Huntington History

In 1929, Norman Thomas, one of the unsuccessful candidates in the presidential election the year before, moved to Cold Spring Harbor.  While a resident here, he ran for president five more times.  Thomas ran as as the Socialist party candidate in every election from 1928 to 1948. No one has ever run for president more often.

Thomas was born in Ohio in 1884.  After graduating from Princeton University, he followed his father’s footsteps and became a Presbyterian minister.  He was a conscientious objector during World War I and his pacifism led him to becoming a member of the Socialist Party of America.

He was an editor at The Nation magazine and ran unsuccessfully for several elected offices, including Governor of New York State and Mayor of New York City.  Although he and his family lived in New York City, in the 1920s they purchased a summer home in East Quogue.  In 1929, they sold the East End property to move closer to New York City.  They purchased five acres on Goose Hill Road.  Thomas’s wife Frances Violet Stewart came from a very wealthy family.  Her grandfather was John Aikman Stewart, who planned the organization of the United States Trust Company and served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln.  Her brother, W.A.W. Stewart, had married Emily de Forest, daughter of Robert W. de Forest who had a 225-acre estate stretching from the east side of Cold Spring Harbor to land east of Goose Hill Road.  Violet’s brother had a house overlooking the harbor.  Although having no architectural training, Violet designed the new 14 room U-shaped house, which still stands.

Violet raised cocker spaniels as part of her Blue Waters Kennels.  The family also had chickens and a cow, either rented or owned. 

Thomas was a socialist, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the fruits of his wife’s wealth. He was a member of the exclusive Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club, where he would engage in political discussions with President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, director of the CIA. Although he seemed to rarely agree with the Dulles brothers, they maintained a cordial relationship.

Thomas regularly took the 8:15 train from Cold Spring Harbor to his job at the League for Industrial Democracy in Manhattan.  He also was a popular speaker across Long Island, speaking at churches, Rotary Club meetings and PTA meetings. 

However, he couldn’t translate his popularity as a public speaker into votes when he ran for president.  For example, in 1932 in Suffolk County, Herbert Hoover received 40,247 votes and Franklin Roosevelt 30,799 votes.  Thomas finished third with 1,365 votes, although well behind the major party candidates, he far outpaced the Communist Party candidate who received only 69 votes.

His popularity as a speaker increased in the 1960s when his speeches would draw thousands to hear his views on Civil Rights, the war in Vietnam, and a sane nuclear policy.

Thomas once said, “I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won.”  Indeed, although he never won any elected office, many of the causes he championed were enacted such as low-cost housing, slum clearance, the five day work week, unemployment insurance, social security, health insurance for the elderly, minimum wage laws, and abolition of children labor.  When he died at Hillaire Nursing Home in Huntington in 1968, he was hailed as the “Conscience of America.”