first mention of it is in the records of the division of land in 1688. By this time Daniel Halsey, youngest son of Thomas, the pioneer, had married Jemima Woodhull of the neighboring town of

[24]

OLD

STREETS

Southold and settled in W i c k a p o g u e .

Thomas

Goldsmith had followed. Between lost lines in an old record we read, " T h o m a s Goldsmith at the end of his home lot, the rest by Goodman H a l sey's at W o e q u a p o u g . "

T h e ponds of

Wicka-

pogue today are still " b y Goodman Halsey's at W o e q u a p o u g , " for a D a n i e l H a l s e y still lives on his ancestor's land. In the near-by graveyard at F l y i n g Point are the graves of seven generations of Daniels. T h e meeting house was built on the rise of land where Southampton H o s p i t a l stands today.

It

was probably built in 1 6 4 1 , but the receipted bill for its construction is dated 1645. Here every Sunday morning men, women, and children gathered for worship. Here, too, town meetings and courts were held, and here every able-bodied man in the town met for "training." Meeting Lane

doubtless grew

from

the

footpath

House way

leading from the new T o w n Street to the old meeting house. Its days of usefulness were not over when the new church was built, for the town meeting of April, 1 6 5 1 , gave the meeting house to Richard Mills, w h o engaged " t o keep an ordinary [tavern] for strangers for diet and lodging." According to plan the town moved its location

[25]

OLD

STREETS

in 1648 from Olde Towne to Towne Street. Main Street today follows the same windings from the ocean on the south to the low, wooded ridge two miles to the north. On either side of the street were the cleared home lots of the settlers. East and west of it were the cleared plains for farming: the Little Playne on the east and the Great Playne on the west. To the north was the woodland. From the Olde Towne to the new Towne Street ran the "lane called Toylesome." The Mill Path led eastward two miles to Edward Howell's watermill. T o Town Pond (Lake Agawam) ran Horse Mill Lane, while Job's Lane pushed out westward until it became an Indian trail. The earliest houses were built in the south end of Towne Street. The house of Thomas Halsey, Jr., built about 1660, still stands and, known as the Hollyhocks, is the oldest house in the village. Across from it is the old Foster House, built about 1690. This is now the Chapter House of the Daughters of the American Revolution. On the west side of the street, north of the Halsey house, Doctor John Mackie about 1740 built in shingle a copy of the stone house he had left in Dundee, Scotland. It still stands in good repair. Across from Doctor Mackie's and on the site of the present Episcopal church stood the

[26]

>«

w co >-ì


prevent cattle from wandering on the Playne and the beach. Cooper s Neck Lane is named after John Cooper, who had land there. In Liber A No. 2 of the town records there is an abstract on page seven, telling that on M a y 1, 1666, John Cooper made over to Daniel Sayre eight acres in First Neck on the west side of the road, a lot formerly owned by John and Thomas Cooper and others. A year later Richard Post bought a tenacre lot at Great Playne Gate, and in 1695

six"

teen acres on Cooper's Neck in the Great Playne brought one hundred

pounds.

Cooper's

Neck

Beach at the ocean end of the lane will perpetuate

[31]

OLD

STREETS

the name for many generations to come. Halsey's Neck Lane was clearly marked from the first, being "granted to Thomas Halsey in lieu of 28 s paid to the towne formerly and 2 acres of land if there be that much lying at the head of the ox pasture by the head of the long creek at the west end of the plaine." Also he and Josias Stanborough exchanged two acres lying "at the point of the plain commonly called Halsey's Neck." The land runs from Shinnecock Road (Hill Street) to the beach—the last road to the west which goes directly to the ocean without crossing water. Captain's Neck is mentioned in 1651 when John Woodruff "imparteth to Edward Howell 2 acres and of land and allso his meadow by ye long tongue on Shinnecock Neck." The neck was owned for many years by two whaling captains, brothers—Captains Elias and Hubert White. Ox Pasture Road is named for the ox pasture which lay in two divisions, south and north. The southern division lay just south of the present Ox Pasture Road between Cooper's Neck and Halsey's Neck. The northern division was just south of the Shinnecock road, and the present Ox Pasture Road probably marks its southern boundary. Out of the northern division twenty acres were taken for use of the minister. It was always called

[32]

OLD

S T R E E T S

parsonage land and referred to in the town records as "ye westward close belonging to the ministry and running parallel against the great highway going down with the playne," First Neck Lane. Pond Lane. Near the division of the ox pasture that "lyeth by ye eastermost close belonging to the ministry" was a place on Agawam left for the watering of cattle. "The waste land lying between the ox pasture and the plain land of old laid out is appointed as common highway to the pond." The lane runs from Job's Lane around the west side of Town Pond (Agawam) and turns into First Neck Lane. Shinnecock Road (part of Montauk Highway) was the original road leading to the western towns of Long Island. In 1711 during the reign of Queen Anne it was called the Queen's Highway; the road to East Hampton bore the same name. In 1651 John Jagger came here from Stamford, Connecticut. He was given by the town a fifty-pound lot on condition that he "use his trade to the best of his power for the use of the inhabitants." His grant was in the new north end of the town (the site of Mrs. W . Seymour White's house). Jagger Lane at the south of his house was the only way the people could get around

[33]

OLD

STREETS

the swamp at the north end of Agawam to reach their farms on the Great Playne. This lane was much used because it was not until 1664 that Job's Lane was opened. Thomas Sayre lived just north of Meeting House Lane on the west side of Towne Street. His neighbor on the south was Edward Howell, whose youngest son, Edmund, married Thomas Sayre's daughter. In 1633 Edmund sold to his father-in-law, Thomas Sayre, all that belonged to him by right of his father in exchange for Thomas Sayre's share of the highway between the house lots of Thomas Sayre and Edmund Howell. Job was Thomas's youngest son, and the path down which he drove his cows to water in Town Pond is now the busiest street in Southampton, Job's Lane. Windmill Lane, called the West Street, existed from the earliest times. It began west of the swamps north of Agawam and ended at North Sea Road. A windmill was built at each end of it about 1 7 1 3 . Both mills have been moved away and are still standing, but they no longer grind the grist for the town. The south mill stands on the Claflin estate on Shinnecock Hills. The north one, first moved to Wainscott, is now remodeled into the summer home of J . Lathrop Brown, near the lighthouse at Montauk.

[34]

OLD The

Mill

Path

STREETS

was opened in 1 6 4 4 , and ran

two miles eastward to Edward Howell's watermill. The first mill stood on the east side of the road just south of the present structure, the shop for the N e w York Association for the Blind. The hand-hewn beams and the mill stones by the stream take our minds back to the days when " E d w a r d Howell doth promise to build for himself to supply the necessities of the Towne a sufficient mill at Meacox." The town gave to H o w ell and "his heires forever" forty acres of land and the mill stones. It also built the mill dam. E v e r y man from sixteen to sixty held himself ready to "cutt open sufficiently a gutt at Meacox at suce [such] tyme and tymes as ye magistrates shall give warneing"; only the miller, the magistrate and the minister were exempt. The settlement that grew up around the mill became in time the village of Water Mill, and the census was taken of men east and west of the mill. In time the Mill Path wound eastward by fords and wading places to new settlements: H a y ground,

Meacox,

Sagaponack,

Wainscott,

and

Maidstone (East Hampton). It became at last Montauk Highway. North

Sea Path was the only way to reach the

place where Captain Daniel Howe's sloop landed,

[35]

OLD

STREETS

bringing new settlers from the mainland. North Sea has always been the port of Southampton and is of great importance in the history of the town. Here three times a year—the first, the fourth, and the eighth month—came the "vessel" owned by the "Companie." Here was the wigwam of Nowedanah, Chief of the Shinnecocks. Here in 1650 John Ogden was permitted by the town to settle with six other families on three hundred and twenty-one acres of

land and

"all

the

meadow betwixt the brook by the Sachem's house and Hogneck spring." The sachem's house has long since passed out of existence, the custom house that followed it has been forgotten, but beautiful North Sea Harbor still encircles Conscience Point.

[36]

T H E

IN

THE

E A R L Y

OLD D O C U M E N T ,

C H U R C H

" T h e Disposal of the

Vessel," drawn up in Lynn, March 14, 1640, the twenty undertakers declared their intention to go to "the place where God shall direct us to begin our intended plantation." In a later "Declaration of the Company" they stated clearly that it was their "true intent that there shall be a church gathered according to the mind of Christ" and that they " l a y downe all power of ordering and disposing at the feet of Christ and his church." It is probable that after the settlement at Southampton had been established several of its leading men returned to Lynn to choose a minister. Governor John Winthrop in his journal writes that "the Linne men . . . called one M r . Pierson, a godly learned man, and a member of the church of Boston, to go with them, who with seven or eight more of the company gathered into a church body at Linne (before they went,) and the whole company entered into a civil combina-

[37]

THE

EARLY

C H U R C H

tion (with the advice of some of our magistrates) to have a corporation." Church and state were one in the early days of the colony, and the man whom the Southampton men persuaded to go to Long Island with them believed thoroughly in this close union. Abraham Pierson was a Yorkshire man, graduated from Cambridge University in 1632. H e had come to Boston with his wife and two sons in 1640 and readily consented to go further to the new settlement on Long Island. H e was appointed in October, 1640, and with his new parishioners formed a church before they returned home. In November he was ordained minister of Southampton, and in the spring the people began to build their first church. T h e Reverend Abraham Pierson was a man of strong faith and leadership, who like many another leader of his day practiced a faith that was gentler than his stern theology. H e helped the little colony through those early years when they were independent. H e believed that only church members should be allowed to vote in the civil elections, while the majority of the Southampton men believed that every freeholder should have the privilege. Therefore after Southampton had decided to join the Connecticut Colony and to

[38]

THE

EARLY

C H U R C H

send delegates to the General Court in Hartford, Abraham Pierson, with a f e w adherents, l e f t Long Island and went to Branford, Connecticut, under the stricter New H a v e n Colony. H i s catechism, written for the Indians, is still in existence. A f t e r several years in Branford he was called to found the church in the new settlement of Newark in N e w Jersey. There he died. Although he stayed in Southampton so short a time, 1640-47, the memory of Abraham Pierson has always been gratefully revered. His older son, the Reverend Abraham Pierson, Jr., became the first president of Y a l e College. T h e Reverend Robert Fordham followed Abraham Pierson, becoming the second minister of Southampton in 1649. H e preached at first in the old meeting house, built the second church, and received as "annual maintenance for the work of the Lord amongst us three score pounds [about $300]." If he gave satisfaction, he was to receive fourscore pounds the next year, "to be levied upon every man in our plantation according to his several possessions." T h e Reverend Robert Fordham must have given satisfaction, for he remained until his death in 1674. Later we find the minister's salary to be one hundred pounds a year: "the same to be paid either in winter wheat

[39]

T H E

EARLY

C H U R C H

at five shillings per bushel or summer wheat at five shillings six-pence per bushel or Indian corn at two and six, tallow at sixpence per pound or green hides at threepence per pound or beef at 40 shillings a barrel or pork at 3 pounds 10 shillings per barrel or threepence per pound, or whalebone at eightpence per pound, or in oyle at thirty shillings per barrel." If people did not pay their shares promptly, the constable saw to the collection. T h e second church was started in 1651

or

1652, three or four years after the settlers opened T o w n e Street. It stood on land which had belonged to Isaac W i l l m a n , just north of the present home of Mrs. Henry Post. Behind it was the graveyard. Across the street from it the town built " a good house of two stories for the ministry." T h e town records tell us that Richard Post and Ellis Cook and other carpenters "set up a . . . meeting house for the Towne, . . . the length of . . .

30 foote, the breadth 24 foote;

the posts to be set in the ground and to be 8 and a halfe foote long . . . the laborers are to have 2 shillings apiece a day or in merchantable wampum strung or unstrung." One of the "other carpenters" must have been John Tennison,

for

there is an old paper dated 1667 signed by him

[40]

THE

EARLY

C H U R C H

and acknowledging "part pay to the building of the meeting house." T h e galleries on the edifice were not added until 1682. A t that time the Reverend Joseph T a y l o r was minister. H e had been chosen several years before; in the church records of 1679 we read that " Y e R e v . M r . Joseph T a y l o r is the man we pitch upon and desire to do the work of the ministry amongst us." H i s time with his people was short. A stone still standing in the old South End graveyard tells us that he died in the thirty-second year of his age after three years in his new parish. Like all other pulpits of that day the one in the new church was high above the congregation. Under it the deacon's pew faced the people. Directly in front of it was the seat for the magistrates. Back of these worthy men the congregation sat, and in those days the congregation meant everyone in the town. T h e old men according to their station sat in the seats on each side of the pulpit, small boys in front of them. Should a thoughtless boy be tempted to play in the meeting he would be brought back into the path of rectitude by a sound box on the ear from an old man behind him. A wife always sat in a seat of equal rank with her husband but on the other side of the church. It was not until much later in the

[41]

THE

EARLY

C H U R C H

history of the place that families sat together. A t a town meeting in 1679 it was ordered that " M r . Justice Topping with the constable and overseers attended by Henry Pierson shall appoint all the inhabitants of the town their proper and distinct places in the meeting house on the Lord's D a y to prevent disorder." For several years the men carried guns to meeting, one half one Sabbath and the other half the n e x t — " h e that faileth after due warning is to pay the clerk sixpence for every failure." W e can be sure no one slept late in the little village on Sabbath morning. In all the new houses along Towne Street and the older houses in the Olde Towne everyone was up and stirring. N o bell had yet been hung in the new meeting house, but the General Court had ordered that

"Mr.

H o w e l l shall have twenty-five shillings for the yeare . . .

for his sounding the drum on the

sabath day, twice before the meetings, . . . half an hour or thereabouts before both morning and evening exercise . . . and that at every time of his first drumming he goe from Thomas Sayre's corner fence unto M r . Fordham's door

[from

Job's Lane to the Presbyterian parsonage today], at the second drumming he is only to drum at the meeting house or the door thereof." Just when

[42]

T H E

E A R L Y

C H U R C H

the drum gave place to the bell we do not know, but the belfry was built in 1 6 8 1 , and it is probable that the first bell was hung there at that date. There is an old bill, dated 1694, for the new bell, which weighed one hundred and seventy-three pounds. Credit is given for the old bell, which weighed fifty-four pounds. It must have been a great day when the church bell came from England. The ship European,

John Foy master,

brought it and landed at Northwest, the port of East Hampton. Samuel Cooper carted the bell to Southampton with his ox team. From that day to this the people have been called to meeting by a sweet-toned bell instead of a drum. The second church served the community fiftyfive years. During that time many sons of the founders had settled outside the old town and the new. Sagaponack and Mecox had grown from neighborhoods into the village of Bridge Hampton, which built its own church in 1695 stalled the Reverend

an

d in~

Ebenezer White as its

first minister. In 1707 the Southampton congregation built the third church. This stood on the northwest corner of Towne Street and Meeting House Lane, across the street from the place where its successor stands today. The land was bought of Obadiah Rogers, grandson of that Wil-

[43]

THE

EARLY

C H U R C H

liam who had been chosen freeman by the General Court of Southampton in 1649. It was still the church of the whole community, but the purchase deed of the church stated that the new building was to be used by those "Congregations of Christian Protistants usually known and distinguished by name or stile of

Presbiterians."

T h e new church had not only a bell but also a clock which was made in N e w Haven. Until the time of the Revolution at exactly nine o'clock every night curfew rang from the tower, calling all children to the shelter of the family roof. Among the archives of the third church are four beautiful silver communion mugs, two given by Stephen Boyer, a French Huguenot, who came to Southampton in 1686. T w o other mugs, given in 1729, are marked "South Hampton Church." T h e minister when the new church was built was the Reverend Joseph Whiting, who stayed until his death at the age of eighty-two. His salary was one hundred pounds a year—"raised in proportion to each man's estate." Sabbath began at sundown on Saturday evening and lasted until sundown on Sunday. A t the appointed hour came the families from T o w n e Street—also

Whites

from

Wickapogue,

Jen-

ningses from North Sea, Halseys from W a t e r

[44]

P R E S B Y T E R I A N B U I L T

IN

C H U R C H , 1707

THE

EARLY

CHURCH

Mill, Burnetts from Flying Point, Fosters from Cobb and Littleworth, Hubbards from Tuckahoe, and Roses from Northside. The men might linger to read the notices on the post in front of the church but the women went directly to their places. At the tolling of the bell and the appearance of the minister all came to their seats appointed. The precentor lined off the hymn, gave the keynote on his pitch pipe, and the morning air was filled with song: Before Jehovah's awful throne Ye nations bow with sacred joy. Know that the Lord is God alone He can create and he destroy. His sovereign power without our aid Made us of clay and formed us men, And when like wandering sheep we strayed, He brought us to his fold again. He brought us to his fold again. The Reverend Joseph Whiting's two-hour sermon followed the stern theology of the song. If an older head nodded with the weariness of the week, the beadle made his presence felt; if children even stirred they must expect punishment at home as well as correction in the Lord's house.

[46]

THE

EARLY

CHURCH

Two hours for a Sunday lunch prepared on Saturday, then came another long sermon at two o'clock. At sundown Sabbath clothes were doffed with Sabbath restrictions and the Lord's Day was over.

[47]

O L D

IN THE EARLY YEARS

L A W S

of the settlement the town

meeting was the highest authority. It was at first called the General Court and was held four times a year. But the spring court, held the first Tuesday in April, is the one which has come down to us from 1641 to 1 9 0 1 , known for those two hundred and sixty years as " T o w n Meeting." It is interesting to read in modern town records the minutes of the town meeting of 1899 when the town meeting was about to be abandoned and town elections made to coincide with national ones in November. The resolution reads like a page from older records and echoes the independent spirit of Southampton in the early days. W h e r e a s by recent legislative enactment the people of this town h a v e been deprived of the right and p r i v i l e g e of assembling themselves in town meeting . . . a n d h a v e therefore been deprived of a f u n d a m e n t a l right of self government established and observed f o r more t h a n two hundred and f i f t y y e a r s , a right upon which our

very

liberties as a state and nation h a v e been built . . . theref o r e it is

[48]

OLD

LAWS

Resolved, that the people of this town in annual town meeting assembled do denounce such legislation as an usurpation of our rights and unwarranted . . . local government and a repetition of the acts of K i n g and Parliament of E n g l a n d prior to the revolution and demand that this right be restored and this people be permitted again to assemble in annual town meeting, and when so assembled to have . . . the right to originate and freely . . . discuss and vote upon all propositions i n v o l v i n g the raising and expenditure of money and all other matters as has been their custom for centuries past.

T h e resolution passed 120-47. In the early town meeting all adult males were compelled to attend the Court or pay a fine. E v e r y man present must "give his vote for any such matter and not in any case be a neuter." All freeholders might vote, that is, any who owned land, but only freemen might hold office. T h e freemen were selected men, chosen by all freeholders. T h e y must be men twenty-one years old who had been accepted by the town as inhabitants " o f peaceable and honest

conversation."

Any man chosen freeman and refusing to accept was fined forty shillings. Only freemen voted for magistrates

and

deputies,

all

freeholders

for

minor offices. A list of "perfect freemen" just after the people had moved to Towne Street was: E d w a r d H o w e l l , gent, Richard Odell, gent,

[49]

OLD

LAWS

John Gosmer, gent, William Browne, J o b Sayre, Thomas Talmage, Thomas Halsey, John Cooper, John Moore, John Howell, Thomas Sayre, Edward Johnes, Richard Smith, John White, Josias Stanborough, and Richard Barrett. The duties of the town meeting were varied and important. It not only made the laws but also elected the town officials and tried all cases of importance. " I t laid out land, made grants, directed highways, tried civil and criminal cases, enforced punishments, levied fines and taxes, appointed delegates to Connecticut, administered estates and appointed guardians, built a prison and a church, controlled the whaling enterprise . . . regulated the relations with the Indian tribes and arranged for sweeping out the meeting house," and even made traffic laws for "little pigges." I t was the supreme power for four years. Two magistrates were appointed, always men honored by their neighbors. Five men (townsmen) were chosen to order affairs between the meetings of the court. As the need of officials arose, they were appointed—marshal, clerk of the band, town clerk, captain of the train band, constable, cowkeepers, fenceviewers, and others as time went on. The Court enacted a code of laws founded on the laws of Moses, "being justly and

[50]

OLD

L A W S

unanimously consented unto as fundamentals by the colony of Southampton." When

Southampton

joined

Connecticut

in

1644, the agreement with the colony was very fair. W e find in the public records of Connecticut that Edward Howell, John Gosmer, and J o h n Moore were deputies from the town of Southampton "concerning union unto one body and government in ye general combination of ye United Colonies," also, "because the Town of Southampton by reson of their passage by sea being under more difficulties and uncertainties of repairing to ye General Corts of Connecticute, they shall have the libertie to regulate themselves according as it may be suitable." Of the three representatives nominated by the town the Connecticut Court chose two, Howell and Gosmer. Any freeholder in Southampton had the right to appeal his case to the Court up the river ( H a r t f o r d ) . The Long Island town was left largely to manage its own affairs, "offenses only which concern life excepted, which shall always be tryed by a Courte of Magistrates to be held at ye River's mouth

[Say-

brook]." Thus, when in 1649 Southampton was thrown into a panic by the murder of Phoebe, wife of Thomas Halsey, the Pequot Indians who perpe-

[51]

OLD

LAWS

trated the deed were taken to Connecticut by Wyandanch and tried by the white man's law. This murder was, indeed, a grave matter of concern for the town and the United Colonies. At a meeting of the Commissioners of the United Colonies in July of that year, John Gosmer and Thomas Halsey made a declaration of "the danger they were in and difficulties exposed unto upon the late murder in that towne whereby they were necessitated to arm themselves and stand upon their defense many days." On the third page of the earliest book of town records, written in the hand of the Reverend Abraham Pierson, are the laws laid down for the early settlement: "An Abstract of Laws and Judgment as given Moses to the Commonwealth of Israel." After reading them we might believe our forefathers were stricter than the narrowest of their sect. But there is no similarity between the mild punishments awarded by the magistrates of the town and the "Hainous" crimes recounted in the written law. There may be some foundation for the story that when Abraham Pierson asked Edward Howell if he liked the laws, Howell said, "No." When asked what he was going to do about it, he replied, "Use them until I have time to make better ones."

[52]

O L D

L A W S

The page on which these laws are written is so worn with time that the words are almost illegible, even as time has effaced many of these laws from the hearts of men. These are a few of the old laws, condensed, taken from Howell's Early History

of

Southampton:

O f Blasphemy which is a curseing of G o d . . . or the like, to be punished with death. Lev. 2 4 : 15. Prophaneing the Lord's daye in a carelesse or scornfull neglects or contempt thereof to bee punished with death. N u . 1 5 : 3 0 & 36. T o plot or practice the betrayeing of the country . . . shall bee punished with death. Rebellious children whether, they continue in Riot or Drunkenesse, after due correction from their parents, or whether they curse or Smite their parents Are to be put to death. Deut. 21 : 18. OF C R I M E S LESSE H A I N O U S S U C H AS ARE TO BE P U N I S H E D W I T H SOME CORPORALL P U N I S H M E N T OR F F I N E .

Rash and pphane swearing and curseing, to bee punished by Corporall punishmt, eyther by stripes or branding them with an hott yron or boareing them through the tongue as he hath boared and pierced God's name. Drunkenness as transformeing God's image into a Beast . . . with the punishmt of a beast. A whippe for a horse and a rodde f o r the fooles backe. Prov. 2 6 : 3 .

There is no record that the death penalty was ever enforced, and there is only one known instance when the law of banishment was put into

[53]

OLD

LAWS

effect. Most of the punishments are fines for disorder or for failure to pay obligations. For example : At a town meeting on November 2,

1652,

Isaac Willman "in a passionate manner said that some of them that voted for the raising of the mill knew noe more what belonged to the seapoose [inlet from Mecox B a y to ocean] than a dogg." W e are told that "he hath given satisfaction" for his hasty words, but are not told what the satisfaction was. "Thomas Diamint was censured for calling Joseph Rayner and John Scott dogg and hound." "Thomas Sayre and Joshua Barnes for speeking unseemly and unsavory words in the cort . . . fined to pay 1 0 shillings apiece." 1 6 5 6 : " I t is ordered . . . that Richard Smith for his unreverend cariage towords the magistrates . . . was adjudged to bee bannished out of the towne and hee is to have a weekes liberty to prepare himself to depart." Richard Smith departed and founded the town of Smithtown. " I t is ordered that if any p[er]son above the age of fourteene who shall be convicted of lying by two sufficient witnesses shall pay 5 s for every such default, and if hee have not to pay hee shall sit in the stox 5 howres."

[54]

Is

T O W N O F EAST HAMPTON

P L A C E ori P L A I N ca.//ecT w K i N s c o r .

CRANTtOTO J0HMJCSS2£I6'!

—

SAGAPONACK

DIVISION

1677

SAGAPONACK

DIVISION

1653

MEADOWS SOLD BY PROPRIETORS

A«HlSlÖrjN40 ' ACR.E DIVISION

M A P _ SHOWINGTHE DIVISION of thie Town of

SOUTHAMPTON

AMONG THE PROPRIETORS NORTH S E A G R A N T E D TO JOHN N OGDENfi-Co(65

— - LITTLE PLAIN DIV. 1651 t) TOWN PLOT SOUTHAMPTON Laid cut 1648 qj OX PASTURE DIV. 1678 GREAT PLAIN DIV. 1640 — 8 SHINNECOCK

MEADOWS '6*8

LEASED to INDIANS 1703 CONVEYED by INDIANS to the PROPRIETORS or the UNDIVIDED f\ LANDS BY ACT OF I8S9 SOLO BY THE PROPRIETORS !B60

^ R E C I T "Pe

__ lli-0

c o n i c

SHINNECOCK NECK LEASED to INDIANS 1703. SOLD to INDIANS by thè PROPRIETORS ISSO

CA HOF PL/ s

H

Q

< U < O H OH

S < B H P

SCHOOLS orphan asylums to help on the farms in summer. In the winter these boys, who were men in strength and size if not in years, flocked into the district school for three months. This made the public school a rough place for young children. A gentlewoman, often a widow who had a family to support, would run a school for the littlest girls and boys. This was called a dame school. Aunt Polly Sayre kept one in early days, and later Miss Amanda Halsey. Mrs. Jane Proud lived in a low one-story house on Windmill Lane opposite the North End burying ground. Her school was long remembered. "She was a widow lady," said one of her pupils, "and always wore a black dress and steel spectacles and was always knitting a blue stocking. She had a stick that weighed seventy-five pounds. At least, that is the way it felt to me. I always wondered how she could knit that blue stocking and see us whisper at the same time." To The New England Primer, this later generation of children added The Child's Guide and Peter Parley's Geography with its picture of "Chinese selling rats and mice for food" and its wonderful poetry— The world is round and like a ball Is swinging in the air,

[66]

SCHOOLS The atmosphere is round it all And stars are shining there. Mrs. Proud's low one-story house has long since made way for the grade school, and of all the little girls and boys who sat on the low benches, studied Peter Parley's Geography, read the Child's Guide, wrote in the copybooks, and played at recess on the hill not one remains. Their names are chiseled on the stones in the old North End graveyard just across the street.

[67]

E V E R Y D A Y

THE

PEOPLE

WHO

settled

L I F E

Southampton

had

come originally from England, and the houses they built were English homes. T h e old Halsey house standing in the South E n d (the last old house on the right before you come to the beach) was doubtless built by Thomas Halsey, Jr., the oldest son of the pioneer, about 1660. It is typical of old Southampton homes. If you enter it by the front door, you come into a small square hall. T h e stairs go up a few steps, then turn to the l e f t twice before you reach the top. There is a huge chimney in the middle of the house with a fireplace in the south room, one in the north room, and a great one in the kitchen at the back. T h e south room in the old days was probably the "parlor," or the best room, a place nicely furnished with mahogany chairs and a large sofa. It was rarely opened except for weddings and funerals. T h e north room was perhaps the parents' bedroom. In it would be a great mahogany bed,

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large chests of drawers, a highboy, and a trundle bed. The kitchen, the place where the family really lived, was a spacious room, with a large fireplace toward the front and low windows at the back. Here over the open fire the cooking was done. The bread was baked in the brick oven built into the chimney; the meat was roasted on the spit that was kept turning in front of the glowing coals. The floor was covered with white sea sand, swept into patterns by a homemade broom. In the center of the room was a long table and around it were wooden chairs painted yellow. A big armchair stood by the fireplace, and bright pewter platters and blue china dishes stood on the big dresser in the corner. Beside the fireplace was a heavy wooden cradle, in which all the babies of the family in their turn were rocked to sleep. In the big fireplace was a little seat or settle where the children could creep on wintry nights and by the hickory-log blaze read in the Children's Primer until Mother lighted the candle and packed them off to the cold trundle bed in the next room. It was not so cold, though, for there was a goose feather bed to sleep on and wool patchwork quilts to sleep under, and between the homespun linen sheets

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she would place the warming pan for a few minutes. The warming pan was a copper bowl with a long wooden handle. Inside the bowl, Mother placed live coals and hot ashes from the hearth. Their warmth made the bed almost as cozy as the settle in the kitchen had been. The trundle bed fitted under the big bed by day; at night it was pulled into the room and there little brother and sister slept "like tops" until morning. The older children slept in what was called "up chamber." This was an attic finished with only a partition. In an old diary we read of a night when the girls "darst not sleep up chamber but came down stairs and slept by the fire. There was a great wind and hail with frightful gusts, we have hardly a dry place in the house." If there were differences in station among the inhabitants, there was no difference in work. Young and old, rich and poor, joined in the work of the settlement and the work of the home. Everything that people wore or ate had to be raised on the farm: a man might be a weaver, a magistrate, a minister, a doctor, a teacher, a tanner, a shoemaker or a carpenter, but first he was always a farmer. The crops must be sown and cultivated and harvested, the cows must be fed and milked and butchered to provide food for his

[70]

ri 3 er w •o ri u

< J w

Pi

to M £

ri >O j «A J «" QÍ I

•a

"i-r

f» s

.5 < 3

» tí o .H J3 J O «i a •M ta w i-i .u , , o W*-¡. ri 53 t £ oa tí *> •5 O Mi O G V JS Ui

EVERYDAY

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family and leather for their shoes. The flax must be sown and pulled to be used later for making linen; the sheep must be cared for and shorn to make wool for clothes. Judge Henry P. Hedges says of these old days: "From his head to his feet the farmer stood in clothes of his own and his wife's make. The leather of his shoes came from hides of his own cattle; the linen and wool were from produce he raised. The wife and daughters braided and sewed the straw hats on their heads. The fur cap was made from fox or chipmunk he had shot, and the feathers that filled the beds and pillows were plucked from his own geese. The pillow cases, sheets, and blankets, the quilts and the towels and the table-cloths were all homemade. The harness and the lines the farmer cut from hides grown on his own farm. Everything about his ox yoke except staple and ring, he made. His whip, his oxgoad, his flail, ax, hoe, and fork handles were his own work." Each man in the town was not only a farmer but also a fisherman and a soldier. The waters abounded in fish, clams, oysters, and scallops. The settlers from the first depended upon the products of the bays for food. The whale fishery early became a source of income. Then every man must also be a soldier. Not only did he have to

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take his "watch" in the fields and his turn in carrying his gun to meeting, but he must also belong to the "train band." In one of the early records of the General Court "it is ordered that every man in this town that bearest arms [all from sixteen to sixty] shall watch and ward and come to trayneings in their coats [uniforms]" and "whosoever shall be found sleeping after he hath taken charge of his watch shall be liable to the censure of 4 lashes of the whippe by the marshall or else forthwith pay ten shillings." They drilled or "trayned" six times a year at the "discretion of the commander," and if a man did not come at the second call of the constable he must pay a five-shilling fine. The drills began at seven o'clock in the morning in summer and at eight in the winter months, September to March. The clerk of the band in 1 6 5 3 was William Rogers, whose home lot was on the northeast corner of Meeting House Lane and Towne Street. It would seem that these occupations, together with weekly church attendance and the compulsory attendance at quarterly Courts, would have kept a man busy. Y e t he had also to "cleare six feet at the end of his howse lott of stump, tree top, lopps, and whatsoever shall be of annoyance for the passage of men, women and children by

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night or d a y " and to do his share in fencing the plains. In 1649, nine years after the town had been settled and one year after the people had moved to Towne Street, there were twenty-nine families; in 1657 there were sixty-one. The census of 1686 gives the number of inhabitants "old and young, Christians and hethen, freemen and servants, white and black 786. And two merchants. T o bear arms 176, soldiers and troopers. The number of marriages, christenings, and burials 1 7 5 . " As the town grew in size the day soon passed when every man could be his own blacksmith and shoemaker and carpenter. Men skilled in necessary trades were invited to come and settle and were given land on condition that they practice their trades. "At

a

Town

Meeting . . . in . . . June,

1 6 5 1 , it was granted by the Inhabitants of this towne . . . that Jeremy Veale, blacksmith of Salem, shall have an hundred pound lott provided that he do come and settle heere before January next, and that to his power, he in readiness doe all the blacksmith work that the inhabitants doe stand in need o f . " At the same town meeting, four other men were provided with a fifty pound lot each on condition that each one "make use of his trade to the best of his power."

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If they did not, the lots were to return to the town. Of these four men John Ouldfield was a tanner and it is probable that John Jagger was also. A tannery long stood on the south side of John Jagger's Lane. W e know definitely that Ellis Cook and John White and Richard Post were carpenters. In the same year that John White built the stocks Richard Post was ordered to make a "sufficient bridge of lumber in the new highway, the sum of twelve shillings trewly paid as soon as the work is done." The church in the new village was the work of Post and Cook "and other laborers and carpenters to help them." They were to receive two shillings apiece per day. Ellis Cook was also marshal and constable. These offices must have interfered with his trade but augmented his living. Now and then a new settler was spoken of as a cordwainer. This obsolete word originally meant a worker in Cordovan leather—in other words a shoemaker. The shoemaker came once a year to make shoes and boots for the whole family. There were many families, and sometimes it was late in the season before the shoemaker could reach the last of his customers. But it is probable that many a man—farmer, fisherman, soldier though he was —was shoemaker too for his own children. In

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many an attic lie dusty lasts and awls, shoemakers' tools of long ago. When Edward Howell undertook "to supply the necessities of the town by building a mill at Meacox" the townsmen built the mill dam not far from the present site of the railroad. The mill was built on the north side of the road on the east side of the stream and was operated by an overshot wheel. The bay must be kept at a low level, the water in the mill pond at a high level. Every man was required to help in digging out the seapoose when necessary. William Ludlam was doubtless the first miller. His toll for one bushel of corn, "whether it be wheat, rie, or any other grayne," was "two quarts by stroke upon the upper part of the dishe." The Southampton mill must have been of good report on Long Island, for under the date of January, 1676, we find this order in the Huntington town records: "That the constable and overseers shall with so much speed as possible send to Southampton to a man that is a millwright to see if he will be willing to come to this town to agree with our town about a mill to the end that we may obtain the expectation of having a good mill." Later a fulling mill was built at Sagg Swamp, and to this day the timbers of the old mill may

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be seen when the water is low. T o John Parker, a fuller, were granted the privileges of the stream at Noyac for a fulling mill in 1690. A f t e r the sheep were shorn, the wool spun, and cloth woven at home it must go to the fulling mill to be cleaned, shrunk, and thickened. As the list of the inhabitants of the town grows men of many other resultant occupations followed: weavers (Thomas Pope,

a weaver,

lived

where

the

Methodist

Church now stands), tailors (Joseph Rugg of North Sea, a presser of cloth; John Gould, a tailor), and glovers ( J o h n Ellis, a glover in Mecox). Besides these several men were listed as coopers and a few as merchants. The earliest chimneys were made with wooden frames, lathed and plastered both inside and out. M a n y thatched roofs as late as 1665 made "the viewing of the chimnies" a necessity. The first bricks used were brought from England; the first brickmakers mentioned were Samuel and John Beswick, whose "parcel of brick" was used by Samuel Mills to buy one-third of a lot in the Mecox Division. The old bricks were irregular, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter than those of the present day. The remains of an old brick kiln may be seen at Long Springs, and there was another at Sebonac. When the chimney of the

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Old Post House was torn down a brick was found dated

1684, and the chimney of Mr.

Lewis

Downs' house in Wickapogue contains a brick bearing the same date. The first tavern keeper seems to have been the schoolmaster, Richard Mills. The General Court ordered that "noe person within the limits of Southampton shall retail any liquor except Richard Mills." H e promised to keep an inn for four years, but before his four years were up Richard Mills had sold his house to John Cooper and moved away. Then the town had to "persuade" Thomas Goldsmith to keep the ordinary. A strict rule was made that only the said Thomas Goldsmith might retail any liquors or wines or strong drink within the bounds of the plantation, upon penalty of ten shillings a quart. The keeper of the ordinary was obliged to sell his liquor at three shillings a quart. It was not long until Thomas Goldsmith gave up the job, and John Cooper, who had bought

Richard

Mills's house, was appointed to keep the ordinary: "his vituals and lodging for strangers only except it bee for town dwellers upon court day and training days." Although every man was provided with his liquor there were heavy fines against the exces-

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sive use of it. T h e first case of drunkenness mentioned in the t o w n records was E d m u n d S h a w in 1653. H i s fine was ten shillings, and its p a y m e n t was dependent

on his future behavior.

At

the

same court the town ordered that " f o r preventing of evill which is subject to f a l l out by reason of excessive

drinking

of

strong drinke

that

whoe

soever shall bee convicted of drunkeness shall for the first time p a y 10 s, the second time 20 s, the third time 30 s." F i v e years later E d m u n d S h a w was again censured b y the court for "his miscarriage in drinking." T h i s fine sounds like a very mild interpretation of the law written b y A b r a ham Pierson in 1640. K e e p i n g a tavern was only one of the energetic John Cooper's businesses. H e had the only license in the t o w n to erect stages for salting and drying fish. H e had privileges concerning whales washed up on the beach, and with his son, T h o m a s , carried on an extensive business in exporting horses to Barbados. Some of

the most interesting occupations

of

the old town have passed with time. In 1 6 4 3 the General Court appointed a cowkeeper or herdsman to watch the cattle. H e must see that they did not wander on the planted lands. T h e town record reads: " I t is ordered that whosoever shall

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be cowkeeper and shall according to his agreement have his wages due unto him, that it shall be lawful for the said herdsman to, with the marshal, levy said wages on the person who shall make default therein"—an old-fashioned way of telling us that the cowkeeper had to collect his pay from the man whose cows he watched. " I t is ordered no cattle shall go without a keeper from the first of January to the tyme that every man's Indian com shall be carried home from the Playne of each side of this towne." Cattle meant cows, goats, and sheep. Each owner of a fifty pound lot was entitled to pasture " 8 cow kind." Six sheep or goats were equal to one cow or one horse. If extra goats or kids were kept on the common the owner must pay to the cowkeeper one shilling sixpence per head. Hogs were not allowed to run on the plains or "to be let within the liberty of the Indians whereby damage may accrue to the meadows or corn." There is a note in the town meeting of 1658 about "a stray hog that was supposed to bee Mr. Smith's sold at an outcry by the town for payment of the damage dun by that hogg to the Indians." These laws concerning stray "hoggs and piggs" put the people of Southampton a step ahead of their times in civic consciousness. It was not until the

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year 1 7 0 0 that the city fathers of New Y o r k made laws prohibiting "little pigges" from running loose through the streets. Most strange to us and very necessary to the early town was the fenceviewer or haywarden, warden of the hedges and fences. This is a very old occupation and comes down for ages among Anglo-Saxon people. It was in early days called "viewing the bounds." In early England the whole population turned out. The bounds of the parish must be followed exactly, over yards, houses, walls, up ladders and down, across roofs, through fields and woods. Young boys were always taken on the trip; they would remember the bounds longer. In Germany the boys were given a sound spanking at the Bound Tree to impress the place on their minds. In Southampton the work of viewing was done by men appointed for the task. Under date of January 7, 1643, we read: "Justice Cooper shall take two young men with him and visit the Bound Tree about four miles beyond Parker's and set their name upon said tree to keep the said Bounds in memory." In 1657 John Jessup and Thomas Halsey were appointed to view the fencing about the Great Playne and the Little Playne. At the same time the town voted that " E v e r y inhabitant of the [ 8 l ]

EVERYDAY

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towne that hath fencing about the Great and Little Playnes and Ox Pasture shall at both ends put his rails in his own posts and this is to be done in the present month." When we find an old oak standing alone in a field or at the corner of an unused wood lot, it is probably a Bound Tree—a Tree that was full grown when J o h n Cooper and his two sons, John, eighteen, and Thomas, fifteen, visited the Bound Tree "about four miles beyond Parker's" in 1643. Slavery existed in the early days of Southampton. There were three types of servants: Indian indentured servants, white indentured servants, and Negro slaves. The indentured servants served for a stated time. The town records tell us that Edward Howell took the one-year-old child of two of his servants and promised to "provide her with meate, drinke and apparel and necessaries . . . until the said child shall be of the age of thirty years." Sometimes Indians bound themselves out for a term of years, sometimes their guardians bound them out. There is this account from the East Hampton town records: John Kirtland sells to the Rev. Thomas James "my servant, Hopewell, Indian, aged 16, whom I bought of his guardians, being an orphan and not one year old, for the balance of the term of 1 9 years, [82]

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at the end of that time, he to receive ten pounds and a suit of clothes." I t seems strange to us to read of a man buying in open market at

New

London a captive Indian girl about thirteen years old, named Beck. T h e man gave the girl to his wife, " a n d on m y w i f e ' s death to pass on in fee to her children." N e g r o slavery was common at the time, but no f a m i l y held many slaves. M a n y masters had already emancipated their slaves before the Act of

1 7 8 8 legislated slavery out of

existence. In some of the Southampton homes of today, the names of " A u n t T e m p i e " or " U n c l e S i l a s " or " O l d P o m p " are cherished in loving memory for their f a i t h f u l service in days long past. T h e work of the town was not all done b y men and women and slaves. Girls and boys had their share. Y e t they were not brought up with " a l l work and no p l a y " — t h e dull children prophesied by the old adage. W e pose

that because

their

are prone to sup-

fathers were

men

of

stern faith their homes were not happy. W e forget that children were taught that they were children of a H e a v e n l y Father whose care protected them night and day. H i s laws must be obeyed. T h e T e n Commandments were a part of

chil-

dren's early education, but they learned

also:

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"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The early morning and evening prayers of their earthly father, the grace he said before each meal, and the example of family love between father and mother did more to foster the Puritan virtues than the long sermons, strict Sabbaths, and stern laws on the statute books. A girl's work consisted in her daily part in the tasks of the home as the seasons rolled round. Every girl knew the old rhyme: Provide thy tallow ere frost cometh in And make thine own candles ere winter begin for dipping the tallow candles and picking the bayberries fell to her lot. The feather beds had to be stuffed from plucked goose feathers before a girl had her feather beds and pillows ready to take to her new home when she married. Thirteen patchwork quilts must be pieced; the thirteenth was called "the bride's quilt," and when finished was the announcement of her engagement. Knitting and spinning and weaving were done by the women and girls. Often they took their spinning wheels with them when they visited. The weaving was done at home. Cloth had to be made for all men's

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and women's and children's clothes as well as for the table and bed linen for the household. Each girl of good family must weave a beautiful woolen coverlid before she married. In the attic of the old W h i t e homestead at Sebonac stood five spinning wheels, and often five women were spinning at once—Mrs. White, her two daughters, Jane and Emma, a spinster cousin who lived with them, and the "hired help." A boy had all the tasks of the farm to learn, from driving the cows to curing the beef for winter, from sowing the wheat to threshing it and taking it to the water mill to be ground into flour, from cutting down the trees in the forest to fashioning wood into hand-hewn timbers for dwellings in the village. Although they worked hard, girls and boys found time to play. Old games like hop scotch, prisoner's base, and tag come down to us from these early days. In attics we find old skates that speak of jolly winter days on the ice and old sleigh bells that ring as clearly as ever though the merry straw-riders have long since gone their ways. Quilting bees and husking bees were times when whole neighborhoods came together, and the news of a barn-raising was a signal for friends from other towns to "hitch up" and come over to

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Southampton in order to lend a hand. And in the Parsonage Woods at Millstone Brook the oldest beech trees are covered with initials of boys and girls who came to the church picnics held there two hundred years ago.

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SOUTHAMPTON

TO

Y O R K

remained a part of the Connecti-

cut colony until 1664. Its people, like those of Connecticut, had come from England by way of Massachusetts and had much in common with the settlers across the Sound and little or nothing in common with the Dutch burghers of western Long Island. Connecticut was easy of access; it was a long and wearisome journey from Southampton to Brooklyn. Therefore when in

1664

the Duke of York's fleet sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam and demanded its surrender of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, the news made little stir in Southampton. But when Charles II decided that "the southern boundary of Connecticut is Long Island Sound" and that all of Long Island should become part of the province of New Y o r k , the indignation of the five towns of Eastern L o n g Island—East Hampton, Southampton, Southold, Brookhaven, and

Huntington—

knew no bounds. T h e y became the East Riding

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of Yorkshire, and even their good friend, Governor J o h n Winthrop, J r . , of Connecticut, could do nothing for them. All former treaties, grants, and charters were made void. Unwillingly in the spring of 1 6 6 5 sixteen Long Island towns sent delegates to the Hempstead Convention to protest unanimously against the annulment of all former grants, treaties, and charters. Even the famous charter granted by King Charles I I to Connecticut in 1662 and including eastern Long Island had become " a scrap of paper."

John

Howell and Thomas Topping, sent by Southampton to represent the town, met with the other delegates in the Hempstead meeting house inside the stockade. The delegates drew up a public address, declaring unanimously their cheerful submission to all laws made by the authority of His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York. They besought him "to take our poverties and necessities in this wilderness country into speedy consideration." Actually, however, the code of Duke's Laws was forced upon them. The new laws took away from the towns the old election rights exercised ever since their founding. All officers, except a few petty ones, were hereafter controlled by the governor of the Duke's choosing. Howell and Topping were helpless. They, with all other dele-

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gates, could only submit and report the result of the convention to their town, Southampton. Here they were called traitors to their country. All the men of the five eastern towns protested. Their protests were disregarded, but the people did not lose their spirit of independence. When the provincial government sought to lay a tax on Long Island towns in order to help pay for the repairing of fortification in New Y o r k City, Southampton made a show of resistance. When, in 1670, the court of assizes declared all protests voided and new patents necessary, there was another vigorous outcry from the eastern towns. Because of their independent attitude they were called "the fractious towns of the East Riding" by the governor, Francis Lovelace, who said: "the only way to keep the people quiet is to lay such taxes upon them as shall leave no time for thinking of anything else than how to pay them." During the brief return of the Dutch to power in 1673-74, Southampton delivered up its flag and constable's staff to the Dutch, then with Southold and East Hampton appealed to Connecticut and later to Massachusetts for help, declaring their doleful and distressed state by reason of the late threats and usurpation of the Dutch. The Dutch government sent the frigate,

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Zeehond, to Southold, demanding from the eastern towns the oath of allegiance to the Prince of Orange. John Cooper, who represented Southampton, told the Dutch Commissioners "to take care and not appear with that thing [the Dutch flag] at Southampton." When the Dutch commissioner asked Cooper whether he spoke for himself or the Southampton people, he replied, "Rest satisfied I warn you, and take care you come not with that flag within range of our village." The commissioner reported to New Amsterdam : "The inhabitants of these towns exhibited an utter aversion thereto, making use of gross insolence, threats, etc., so that we were obliged to return with our object unaccomplished." The Dutch tried again, however, during the next February to force the allegiance of the eastern towns. They sent a flotilla to Southold. Captain John Howell rushed with sixty men from Southampton and East Hampton to the aid of Southold. Under Governor Winthrop of Connecticut, the Long Island men defeated the Dutch without loss, took their guns, and went home, saying that when last seen the Dutch vessels were "on their return passage through Plumme Gutt." This was the last seen of the Dutch on eastern Long Island, but the troubles of the Long Island

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people had just begun, for with the return of English rule Sir E d m u n d Andros came as governor of the province of N e w Y o r k , in which L o n g Island was forced to remain. T h e Duke's L a w s were reestablished. These people, who had held their land by purchase from the E a r l of Stilling and had made a fair treaty with the Indians, were now forced to secure a new patent whereby with the payment of "one f a t t l a m b " a year they bought some of the privileges inherited from their fathers. N o wonder these seeds sown in 1 6 7 6 came to their harvest a hundred years later in the American Revolution. There is still to be seen among old documents in the town clerk's office in Southampton the yellowed parchment with the seal of the province of N e w Y o r k and the signature of

T h i s is the charter which claimed to give to the people of Southampton town, "their Heirs, Successors and Assignes all the privileges and immunities belonging to a town," but which W i l liam S. Pelletreau says "claimed the right to sell to the people of Southampton, what they had held by an indisputable right, for a sufficient

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length of time to establish their title in any of the Courts of England." A l l evils anticipated under the Duke's L a w s seem to have come to pass. T h e freeholders of Southampton strongly resented the change from their self-government under Connecticut to the constables and overseers chosen under a governor appointed by the Duke of Y o r k rather than by the King, whom they ever owned as lawful sovereign. W e have proof that the offices were not popular. " A t a town meeting held in Southampton April ye 2d

1683, M r . Edward H o w e l l

was

chosen constable, who refuseth to serve, whereupon the towne proceed to a new choyce. 2ly Mr. Obadiah Rogers is chosen constable in the roome of ye said Edward H o w e l l but the said Obadiah Rogers doth alsoe refuse to serve, whereupon" John Jessup was chosen, then Edmund Howell, "and he also by his messenger informes the towne that he will not serve." Finally John Else accepted. H e must have been a newcomer, since his name appears only once in the list of residents. H e was a neighbor of Justice Topping of Sagaponack and was sworn in by him. John Else died within two months, and Zerubbabel Phillips was chosen for the remainder of the year. Perhaps

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YORK

one reason the office of constable was so unpopular was that the constable was also collector of taxes, and taxes were heavy. Naturally the collectors were not popular with their neighbors. The changes in government, however, seem to have made little difference in the life of this remote town, which in these years grew from a hamlet in the wilderness to a group of neighborhoods centralized in the village of Southampton. The generation of men who founded the settlement was now passing. The name of Edward Howell, the founder, gives place to those of his sons, John and Edward, Arthur and Edmund. J o b Sayre, the last of the founders, had lived to the good age of eighty-two when he died in 1694. In the timeworn pages of Liber A and Liber B of the town records we glimpse the daily life of the people and the growth of the settlement. W e see the sons of the founders taking up land in Sagaponack and Mecox; we read that Obadiah Rogers has set up a fulling mill near the shore at Noyac, that Joseph Wickham has been granted permission to "set up his trade [tanning]" at Sagg Pond, and that Mr. John Ogden and his company are granted land at North Sea. In the town clerk's office are two later deeds of land purchased from the Indians—the Quogue

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Purchase in 1659 and the Topping Purchase of 1662, extending the bounds of the town westward to a place called Seatuck, today bearing the commonplace name of Eastport. A little later a new treaty was made with the Indians to satisfy the claims of the sons of Mandush and Mocomanto and Wybenet, "these in the names of all the rest." Although the ink is badly faded, the red sealing wax of John Wheeler, justice, is still fresh today, standing against the names of each of the thirtyfour Indians, " X their mark, whose hand and seals are hereunto affixed." For the sum of twenty pounds current money of the province of New York paid by the trustees of the town of Southampton, they confirm the old deed of 1640 and all later purchases and do clearly and absolutely release all land "lying easterly from a stake on Wainscott playne to the main ocean and westerly from an inlet out of the sea commonly known as Copsogue Gut with ye South Bay, running northerly up Seatuck River to a bound tree of the said town of Southampton, and from said tree northerly to Peconic Great River." This tract included all beaches, points, meadows, marshes, swamps, rivers, brooks, ponds, timber, and stone; the grant further states that hereafter no Indian or his heirs or successors may claim any part or parcel thereof.

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S T E P H E N

S A Y R E ( 17 3 6 - 18 18 )

B o r n in Southampton, Sayre went to E n g l a n d , where he became a merchant, banker, and sheriff of London ( 1 7 7 3 ) . H i s support of the colonial cause brought him to the T o w e r of London, but he was acquitted. H i s last days were spent in America.

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T h e account of the town meeting of April, 1683, gives, beyond the refusal of men to act as constable, no hint of dissatisfaction with the existing laws. John Jagger and John Howell, Jr., were chosen overseers for two years and were empowered to "repare the house for the ministry and build a barn for the ministry . . .

to be

done at the town's charge." A t the same meeting the people voted to mend the fences on the Great Playne and Little Playne. It was to be done "as formerly with a good sufficient six-Raile fence to secure the said plains and common land." Joseph Fordham was given land and liberty to build a warehouse at North Sea landing place, and the layers-out of land, John H o w e l l and John Jessup, on M a y 15, 1683,

"doe give in that they have,

according to towne grant Layed out at Littleworth hollow to Benjamin Davison soe much Land as can be spared adjoyning to his own land. Leaving a highway in ye said H o l l o w . " (This is the road to W a t e r m i l l . ) There is no hint here that Southampton town had joined the other towns of Long Island in a petition to His Grace, James, the Duke of Y o r k , protesting against the tyrannies of Governor Andros, but Captain John Youngs, high sheriff of the "east Riding of Yorkshire," had long since

[96]

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TO

N E W

Y O R K

forwarded their petition. Andros, always unpopular in N e w Y o r k and New England, had been recalled. Early in 1683 Governor Thomas Dongan had arrived in N e w Y o r k and formed his council. T h e new governor called together all the sheriffs and instructed them to notify the towns that they should elect representatives to " a general assembly of all free-holders by the persons whom they should choose, to represent them in order to consult with the governor for the good weal and government of the colony." Although English Puritan Southampton was strongly averse to an Irish Catholic Governor, the town meeting

quickly

selected

Captain

John

Howell to represent them in the assembly which met in N e w Y o r k on October 17. T h e assembly consisted of the governor, his council, and seventeen delegates from the different localities of the province. It is interesting to note that in 1683 delegates to a N e w Y o r k assembly came from no towns west of Schenectady but did come from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and Pemaquid (Maine) and Long Island. The delegates from Long Island were suspicious to the last, and the minister of East Hampton, Reverend Thomas James, urged them to "maintain our privileges and English

[97]

liberties

U N W I L L I N G L Y

TO

NEW

YORK

and especially against any writ going out in the Duke's name but only in his Majesty's, Charles the Second, whom we own as our sovereign. W e do not send our men in obedience to the warrant of the High Sheriff, but because we would not neglect any opportunity to assert our liberties as freeborn Englishmen." In the great charter of liberties approved by that first representative assembly the East Riding of Yorkshire became the county of Suffolk. Every freeholder might vote without restraint, and every trial henceforth was to be held with a jury of twelve men. N o tax was to be levied within the province without the approval of the governor, his council, and representatives of the people in general assembly. N o seaman or soldier might be quartered on the people against their will, and no one professing faith in Jesus should in any way be questioned for any difference of opinion. The people of Southampton rejoiced in the change for the better without realizing how farreaching it was. They protested against taking out another patent within ten years of the old one. They said they were living in peace and quiet possession of their lands under a patent granted by Governor Andros. Today one may go to the town clerk's office and there decipher the Dongan

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TO

NEW

YORK

patent, under which the freeholders and commonality of the town of Southampton "may forever hold, use, and enjoy all the liberties, lands, hereditaments, goods, and chattels without let or hindrance of any person or persons whatsoever." Under the Dongan patent the people of Southampton town lived until the Declaration of Independence. The Revolutionary W a r caused no break in the county organization, and the succession of county officers has never been broken. Our government of Suffolk County is a century older than the state and Federal governments as they exist today.

[99]

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BEFORE THE WHITE

MEN

W H A L I N G

came to Long Island,

the Indians caught whales off the coast with their bone harpoons. In an old journal of

1605 are

these words: "One especial thing is their

[the

Indians'] manner of killing the whale, which they call powdawe . . .

he bloweth up the

water

. . . and . . . they go in company of their king with a multitude of their boats; and strike him with a bone, made in fashion of a harping iron fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him; then all their boats come about him as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death; when they have killed him and dragged him to shore, they call all their chief lords together and sing a song of j o y ; and those chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoils and give to every man a share . . . they boil off the f a t and put to their pease, maize and other pulse which they eat." T h e Indian deed made with East Hampton settlers in 1649 pro-

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vided that the red man was to have "all fins and tails of any whales that shall be cast up by the sea." These delicacies were reserved for feasts to their gods. Four years after its founding Southampton organized its whaling business. The town meeting of 1644 divided the town into four wards. T h e eleven persons in each ward were to be chosen by lot to cut up drift (and at times other) whales. Whoever

found drift whales must notify

the

magistrate and for this information received five shillings as a reward. If the day, however, happened to be Sunday, the five shillings were not payable. A patrol was established, and any man who did not take his turn in the patrol had to pay a fine of ten shillings or take a whipping at the whipping post. For several years the people looked upon drift whales as "God's providence." Always after a storm two men went out "to vieue and spie if there be any whales cast up, [one] as far as the South Harbor [Shinnecock B a y ] and the other . . . unto the third pond beyond Meecocks beginning at the windmill." B y later arrangement each ward in rotation took charge of cutting up the whales. T h e cutters took one fourth of the whale as their pay, dividing the rest with the [101]

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inhabitants, "every man particular according to their several proportions of land," the cutters included. The constable took charge of the business. In 1650 John Ogden organized a company to go out to sea and look for whales, leaving the drift whales to the rest of the inhabitants of the town. The record of that year reads: "It is ordered at the . . . general court that Mr. John Ogden, Senior, of Northhampton [North Sea] shall have free liberty . . . to kill whales upon the South sea [Atlantic Ocean] . . . for the space of seaven yeares, . . . that in that space noe liberty shall be granted to any . . . other person or persons." This special privilege seems to have been granted a few years later to " M r . Odell and Mr. Ogden and their company." It is distinctly stated that Mr. Ogden or his company "shall not deny the towne's inhabitants claiming privileges formerly belonging to them in the dead whales that shall be accidently cast upon the shores." That there were at times disagreements between the town and the companies about the ownership of whales is evidenced by extracts from the town records. Here is one of 1662: "At a towne meeting It is concluded and ordered by the major voat and but few persons dissenting, that

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the whale brought up yesterday to towne, and claimed by John Cooper Jun & some others shall be devided by the cutters unto the towne according to the order of the towne in that behalf." In 1667 John Cooper and a company made a voyage

to

Roanoke

"upon

design of

getting

whales or great fish for the procureing of oyle." This is the first venture upon deep-sea whaling. Offshore whaling soon became the off-season industry of the Southampton men, from October to March. T h e method of catching the " K i n g of the sea" was this. T w o or three boats put off shore at a time, each one manned by a crew of six men at the oars, the boat steerer who stood in the stern and steered with an oar, and the boat header who stood in the bow to throw the harpoon into the whale. T h i s weapon was a heavy barbed iron lance at the end of a coil of rope. W h e n the whale came up to breathe, the boat header threw the harpoon and made fast to him. T h e whale, when wounded, dived and towed the boat in a long s w i f t race before he rose to the surface. Another boat then came up and put another harpoon into the whale. Then the adventure would begin in earnest. A whale fighting for his life is dangerous sport: any moment his tail may lash the boat into splinters, and the men find

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themselves in the water. If this happened the whale must be cut loose and allowed to escape while the men in the other boats came along to rescue their companions from the water. Here is an account of what happened not once, as recorded in 1769, but many times before and since: "A whale boat being alone, the men struck a whale and she coming under the boat in part stabed it, and though the men were not hurt with the whale, yet before help came to them, four men were tired and chilled and fell off the boat and oars to which they hung and were drowned." When the whale had been successfully harpooned and killed, he was towed to shore to be "tryed" on the beach. The oil and bone were shipped to market, often directly to London, and every man had his share of the returns. There were in 1769 seven companies engaged in whaling with try works along the beach at the following places: Sagaponack, Mecox, Wickapogue, Southampton, Shinnecock Point, Quogue, and

Ketchaponack

[West Hampton]. By this time the whaling industry was becoming a means of livelihood to many Southampton men. The Indians, who had really taught the white men this profitable sport, were hired to go with the different companies in service. Their pay

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for the season was usually three Indian coats, one pair of shoes (or buck neck-hides to make t h e m ) , one pair of stockings, three pounds of shot, one and a half pounds of powder, and a bushel of Indian corn. A s time went on the white men more and more entered into five-year engagements with Indians, w h o were to g o to sea for them f r o m N o v e m b e r to A p r i l each year, wages to be paid in "Broadcloth, trucking, cloth, britches, porrigers, spoons, shott, powder, and ( w h e n they need i t ) each boat crew 3 gills of liquor at sixpence a g i l l . " D u r i n g its earliest years, w h e n

Southampton

had been responsible only to itself, and

later

under the union with Connecticut, w h a l i n g was carried on independently, but the coming of royal governors brought taxes on the increasing profits of the w h a l i n g business. T w o years a f t e r John Cooper's Roanoke adventure there were thirteen whales taken off the east end of L o n g Island, and several companies averaged t w o barrels of whale oil to a man. A little later than this, in 1672, we find the three eastern towns m a k i n g a petition to K i n g Charles II stating that they had "endeavoured it [the industry] above these t w e n t y yeares, but could not bring it to any perfection till within these 2 or 3 years last p a s t . " T h e t o w n records of this time have many accounts of Indians bind-

[105]

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ing themselves to "goe to sea for the whale season on the whale design; to use and improve our best skill, strength and utmost endeavor for killing whales and cutting out of the said whales killed by us. In the company we shall joyne with, we engage to doe the utmost of our best endeavor to preserve boat and craft committed to our management by our owners." Monarchs changed, royal governors changed, but the burdens of taxation became heavier and heavier, and again (long before the American Revolution) the people of the "fractious towns of the East R i d i n g " stood for their rights as free men. T h e whales, which had been free to all inhabitants, now became " Y e Queen's W h a l e s . " T h e climax of injustice came when Governor Hunter in 1 7 1 1 required all Southampton companies to take out whaling licenses from him, reserving for himself one half of all the bone and oil of captured whales. H e granted one Richard W o o d exclusive possession of all stranded whales; of these also the governor claimed half. A t last in 1 7 1 6 Samuel M u l f o r d of East Hampton, acting as agent for both East Hampton and Southampton towns,

went

to Parliament

and

was able

to

succeed in having Governor Hunter's claims denied. M u l f o r d was a fearless man of great deter-

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mination. H e did not mind having his provincial ways and country clothes made fun of in London. A f t e r having had his pockets picked several times, he sewed fishhooks into them and caught the next offender. T h i s gave him so much attention that he was able to get his request to Parliament and succeed in his mission. T h e true story of Abigail Baker's whale rally shows us how plentiful whales were at this time. In 1700, Abigail Baker, riding along the beach from Bridgehampton to East Hampton, sighted thirteen whales in the six miles. She gave the alarm, dashing down the village street and wefting (swinging) her cape as she rode, shouting, " W h a l e off! W h a l e o f f ! " Horns blew. Every able-bodied man in the village dropped his work, snatched his coat, and ran to the beach, where the different crews were already rolling the big whale boats into the water. W o m e n and children followed the strange procession to the shore; even the schoolmaster suddenly found he had no pupils left to instruct and joined the whale rally. H o w many whales were caught that day we do not know, but we are sure Abigail Baker fared well, because the first one to give the alarm always had a share of the proceeds. For the next fifty years, the offshore whaling

[ 108]

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kept up steadily, but the whales became so wary that the fishermen had to go further and further to sea for their prey. It was about

a hundred years after

John

Cooper's voyage to Roanoke that Joseph Conklin, John Foster, and others fitted out three sloops, the Goodluck,

the Success, and the Dolphin,

to

cruise the Atlantic for whales. T h e y sailed in 1760 from the harbor of Sagg, then a hamlet of a few houses clustered around John Foster's storehouse and tanyard. T h e ground in the tanyard Foster had leased from Nathan Corwin for nine hundred and ninety-nine years at the rent of one peppercorn a year to be paid on lawful demand. There is no record of the catch or of the safe return of those first whaling sloops, but they were the vanguard of Hannibal,

the

fleet—the

the Xenephon,

Helen, the Neptune,

Argonaut,

the Noble,

and the Nimrod—that

the

the Fair sailed

from the port of Sag Harbor in later days, carrying sons of Southampton's offshore whalers to the Seven Seas.

[ 109 ]

R e v o l u t i o n a r y

D A Y S

THE MEN who lived in Southampton town in 1 7 7 5 were the great-grandsons of those first settlers who had come to Long Island in the 1640s. L i f e had changed from the severe struggle of those earlier days to a more genial though still hard-working adventure. T h e church was still the arbiter of the life of the people, though it was more tolerant than in the days when Abraham Pierson made harsh laws and Edward

Howell

leniently interpreted them. T h e high standard of those early settlers educated in England had been lowered by the lack of educational advantages in a place so remote from centers of learning. But the town meeting and responsibility in government had given every man an understanding of law and order. T h e men of 1 7 7 5 were as devoted to the cause of freedom as their fathers had been before them. In 1640 the first settlers had governed themselves, believing with Thomas Hooker that "the seat of authority rests within the power of the governed." From 1644 to 1665 they pro-

[ no]

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gressed happily under the jurisdiction of Connecticut, finding protection and broader interests in their union with the mainland. Under the Duke's Laws ( 1 6 6 5 - 8 3 ) the second generation had rebelled openly and had given unwilling obedience to the laws which took away their earlier rights. From 1683 to 1 7 7 5 the following generations lived like freeborn Englishmen, guarding their rights as jealously as their kinsmen in Great Britain. Communication was mostly with New England. Daniel Howe's sloop had been succeeded by many abler craft, and the harbors of North Sea, Northwest, and the new harbor of Sagg were already full of pinks and snows and schooners. These carried whale oil to Boston and London, cordwood to New York, and traded in rum and horses in Barbados. Some may even have engaged in the trade that carried the black flag. John Foster's store house and tanyard in the harbor of Sagg had grown into a landing. T w o other men, Nathan Fordham and James Foster, had obtained the privilege of building a landing and a tryhouse, and the little settlement had grown into the thriving port of Sag Harbor. T w o windmills had been built between the landings and another to the west of them. The first deep[ i l l ]

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sea whaling ship had gone out. The need of a larger wharf had become so great that a company of forty men from the neighboring villages had obtained a grant from the town of East Hampton and had built the Long Wharf. B y land the King's Highway, established early in the century "to be and continue forever," began at Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn and followed closely the route of the Middle Island Road eastward over the Island. This public road soon brought the east and west end villages nearer together. B y 1 7 6 1 , the post rider brought the mail from New Y o r k once a week, making the trip in five days. The rider started from New Y o r k ; ferried to Brooklyn; stopped at Jamaica, at Smithtown, at Suffolk Court House, at

Southold;

crossed in boat to Shelter Island; again rode on to Hog Neck (North H a v e n ) , to Sag Harbor, to East Hampton, and to Southampton, and back to New Y o r k , a circuit of two hundred and thirtytwo miles. The stagecoach line was established a few years later. In an old newspaper printed March 5, 1 7 7 2 , we read this advertisement: " A Stage will run from Brooklyn to Sag Harbor once a week as follows: Brooklyn Ferry to Hempstead Plains where the passengers will spend the night at Samuel Nicholls'; T o Epentus Smith's in [

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Smith town; T o Benjamin Havens' in St. George's Manor (Moriches); T o Nathan Fordham's in Sag Harbor. Thus passengers may be conveyed 1 2 0 miles in 3 days on a pleasant road for 18 shillings ( $ 2 . 2 5 ) . " Returning, the stage left Sag Harbor every Monday morning at six o'clock and reached New York at ten on Wednesday. Southampton had sent its quota to the colonial wars, but however closely those wars had touched lives of individuals they had interfered very little with the life of the community. There is one instance, however, when the placid waters of Southampton life felt an impulse from the changing current of the times. When the Acadians were expelled from their homes in 1 7 5 5 two young women were sent to Southampton, Margaret and Mary Le Barre. They fitted quietly into the English plan of life, winning respect and love of their neighbors. Mary married one of the young men of the village, and her name is forgotten by all except her descendants. The Southampton Club today stands on Margaret's Hill, where Margaret Le Barre, the village tailoress, lived out her gentle life in the house built by the town for the sisters. "During the Revolutionary war the people of Suffolk County were exposed to peculiar hard-

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ships," writes George Rogers Howell. James Truslow Adams goes farther, saying that the American Revolution caused "more havoc and personal suffering on the eastern end of Long Island than perhaps anywhere else in the country" and altered "individual and community relations for all time after." Our present state historian, Alexander Flick, says that "Nowhere except in the Mohawk Valley was there greater suffering." When the trouble began in Boston in 1774 it was Captain John Foster who offered his ship to the men of eastern Long Island for carrying supplies "to the distressed people of Boston." Although Long Island was as yet unaffected, Long Island men volunteered promptly to go to the aid of New England. When the news of the battle of Lexington and Concord was brought from the mainland, Jesse and Henry Halsey of Mill Pond Head and a neighbor, whose name is unknown, left their horses at Sag Harbor and crossed Long Island Sound in a rowboat to join the Continental forces. They reached Boston just after the Battle of Bunker Hill, enlisted, and served through the war until Henry was killed in the battle of Groton Heights, Connecticut, and Jesse was wounded at Monmouth. John and Elias Pelletreau, sons of the silversmith, served throughout the war. Four

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of Southampton's sons served as surgeons: Doctors William Burnett, Silas Halsey, Shadrack Hildreth, and Henry White. These men were but a few of those who enlisted before the trouble came to Long Island. Associations were formed throughout Suffolk County—men from fifteen to fifty years of age—pledged to support the Continental Congress. Every male inhabitant in East Hampton town signed these Articles of Association promptly, and in Southampton there were only two who refused to sign. The hills of Montauk were the first concern of eastern Long Island. They had long been a summer pasture for cattle from the surrounding country. Only a few weeks after the war began, Gardiner's Bay became a meeting place for English ships, and the herds of two thousand cattle and three thousand sheep on Montauk were promptly raided from the English fleet. The eastern towns petitioned Congress that two companies of militia should be sent for protection. "A considerable part of our strength has gone into the service," they wrote. "We have the most defenseless position of any part of the continent." No help came from outside. Captain John Hurlburt raised a company of minutemen to guard the cattle and remove them as fast as pos[115]

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sible. It is said that the cattle were concealed in the woods behind Scuttle Hole in Purgatory Hollow, where the English soldiers did not find them. A little-known expedition of the Revolution was that of Captain John Hurlburt, who led a company of seventy-five volunteers to the aid of Ticonderoga. The roster of the company was found one hundred and fifty years later under the eaves of Doctor Gardiner's house in Bridgehampton. With it was their battle flag, made by the hands of wives, mothers, and sisters of the men who marched out with Hurlburt in June, 1 7 7 5 . It has thirteen stripes and thirteen sixpointed stars on a field of blue and is the earliest flag of this type to be preserved. The Long Island men were commissioned to escort two hundred British prisoners from Ticonderoga to Philadelphia. Our flag flew in Philadelphia two years before the national flag was adopted by Congress. In that place the company disbanded. Most of them returned home in time to reenlist in one of the three regiments raised in Suffolk County. The first regiment ready for service was Colonel Josiah Smith's of Moriches. T w o companies in this regiment went from Southampton, officered by Captain Zephaniah Rogers and Captain David Pierson with John Foster serving as first lieuten[

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ant in the second company. Colonel David Mulford of East Hampton headed the second regiment of Long Island. This was made up of men from Southampton and East Hampton towns. In addition to these, Southampton and East Hampton and Bridge Hampton furnished a company of minutemen to act as home guard. Captain Elias Pelletreau,

the

silversmith

of

Southampton,

formed a company of old men to act at home if need should arise. An old letter, dated J u l y 23,

1776, reads:

" L a s t Monday afternoon was exhibited in view in this town a very agreeable prospect: the okl gentlemen, grandfathers to the age of seventy and upward,

met

agreeably

by

appointment

and

formed into an independent company. Each man was well equipped with a good musket, powder, balls, cartridges, etc., and unanimously

made

choice of Elias Pelletreau, Esq. for their leader (with other suitable officers), who made a very animating speech to them on the necessity of holding themselves ready to go into the field in time of invasion." So much for the preparation. There were many Tories in Kings and Queens Counties, but Suffolk County men took the side of the revolutionists. The Declaration of Independence was

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adopted July 4, 1776. Five days later, a post rider brought the news to N e w Y o r k City. A t

six

o'clock that evening, Washington drew up one of his crack regiments in a hollow square on the Common. In a loud, clear voice one of his aides read the Declaration: " T o this cause we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Since it took a man on horseback several days to reach Southampton, we can guess that the news was delayed no longer than that in reaching the east end of Long Island. A t any rate, many east end men took part in the Battle of Long Island, fought August 26, 27 and 28, 1776, the battle which determined the fate of Long Island for the rest of the war. Washington, defeated, made a masterly retreat to N e w Y o r k , but Long Island became British territory. M a n y men who had taken part in the battle came home, under orders of the government, to look after their families. Those who were able moved their families to Connecticut and became refugees there until after the war was over. Others went back into service and left their wives and children in care of the older men, who remained at home working under English rule. David Gelston, one of the leading men of Bridgehampton, wrote a letter September 5, 1 7 7 6 — i n which he said, " I can only tell you [

H8]

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the distress I hourly see and hear in L o n g Island are beyond my power to describe." T w o days after the Battle of Long Island the Provincial

Convention

of

New

York

recom-

mended the inhabitants of Long Island to remove as many of their women and children and slaves and as much of their livestock and grain as they could to the mainland

(Connecticut or W e s t -

chester County, N e w Y o r k ) and said that the Convention would pay the expense of removing the same. On October 1, the Committe of Southampton issued a permit to M a j o r Uriah Rogers, Captain Zophar Cooper, Captain Elias Pelletreau, Captain Jeremiah Rogers, Abraham Cooper, and Henry Herrick to "remove their respective families for their safety to any part of Connecticut at their discretion, not absenting themselves, and to hire a boat for that purpose." Also, Howell,

Capt.

Jeremiah

Jagger,

and

"Elias Stephen

Stanbrow are permitted to pass from L o n g Island with proper stores." T h e new wharf of Sag Harbor became the scene of many sad farewells—the wharf which only six years before citizens from the Hamptons had asked permission to build. T h e y made use of it in a w a y they had little dreamed of when they asked for it in 1 7 7 0 .

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Honorable H e n r y P . Hedges said in his address in Sag Harbor in 1909: " B e f o r e the war, S a g Harbor was in the state of N e w Y o r k , next in importance to N e w Y o r k City. T h e products of farms and forests, hides, tallow, beef, pork, hoops, staves, cattle, horses, shoes, grain, and salt fish from all eastern L o n g Island were shipped at S a g Harbor for the W e s t Indies and for trade in other markets. . . . T h e war changed all this. H e r wharves, stores, and houses were held by her adversaries. H e r shipping was gone, her trade ruined. T h e products of her fields were seized by her foes and . . . professed friends. T h e aged, sick, infirm, dying, and dead were without medical relief. A n d while Saratoga and

Yorktown

g a v e relief elsewhere, yet Sag Harbor was the last to look upon the retreating ships of

the

enemy." T h e state of Connecticut was very kind to the refugees from L o n g Island but really had all it could do to care for its own people. W e find a request to the state of N e w Y o r k written June 12, 1 7 7 7 , signed by forty-five L o n g Island men in Connecticut. It tells its own story. " O u r distress is daily increasing, constantly multiplying, the strictest prohibition passing to L o n g Island to get over anything or support ourselves, and little

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or nothing to be had for paper currency, and hard money we have not. Harvest is approaching, and some or most of us have bread corn growing on our land [on Long Island]." They asked for permission to "pass and repass to take over to the relief of our families [in Connecticut] such forrage as will otherwise fall into the possession of our enemies." Meanwhile, those who had stayed at home were living with the enemy. Only a few weeks after the Battle of Long Island English soldiers were quartered on the unfortunate inhabitants. In many instances women divided their houses into two parts—the family living in one side, the English soldiers and Hessians in the other. The Hessian soldiers were called "the dirty blues" by the neat Long Island housewives, and to this day the term "Hessian" is a term of opprobrium. English troops from New York came to the east end to collect provisions for the British army. These are their orders: "You are hereby ordered to preserve for the King's use, loads of hay, bushels of wheat, of oats, of rye, of barley, of Indian corn, and all your wheat and rye straw, and not to dispose of the same, but to my order in writing, as you will answer the contrary at your peril." An English [121]

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fleet lay at Sag Harbor to protect the removal of hay and wood; five hundred men were taken to Brooklyn to be employed. Refusal to comply led to expulsion from Long Island and the loss of one's property. Added humiliation was put upon the people by the forced oath of allegiance to the English government which those who could not escape from the Island were made to take. Doctor Samuel Buell, who was minister in East Hampton at this time, wrote on September 22, 1776, "the people are as a torch on fire at both ends, which will be speedily consumed, for the Continental whigs carry off their stock and produce, and the British punish them for allowing it to go" The seven years of the war on Long Island were seven years of suffering, but suffering unknown to the outside world. Considered Tories by the rest of the country, plundered by both sides, scorned by the British soldiery who lived upon their garnered stores, the people of the eastern towns plodded on, true to the cause in which their fathers had firmly believed. Many left their homes to the invader. Many gave their lives, more carried on in their own communities as best they could. The year 1777, which saw the turning point of [ 122 ]

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the war, was marked on the east end of Long Island by the Meigs expedition. It was a small engagement, not mentioned in the histories today; but for it the leader, Colonel Meigs, received commendation from Washington, and it brightened the dark skies for Long Islanders. The whale boats had been commissioned by the government to prey on English shipping in Long

Island

Sound, and Deacon John White of Sagg was one of the refugees who had gone to Connecticut. On May 23, 1 7 7 7 , he piloted the Meigs expedition of one hundred and seventy men in the whale boats. They successfully crossed the Sound, transported their boats across the north fork of the Island, crossed Peconic Bay, and landed at Sag Harbor at night. Here they arrested the English garrison, destroyed twelve English brigs

and

sloops, one hundred and twenty tons of hay, ten hogshead of rum, and a large quantity of grain. They

returned to Connecticut

in twenty-five

hours without the loss of a single man. During the winter of 1778-79 General Sir William Erskine, commander of the English forces on the east end of Long Island, made his headquarters in the old Pelletreau house, which, until a few years ago, stood on North Main Street in Southampton. He used the Herrick house across

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the street for his meals, and this house still stands, with its old brick oven, its corner cupboard, and its great fireplace just as in the Revolutionary years when he occupied it. The English threw up earthworks west of the village, marked today as the Old Fort. Fort Hill still stands on Shinnecock Hills, and west of Canoe Place are the remains of an old fort that commanded Peconic Bay. Two small cannon belonging to the town were hidden as weights in the church clock until the war was over. General Erskine, living in Southampton, tried to be fair to the people, but his officers were not so temperate. Stones in the old South End burying ground, used by English soldiers for their fires, have never been replaced. Major Cochrane used the church in Bridgehampton as a stable, and he is traditionally remembered as a merciless tyrant. Some of the stories concerning him have persisted for generations, and all give testimony to the manner of man he was. He allowed his men to carry off unprotected cattle, forage by day and by night, and even destroy furniture and houses upon occasion. One day his soldiers turned Lemuel Pierson out of his house. Pierson was determined to take some of his furniture with him, and although the [ 124]

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soldiers stood over him with drawn swords he gained his point. His wife proved to be as good a fighter as he and met the invaders with a teakettle of boiling water. Major Cochrane had the habit of riding into a farmer's yard and ordering him to hitch up his team and cart a load to Southampton. H e met his equal in Captain David Hand, who said he had turned out his team and would not hitch them up again. Cochrane drew his sword and the old veteran of wars by land and sea drew his pitchfork, saying, "I've fastened to many a whale and I'll fasten to you if you don't get out of here." "Well, Mr. Hand," said Cochrane, "I guess you and I had better be friends." When he did not have so fearless an antagonist Cochrane was more formidable. On the wheel of the old spider-legged mill by Sagg schoolhouse he had a man tied and whipped until the blood ran down to his feet. General Erskine is remembered by all for his fair dealing. The story of Edward Topping illustrates it. One night several of Cochrane's men came to Topping's house on Main Street in Bridgehampton, evidently intent upon mischief. With blackened faces and coats turned inside out they invaded Topping's house. He was wakened [125]

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by their noise and seized his gun. One man raised a window and started to enter. Topping commanded him to get out and said he would shoot if the man persisted. No attention was paid to his warning, and he shot. The man fell back dead and was carried off by his companions. Notified the next morning, General Erskine came down to investigate. There he learned the truth. "Is this one of the flower of the British army?" he asked, kicking the body. "Take him down to the ocean and bury him below high water mark, and let me hear no more of it." The same affair under Major Cochrane might have had a different ending for Topping. Many other stories of General Erskine's even temper and generous spirit persist. The Reverend Doctor Samuel Buell, minister of East Hampton during the Revolution, was a staunch patriot. He made friends with the English officers and was able by his friendly relations to do more for his people than if he had been unwilling to meet the invaders halfway. He and General Erskine became very good friends and often went hunting together. One day General Erskine brought one of his young officers over to East Hampton to meet the minister. "And what division of His Majesty's army do

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you have the honor to command 1 ?" asked Doctor Buell pleasantly. Lord Percy, young and arrogant, said quickly, "A legion of devils straight from hell." Not to be outdone in repartee, the old minister bowed low and said courteously, "Then I suppose I have the pleasure of addressing Beelzebub, Prince of Devils'?" Percy retired, much to the amusement of his superior officer. One Saturday morning General Erskine said to Doctor Buell, "Doctor Buell, I have just ordered your townsmen to appear with their teams at Southampton at seven o'clock tomorrow [Sunday] morning." Doctor Buell replied, "Your Excellency, you are in command six days of the week. Sunday is the Lord's day. I am in command then. I shall countermand your order." Doctor Buell won. Another day as the two men rode along the Sagg road they met a boy on a load of hay. The general in a teasing mood called the lad a young rebel. "Ay, sir," said the boy quickly, "and proud of i t ! " "Egad, Doctor," said General Erskine, "even the children in America inhale liberty with the air they breathe."

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Before the war was over General Erskine resigned his commission because of sympathy with the American cause. W e like to think down in Suffolk that the gentle offices of Doctor Buell and the valiant words of that young lad influenced his thought. The weary years of the Revolution wore on to Yorktown. Some men came home on brief furloughs, some came home wounded, some never came, killed in battle or dead on prison ships. Women and children and old men carried on as best they could. The winter of 1780 was one of the coldest ever recorded; even Long

Island

Sound froze over. It was not until November 23, 1783, that Washington's army marched back into New York City and the English fleet left New York

harbor.

Fireworks,

entertainments,

and

homecomings made the city a joyous place. But there was nothing festive about the end of the war on Long Island, when the English fleet finally set sail from Gardiners Bay at Montauk. Men came home to find their families scattered and their farms wasted. The refugees came from Connecticut family by family to find their properties altogether destroyed. Five hundred thousand dollars worth of property was lost, and added to this the new State of New Y o r k taxed

[128]

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Long Island thirty-seven thousand dollars because it had not been able "to take an active part in the war." The record of mortgages in these years shows that many men who had been wealthy before the war were forced to borrow money on their land. Others whose property had been handed down from father to son since 1640 lost everything. The petition of John Foster from a debtor's prison in New York on February 9, 1790, tells the story of many a Revolutionary patriot. This was the same Captain John Foster who was owner of a large property and business, one of the petitioners for the Sag Harbor wharf in 1770, the man whose ship took the "donations to the distressed poor of Boston" in 1774, a delegate to the First Provincial Congress, a signer of the Articles of Association in 1 7 7 5 , a refugee to Connecticut in 1776. " G a o l — N e w York, Feb. 9, 1790. " T o the Senate: In the year 1 7 7 5 , was delegate for the County of Suffolk in the Provincial Congress and thereby became very obnoxious to the enemy; upon removal with his family out of their power, they burnt his ship on the stocks at

[ 129]

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Sag Harbor to the value of 2ooo-pounds and injured his house and other property to large amount. B y these losses and by supporting a large family in Connecticut during the war, found himself unable to pay his debts and prays that the Treasurer of the State may by law be enabled to sign as a creditor for the discharge of a certain bond." He further states that he "took upon himself the charge of transporting powder and other warlike stores down

Long

Island, exerted himself in procuring boats, arms, etc., that the enemy burnt his ship, barns, and outhouses, and to complete the destruction of his property, also destroyed some goods, books, and papers, the amount of 500 pounds. Prays for compensation." T o the men who had fought and endured suffering, to the women who had stayed at home and endured hardship and loss, the close of the war meant beginning life over again. But they courageously took up their hard-won peace and bravely carried on into the new days, the days of the Republic. Twelve generations of men and women have since 1640 carried on in the spirit of those who came in the Company of Edward Howell. How hardly and with what sacrifice our freedom has been won!

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I N D E X

Academy, first, 64, 65 {ill.) Acadians, expulsion of, 1 1 3 Act of 1788, prohibits slavery, »3 Adams, James Truslow, quoted, 114 Agawam, Indian name of Southampton, 3 Agriculture, importance of, 7072 Alexander, William, Earl of Stirling, owner of Long Island, 5 Algonquin Indians on Long Island, 11 Andros, Sir Edmund, 98; unpopularity of, 91, 96 Baker, Abigail, whale rally, 108 Banishment, law of, 53, 54 Barker, William, 18 Barnes, Joshua, 54 Barnes, William, 18 Barrett, Richard, 18, 50 Battle of Long Island, 118 Bees, quilting and husking, 85 Beswick, John, early brickmaker, 77 Beswick, Samuel, early brickmaker, 77 Bishop, John, 18 Block, Adriaen, gives Long Island its name, 4 Bond, Robert, 18 Books, in early i-chools, 61-63 Bostock, Arthur, 20 Bostwick, John, 18 Bound Tree, importance of, 81, 82 Bower, Jonas, home, 29

Boyer, Stephen, 44 Boys, education, 61 ; share in work of town, 83, 85 Bread, Allan, 5 Brickmaking, early, 77 Bride's quilt, 84 Bridge Hampton, early church, 43; during Revolution, 1 1 7 Brookhaven, becomes part of New York province, S7 Brown, J . Lathrop, historic value of home, 34 Browne, William, 50 Buell, Samuel, quoted, 1 2 2 ; friendship with General Erskine, 126-28 Burnett, Thomas, 18 Burnett, William, Revolutionary War service, 1 1 5 "'Cademy Shoat" (term), 64 Calder, Isabel MacBeath, 7n Canoe Place, Indian camping ground, 14 Captain's Neck, 31, 32 Carpenters, early, 75 Carwithy, David, 18 Cattle, meaning of term, 80; laws dealing with, 80 "Cellars," first shelters of settlers, 13 Charles II, of England, includes Long Island in province of New York, 87 ; grants charter to Connecticut, 88 Child's Guide, The, 66 Chimneys, earliest, 77 Church, early, 6, 37-47, 1 1 0 ; site of first, 20; second church, 28, 40-43 ; third church, 43-47

[135]

I N D E X Church and state, 38 Claflin estate, 34 Cochrane, M a j o r , tyranny during Revolution, 124 f. Cockenoe de L o n g Island, Indian, 12 Colonial wars, little effect upon Southampton, 113 Communication by land and sea, i n f. Conklin, Joseph, w h a l i n g venture, 109 Connecticut, relations with Southampton, 19, 38, 51, 87, H I ; loss of L o n g Island to New York, 87; charter granted by Charles II, 88; L o n g Island families removed to, during Revolution, 118-21 Conscience Point, settlers land at, 10, 12 Constable, unpopularity of office, 92 Cook, Ellis, 18 ; early carpenter, 40, 75 Cooper, A b r a h a m , removal of f a m i l y f r o m Long Island during Revolution, 119 Cooper, John, 5, 18, 31, 50, 59; tavern, 57, 78, 79; as fencev i e w e r , 81, 82; first deep-sea w h a l i n g venture, 103, 105, 109 Cooper, John, Jr., 82; defies Dutch, 90 Cooper, Samuel, 43 Cooper, T h o m a s , 31, 79, 82 Cooper, Zophar, removal of family f r o m Long Island during Revolution, 119 Cooper's Neck Beach, 31 Cooper's Neck Lane, 31 [

Corchaug Indians on L o n g Island, 11 Cordwainer, position in community, 75 Corwin, Nathan, 109 Cory, John, 18 Cowkeeper, position in community, 79 Criminal code, see L a w s Dame schools, 66 f. Daughters of the American Revolution, historic value of Chapter House, 26 Davis, Fulk, 18 Davison, Benjamin, 96 Dayton, Samuel, 18 Death penalty not enforced, 53 Dia mint, T h o m a s , 54 Dongan, T h o m a s , governor of N e w York, 97-99 Downs, Lewis, 78 D r i f t whales, 101, 102 Drunkenness, penalty for, 79 Dugouts, first shelters of settlers, 13 Duke's L a w s , effect upon Long Island towns, 88, 91, 92, 111 Dutch, influence upon Long Island, 4, 7 f. ; surrender N e w Amsterdam to English, 87; brief return to power, 89 f. Dwellings, Homes

first,

13; see

also

Early History of Southampton ( H o w e l l ) , excerpts, 53 East Hampton, becomes part of N e w Y o r k province, 87 ; return of Dutch to power, 89, 90; Indian deed of 1649, 100; during Revolution, 115, 117 I 3 6 ]

I N D E X Foster, J a m e s , share in development of S a g H a r b o r , i n Foster, John, w h a l i n g venture, 1 0 9 ; share in development of S a g H a r b o r , m ; R e v o lutionary W a r services, 1 1 4 , 1 1 6 ; petition f r o m debtor's prison, 129 f . Foster House, 26 Foy, John, 43 Freeholders, p r i v i l e g e s of, 1 7 , 49. 5r> 98 ; education of children, 58 Freemen, rights of office, 49 F r o g Pond, 30

East R i d i n g of Y o r k s h i r e , formation of, 8 7 ; becomes S u f folk County, 98 f. Education, see Schools Eliot, John, 1 2 Ellis, John, 77 Else, John, becomes constable, 92

English, interest in Long Island, 4 ; Dutch surrender N e w Y o r k to, 8 7 ; quartering of soldiers on Long Island d u r i n g Revolution, 121 Episcopal church, historic value of site, 26 Erskine, S i r W i l l i a m , command of E n g l i s h forces on eastern L o n g Island, 123 f., 125-28 Farming, f u n d a m e n t a l aspect of, 70-72 Farret, J a m e s , agent f o r disposal of lands on Long Island, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16, 18 Farrington, Edmond, 5, 18, 20 Farrington, John, 5, 8, 18, 20 Farrington, T h o m a s , 5, 18, 20 Fenceviewer, duties, 81 Fireplace, illustration of oldtime, 71 First Neck L a n e , 3 1 Fisheries, importance of whale, 72, 100-9 Flick, A l e x a n d e r , quoted, 1 1 4 Fordham, Joseph, 29, 96 Fordham, N a t h a n , share in development of S a g Harbor, in Fordham, Robert, second minister of Southampton, 39 Foster, Christopher, 18 Foster, E d w a r d , 30 L

G a m e s and sports, 85 G a r d i n e r , Doctor, 1 1 6 G a r d i n e r , Lyon, settles on eastern part of Long Island, 4, 1 1 Gardiner, M a r y , 4 Gelston, D a v i d , 1 1 8 G e n e r a l Court, first name of town meeting, 48 fiF. G i n , the, 30 G i n Lane, 30 Gould, John, 77 Government in Southampton, 17, 38, 48 ff., 88, 92, n o G r e a t Plains R o a d , 31 G r e a t Playne, 22, 26 ; description, 31 Girls, extent of education, 61 ; share in w o r k of town, 8385 ; m a r r i a g e preparations, 84, 85 Goldsmith, T h o m a s , 18, 2 5 ; tavern, 78 Gosmer, John, 18, 50, 5 1 , 52 H a l s e y f a m i l y , Daniel a recurrent name in, 25

I ß ?

J

I N D E X Halsey, A m a n d a , dame school, 66 Halsey, Daniel, marriage, 24 HaWey, Henry, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 4 Halsey, Jesse, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 4 Halsey, Phoebe, murdered by Indians, 29, 51 Halsey, Silas, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 5 Halsey, T h o m a s , early settler, 5, 18, 20, 24, 30, 32, 5 0 ; his w i f e murdered, 29, 5 1 ; as fenceviewer, 81 Halsey, T h o m a s , J r . , description of house, 26, 27 (ill.), 68-70 H a l s e / s Neck Lane, 32 Hampton, James, 18 Hand, D a v i d , encounter with M a j o r Cochrane, 125 Hand, John, 18 Harker, William, 5, 8 H a y w a r d e n , duties, 81 Hedges, Henry P., on self-sufficiency of early f a r m e r , 72 ; description of S a g Harbor during Revolution, 120 Hempstead Convention, protest against jurisdiction of N e w Y o r k province, 88 Herdsman, position in community, 79 Herrick, Henry, removal of family f r o m Long Island during Revolution, 1 1 9 Herrick, James, 18 Herrick House, 1 2 3 ; illustration of old-time fireplace in, 7i Hessians, attitude on Island toward, 1 2 1 High school, first, 64

Long

[

Hildreth, J . Augustus, 29 Hildreth, Shadrack, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 5 Hildreth, Thomas, 18 Hogs, movement restricted, 80 Holdsworth, Jonas, early schoolmaster, $9 Hollyhocks, house, 26 Homes, early Southampton, 2 1 , 23, 26-29, 68-70, 71 (ill.) Hooker, Thomas, n o " H o r n " books, 62 Horse Mill Lane, 26, 29 Howe, Daniel, vessel brings settlers to Long Island, 5, 7, 8, 935, I " Howell, Arthur, 93 Howell, Edmund, 34, 93; refusal to serve as constable, 92 Howell, E d w a r d , 16, 32, 34, 42, 49, 51, 82; heads founders 20 > Si 9, 1 watermill, 18, 19, 26, 35, 76; home, 24, 28; attitude toward laws, 52, no Howell, E d w a r d , J r . , 9 3 ; refuses to serve as constable, 92 Howell, Elias, 1 1 9 Howell, George Rogers, 7n; Early History of Southampton, 5 3 ; quoted, 1 1 4 Howell, John, 50, 93, 96, 97; accepts jurisdiction of New York province, 88; defeat of Dutch forces, 90 Howell, John, Jr., chosen overseer, 96 Hunter, Governor, restrictions upon whaling, 106 Huntington, becomes part of New York province, 87 Huntting property, 29 I ß « ]

I N D E X Hurlburt, John, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 5 , 1 1 6 Indians, relations with settlers, " - ' y . 93 f - ; a s indentured servants, 8 2 ; in w h a l i n g industry, 100, 104, 105 Inns, 78 Intemperance, penalty f o r , 79 Jagger, Jeremiah, 1 1 9 J agger, J o h n , 18, 33, 60, 7 5 ; home, 2 9 ; chosen overseer, 96 J a g g e r L a n e , 33 J a m e s , T h o m a s , 82, 97 J e n n i n g s , John, 18 Jessup, J o h n , 18, 30, 9 6 ; fencev i e w e r , 8 1 ; refuses to serve as constable, 92 J o b ' s L a n e , 26, 28, 34 Johnes, E d w a r d , 50 Johnes, W i l l i a m , 63 K e l l y , J o h n , 56 King's Highway, important land route, 1 1 2 K i r t l a n d , John, 82 K y r t l a n d , Nathaniel, 5, 8 K y r t l a n d , Philip, 5, 8 L a n g e E y l a n d t , Dutch name of L o n g Island, 4 L a w s , old, 4 8 - 5 7 ; relation of town meeting to, 48 ff.; founded on M o s a i c l a w , 5 0 ; letter o f , not a l w a y s observed, 52 f . ; abstracts, 5 3 ; examples of punishments, 54-57; none g o v e r n i n g education, 6 1 ; code of Duke's L a w s , 88, 9 1 , 92, h i Le Barre, Margaret, 1 1 3 Le Barre, Mary, 113

Little P l a i n s R o a d , 30 Little P l a y n e , 26, 3 0 ; first d i v i sion of land to be planted and allotted, 14, 29 L o n g Island, history of, 4 8 . ; I n d i a n tribes on, 1 1 ff.; becomes part of N e w Y o r k province, 87 ff. ; during R e v olution, 1 1 3 8 . ; removal of f a m i l i e s to Connecticut, 1 1 8 2 1 ; q u a r t e r i n g of E n g l i s h soldiers on, 1 2 1 ; considered T o r y by rest of country, 1 2 2 ; N e w Y o r k ' s tax on, at end of w a r , 128 f . L o n g W h a r f , building of, 1 1 2 Loom, John, 18 Lovelace, Francis, colonial g o v e r n o r , 89 L u d l a m , Anthony, 18 L u d l a m , W i l l i a m , firn miller, 76 Lum, John, 18 Lynn, M a s s . , Southampton settlers come from, 3 M a c k i e , J o h n , 26 M a g i s t r a t e s , appointment of, 5° M a i n Street, follows general plan of T o w n e Street of 1648, 22, 26 M a n h a s s e t Indians on L o n g Island, 1 1 M a r r i a g e , preparation for, 84, 85

Meetinghouse, first, 25 M e e t i n g House Lane, 2 5 ; site of first church, 20 Meigs, Colonel, expedition against English, 1 2 3 M e r w i n , Robert, 18 M i d d l e Island R o a d , 1 1 2 Millers, early, 76

C139]

I N D E X Mill Path, 16, a, 35 Mills, Richard, 1 8 ; tavern, 25, 78 ; first schoolmaster, 58 f. Mills, Samuel, 77 Montauk, cattle raid on hills of, 1 1 5 Montauk Highway, 28, 33, 35 Montauk Indians on Long Island, 11 Moore, John, 18, 50, 51 Mosaic law forms basis for early Southampton code, 50 Mowbrey, John, early schoolmaster, 60 Mulford, David, Revolutionary War service, 117 Mulford, John, 18 Mulford, Samuel, protests tax on whaling, 106 Mulford, William, 18 National Golf Club, historic value of site, 14 Nausamp, Indian porridge, 15 Needham, Edmond, 5 Negro slavery in Southampton, 82 f. New Amsterdam surrenders to English, 87 Newell, Thomas, 5 New England, Southampton communication mostly with, h i ; tee also Connecticut Nno England Primer, The, used in early schools, 62, 66 New York, Long Island becomes part of, 87-99 i removal of Long Island families during Revolution, 11821 ; tax on Long Island at end of war, 128 f. Niamuck, Indian camping ground, 14 N orris, Robert, 18 [

North End graveyard, 67 "North End hog" (term), 64 North Sea Harbor, historic importance of, 9, 36 North Sea Road, 13, 35 Nowedanah, sachem, 11, 36 Occupations, everyday, 68, 7086 Odell, Richard, 5, 49, 102 Office, privilege of holding, 49 Ogden, John, 19, 36, 93; organizes whaling company, 102 Olde Towne, 11-23 Oldfields, John, 19 Old Post House, 29, 78 Old Town Pond, 13 Old Town Road, first street, 24 Ordinaries, 78 Ouldfield, John, 75 Ox Pasture Road, 31, 32 Parker, John, 77 Parrish, Samuel L., 28 Parsonage land, 33 Parsonage Woods, 86 Paumanack, Indian name of Long Island, 4 Pelletreau, Elias, forms company of old men during Revolution, 1 1 7 ; removal of family from Long Island during Revolution, 119 Pelletreau, Elias, Jr., Revolutionary War service, 114 Pelletreau, John, Revolutionary War service, 114 Pelletreau, William S., quoted, 9' Pelletreau house, 123 Penhawitz, Indian sachem, 7

H O

]

I N D E X Pequot Indians, murder of Phoebe Halsey, 29, JI Pequot wars, 15 Peter Parley'3 Geography, 66 Phillips, Zerubbabel, becomes constable, 92 Pierson, A b r a h a m , first minister, 16, 37-39; home, 24; laws f o r early settlement, 52, 79. Pierson, A b r a h a m , Jr., 39 Pierson, David, Revolutionary W a r service, 116 Pierson, Henry, 19, 28, 42 Pierson, Lemuel, 124 Pond Lane, 33 Pope, Thomas, 77 Post, George, 64 Post, Mrs. Henry, 40 Post, Richard, 19, 3 1 ; early carpenter, 40, 75 Proprietor rights, 20-23 Proud, Jane, dame school, 66 f. Provincial Convention of New York recommends removal of Long Island families to mainland, 119 P u n i s h m e n t s , 54-57

Queen's Highway, 33 Quilts, 84 Quogue, Indian winter home, *4 Quogue Purchase, 22, 93 Rainer, Deborah, 56 Rayner, Joseph, 54 Raynor, Thurston, 19 Readers, scarcity of, in early schools, 62 Religious instruction, 83 Revolutionary days, 110-31 River Towns, Southampton enters into compact with, 19

Rogers, Jeremiah, removal of family from Long Island during Revolution, 119 Rogers, Obadiah, 43, 93 ; house, 28 ; refuses to serve as constable, 92 Rogers, Uriah, removal of family from Long Island during Revolution, 119 Rogers, William, 19, 43, 73 Rogers, Zephaniah, Revolutionary W a r service, 116 Rose, Robert, 19 Rugg, Joseph, 77 Sabbath observance, 44-47 Sag Harbor, development of, in ; during Revolution, 1 1 9 f. Samp porridge, food of settlers, 15 Sayre, Daniel, 31 Sayre, Job, 5, 8, 9, 18, 34, 50; death, 93 Sayre, Polly, dame school, 66 Sayre, Stephen, portrait and life sketch, 95 Sayre, Thomas, 5, 18, 20, 34, 5°. 54. 57; house, 21 (ill.), 23, 28

Schools, early, 58-67, n o ; public but not free, 58 ; description of first schoolhouse, 59 f. ; f e w girls attend, 61 ; popularity of "spare the rod and spoil the child," 61 ; earliest textbooks, 61-63; first high school or academy, 64, 65 (illus.) ; pre-collegiate training, 64; dame schools, 66 f. Schout's Bay, settlers land at, 7 f. Scott, John, 54

[HO

I N D E X Sea trade flourishei, m Sebonac, Indian fort, 1 4 Self-government, stt Government Servants, types of, 82 f. Settlement, the, 3 - 1 0 Shaw, Edmund, punished f o r drunkenness, 57, 79 Shinnecock Indians on Long Island, 1 1 , 1 2 if. Shinnecock Road, 33 Shoemakers, importance to community, 75 Slavery in Southampton, 82 f. Smith, Bartholomew, 56 Smith, Josiah, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 6 Smith, Richard, 19, 50; banished, 54 Soldiering, an everyday occupation, 72 f. Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of, settlement probably named for, 3 Southampton, the settlement, 3 - 1 0 ; derivation of name, 3 ; founders, 5, 18, 20, 58, 93, n o ; patents granted to settlers, 6, 711, 9, 12, 13, 16 f., 1 8 ; early church, 6, 28, 3747, no; adventure at Schout's B a y , 7 f . ; historic value of North Sea Harbor, 9, 36; the Olde Towne, n 2 3 ; relations with Indians, 1 1 ff., 93 f . ; first spring planting, 1 3 ; earliest dwellings, 1 3 ; government, 17, 38, 4 8 » . , 88, 92, n o ; relations with Connecticut, 19, 38, 51, 87, i n ; proprietor rights, 20-23 ; outgrows Olde Towne, 20, 22, 2 5 ; early homes, 21, 23, 26-29, 68-70, [

71 (ill.) ; old streets, 23, 2436; old l a w s , 48-57; map of early, 5 5 ; education and schools, 58-67, n o ; everyday life and occupations, 68, 70-86; self-sufficiency of community, 70 ff. ; men skilled in necessary trades invited to settle, 7 4 ; growth, 74, 93 ; attitude toward slavery, 82 f. ; becomes part of New York province, 87-99; laws superseded by code of Duke's L a w s , 88 ; return of Dutch to power, 89 f. ; under Andros' regime, 91 ff. ; resents loss of self-government, 92; under Governor Dongan, 97-99; whaling industry, 100-109; protests tax upon whaling, 1 0 6 ; Revolutionary days, 1 1 0 - 3 1 ; land and sea routes, i n f . ; during colonial w a r s , 1 1 3 ; removal of families to Connecticut, 1 1 8 - 2 1 Southampton Academy, 6$ Southampton Club, historic value of site, 1x3 Southampton Colonial Society, commemorates landing of settlers, 10 Southampton Hospital, historic value of site, 1 3 , 25 "South End r a t " (term), 64 Southold, becomes part of New York province, 87; under Dutch control, 89, 90 Sports and games, 85 Stanborough, Josias, 5, 18, 20, 32, 50 Stanbrow, Stephen, 1 1 9 State and church in early days of colony, 38 I 4 2 ]

I N D E X Stirling, A l e x a n d e r W i l l i a m , E a r l of, o w n e r of Long Island, 5 Stratton, Richard, 19 Streets, old, 23, 24-36 Stuyvesant, Peter, 5 9 ; surrender of N e w Amsterdam, 87 Suffolk County, E a s t R i d i n g of Yorkshire becomes, 98 f . ; older than State or Federal governments, 99; during Revolution, 1 1 3 ff.; removal of f a m i l i e s to Connecticut, 118-21 T a l r a a g e , T h o m a s , 19, 50 T a v e r n keepers, e a r l y , 78 T a y l o r , Joseph, early minister of Southampton, 41 Tennison, John, 40 T e r r y , T h o m a s , 5, 18 T i c o n d e r o g a , Hurlburt's expedition to, 1 1 6 T o p p i n g , E d w a r d , encounter with Cochrane's men, 125 T o p p i n g , T h o m a s , 19, 42, 92; home, 2 8 ; accepts jurisdiction of N e w Y o r k province, 88

T o p p i n g Purchase, 22, 94 T o w n meeting, highest authority in early days, 1 7 , 48 ff., 1 1 0 ; compulsory attendance, 49; powers, 50 T o w n e Street, 23, 40; description, 26-28 Town records, glimpse of daily life found in, 93 ff. T o w n s m e n , appointment of, 50 Toylesome Lane, 26, 29 T r a i n band, composition of, 73 " U p chamber," 70 [

Veale, Jeremy, invited to settle in Southampton, 74 Veale, Sarah, 56, 57 Voting, privilege of, 49 Walton, Henry, 5 W a m p u m , as medium of exchange, 1 1 W a r m i n g pan, 70 Washington, G e o r g e , 63 W a t e r Mill, v i l l a g e of, 35 Welbe, George, 5, 8 Wells, William, 19 West Street, 34 W h a l i n g , importance of, 72, 100-9; d r i f t whales, 101, 102, 1 0 6 ; tax upon, 105 f . ; A b i g a i l Baker's whale rally, 108 Wheeler, John, justice, 94 White, Ebenezer, 43 White, Elias, 32 White, Henry, Revolutionary W a r service, 1 1 5 White, Hubert, 32 White, John, early carpenter, 19. 5°, 57, 75 White, John, flees Long Island during Revolution, 123 White, M r s . W . Seymour, historic value of house site, 29, 33 White homestead at Sebonac, 85 Whiting, Joseph, early minister at Southampton, 44, 46 Wickapogue Road, 24 Wickham, Joseph, 93 Willman, Isaac, 19, 20, 40, 54 Windmill Lane, 34 Winthrop, John, 3, 4, 7; quoted, 5, 37 Winthrop, John, J r . , 88, 90 WoodI, G e o r g e , 57 H S ]

i N : Wood, Richard, granted exclusive possession of all stranded whales, 106 Woodhull, J e m i m a , marries Daniel Halsey, 24 W o o d r u f f , John, 19, 32 Woolley, Robert, home, 29 Wriothesley, Henry, E a r l of Southampton, settlement named after, 3

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5» Y o r k , Duke of, surrender of N e w Amsterdam to, 87 Yorkshire, East Riding of, formation of, 88; becomes Suffolk County, 98 f . Y o u n g s , John, 96