Huntington History

It is unknown who was the first Irish immigrant to settle in Huntington. To start, what do we mean by “Irish?” Does the term include the Scotch Irish who settled in this country starting in the eighteenth century; or do we mean the Irish who are often defined by their Catholic religion? This paper will use the latter definition.

While Irish Catholics had been immigrating to America for years, the numbers greatly increased during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. An analysis of the 1850 U.S. census—the first census that included place of birth—reveals that there were 325 residents of Huntington who had been born in Ireland, about 4.34% of the Town’s population of 7,481. These figures are for the entire town, which at the time included what is now the Town of Babylon. Seventy-two percent of these Irish immigrants were under the age of 30. Most were young adults, age 18 to 29. Eleven children lived with families other than their own, perhaps because their parents had died during the famine.

Occupations in 1850 were only listed for men. It can be assumed that the young women living with other families were domestic servants. Of the 144 men whose occupation is indicated, most were listed as laborers. It is not unusual to find that a farmer’s household included a young Irish woman, who was probably a domestic servant, and a young Irish man listed as a laborer, or in five cases as an ostler or horse handler. Three of the more prominent Huntingtonians of the time had multiple Irish servants: Churchill Chamberling had four, as did Hiram Paulding, while John Rhinelander had six.

But forty per cent of the Irish born men worked in the brickyards. In fact 81% of all brick makers in 1850 Huntington were Irish born. Ten years later the number of Irish-born brickyard workers had doubled to 124. The overall Irish born population of Huntington had increased by 238 to 563, which was 6.32% of the town’s population of 8,908, up from 4.34% ten years earlier. In other terms the Irish born population in Huntington had increased by 75%; while the overall population increased 19%.

The Irish population was aging. In 1860, just under half the Irish born were under the age of thirty down from 72% ten years earlier. Of course, this figure doesn’t include the children born here to immigrant parents. The number of Irish born children under 18 remained somewhat constant (50 children in 1850 and 43 children in 1860), despite the increase in immigrant population.

Again, many of the occupations listed (which now included women as well as men) were as servants or farm laborers. But brick making retained its Irish flavor.

Bricks had been made in Huntington since the seventeenth century, but did not become a big business until Gilbert Crossman entered the business in the early nineteenth century. His yards at West Neck—now Lloyd Harbor Village Park—eventually produced as many as eleven million bricks in one year. Many of the Irish immigrants worked at Crossman’s yard or at the adjoining Jones yard. Most lived in company housing and shopped in the company store. In fact, the West Neck brickyards were a separate enclave to themselves.

Irish immigrants, who made up half of all immigrants coming to the United States at the time, were met at Castle Garden, the immigrants’ point of entry in lower Manhattan, by representatives of the brickyards. They would head over to the East River and board a steam ship to Lloyd’s Dock, located just north of the brickyards.

The company provided housing for the workers that included a small plot of land for a garden and sometimes for a pig or cow, but almost always for chickens. Rent was $8-15 a year. In 1854 a common laborer could earn from a dollar to $1.25 a day. Work at the brickyards could be dangerous. In 1839 “an Irishman (whose name we could not learn) was killed by the caving in of a bank from which he was digging clay.” A similar accident in 1853 resulted in a broken leg for Dennis Coleman.

Of course, the Irish immigrants were overwhelmingly Catholic. The closest church was in Brooklyn. However, a priest came to Huntington in 1838 to say mass in the home of Matthew Hoban, who lived on the north side of Main Street east of Sabbath Day Path. For ten years, missionary priests would tend to the spiritual needs of Huntington’s small Irish Catholic community with masses in the Hoban home.

In August 1849, a small church was built in West Neck on the grounds of what is now St. Patrick’s Cemetery. It was certainly the first Catholic church in Huntington and perhaps also the first in Suffolk County. The first resident pastor of the church, the Reverend Jeremiah J. Crowley, was assigned to Huntington in 1860. Crowley, like those he ministered to was a young Irish immigrant. He had completed his seminary studies and had been ordained in Dublin in 1860. He immediately came to Long Island, settling first in Bay Shore and then moving to Huntington.

Father Crowley’s arrival coincided with the beginning of the Civil War. The war was fought in the south until 1863, when Confederate forces entered Pennsylvania. The three day battle at the beginning of July in the town of Gettysburg marked a high water point in the war.

Just one week after the Battle of Gettysburg, New York City began to draw names of those to be drafted into the service under the National Conscription Act, which had been enacted the previous March. At the outset of the war, the federal government had relied on volunteers—who were given a bounty to enlist—to fill the ranks. But heavy losses, dwindling recruitment and soaring desertion rates led to the enactment of a draft. The draft was unpopular in New York, not least because a draftee could avoid service by either finding a substitute or paying $300, a sum beyond the means of the working class.

The first 1,236 names were drawn at the draft office at Third Avenue and 47th Street on Saturday, July 11, 1863. Before the lottery could resume the following Monday, protesters had marched through the city and then burned the draft office down. Over the next three days, the city was engulfed in riots. What originally started as a protest against the draft, became an attack on the wealthy and then an attack on poor blacks. In addition to extensive property damage, it was estimated at the time that a thousand people had been killed (only 119 deaths could be confirmed).

Many of the rioters were recent Irish immigrants.

News of the riot reached Huntington on the day it started. Amos P. Conklin noted in his diary: “Quite an excitement has been made by a report of a riot in New York. Caused by the enforcement of the Draft.” Conklin was a 27-year-old father of a daughter who was about to celebrate her third birthday the next day. His wife was expecting their second child within the next month. Conklin worked in the Sammis bakery on the south side Main Street, just east of Green Street. Although the Sammis bakery was known for flying a large American flag each time the Union won a battle, Conklin dreaded the thought of being drafted. In fact, he and ten other young Huntingtonians set up an “Insurance Company.” Conklin collected $100 from each member of the insurance company. If any of the men were drafted, he could draw the $300 needed to avoid the draft from the pool. As it turned out, three of the members—including Conklin—w ere drafted. Each drew $300 from the pool. The balance of $200 was split among the 11 members—each received $12 back. The eight who were not drafted lost $82. The three who were drafted had to pay only $82 instead of $300 to avoid the draft.

Huntington’s Irish immigrants could not have afforded such a scheme.

On Tuesday, Conklin wrote in his diary: “The Riot still continues in the City and much damage is likely to be done to property And many lives will be lost.” The alarming news from New York caused a panic in Huntington. Conklin went on: “Some of the citizens of our Village are getting very much alarmed about an Irish invasion. A meeting was held this evening in the store of Baylis & Mills and a Kind of Organization for defense was formed. . . . Watchman will be on duty during the night.”

Conklin confessed that he did not think there was any danger. Nonetheless, he and Daniel Pearsall served as night watchmen the following night from 10:30 Wednesday night until 3:00 Thursday morning.

On Wednesday, Conklin noted: “The public is very much excited about the riot in the city and strange rumors are afloat concerning the Irish attacking this Village. … Groups are standing on the corners of the Streets discussing the events in the city, etc. . . . Men and boys are very much engaged at looking up guns and Pistils [sic] They even will take up with old Flint Locks.”

The riots in the New York were suppressed—with troops fresh from Gettysburg—by Thursday evening. That night Conklin reported, “David Brush & 2 or three men came in to watch the brick building.” Brush’s wife Amelia noted in her diary that her husband “& Elias & Jim went to Huntington tonight and staid [sic] until 10:00 to assist in putting down the expected riot but the rioters did not make their appearance.” It is curious why they were guarding “the brick building,” which must be a reference to the building erected on the southwest corner of Main Street and New Street by Richard Leaycraft in 1859—probably the first brick commercial building in Huntington. They may have suspected that that building in particular would be a target based on prejudiced views of the Irish—there was a liquor store located there.

The New York City Draft Riots did not incite Huntington’s Irish to riot. But four years later tragedy struck the small community when a fire destroyed the small wooden church, which had been incorporated in 1865 as “The Roman Catholic Church in West Neck.”

The Long-Islander newspaper reported on March 1, 1867 that the fire started in a stove pipe and somehow reached the wall, completely destroying the church.  Fr. Crowley objected to this explanation for the fire because “the stove pipes were as well and as safely secured in the Church as in any other building, and every precaution was taken to guard against the sad accident that has left us without a place of worship.”  Crowley may also have been thinking of an incident a year earlier.  In July 1866, Fr. Crowley offered a $500 reward “for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who attempted to set on fire my premises on July 4.”  The notice of the reward appeared on the same page of the newspaper as a comment in which the editor commended Fr. Crowley for the Fourth of July celebration he had organized for the Town’s Irish residents.

Fortunately, the church was insured and was able to recover $1,482.50 from the insurance policy. Perhaps as a statement that the Irish were here to stay and to be a part of the larger community, Father Crowley decided to rebuild on Main Street instead of out in the woods of West Neck. He acquired a one-acre lot at the corner of Main Street and Anderson Place. The cornerstone for the new church was laid on Thanksgiving Day 1867. The new church was built appropriately of brick and was dedicated with an imposing ceremony led by Bishop Loughlin of Brooklyn on June 27, 1869. The 114′ x 45′ building was erected at a cost of $26,710.03. Looking back ten years later, the church finance committee noted that the ability to build such a handsome and commodious church was remarkable especially since none of its members was wealthy.

The 500-seat church was renovated in 1896. That same year additional land was acquired adjacent to the old church property to provide additional cemetery space.

The small, brick church served the parish for almost a century. But by the early 1960s, Huntington’s rapidly growing population created the need for a larger church. The present church building was completed in 1963.

The old church was razed in July 1969-almost exactly 100 years after it had been dedicated.

Huntington’s Irish organized the Irish American Social Club in 1933 to advance “their educational, economic, commercial and social advancement in American life.” Two years later the club organized Huntington’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade. The parade was held on St. Patrick’s Day, which fell on a Sunday that year, and featured, as it does today, bands, local fire departments, veterans groups and politicians. At 2:00, the marchers started at the intersection of New York Avenue and Depot Road and headed north. At High Street they turned left to Woodbury Road and then down to Main Street. They marched through the village to Town Hall where the Town Supervisor, a retired judge and a Justice from Queens made brief addresses from the steps of the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building, which was at that time home to the Huntington Public Library.

By the second parade, there were 1,000 marchers and several thousand spectators. The night before the parade a dinner dance was held. In the early years, the dance was held at Odd Fellows Hall on Wall Street and later at the Hotel Huntington on New York Avenue.

With the outbreak of war in December 1941, the Irish American Club voted unanimously not to hold a parade in 1942. The annual dinner dance was held and the usual journal was published. The first $100 of proceeds from both was given to the Buy-a-Bomber Fund and the rest was divided equally between the Red Cross and the U.S.O.

The parade resumed in 1946. The following year the county-wide Ancient Order of Hibernians created a division covering the Huntington area. The new division was expected to work in cooperation with the Social Club.

In 1949, the Irish American Club held its first Irish Field Day at Rice Farms, the former home of the Squadron C Cavalry Club. The fair featured Gaelic football, hurling and other traditional Irish sports in addition to Irish dancing and music. Administration of the fair was assumed by the Ancient Order of Hibernians the following year and, in a probably unintended nod to multiculturalism, the venue was changed to Lindbergh Park Lodge on Jericho Turnpike in Elwood.

In 1954, the parade was changed. Marchers would now proceed north on New York Avenue and then turn left to the reviewing stand on the west end Main Street. The parade disbanded at the St. Patrick’s school playground.

On occasion, the parade has been postponed a week due to inclement weather. But other than the war years of the 1940s, it has been every March. The numbering sometimes gets confusing—somehow the 1958 edition was inexplicably celebrated as the 25th anniversary parade—but, if you’re keeping track, Huntington has hosted the parade 72 times since 1935.

Today the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Division 4 hosts Long Island’s oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade on the second Sunday in March.