Huntington History

For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine leads to a remembrance of things past.  Likewise the discovery of some lost object can lead to a rediscovery of the history of a place.  Such an event happened on a recent Saturday morning when members of the Cold Spring Harbor Fire Department and the Huntington Historical Society visited an old farm on Woodbury Road to transport a hundred year old bobsled that was being donated to the historical society.

The bobsled had been stored in the loft of a barn on the property.  The owner recently asked the Cold Spring Harbor Firehouse Museum if they would be interested in it.  Officials at the Firehouse Museum in turn contacted the historical society, which has a small collection of bobsleds.

In the early twentieth century, Huntington hosted a winter carnival, which featured bobsled races.  Bobsleds holding as many as 25 riders would complete to see who could go the furthest and the fastest starting on Lawrence Hill Road near Carley Avenue and down Main Street to as far as the old stone library a block east of New York Avenue.

The bobsled in question was the Huntington and was raced by the McKowen brothers.  It had apparently been placed in the barn after the last Winter Carnival in 1920 and remained there until the current owners decided to restore the barn.  The sled was placed outside while its ultimate destination was determined.  The historical society plans to restore the sled and display it.  The sled is in excellent condition, although missing its runners.  Some of the lettering that spelled out the sled’s name can still be seen.  Restoration will involve replacing the runners (luckily the historical society has some in its collection) and painting the sled white and recreating the lettering.

But what about the place where this sled was kept for the last 90 years?

To start at the beginning: The farm seems to have been developed around the time of the Civil War.  No buildings are shown at that location on the 1858 map of Suffolk County.   The map does show a house on Woodbury Road, about half a mile south of Main Street, owned by S. Rowland.  Smith Rowland was born in 1807.  According to information posted by family history researchers on http://www.ancestry.com, Smith Rowland’s great grandfather immigrated to New York from France.  Smith’s grandfather was born in Commack in 1738.  So Smith was a third generation Huntingtonian.  In 1838, he married Susan Taylor Roe (or Rowe).  They do not appear to have had any children.

In 1849, Smith Rowland was one of a party of four Huntington men who left to seek a fortune in California’s gold fields.  He returned eighteen months later, apparently not having found gold, but in poor health due to a fever contracted in Nicaragua on his way home.[1]

Ten years later, he offered his 15-acre farm on Woodbury Road for sale.  The farm was advertised as having a large two story dwelling, a tenant house, a good barn, cow house, corn crib and other out buildings.  The farm also boasted a young orchard of apples, pears and other fruits.  Moreover, the farm was “within a mile of one of the best schools in this part of the country, and in the immediate vicinity of churches, stores, post office, etc.”[2]

The 1873 atlas locates S. Rowland about three quarters of a mile further south of his location on the 1858 map indicating that he sold the farm as advertised in 1860 and purchased another farm.  According to the agricultural schedule of the 1880 census, Rowland’s farm was now 20 acres, on which he grew grass, buckwheat, Indian corn, rye, wheat, potatoes and apples.  Rowland was also a widower by 1880; his wife died in 1878.  Rowland sold the farm to Charles A. Van Sise in 1882.  Rowland died seven years later.

Although the farm was owned by Van Sise, it continued to be referred to as the Smith Rowland farm into the twentieth century.  For instance an advertisement in 1903 gave notice of an auction of “about 9 acres of standing grass on the Smith Rowland Farm on the Woodbury Road.”[3]  Van Sise died in 1901 and his son Peter inherited the farm.[4]

When John and William McKowen purchased the farm from Peter Van Sise in 1904, it was still referred to as the “Rowland Farm.”[5]  A couple of years later, the McKowen brothers purchased an additional 33 acres adjoining the farm from Mrs. Joel Titus.[6]

The McKowens appear to have been farm hands on various farms in town.  In 1868, they were on the Paulding farm in Lloyd Harbor and before their purchase of the Woodbury Road property, they worked on the Jones farm on Lawrence Hill Road, which is now owned by the Nature Conservancy.

The McKowen Brothers—William and James Edward[7]—operated a dairy on the property and had a milk delivery route serving the Cold Spring Harbor area.  By 1912, their herd numbered 32 cows.[8]   In 1911, three acres were divided from the property for John McKowen to build an “attractive cottage.”[9]

And, of course, the McKowen brothers entered their bobsled Huntington in the Huntington’s annual winter carnival as well as races in Oyster Bay.

William died in October 1950.  Just three months later, five men broke into the house and tied up 73-year-old brother Henry, 70-year-old Mary Elizabeth and a 53-year-old farmhand.   The gunmen cut the telephone wires and entered the house at around 6:45 on a Tuesday evening.  With their guns drawn and threatening bodily harm, they demanded money.  The occupants of the house refused to cooperate and they were tied up while the gunmen searched the house.  They eventually left with $200 in cash and silver.  The McKowen’s and the farmhand were rescued three hours later when brother Edward came to the house. [10]

Henry died less than two years later.[11]  Mary Elizabeth died three years after her brother.[12]  She left the bulk of her estate (after a $50 bequest to a niece) to the Central Presbyterian Church and Huntington Hospital.[13]

The property was subdivided in 1957 as “Woodbury Knolls” consisting of about 45 acres from Woodbury Road to Woodchuck Hollow Road.  A new street—Snowball Drive—was laid out through the property to join Woodbury and Woodchuck Hollow.

The family that donated the bobsled acquired the lot with the old farmhouse and barns in 1960.  They have recently acquired the lot to the south on the corner of Woodbury Road and Snowball Drive as well as the three-acre lot on which John McKowen built his home in 1911.