Huntington History

Seventy years ago, the United States was drawn into a second World War when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  Although several Huntington men were stationed at Pearl Harbor or elsewhere in Hawaii at the time of the attack, it appears that only one was killed.  John Grubbs Little of Northport was a 1935 graduate from the Naval Academy stationed aboard the USS Utah.[1]

Eric Noeldechen, a Huntington Station resident, was aboard the USS Enterprise.  At the time of the attack, the aircraft carrier was about 215 miles west of Oahu.[2]  Noeldechen went on to see considerable action aboard the Enterprise over the course of the following year.  The ship sank 19 Japanese ships and downed 185 Japanese aircraft.  In 1942, Noeldechen transferred to the submarine service.[3]

Wilfred A. Ruland, Walter Schlossberg, Edgar and Donald Hazleton, Kenneth Babcock, Anthony Fusaro, and Kent Gale were stationed in Hawaii or somewhere else in the Pacific.[4]

On the home front, parents did not hear of the fate of their sons for weeks.  The papers even reported the death of one Hicksville native, who later was reported alive and well.[5]  People were nervous.  Just three days after the Pearl Harbor attack, the air raid alarm sounded in Huntington twice, once at 6:00 a.m. and again at 8:40 a.m.  Residents didn’t know what to make of the alarms and were especially concerned about their children.  School children were instructed to go home when the second alarm sounded, but parents were concerned about sending them back to school after the all clear was given.  The resulting confusion and calls from the merely curious jammed the phone lines preventing officials in charge of civil defense from getting their calls through.  Notices were placed in the newspaper instructing that when the air raid warning sounds, people should avoid the use of the telephone “for curiosity or any purpose except in case of an actual emergency.”[6]

The FBI instructed local police departments to interview all Japanese residents and order them to remain indoors until further notice.  The day after the attack, Lloyd Harbor police picked up two Japanese nationals for failing to abide by the alien registration law.  They were taken to New York later in the day.[7

Residents were asked to bring waste paper to the Defense Paper Depot on Stewart Avenue.  “Worthwhile” books were collected to provide to servicemen overseas.

More than one senior at Huntington High School left school before graduation to enlist.  Peter Campbell was a popular member of the Huntington High School football team who left school in May 1942, just a month before he would have graduated, to enlist in the Marine Corps.  He loved to hunt in the woods around Huntington.  He would often cut school to go hunting.  But he had a gentle side as well that led him to nurse an injured bird back to health and to care for homeless dogs.  He was engaged to get married.  But in November 1943, he was killed while scouting enemy positions on Bougainville Island, a part of Papua New Guinea.

His parents were presented with a Bronze Star Medal for Campbell’s heroic actions.[8]  But they were devastated by their loss.  Two years after he would have graduated, the high school planted an elm tree in his honor during an Arbor Day celebration.  The ceremony on the front lawn of the school included a rendition of the Marine Hymn by the high school band, a recitation of “Creed to My Rifle,” dedication of the tree in Campbell’s honor and the National Anthem.  The principal of the school, Robert L. Simpson, also shared a letter he had received from his former student:

You know I thought I’d be the last one in this wide world to miss the old school.  I guess it’s the company of all the kids I miss most and the football games.  Somehow or other I seem to connect hunting with my school.  I guess that’s because I cut school so much to go hunting.  I can still go hunting, though.  Pretty soon now I’ll be hunting with my buddies, for more dangerous game than I found at home.  It’ll be good hunting, though, and it will have more purpose behind it than just plain sport.  It will be so the people all over the world can keep going to schools like H.H.S. and so that the boys can keep playing football, and so that the girls can have their football heroes.  It will be to preserve our grand old American customs and traditions.  So that there will be lots and lots of kids going to those football games with minds free from fear or oppression.  They will be able to cheer with all their hearts, not because they have to but because something inside of them makes them want to.  Believe me, if I and all the other young Americans have anything to say about it, all these things will remain unchanged in our great country.

I’m not very good at putting down on paper what I feel inside me, but that’s just about how I feel about it, and I guess everyone else in this country feels the same.  We’re going to win this fray just like some of our school songs say.  It will be a big fray but not too big for good Americans to handle.  Good luck to all at home.[9]

 Eventually 3600 Huntingtonians would enlist—127 of them would be killed.

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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.

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These days, many people carry a smart phone that gives them a private reminder of appointments and errands.  But before the advent of such devices, before the advent of wristwatches, and even before the mass production of affordable clocks, bells provided public reminders and alerts.

Huntington has had several notable bells intended to be heard far and wide.  The first was the bell procured to summon the faithful every Sunday morning to Old First Church.  The Town’s second church building was erected in 1715 on the site of the current Old First Church on Main Street across from Town Hall.  A small bell was soon acquired from England.

During the American Revolution, when Huntington was occupied by the British army, the bell was removed by the British troops.  Huntingtonian Zebulon Platt was a prisoner on the ship Swan in late 1777 and later reported having seen Huntington’s bell on that ship.  Nathaniel Williams arranged to retrieve the bell and in 1793, the bell was recast to include the motto “The Town Endures.”

While the bell was missing, the British had razed the church and used the timbers to build a fort in the Old Burying Ground.  The bell returned to service in the current church, which was built in 1784, and continued in use until the 1960s.  It is now on display in the church lobby.

About the time that the church bell was being restored, the Huntington Academy was built across the street.  The new schoolhouse included a tower for a school bell.  The Academy was replaced in 1858 by the Union School.  Since a new school needs a new bell, the small bell from the academy was retired.  It soon found a new use as a fire bell behind the firehouse on Wall Street.

Fast forward fifty years.  In 1909, the Union School was torn down to makee way for a new state-of-the-art brick high school (today’s Town Hall).   This new construction gave rise to some nostalgia: a committee was formed to create a display in the new building commemorating the old Academy.  The committee decided to hang a picture of the Academy in the new building and it was thought that the old Academy bell would be a terrific addition to the display.  The committee asked the fire department if they would part with the bell.

The old Academy bell had proved inadequate to alert fire fighters when they were needed—it could not be heard outside the heart of the village—and had been relegated to calling members to meetings.   The fire department, therefore, did not object to returning the bell.  The department decided to inscribe the bell with the years it served as a fire bell as well as the years it called children to the old Academy.  Newspaper reports in the 1950s indicate that the bell was on display in the high school building on Main Street.  But its current whereabouts are unknown.

The fire department had decided in 1898 to replace the old school bell with a bell loud enough to “awaken the soundest sleeper living within a mile radius of the village.”  The new 730-pound bell was hung in a new tower behind the Wall Street firehouse.

When the fire department moved to its new building on Main Street in 1911, a modern electric siren was installed.  It was later suggested that the 730-pound bell acquired in 1898 be used for brush fires and the electric siren for building fires.  With the advent of suburbia, the number of brush fires decreased.  The department decided to use the bell as a memorial.  On Memorial Day 1951, the fire department dedicated the new memorial to its members who had died in World War II.  Placed outside the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building, which at that time was the home of the Huntington Library, the bell was topped with a spread wing eagle that has since disappeared.

The bell used for fifty years in the Union School (1858-1909), can now be seen in the lobby of the current high school building on Oakwood Road.  When the Union School was torn down in 1909, its bell was moved to a school in Huntington Station.  It soon found its way into storage, however.  From 1967 to 1985, it was located in the courtyard of what is now the Jack Abrams School.  It then was moved to Woodhull School as part of the school district Heritage Museum organized by Jack Abrams.  Since 2004, the bell has been on display in the high school lobby.

Having three of the town’s oldest public bells is impressive.  But if only we could find the missing bell from the Huntington Academy.

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People complain that Huntington is getting too crowded.  There’s too much congestion, too much traffic, not enough open space, we’re losing our small town character.  But how accurate are these sentiments?  With the release of the 2010 census records, we see that Huntington is, in fact, more crowded than ever.  But is it that much worse than it was 10 or 20 years ago?

A look at the numbers is illuminating:

Throughout the nineteenth century the town’s population grew a pretty steady rate of about 15% per decade.  But in the twentieth century things started to take off.  IN fact, most people associated suburbanization with the 1950s.  But with the advent of direct train service to Manhattan in 1910, commuting from Huntington became possible.  It took a few years, but between1910 and 1930, the town’s population doubled.  The growth continued even through the Depression years of the 1930s.

Of course, public perception about the 1950s is accurate.  With a 165% growth in population, Huntington was no longer a small country town.  In absolute numbers, the town’s population grew almost as much in the 1960s.  The increase in population between 1950 and 1970 was three times the town’s total population in 1950.

But contrary to population complaints, Huntington essentially reached its present population levels forty years ago.  But you would hard pressed to find many who do not think Huntington is more crowded today than it was in 1970.  The net population growth from 1970 to 2010 was only 3,778, or less than 2%.

Of course, the difference is that the average household size has fallen.  There are more homes today than there were forty years ago.  But now there are fewer persons in each of those homes.  In 1967, the average number of people per household in Suffolk County was 3.74.  Today it is 2.93.

So yes, it feels more crowded, but it really isn’t.

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The Huntington Town House catering hall, which was demolished the week of July 4, 2011, originated as roadside restaurant in 1937 and over the years grew to one of the largest catering facilities in the country.

The story of the Town House begins with Leo Gerard.  Leo’s father, William B. Gerard, operated three luxury hotels in Cold Spring Harbor in the late nineteenth century.  Leo continued the family’s success in the hospitality industry.

Leo was born in 1892 and served in the army during World War I.  In 1922 he married and began his own career in the restaurant business with the Gerard Inn on Park Avenue in Huntington.  In 1927 he was named steward of the Huntington Yacht Club, where among other things he was in charge of the dining room.  Starting in 1930, he would spend his winters operating the Hunter Arms Hotel in St. Cloud, Florida.

In 1932, he leased a restaurant overlooking the water in Cold Spring Harbor under the name The Oyster Bar.  It was later also known as Ye Olde Tavern Inn, but mostly was referred to as Leo Gerard’s.  In 1933, he also resumed his duties as steward at the yacht club.  Two years later he expanded his Cold Spring Harbor restaurant, but he still had to turn patrons away.

That same year, Alfred Bruns, the founder of the Liberty Can and Sign Co. of Brooklyn died.  Bruns had a large house on a wooded five acre estate on the south side of Jericho Turnpike, just east of the Huntington-Amityville Road (Route 110).  The house boasted an immense dining room that could seat over 100 people, as well as a large number of bedrooms.  Gerard purchased the estate in March 1937 and began making plans to relocate his restaurant to this larger building.

Leo Gerard’s new restaurant opened just three months later.  The Long-Islander predicted that “in view of Leo Gerard’s fine reputation, business in his new place will no doubt grow very fast.”  That prediction turned out to be correct.  Within a year, two additions were built and a third was being constructed.

In 1957, Gerard, now 65 years old, sold the restaurant to Thomas Manno, a New York caterer.  Manno converted the restaurant to strictly a catering facility for private parties—one of the first such establishments on Long Island—and named it the Huntington Town House.  Manno planned to refurbish the building (including the installation of air conditioning) and re-landscape the grounds.  By the end of the year, the Town House was advertising the picturesque country club atmosphere as the perfect place for wedding receptions.  Manno attracted clients from Brooklyn in the west to Riverhead in the east and hoped to cash in on the surge in weddings by war babies.

The Town House featured three ballrooms, each with its own kitchen and bandstand.  Dressing rooms for bides were located on the second floor and there was no bar, which reportedly pleased church groups looking to hold events there.  Within a couple of years, the Town House was hosting between 12 to 22 banquets a week and was being expanded with the addition of two new rooms that would increase the seating capacity from 900 to 1500 persons.   By 1972, the Town House had expanded to 11 rooms; and by 2000 it boasted 100,000 square feet of banquet space, 48,000 square feet for offices, kitchens and other support functions and parking for 2000 cars on a 20 acre site.

Rhona Silver purchased the Town House in 1997 from Thomas Manno’s estate for $7.6 million.  Silver hoped to transform the catering facility into a conference center with a 244 room hotel and 58,000 square feet of space dedicated to conferences.  Those plans were never realized.  Instead, in 2007 Silver sold the property to Lowe’s Corporation, which is in the process of constructing one of its home improvement stores on the site.

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Only a hand full of buildings survived the Urban renewal initiative that devasted Huntington Station in the 1960s and 70s.  Now with the demise of the former auto repair shop at 1000 New York Avenue, there is one less.  Right next door to the now gone auto repair shop stands a surviror with a long standing conection to Huntington’s African American community.

The story begins in 1906 when Louis M. Brush filed a subdivision map for a large tract of land on the east side of New York Avenue, south of Olive Street.  The subdivision of 337 lots was known as Highland Park.  The subject property, 1006 New York Avenue, comprises lots 31 and 32 of the subdivision.

On August 23, 1909, Brush conveyed the property to Charles W. Fox (Liber 708, page 563).  Less than two weeks later, Fox conveyed the property to Emma Paulding pending payment of a $2,000 loan due in three years at an interest rate of 6%. (Mortgage Liber 346, page 124).  Under the terms of the transaction, Fox was obligated to insure the buildings on the property, indicating that buildings existing in 1909.  Although the 1909 atlas does not show any buildings, an item in The Long-Islander edition of October 2, 1908 indicates that Mr. & Mrs. Jurgensmaier had broken ground on a new residence in Highland Park.  The 1917 atlas identifies the owner of the property to the south of the subject property as Jurgensmaier.  The reference in the mortgage and the development of the adjoining property point to a construction date of about 1909 for the subject premises.

Over the next decade, the property changed hands several time among the children of builder George W. Fox[1].  Charles Fox sold the property to Elizabeth B. Gardiner (The Long-Islander, February 25, 1910, page 5).  She then sold the property to Oscar W. Fox (The Long-Islander, March 24, 1911, page 5), who then transferred it back to her (The Long-Islander, October 18, 1912, page 5).  Finally, she transferred it back to Oscar W. Fox one last time (The Long-Islander, March 17, 1916, page 4).  Interestingly, these transfers were all reported in The Long-Islander, but not found in the County Clerk’s records during a title search.

The property left the family in 1917 when Oscar sold the property to Cecelia Kehoe.  (The Long-Islander, January 26, 1917, page 4).  Apparently, George Fox had given the purchasers a loan to purchase the property and they defaulted on it because notice of foreclosure and sale of the property was printed in The Long-Islander on December 7, 1917, page 9.  However, it appears that the original mortgage from Emma Paulding had never been satisfied.  An action between Emma Paulding and members of the Fox family resulted in a judgment for Paulding in the amount of $2,532.36 on October 11, 1918 and the transfer of ownership of the property to George Fox (Liber 965, page 477).

George Fox then sold the property to Charles H. Ballton on April 19, 1920 (Liber 997, page 366).  The deed refers to a $2,000 mortgage, but the earlier mortgage had been discharged and no record of a mortgage given by Charles Ballton was found in the County Court records.  Charles H. Ballton was the son of the famous Greenlawn entrepreneur and farmer Samuel Ballton, known as the Pickle King.  Charles Ballton owned a moving and trucking company and also engaged in the sale of sand and gravel and refuse removal.  (Advertisement in The Long-Islander, September 11, 1925, page 17).

Less than two years later Ballton conveyed the property to the Crispus Attucks Lodge No. 9055 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows (John H. Plummer, George Allen and Charles H. Ballton, trustees) for $3,200 (Liber 1033, page 595).  The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows was a fraternal organization first chartered in this country in 1843 when a lodge in Philadelphia was established with a charter from the Grand Lodge in Manchester, England.  In this country, African American Odd Fellow lodges were generally associated with the Grand United O rder, whereas white lodges were affiliated with the Independent Order.  The Huntington lodge was established in 1913 with 30 members (The Long-Islander, August 22, 1913, page 4).  It was named for the African American who was one of the five people killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770.

According to Richard Robertson, the nephew of Charles Ballton, the building was known as Odd Fellows Hall.  The Odd Fellows met upstairs (the Elks Club met there as well).  Downstairs was an apartment in which Mr. Robertson’s aunt Maude Smith lived.  Maude Smith was the granddaughter of Benjamin Ballton, who was Charles Ballton’s brother.

According to Mr. Robertson, the Odd Fellows was made up of brick masons from the south.  The only young members were a man named Shakespeare and George and Willy King, who owned the biggest black construction company in Huntington.

Maude Smith moved out of the building in the mid-1930s.  After she moved out, two of Benjamin Ballton’s sisters operated a restaurant there, serving what would now be called soul food.  Mr. Robertson said that after the end of the World War II the Odd Fellows started meeting at Rosetta Hall on Church Street, which was behind the firehouse and also owned by Charles Ballton.  Mr. Robertson thought the upstairs of the subject property remained vacant for a long time after the Odd Fellows moved to Rosetta Hall.  This recollection coincides with the sale of the property by the Odd Fellows in January 1945 to Max and Clara Herman for $3,875.  (Liber 2419, page 139).

Max Herman was a kosher butcher, who had a shop two doors down from the subject property.  He was in town by 1924 when he advertised in The Long-Islander (May 23, 1924, page 4) (“If you have chickens for sale, communicate with Max Herman, Butcher”).  According to Adele Kalstein, whose parents operated a grocery store in the same building as Herman’s butcher shop, Herman was an exclusively kosher butcher and attracted customers from a wide area.  Next door to the north was the butcher shop of Samuel Levy, who arrived in town as early as 1917 (The Long-Islander, January 12, 1917, page 6 and April 6, 1917, page 6).  However, Levy sold both kosher and non-kosher meats and, therefore, did not attract as many kosher customers.

Herman apparently owned the subject property as an investment.  It is believed that the storefront has been used as a barbershop since the 1940s.  Mr. Herman died on February 7, 1965 (The New York Times, February 10, 1965, Obituary section).  Later that year, Sam Raskin, as executor of Herman’s estate, sold the property to Brun-Wal Corp. of 780 New York Avenue (Liber 5764, page 1574).  The corporation conveyed the property to James F. Straub in 1970 (Liber 6860, page 301).  The current owner, Rehab Investors, acquired the property in 1979 (Liber 8670, page 7).

ADDENDUM:  Odd Fellows Hall was demolished in the Fall of 2018 as part of Renaissance Downtowns’ Gateway Plaza Project.  See http://renaissancedowntowns.com/projects/huntington-station/

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A typical Long Island three quarter house sits behind two early 1960s high ranches on the east side of West Neck Road about a quarter of a mile north of Huntington village.  The house provides a glimpse into the humble nineteenth century background of one of the leading Long-Islanders of the twentieth century.

Although no early deeds have been located, Joseph Warren Conklin and his wife Rebecca appear to be the original owners of the house.  When one of their daughters died in 1901, her obituary noted that she had lived in the house since her birth in 1850[1].  Her parents married in 1835 and their first child was born in 1836.[2] It is likely the house was built at about the time they married and started a family.

A construction date in the 1830s or 40s is consistent with the physical evidence.  All of the details of the house point directly to the Greek Revival Style in the second quarter of the 19th Century, including: a braced, pegged frame of sawn spruce, no ridge pole, a brick/stone foundation, side hallway, front entrance entablature with glazed sidelights, frieze (“lay on your belly”) windows over 6/6 windows, porch with square columns, a small rectangular chimney set crosswise to the roof ridge and a debased fireplace mantle.

The rear kitchen service wing is unusual for Long Island, where the service wing was usually placed on the side hallway end of the house during the Federal/Greek Revival Period (1790-1850).

Of the Conklin’s eight children, two died in childhood.  The only deed found in the Suffolk County Clerk’s records under Joseph Warren Conklin’s name is for a 14½ acre triangular parcel on the west side of West Neck Road, which he acquired in 1841.[3] Warren Conklin was a farmer, who in addition to his home lot and the parcel on the west side of the road, also owned 10 acres on the east side of Oakwood Road and 20 acres on the east side of Woodbury Road about three quarters of a mile south of Main Street.

Unfortunately, Warren Conklin died in 1854[4] at the age of 45 leaving behind seven children ranging from 1 to 18 years of age.  A mortgage he had taken out in 1841 and secured by the property on the west side of West Neck Road was foreclosed the following year.[5] His widow advertised the lots on Oakwood and Woodbury Roads for sale at auction a year after his death.[6]

It must have been difficult for his widow to raise seven children on her own—one died three years after Warren at age 10 and another died in 1866 at age 22.  Rebecca Conklin borrowed $700 from George Carll of Dix Hills in 1866 at 7% interest secured by the nine-acre homestead.  The following year the mortgage was released in part to allow for the development of houses along what is now known as Mechanics Street.[7] The Long-Islander noted the new development:  “We learn that several of our mechanics have made arrangements to purchase lots on a new street to be opened near the residence of Mrs. Rebecca Conklin on the North Bowery.  The locality to be known as Mechanicsville.”[8] The entire mortgage was cancelled later that year.[9]

In 1871, Rebecca Conklin again mortgaged her homestead, this time giving a mortgage to Mary P. Baldwin to secure a $500 loan for a three-year term at 7% interest.  Rebecca Conklin, who had been a founding member of the Central Presbyterian Church, died in 1880.  At the time of her death, her only personal property was a cow, which was sold for $40 to cover her funeral expenses.  She left debts of $613.56 for doctor’s bills, notes and merchandise from various local stores.[10] Her family sold at auction three building lots from the homestead property as well as five acres of woodland on the ridge between New York Avenue and Oakwood Road south of the village, which may be what was left of the ten acre plot Warren Conklin left.  The sale of these properties yielded $890.  It appears that the 1871 loan from Mary Baldwin—which was secured by a mortgage on the homestead—was still not paid off at the time Rebecca Conklin died.  The property was purchased at auction by Mary, Henrietta and Juliette Conklin for $697.28 a year after their mother died.[11]

The three sisters continued to live in the house for the rest of their lives.  Henrietta, who was sickly her entire life, died in 1901.  Apparently, money was still an issue for the family.  Henrietta’s two sisters placed a notice in The Long-Islander thanking “the many kind friends who so generously assisted in defraying the expenses attending the funeral of our sister.”[12]

As early as 1880, Mary advertised her services as a dressmaker.[13] Juliette also engaged in dressmaking and millinery.  To accommodate their business the room in the northeast corner of the house was enlarged.  They also continued to sell building lots along Mechanic Street.  In 1905, the remaining  property was surveyed and divided into 10 lots including the lot with the family home.

Juliette died in 1914 and Mary died in 1916.  The lot with the house, now about an acre and a half, was sold in 1920 to Paul Williamson.[14] The property had a series of owners until the current owners purchased it in 1979.  In 1961, two lots were created from the front yard of the property; thereby obscuring it from view.

One of the leading figures of twentieth century Long Island—if not the nation—traced his family tree to these humble beginnings.    Rebecca and Warren’s son Alonzo had five children, one of whom was Grace Ethel Conklin.  Grace married George Tyson Grumman.  George and Grace Grumman’s son LeRoy graduated from Huntington High School in 1911, served in World War I and after the war established the aerospace company that bore his family’s name.  The Grumman name became synonymous on Long Island with fighter jets and space exploration.

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In October 1870, Evelyn Ketcham wrote a letter to her brother George to invite him to her upcoming marriage to Sydney Buffett.  Sydney was from an old Huntington family, but had moved to Nebraska a year earlier to seek his fortune.  Their great, great grandson would eventually become the world’s richest man, but that’s another story.  What’s intriguing is Evelyn’s postscript:  “They have changed the name of Dix Hills.  The name is Elwood now.”

The name Dix Hills—originally Dick’s Hills, named for Dick Pechegan—was given to the area on both sides of Jericho Turnpike.  The area north of the Turnpike was known as North or Upper Dix Hills.  On June 7, 1870, a post office was established in North Dix Hills under the name Elwood (the office was discontinued on October 31, 1902).  A notice in the February 10, 1871 edition of The Long-Islander advised that the Postmaster General had ordered the Dix Hills Post Office discontinued and all letters and papers transferred to the Elwood Post Office.

Where the name came from is a mystery.  Anna Singer, writing in The Long-Islander¸ speculated that the name was derived from Elkanah Wood, whose family owned a good deal of land in the area (The Long-Islander, May 23, 1974).  The name Wood cannot be found in the Elwood area on the 1873 atlas and, although there was indeed an Elkanah Wood, he wasn’t born until 1871, a year after the post office was established.

Around the same time that “they” were changing the name of North Dix Hills, the residents of the area we know as East Northport were debating what to call their hamlet.  Unlike the situation in Elwood, the residents were not subject to the dictates of the Postmaster General because they did not yet have their own post office.  Instead the residents of what was then known as Claypitts—for the plentiful deposits of clay to be found there—met in the local schoolhouse to discuss changing their hamlet’s name.  Fourteen names were suggested, but the top contenders were Delmont and Fairview.  The vote was reported in The Long-Islander on January 27, 1870 in verse:

The name “Clay Pitts” we bid adieu

For we have elected the name “Fairview;”

And that by a large majority, too,

Over the names some had in view!

But apparently not all were happy with the new name.  A group of residents put forward the name Genola, which was considered by some to be the efforts of a minority to impose its will on the majority who had openly and fairly voted for Fairview.  That name lives on in the place where the community buries its dead—Genola Rural Cemtery.

Residents’ wishes would soon be subjected to outside influences.  This time, it would be the arrival of the Long Island Rail Road.  The Rail Road terminated at Northport in 1867.  But plans were soon formulated to extend the line to Port Jefferson.  It was decided to follow an easterly route from the Greenlawn station, rather than extend the line from Northport.  When the line opened in 1872, trains stopped at a new station south and slightly east of the Northport station.  Although the station is officially known as the Northport station, the area around it became known, at least unofficially, as East Northport (probably because the more geographically accurate South Northport would be too silly a name).

The post office, however, decided on still another name.  In 1896, it opened the Larkfield Post Office.  The name Larkfield was apparently in honor of the meadowlarks that could be found on the open fields of the area.  According to East Northport, An Incomplete History, in 1909, residents circulated a petition to change the name of the post office to East Northport.  And thus the name became official.

But still there was dissention. In 1952, the East Northport Board of Trade announced an effort to revert to the name Larkfield.  The Board of Trade claimed that mail destined for East Northport often found its way to Eastport or Northport.  Moreover, the growing community should have an identity independent from the village to the north.  The effort was renewed in the 1960s, but the geographically inaccurate name persists.

Another hamlet of Huntington has had the same name for centuries, but how it is spelled and pronounced has changed.  Once known as Whitman’s Hollow, the name Commack comes from the Indian name “winnecomac” meaning “pleasant land.”  Originally the name was spelled Comac and the historic pronunciation rhymes with the word “comic.”  Now most residents pronounce the name Co-mack, with the emphasis on the first syllable.

The change in pronunciation has been attributed by some to the rapid growth of the area in the 1950s and city radio announcers’ unfamiliarity with the traditional pronunciation.  However, the earlier spelling of Comac seems to support the “modern” or outsider’s pronunciation.  Whereas the modern spelling Commack should be pronounced Com-mack with the emphasis on the second syllable—not exactly the same as “comic,” but closer than Co-mac.

But the change of spelling occurred much earlier than the suburb boom of the mid-twentieth century.  In fact, the Commack spelling appears in the Brooklyn Eagle as early as 1868.  In The Long-Islander, Commack appears as early as 1891; and the last time Comac appears is 1894.  Therefore, locally it would seem the change in spelling was made in the 1890s.  And it would seem reasonable to assume that the “modern” pronunciation was being used as early as the 1890s—if not earlier.

It is unclear why the modern pronunciation seems to follow the old spelling of the name and why the change in spelling did not reinforce the traditional pronunciation.

These are but three examples in the Town of Huntington of the sometimes fleeting nature of place names.  We tend to think that places are given names and that those names stick.  But ask the residents of Fairground, Oldfields, Cow Harbor, Horse Neck, Fresh Ponds, and Sweet Hollow about the permanence of place names.

But a community by any other name . . .

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When she died in 1932, Mary Campbell Stuart Symonds became one of the last people to be buried at Huntington’s Old Burying Ground at Main Street and Nassau Road.  She and several generations of her family are buried at the top of the hill where the British built Fort Golgotha in the waning days of the American Revolution.  From this high point, visitors to the family plot could enjoy vistas across the countryside to the waters of Huntington Harbor and Long Island Sound and all the farms that surrounded Huntington village.  And there across the street from the graveyard was the family homestead, an oasis of gardens, greenhouses, ponds, and fresh water springs surrounding the family’s home.  Only now that bucolic view of home has been lost to the steady march of progress that has created the downtown Huntington we know today.

Even during her lifetime, Mrs. Symonds saw her family’s homestead replaced by storefronts, houses, the Opera House, Huntington’s first artificial ice factory, the Fire Department, Huntington’s first Town Hall and the Trade School.

Symonds was buried in the family plot along with her parents, her aunts (who died as young children), and her grandparents.  Her grandfather Zophar Oakley was a successful and well-respected merchant in town.  He was involved with many local ventures; he served as president of the Huntington Mutual Fire Insurance Co., he was stockholder of the Cold Spring Whaling Company, and chair of the Whig party in Huntington.  He was so well regarded that many of his neighbors appointed him as executor of their wills, including Congressman and Long Island’s first historian Silas Wood.  Shortly before he died, when Huntington established a new Union Free school, some expressed concern that the town’s poorer residents would not be able to pay their school taxes, Oakley contributed $1,000 to help pay those taxes for them.

Zophar Oakley was from West Hills.  As a young man he purchased land on the northwest corner of Main Street and Wall Street (where Starbuck’s is today) and opened a general store.  In 1828, he purchased from the estate of Timothy Williams 12 acres on the north side of Main Street stretching east from Wall Street.  Williams father Nathaniel operated an inn on the property.  The inn stood on the north side of Main Street where New York Avenue now is.  Timothy continued the inn and also operated a store and for a time the post office from the same building.  Oakley continued to operate the Williams store, which was a true general store offering a wide variety of merchandise—“almost every article called for in the country.”

Oakley built a house northeast of the store in 1845.  The property included a spring fed pond, greenhouses, gardens and orchards.  It was considered one of the garden spots of town.  At the southwest corner of his property—along Main Street near Wall Street, Oakley rented stores to other merchants such as Isaac Adams who had a tinsmith shop and Fayette Gould who had a jewelry store.  By the 1850s, this row of stores was known as the Empire Block.

It is unknown how Zophar’s daughter Catherine of Huntington came to meet and then marry Carlos D. Stuart, a poet and newspaper editor in New York City.  Stuart had grown up in Vermont and upstate New York in the mountains near Lake Champlain and Lake George.  As a teenager, he went to Fort Ann where he found work as a bookkeeper and salesman in a local store.  When he was twenty, he left for New York City where in addition to his working as a salesman, he wrote and published poetry.  He then traveled the world sending accounts of his travels back to the New York Tribune.  He eventually returned to New York and became editor of the New York Sun from 1840 to 1850.  He was considered second only to Horace Greeley among the editors of the numerous daily newspapers in mid-nineteenth century New York.  In 1843, he published Ianthe and Other Poems. His poems also appeared in newspapers across the country.

He married Catherine Oakley on May 22, 1850.  Just a few months later, The Long-Islander announced that Stuart would be establishing a new newspaper in New York to be known as The New Yorker.  While this paper does not appear to have taken off, it did attract the attention of another poet who wrote to Stuart asking for a job:

I take the liberty of writing to ask whether you have any sort of opening in your new enterprise for services I could render—I am out of regular employment and fond of the press—and, if you would be disposed to “try it on” I should like to have an interview with you for the purpose of seeing whether we could agree to something—My ideas of salary are very moderate.

The letter was signed “Walter Whitman” and is now in the archives of the Huntington Historical Society.

Stuart retired from the newspaper business because of tuberculosis in 1856 Later that year, he and a partner, William A. Conant, took over Oakley’s store and purchased the two acres in the southwest corner of his property—the land along Wall Street and Main Street—for $8,000.  The entire purchase price was covered by a mortgage held by Oakley.

The partners placed a notice in The Long-Islander in September 1856 (a month before the deed was actually signed):

The Undersigned (under the style of Conant & Stuart,) having purchased the mercantile establishment of Z.B. Oakley, and replenished the stock of the same, will endeavor to deserve the favor of the public, and maintain the reputation of the “old Stand.”  Their stock embraces a general assortment of Dry Goods, Groceries, Crockery, Hardware, Iron, Agricultural Implements, Carpenter’s Tools, Paints, Oils, Varnish, Dye Stuffs, Glass, Drugs and Medicines, Leather, Boots and Shoes, Carpeting, Oil Cloth, &c., &c.  Wood, and all marketable produce taken at current prices.

Less than two years after the sale, Zophar Oakley died.  Stuart then gave up his partnership with Conant and transferred his interest in the property to Conant, subject to the $8,000 mortgage.  A year later, Conant, who would later represent Huntington in the State Assembly, sold the property to William Miles of New York City for $10,500 and subject to the $8,000 mortgage.  Miles would sell the property to Timothy Baylis in 1865, but more about that later.

Stuart was active in the civic affairs of Huntington, especially the cause of free public education.  Perhaps it was Stuart’s influence that led to his father-in-law’s $1,000 gift.  But he died in 1862 at the age of 40.

In May 1884, Carlos Stuart’s daughter, Mary Campbell married Joseph White Symonds, who had been appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court of Maine in 1878 and served for six year. How they met is another mystery, but it appears that, initially at least, they settled in Huntington because their only son—Stuart Oakley Symonds—was born in August 1885 in Huntington.  According to a biographical sketch, the family moved to Maine while the boy was a very young child and Joseph Symonds resumed his private law practice there.

By 1900, the Symonds had divorced and Mary moved in with her mother in Huntington.   By then the old homestead would have been unrecognizable.  What had once been an outpost west of the Town Spot was becoming Huntington’s down town business district.

The old store, owned by William Miles of New York City, was operated by Baylis & Wells starting in 1862.  In 1865, Timothy Baylis purchased the property apparently for his son Hiram Vail Baylis, one of the partners operating the store.  Hiram gave up the store because of ill health and went into farming.  But he held onto the property and rented the store out.  Unfortunately, the store burnt to the ground and Baylis did not have enough insurance.  The land was sold off lot by lot, but Baylis kept the eastern most lot and built a house there.

The old homestead—and the village—underwent a tremendous change in the years after the Civil War.  In 1869, William Conant, at one time Carlos Stuart’s partner in the general store, was now a member of the New York State Assembly.  He introduced a controversial bill to extend New York Avenue north from Main Street to the east side of Huntington Harbor.  The legislation was controversial because of the route and because of the expense.  In fact, the extra taxes borne by the entire town (which at that time extended all the way to the south shore) for a road that would benefit only those in the village area led to the formation of the Town of Babylon just three years later.  Huntington’s south shore residents were upset that town meetings were always held in the northern part of town.  The added tax burden that they had to bear for a road they would likely never use was the impetus to finally form their own town on the south shore.

Concern was raised about laying out the road directly across from the existing road, which would put it through Hiram Baylis land and require the demolition of his barn.  An alternate route between the Baylis property and the Stuart property was proposed, but then the road would not line up with the existing road.  The more direct route was chosen—the new road was to begin in line with South Street, proceed north “to a point opposite the north side of the barn of Hiram Baylis” then run northeast in a straight line to the harbor—that is why today New York Avenue curves at the Canterbury Ales restaurant.

Hiram Baylis house was spared, but was now separated from the rest of the Empire Block.  Baylis sold the house in 1888 to Philip Pearsall who converted it into two stores after he extended the front wall on the east and west of the building to create a flat façade.  The house still stands today on the northeast corner of Main Street and New York Avenue.  The first floor was home for many years to The Bombay Company store, it is now the site of Ricky’s.  The second floor has been occupied for many years by Hirschfield Insurance.

Besides necessitating the demolition of the Baylis barn, the road bisected the Stuart property.  But that was minor compared to the changes that would come twenty years later.

In 1891, Catherine Stuart sold the family homestead for $20,000 to a syndicate of 22 prominent Huntingtonians under the name Huntington Real Estate Association.  Fifteen thousand dollars had been raised from the investors and a mortgage was given for the balance.  The lot with the house was sold for $7,000, while the 30 foot lot next to Hiram Baylis’ old house on Main Street sold for $3,000.  Within a year, the entire property had been resold for a total of $35,228.25—a 93% profit on the original $15,000 investment in one year!  Several of the lots were purchased by members of the syndicate in their individual capacities.

The subdivision included the creation of three new roads: Stewart Avenue (a misspelling of the former owner’s name), First Street (now Gerard Street) and Second Street (one block north of Gerard street; it no longer exists).  Dr. Oliver Jones, who was one of the members of the syndicate, purchased many of the lots on the east side of the property.  He proposed extending the new Stewart Avenue across Main Street to Myrtle Place.  His obituary in The Long-Islander noted that Dr. Jones’ “well-known hobby was the opening of new roads.”  The doctor claimed that the new road would improve traffic flow between the village and the train depot.  But this extension, which would have come within a few feet of the new library building, met stiff opposition and was never built.

In 1910, Dr. Jones had the old Oakley-Stuart house divided into three parts and moved; the main 2½-story section to Stewart Avenue and the two 1½-story side wings to First Street.  They were to be used as dwellings.  The plan may not have worked out the way Dr. Jones hoped:  by 1914, the two sections on First Street were identified on the Sanborn Insurance Map as “vacant wrecks.”

One of the first lots sold was a landlocked one that was sold to the Huntington Hall Association.  The lot in the middle of the block included a narrow walkway to Main Street.  In the year following the sale, the Hall Association erected a large opera house, which quickly became the center of Huntington’s social and entertainment functions.  The wood frame structure hosted regular plays, lectures, entertainments and even poultry shows.  The noted African American leader Booker T. Washington spoke to a large and admiring crowd in the Opera House in 1901, just two days after his groundbreaking—and controversial—dinner with Theodore Roosevelt in the White House.  Unfortunately, the building stood for only 18 years.  A mysterious fire at about 1:00 a.m. on March 15, 1910 quickly destroyed the building, but thanks to the diligence of the local fire departments, did not harm any other the adjoining buildings.

Despite the calls for a replacement venue, the Huntington Hall Association sold the land and the corporation was dissolved in 1911.  That same year, the voters of the Huntington Fire District approved the purchase of land on Main Street just east of where the opera house had been.  The new brick firehouse was dedicated on September 10, 1912 and housed the first mechanized fire fighting equipment, which had been purchased in 1910 to replace the old horse drawn—or more often, human drawn—apparatus.  The firehouse served the district until 1958, when the current firehouse was built on Leverich Pace.  The 1911 building is now a furniture store.

The construction of the firehouse rounded out Huntington’s civic core on or across the street from Zophar Oakley’s homestead.  As the homestead was being subdivided, the town’s first library building was erected across the street in front of the Old Burying Ground.  The Trade School building was constructed at the eastern end of the homestead in 1905 and Town Hall was built in 1910.

The Trade School dates back to 1881 when two women began to teach girls how to sew in the basement of St. John’s Church on Park Avenue.  The following year Emma Paulding, daughter of Admiral Hiram Paulding, took over the school and eventually expanded it to include boys as well as girls and to teach manual arts, such as chair caning and carpentry, as well as sewing.  As enrollment grew (by 1903 over 150 students were attending classes), classes were held in various locations in the village but it became clear that the school’s popularity required a permanent home.  In 1904, the school was formally organized as “The Huntington Sewing and Trades School.”  The next year, Cornelia Prime, a local philanthropist, purchased a lot at the southeastern corner of the Stuart homestead to erect a permanent home for the Trade School.  The architect’s had designed the town library across the street 14 years earlier.  The school was taken over by the Huntington school district in 1937.  The district eventually sold the building to the Town, which in turn sold it to the Huntington Historical Society, which uses the building to store it archives collection and for its administrative offices.

Symbolically, perhaps the most important building to be constructed on the old Stuart homestead was Huntington’s first Town Hall.  For its first two and a half centuries, Huntington’s town government met in local inns to conduct business.  Eventually space was rented for the Town Clerk to keep all of his files.  But no permanent seat of government existed until the beginning of the twentieth century.  As Huntington grew, there clearly was a need for a place where all of the Town’s official business could be done, with a substantial jail on the first floor, and a courtroom on the second floor.  Dr. Oliver L. Jones offered the town free of cost a site just west of the Trade School, across from the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building, on the corner of Main Street and Stewart Avenue, and although there were other sites in consideration, this location was chosen.  Peabody & Wilson were chosen as the architects and Wanser & Lewis was awarded the contract for the erection of the new building, with a winning bid of $15,966.93.  The design called for all exposed work on the building face to be brick, and all stone work on the outside to be light marble.  All exterior woodwork would be cypress, and all interior work would be oak.  Miss Cornelia Prime, who donated the land for the Trade School building, donated the clock which sits atop the cupola built for this purpose.  Although it boasts an impressive façade, the building is rather small.  Less than 25 years after it was built, an article from The Long-Islander of June 17, 1932 reported a proposal to build a new Town Hall to help alleviate the unemployment situation in the Town, and as a result of complaints of overcrowding.  This issue was revisited in 1958, and in 1979 Town Hall finally moved into larger quarters, the old high school building—built coincidentally at the same time as Old Town Hall.

The wood frame building to the east of Old Town Hall, which once served as the headquarters for the Huntington Police Department and is known as the annex, actually pre-dates Town Hall.  It was built in 1894 as a bowling alley and ice cream parlor.  The bowling alley, which extended to the northeast, was vacant by 1914 and later demolished.

Dr. Jones’ bowling alley would have faced some competition from the lanes in the new Knights of Columbus building built in 1915 on Stewart Avenue across from Town Hall.  Those alleys were “said to be the best in this section of Long Island,” reported The Long-Islander when they were opened.  The local Knights of Columbus council, the first in Suffolk County, was organized in 1899 with 40 members.  When St. Patrick’s school was started in 1922, the first classes were held in the Knights of Columbus building.  Unfortunately, the building was destroyed by fire in March 1930.  The Knights apparently did not have the funds to rebuild and the burnt out hulk became a public safety concern.  In 1935, however, the building was renovated and completely changed to make it the Stewart Arms, which quickly became a social gathering place for many Huntington organizations.  Eventually, the Town took over the building for its growing staff.  Today the building houses a gym and offices.  The bowling alleys remained until just a few years ago.

Just up Stewart Avenue, the Consolidated Ice Company took advantage of the fresh water spring on the property.  The spring created a pool of clear, cold water, which supplied a steady year-round stream of water flowing north where it merged with other streams on the way to the harbor.  The company, also sometimes referred to as the Huntington Ice Company, was organized by Hewitt G. Sammis in 1902.  Huntington’s first artificial ice plant took advantage of the deep artesian well that produced water “as pure, sparkling and clear as Mother Nature can give.”  An assessment borne out by tests of the water and the ice produced from it.  The plant originally produced 12 tons of ice a day.  By 1906, the plant’s capacity was increased to 20 tons; five years later 40 tons; and by 1919 1,000 tons.  All this artificial ice—also called Hygeia ice after the Greek goddess of health, cleanliness and sanitation—supplemented the natural ice cut from local sources such as Prime’s Pond (now known as Heckscher Park Pond) and St. Join’s Lake in Cold Spring Harbor.  The natural ice was often 5 inches thick and sometimes even a foot thick.

In 1930, the company merged with several other ice companies to create the Long Island Ice Corporation.  In 1959, the local plant was acquired by the Losquadro Ice Group of Brooklyn.  Losquadro was acquired by Artic Glacier, Inc. of Canada in 2004.  The plant no longer produces ice and now serves as a distribution point.

Simon Hirschfeld, who built two houses on the old Stuart property, also took advantage of the natural spring there.  He marketed “Sparko-Crystal Water,” which he advertised as “pure, healthful [and] helpful.”  The water cost 50¢ a bottle delivered.

Of course, the stores along Main Street are the most familiar and oldest development of the old homestead.  Five buildings were erected east of the old Hiram Baylis house.  Now the site of upscale boutiques as well as a landmark diner, this row of stores over the years have also housed a meat market, drug store, barbershop, hardware store, grocery stores, and a harness shop that featured a large wooden horse that modeled horse blankets and netting used to keep flies off a horse’s back.

Hiram Baylis house had been converted to a grocery store operated by Henry Borchers, who owned a chain of 16 stores across the Island.  The headquarters were in Huntington and Borchers had a warehouse on Stewart Avenue.  In 1921, Borchers sold 15 of the stores to A.L. Beckmann & Co.

But the largest grocery business on the street was next to the fire department.  Sam Brumberg, who claimed to one of the pioneers of a new way of selling groceries known as the “supermarket,” in 1932 opened a store on New York Avenue in the building now occupied by Value Drugs.  Brumberg had opened a supermarket in Jamaica in 1919 and his chain of stores eventually grew to several stores throughout the Island.  He named the store “Stop ‘n’ Shop,” but was not affiliated with the current “Stop & Shop” chain that originated in Massachusetts in 1914.

This new concept was so successful that six year later, he moved to a larger store on Main Street next to the firehouse.  The new store boasted a modernistic orange and black sign with the name “Stop ‘n’ Shop” in raised letters.  The store’s name was also embedded in the new cement sidewalk in front of the store.  Until the recent installation of brick sidewalks, part of the store’s name remained in the sidewalk instructing children who reached that point to “hop.”  Parking was provided in the rear of the store on property leased from the estate of Dr. Jones.  Access to the parking lot was from First Street as well as a driveway from Main Street.

In 1952, Brumberg enlarged the store from 6,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet making it, he claimed, the largest supermarket on Long Island.  The store along with another in Huntington Station (now C-Town) was acquired by the Grand Union chain in 1959.  Within ten years, the store was empty.  Today the building has been integrated with the old firehouse and is home to Classic Galleries furniture store.

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By the time she died in 1932, Mary Campbell Stuart Symonds, who continued to live in the house on the corner of Main Street and Nassau Road, had seen the place where she grew up completely transformed from gardens surrounding the family home, to the center of Huntington’s business and civic life.  But she helped to preserve Huntington’s past by donating numerous items to the Huntington Historical Society.  She also set aside in her will $1,000 “for the care of my plot in the old cemetery at Huntington formerly belonging to Zophar B. Oakley.”  The money was to be used to keep the grass cut, “to keep the posts and chains surrounding the plot in good condition and to reset the headstones whenever they may get out of plumb and to do such other things as may be necessary in the premises.”

A visitor in 2007 would have found that none of the headstones in the plot was upright; many were broken.  But using the fund set aside 75 years earlier and held by the Trustees of the Old First Church, all the stones have now been repaired and reset, except for Zophar Oakley’s, which was too far gone to be repaired.

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Although now a busy commercial corridor surrounding by residential developments, in the early twentieth century the valley bounded by New York Avenue on the east and Old Walt Whitman Road on the west, south of Jericho Turnpike, retained its agricultural and rural character.  John T. Leiper, who was active in local politics, offered his horse farm for use as a camp for the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the most successful programs of the New Deal.  The CCC was designed to alleviate unemployment and at the same time improve the environment.

Leiper was born in Pennsylvania in 1867 and played professional baseball in Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Oregon.  After he retired from baseball in the 1890s, he came to Long Island and lived on the grounds of the Meadow Brook Club where he served as huntsman.  After he acquired the property in Huntington, he raised and trained horses and hounds that he used in hunts throughout the then open country in Dix Hills, West Hills and Half Hollow.  He also raised gamecocks.

In 1931 he was elected Justice of the Peace as a Democrat.  He was not re-elected in 1935 and was also unsuccessful in 1937.  He served as a commissioner of the South Huntington Water District from 1937 to 1954.

Perhaps due to his political connections, Leiper’s property was chosen as the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp.  He leased six acres of the property to the army from 1934 to 1938.  Considered one of the most successful New Deal projects, the CCC operated in a military style to undertake environmental improvement projects.  On Long Island, the CCC was concerned with Gypsy moth eradication.  The young men who worked at the camp ranged from their late teens to early twenties and were paid a dollar a day in addition to meals and lodging.  They were required to send $25 a month home to their families.

By the 1950s, the Leiper property was being subdivided.  Leiper held onto about an acre and a half until 1959 when he sold to Vito and Louis Porcelli of 2375 New York Avenue (Deed Liber 4684, page 561), who further subdivided the remaining tract.  Judge Leiper died in Pennsylvania in 1960 (The Long-Islander, August 1960).Judge Leiper’s house stood at 2234 New York Avenue until 2009 when it was demolished to make way for a new house.  The camp was located south of the house.

Of course, the history of the area pre-dates Judge Leiper and the CCC camp.

The earliest deed located for Judge Leiper’s property is dated May 2, 1851 (Suffolk County Clerk’s Office Deed Liber 64, page 249).  David Ketcham conveyed 100 acres to Jeffery Smith of Huntington for $2,500.  The property was bounded on the west by the road from the Turnpike towards the house of Oliver Baylis (i.e. Old South Path, now New York Avenue); on the south by Timothy Carll’s land; on the east partly by the highway from Long Swamp to Wolf Hill (i.e. Melville Road) and partly by land formerly belonging to John Carll, deceased; and on the north partly by land formerly belonging to John Carll and partly by land of Henry Hendrickson.

The deed conveyed the land together with the building thereon.  Smith borrowed money in 1854 and 1855 secured by mortgages on the property.  The 1854 loan was $1,400 from Whitman Bedell and David Baylis (Mortgage Liber 45, page 409).  The second loan was $600 from Joseph Theal of New York City (Mortgage Liber 47, page 359).  It is possible that Smith borrowed the money to build a new house on the property.  This would be consistent with the physical evidence—sawn spruce framing, rubble foundation topped with brick, pre-Victorian styling—which points to a construction date in the 1850s.   J. Smith appears as the owner of a structure in this area on the 1858 atlas.

Smith sold the property to John O’Neill of Brooklyn for $3,000 in 1861 (Deed Liber 115, page 229).  By this time Smith was identified as formerly of Huntington, now living in Stony Brook.  The sale was subject to the two mortgages Smith had given.

Apparently O’Neill defaulted on the mortgages and the property was sold at public auction on the steps of the Suffolk Hotel in March 1871.  The successful bid of $300 was made by Russell W. Adams of Brooklyn, to whom the $1,400 mortgage had been assigned (Mortgage Liber 121, page 368).

Just a year later Adams sold the property to William Peet of Manhattan for $8,250 (Liber 184, page 187).  Peet was also an assignee of Smith’s $1,400 mortgage (Mortgage Liber 121, page 344).  Although Adams sold the property in March 1872, he is identified as the owner on the 1873 atlas.

Some time in the decade following his purchase of the property Peet died and the property was sold by his executors to William P. Book and James S. Book, both of Jamestown, NY, in 1882 for $6,500 (Deed Liber 265, page 239).  The sale was subject to a $3,000 mortgage given in 1875 (Mortgage Liber 121, page 362) and a lease of the property to Joseph S. Baitter from June 1881 to March 1884.  Absentee ownership indicates that the property was held as an investment and leased to local farmers.  However, a later newspaper reference states that James Book occupied the farm when he owned it (The Long-Islander, December 6, 1907).

In 1894, William P. Book (still of Jamestown) and James S. Book (now of Huntington) conveyed the property to Ella J. Book of Huntington for $6,000 subject to two mortgages totaling $3,000 (Deed Liber 414, page 401).  A subsequent deed identifies Ella Book as the wife of James Book.  A year later Ella Book leased the property to D.O. Lang of Brooklyn for nine months beginning June 1, 1895 (Deed Liber 426, page 463).  In this transaction Ella Book is identified as living in Pennsylvania.  Lang agreed to pay $250 in rent and was given the option to purchase the property for $5,250–$3,000 cash accompanied by a $2,250 mortgage.  The lease refers to timberlands as well as ploughed fields.  Lang was permitted to cut timber for his own use as firewood or fencing.  He was also authorized to make alterations to box stalls 10 to 22, but had to restore them at the end of the lease.  Evidently, the property was now being used to raise animals—a subsequent deed identifies the property as the Suffolk County Stock Farm.

A year after the conveyance to Ella Book, she and her husband sold the property to Charles Cyril Hendrickson of Queens for $4,800 (Deed Liber 437, page 464).  A year later (April 8, 1896) Hendrickson gave a $5,000 mortgage to Henry Hyde of Hempstead for a loan due on April 28, 1898 (Mortgage Liber 237, page 380).  By this time the property was known as the Suffolk County Stock Farm (The Long-Islander, January 4, 1896).  Hendrickson, who was in the construction business (he had the contract for erecting the Cullum Memorial Building at West Point (The Long-Islander, February 29, 1896), worked to improve the property.  By the beginning of 1896, he had had the house, barns and stables painted and repaired.  He also began clearing out the woods and had plans to install a steam engine in the barns for pumping water and heating.  The farm featured a half-mile track for the 18 horses Hendrickson had on the farm—a number he intended to increase (The Long-Islander, January 4, 1896).  Apparently, Hendrickson defaulted on his loan and Hyde sued.  The property was put up for auction at the front door of the Huntington House and Hyde submitted the winning bid of $5,000 (Liber 471, page 539).  This deed identifies the property as the Suffolk County Stock Farm.

Soon thereafter, Hyde was declared incompetent and was living in Massachusetts.  In 1903, the property was sold by his agent Edmund Hyde to John T. Leiper of Hempstead for $5,000 subject to a $2,500 mortgage (Deed Liber 540, page 338).  The description of the property is similar to the description in the 1851 deed except that the names of the neighboring owners have been changed and the acreage is now given as 88 acres instead of 100.

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