Huntington History

In 1965, the Town of Huntington placed a historical marker on the southwest corner of Main Street and Spring Road to commemorate Huntington’s Earliest Church:

Besides emphasizing a rather insignificant fact—the sales price—the marker compounded the error by using “LBS” to designate English currency instead of using the symbol £.

In September 2017, Harvey Spencer, an English ex-pat living in Northport, mentioned the error to me. Then a few months later another resident sent me an email complaining that “5 LBS is a measurement of weight, not money. 5 POUNDS should have been used, or perhaps the symbol. Most amusing, but reflects poorly on the town’s intellect.” Ouch.

As far as I know no one else had raised the issue in the 53 years the sign had been there—certainly not in the 18 years since I became Town Historian.

Of course, the English unit of currency originally did correspond to a unit of weight.  In the Middle Ages, silver coins were the common currency of several European countries. If one weighed 240 of those silver coins, he would find they weighed a pound.  Under the old system, a British Pound was made up of 20 shillings and each shilling was made up of 12 pence; or 240 pence to a Pound. After decimalization in 1971, a British Pound has only 100 pence, not 240. And a pound of silver is worth much more than a Pound (about 181 times more).

But that doesn’t excuse using Lbs in place of £. The lack of the proper symbol so offended Mr. Spencer that he and his wife Lesley agreed to pay for the not insubstantial cost of a new marker.

Surely, there must be something more to say about Huntington’s earliest church than the price it was sold for. Actually, there is not much more recorded about the original church. Nonetheless, the wording could be more complete:

The new mark recently installed on the southwest corner of Main Street & Spring Road.

One question still remained: exactly where was the first church building*?  As Al Sforza pointed out in his book Portrait of A Small Town II, Huntington, New York “In The Beginning,” there is some question in the historical record as to the location of Huntington’s first church building. Dr. Sforza cites three records to support a location on the north side of Main Street.

First, a footnote on page 306 of Volume II of the Town Records published in 1888, says the church was “on ‘meeting house brook’ (now Prime Avenue).” Since Prime Avenue is north of Main Street, this reference indicates the church was on the north side of Main Street. However, it is possible that the footnote refers to the road as it runs south of Main Street even though on the 1873 map of Huntington that road is labeled as Spring Street.

Another source, the 1882 History of Suffolk County, was written by Charles R. Street, who also provided the footnote above. That text asserts that the church stood “about where the thimble factory of Ezra C. Prime now stands.” The fact that the historical marker for Prime’s thimble factory is on the north side of the street seems to support the conclusion that the church was also on the north side of the street. However, by 1882, Ezra Prime had converted his first thimble factory on the north side of Main Street into a residence and had opened a second factory on the south side of Main Street.

The third reference is from Romanah Sammis’ 1937 book Huntington Babylon Town History, which states that the church was “on the north side of Oyster Bay Path and beside the stream which then became Meeting House Brook.” Mrs. Sammis may have been relying on Mr. Street’s statements.

In any event, each of these sources was written more than two centuries after the church was built and 167 years after it had been dismantled. In other words, there is no definitive support for either location, so the new marker was installed in the same location as the 1965 marker.

The current confusion about the location of the 1665 church mirrors the controversy about where to build a new church in 1715. As early as 1711, the townspeople agreed that a new church was needed. Forty men pledged various amounts ranging from £30 to 3 shillings to build the new church “in the hollow in the same place where the ould meeting house now standeth or near there abouts.” The total amount pledged was £228. 13s+. At the time, there were at least 132 heads of household living in Huntington.

No further reference to building a new church are found in the Town Records until four years later when notice was given to the inhabitants of town that “the Majer part of sd in habitants Doth agree to gitt timber for a new meeting house; to be sett upon the East hill.” So much for building in the hollow.

The dispute pitted the West End men against the East End men. The West Enders favored building in the hollow where the old church was. The East Enders wanted to build at the top of the hill to the east. It is hard to imagine that each side objected to having to walk an extra 200 yards up hill either before or after Sunday services. There must have been more to the dispute than a longer walk, but whatever it may have been has been lost to history.

By 1715, 14 of the men who had pledged to donate to build the new church in the hollow had changed their minds. There were an additional seven identified as “west end men” whose names had not appeared on the 1711 list who also consented to build the new church on the East Hill. Twenty-four of those who had pledged in 1711 did not consent to building on the East Hill; they were joined by 16 men who were not on the 1711 list of potential donors. So the supporters of building in the hollow remained at 40 in number, less than a third of the men of the town.

In March 1715, the East Enders suggested arbitration. Each side would select a minister and those two ministers would select a third to settle the matter after each side presented its case. The offer was made “for peace and quietness Sake that Soo we may be united amoung us and that wee may live to gether like Christians as wee ought to do.” The West Enders accepted the suggestion and by mid-April each side selected ten men to make its case before Mr. Magnis, minister of Jemeco (perhaps Jamaica), Mr. Pomarary, minister of Newtown and Mr. Wolcy, minister of Oyster Bay.

The ministers were apparently successful in resolving the dispute. In June 1715, the West End men agreed to locate the new church on the East Hill. It seems that they had previously taken matters into their own hands and began to build a new meetinghouse near the old church. As part of the agreement, the East End men agreed to reimburse the West End men for the expense in money and labor for erecting the framing for a new building and to move it to the hill. Once the new church was completed, the West End men “are to have Equall priveledge in and with the sd. House as if the whole town had built the sd. House in Equall proportion according to Estates.” The agreement was made “for uniting and Continuing us all in peace Love and unity.”

Two years later, Mr. Wolcy of Oyster Bay was invited to come to Huntington to assist Mr. Jones as minister of the new church. As for the old church, it was auctioned off to Jonas Platt, Jr. for £5. 2s. Mr. Platt was given a year to pay. What he did with the old building is not known.

And what of that new church built on the East Hill in 1715?  It served the community until the American Revolution.  At first the occupying British troops used the building as stable.  Then it was dismantled to build a fort on top of the Old Burying Ground.  Soon after the war, a third Old First Church was built.  It continues to be a place of worship today.

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*  That original church or meetinghouse was built to comply with the newly enacted Duke’s Laws, promulgated by the Royal Governor soon after the English took control of the area from the Dutch. The Duke’s Laws provided that

Whereas the publique Worship of God is much discredited for want of painful & able Ministers to Instruct the people in the true Religion and for want of Convenient places Capable to receive any Number or Assembly of people in a decent manner for Celebrating Gods holy Ordinances These ensueing Lawes are to be observed in every parish (Viz.) 1. That in each Parish within this Government a church be built in the most Convenient part thereof, Capable to receive and accomodate two Hundred Persons.

+ To put that sum in perspective, in 1713, Jacob Conklin paid £96. 10s. 6d. for 2,792 acres of land in Half Hollow Hills. Charles Street notes in the Town Records (Vol. II, page 317 footnote), “How he acquired the large sums of money which he disbursed during this period in the purchase of lands was a mystery never fully solved.” According to legend, Conklin had been a member of the pirate Captain Kidd’s crew—either voluntarily or by force. At one point, Captain Kidd sailed into Cold Spring Harbor to replenish the ship’s water supply. Conklin, who had been born in Huntington, managed to escape with a tidy sum of money, which was either his wages or treasure he stole from the captain. Whether that’s true or not, it is a good story.