Furniture

This table belonged to my grandmother, Eliza Halsey, born in 1803. It was given to my grandfather, Captain Harry Halsey, born also at Watermill in 1803. My grandmother’s maiden name was also Halsey. They were married January 21, 1828. Grandfather and his two brothers, Jesse and Edward (grandfather of Frank Burnett) and his sister Elizabeth (grandmother of Marian O’Connor) were taken to New York by their widowed mother where the two boys learned the mason’s trade. Eventually they built many of the houses in Greenwich Village, in one of which on Grove Street (house still standing) my father, Charles Henry, was born October 10, 1830.

Grandfather built many of the stores on what is now Canal Street, then a development in the northern suburbs. One of these stores, built for “an old Dutchman,” so pleased the owner that he took Grandfather into his new furniture shop and told him to pick out a piece of furniture for his wife. This table was his selection. Then the “Dutchman” told him to pick another piece, and that little stand with the two drawers that “Babbie” left to Abbie (Van Allen) was selected. Then the “Dutchman” said “that is not enough, take something big,” and he pointed to the big mahogany bureau that now belongs to Ibbie (Elizabeth White Adams) and said, “how would you like that?” Then the three pieces were delivered to the house on Grove street while the “Dutchman” took Grandfather into a tobacconist’s shop and told him to pick out some cigars. Grandfather took two of his favorite brand and said “Thank you.” The “Dutchman” said, “Hold your hat,” and he dumped the contents of the box into the hat.

My father, Charles Henry, told me this story years ago.

--Jesse Halsey

Memorials of the North End | Part One

49 No. Main Street | 1833-1940 | Southampton | Abigail Fithian Halsey

by Lizbeth Halsey White

Paper read before a meeting of Southampton Colony Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, on March 19, by Mrs. Edward (Lizbeth) P. White, 1929

In the earliest days of the village the triangle of land bounded by Main Street, Bowden Square and North Sea Road was common land, for some time after that on every side had been occupied.

Early in 1700 this was bought by Abner Howell, son of Col Josiah, who lived on he Bowden property. Abner Howell divided it between his two sons. To David he gave the south portion which included the plot where in the early 1840s Capt. Daniel Jagger built his home. This is now the home of Wm. L. Donnelly. To Phineas Howell was given the north portion of the Triangle. On the west half of his lot he built a tan-yard, which he afterwards sold to Ebenezer Jagger and removed from the village.

The Main Street part of the lot was purchased in 1788 by Annanias Halsey, whose son Urah lived across the street in the Wilman Halsey house and whose daughter, Susan, lived to very old age in the little house which stood on the front of the lot now owned by Abigail Halsey. This house and also the Nancy Sayre house is now in Tuckahoe.

On the Seven Ponds road to the Water Mill, on the edge of the Piggery Golf Links, is a very charming little old house which about the year 1800 stood beside the mill stream just opposite to the old Water Mill. Into it came a young bride Phebe Rogers and her husband Charles Fithian Halsey. They purchased a farm and he was miller in the windmill, (still standing) not far from their home. Three boys and three girls came to them and the father died. Desiring to give her boys a trade Phebe sold the farm and moved her family to New York City—then a three-days journey by stage-coach. She apprenticed the boys for four years to learn the mason’s trade. At that time (1820) New York City had begun its phenomenal growth, thought it was still a country village as compared with the city of today. Wall and Canal Streets were being built up, and Greenwich Village was a residential suburb.

There in Grove Street in 1827 the youthful masons built a home for their family use, and when Henry, the eldest son, returned to Water Mill for his bride, it was in the Grove Street house that they made their first home. But eastern Long Island beckoned and the family returned.

“Capt. Harry” Halsey in 1831 bought the plot on the triangle owned by Annanias Halsey and built his home thereon. The house in Grove Street is still standing and the wooden mantels and paneled and reeded casings of doors and windows were exactly copied in the little parlor of their home in the North End. In a room, now a part of the kitchen, “Miss Amanda” kept her Dame school and there are a few still with us who remember her as their first teacher. Opening out from the school room was a dark stairway where her pupils were banished by way of punishment. While she was having recitations they would pull off their shoes and steal to the kitchen chamber above and have no end of fun, as children do, when they can find an attic to play in.

“Miss Amanda” loved poetry and flowers and the perennials she planted still bloom in the little old garden. Some of her punishments, after she had tried them out on herself, she abandoned. A big pewter horn hung high in its place on the wall and nothing was allowed to break the routine of the little schoolroom except when a whale-rally was on at the beach and “Capt. Harry,” without ceremony, rushed in for the horn that he might do his part in passing the signal which meant “Whale off shore! All hands to the beach!”

Both of Capt. Harry’s brothers became whaling captains but he bought a farm and worked on at his mason’s trade. His title of “Captain” came to him as wrecking master. Before the Life-Saving Service was established (1876) and nearly all ships were sailing vessels, wrecks along the shore were not infrequent and the wrecking crews were a necessary and important organization.

For so many years when Sag Harbor was a prominent whaling port and her harbor was busy with ships it became the Mecca of every man, and especially of every boy, to go to the Harbor and see the ships.

Capt. Harry Halsey, when a boy of twelve years, had been permitted to pay a visit to his cousins living there. A ship came in bringing the news of the signing of the Peace between England and the United States, after the War of 1812-14. His first impulse was to carry home the good news as quickly as possible. So, in his boyish enthusiasm, he ran all the way to this home crying “Peace! Peace!” and this is the way the news was brought to Water Mill. The boy had been named for his great-uncle Henry Halsey who was Capt. of a Privateer during the Revolution and who lost his life in the Battle of Groton Heights. His name with other patriots who fell at that time is engraved on the monument there. He with his brother Jesse, after hearing the news of the Battle of Lexington, rowed across Long Island Sound in a row-boat and enlisted in the Continental Army. Jesse Halsey served throughout the war and won the rank of Captain.

In the April number of the Scribner’s magazine (1929) is an article written by Thomas Boyd entitled, “How Mad Was Anthony Wayne?” The article describes the evacuation of the City of Philadelphia by the British Forces and the Battle of Monmouth Court-house. The incident described on page 436 verifies a tradition cherished by the numerous descendants of Jesse Halsey, the Patriot, who at the time was near Gen. Washington and heard his reprimand of Gen. Charles Lee for his disobedience of orders and his cowardly retreat. He felt the reprimand, though severe, was just and well deserved.

He told also of the severe heat of that eventful day and said that more men die from the intense heat than from the guns. This favored the Americans for though many had frozen in their homespun garments during the previous severe winter at Valley Forge, on this hottest of July days the homespun-clad army had the advantage over the enemy. In their heavy and much-decorated cloth uniforms.

Capt. Jesse Halsey, brother of Capt. Harry, built the house which is now the home of Dr. David Hallock. The sister, Elizabeth, married Capt. William Fowler and settled just north of the Burying Ground. Her husband was a whaling Captain and he also spent several years in California during the gold-rush. Three of their sons went on whaling voyages and never returned. Dear Aunt Libbie Fowler! Who never heard the click of the gate without a throb! She had an overwhelming sympathy for others in time of need. In sorrow and in illness she became the neighborhood mother, and there are many who remember her for her kindly deeds.

To return to the Triangle, the southern half of which had been given to David Howell. It was he who about 1750 built the well-preserved old house which long since became the home of the Herricks. David Howell was a silversmith and just when he left Southampton we have no record. It is certain that his house was occupied by the British officers during the Revolution, and it is safe to assume that he was one of the many refugees to Conn. So many of the homes of the villagers changed ownership after the Revolution. This, in 1772, was purchased by Col. Josiah Smith of Moriches for his daughter, Hannah, who had married Elias Pelletreau. He was a merchant and the store which he built remained for many years attached to the house on the south. His wife, Hannah, was very deaf, caused by the effects of cold and exposure when endeavoring to relieve her father who for some time was imprisoned by the enemy in the Provost Prison in New York City.

She made very possible effort to relieve his distress, for imagination would fail to reveal the miseries of an enemy prison during those bitter years.

Courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center 

"An Old Southampton House in New York"

Friday, May 20, 1938 | Southampton Press

No. 90 Grove Street and No. 88 Grove Street, N.Y.C.

Among the many houses and gardens exhibited for the benefit of Greenwich House in New York last week was that of Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Phelps Stokes, 88 Grove Street. The house was built in 1827 by three Halsey Brothers of Water Mill, Henry, Jesse and Edward. Later Jesse and Edward went to sea and became captains. In 1833, Henry, with his wife and infant son, Charles Henry, moved to Southampton and built the house on North Main Street owned by Rev. Jesse Halsey. The brothers, when they retired from the sea, also built in Southampton, Capt. Jesse, the house now owned by Dr. D.H. Hallock and Capt. Edward the house on Hill Street owned by Mrs. George Burling.

In the older house in New York are details that are repeated in the Southampton houses. It was built at the time when Greenwich Village (The Green Village) was made a part of the City of New York. The streets are irregular here and depart from the rectangular plan of the city . . .  A.F.H. 

 Sheridan Square, N.Y.C., 88 Grove Street Center

[Abigail Fithian Halsey] 

Images courtesy Abigail Fithian Halsey Files | Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center 

Letter from Abigail Fithian Halsey re: 88 Grove Street

34 Post Crossing

Southampton, L.I.

December 17, 1936

My dear Mr. Stokes,

This is a letter I have intended to write a long time giving you some information about your house which was built by my grandfather Henry Halsey and his brothers Jesse and Edward in 1827.

Their father had died and their mother Phoebe, unable to give her boys a college education, although she owned much land here, took them to New York and apprenticed them to a master mason. They built 88 Grove Street for themselves, buying Lot No. 52 from Thomas R. Mercein at the time, I think when Greenwich Village was taken into the city. Henry brought his bride there, and his mother, brothers and two sisters lived on one floor, he and his wife on the other. My father, Charles Henry Halsey was born there in 1830. In ’33 the two younger brothers went to sea, became whaling captains, the others came home to Southampton where Henry built the house my brother, Rev. Jesse Halsey of Cincinnati, still owns.

It may interest you to know that the cornice in the old house in Southampton is the same as in yours. I know because one day long ago as I passed, I plucked up my courage and called to tell you all this. Neither you nor Mrs. Stokes were home, but your faithful Anna gave me a glimpse of the lovely interior of these old rooms.

It is in gratitude for your preservation of that which is beautiful and precious to us that I write at this Christmas season to wish you Joy in the old house.

Very sincerely,

Abigail Fithian Halsey

Wrecking Master

by Jesse Halsey

Deep ruts in the grass mark the effort of heavy wagons in avoiding the muddy highway. Cap’n Harry had laid out fence rails in front of his place. He took great pride in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. But, when the unpaved and almost ungraded highway became “sticky as a Mortar bed,” as he expressed it, why then he always relented and took up the rails. Then some adventurous farm boy would leave the muddy tracks and, while the old man fussed a good deal about it, he never did anything.

“Why don’t you keep your rails down one spring and keep folks off?” This was Squire Jim’s advice.

“How’d you feel if some fella’s horse got scratched and got lockjaw ‘cause he drove over my rails some dark night? I always manage to patch up the front and scratch in a little grass see and get things lookin’ ship-shape by Decoration Day. Someday we’l have a good road. There’s pebbles enough on Sebonac Beach to build a stone highway all the way from the railroad to the church! Then everybody would have a grass plot along front. Strange we can’t get that appropriation through the town meetin.’”

The half-formed leaves cast their sufficient shadow over the village street. Cap’n Harry, with wheelbarrow and rake and shovel, was filling in the ruts and scratching in the seed. The street had been plowed and crudely honed to an indefinite crown. Frost had been gone for two months but Cap’n Harry had been so busy with his spring planting that his “front” had been neglected. This was not unusual, however. He always calculated to have it repaired and seeded and the sidewalk neatly edgetd by Decoration Day.

“Mornin’, Cap’n,” called a boy from horseback as he bought his animal to a walk. “Looks like it was goin’ to rain.”

“Yes, reckon it will. Never seen it fail yet. Fine sunset Friday night, sure to rain before Monday mornin’! But the rain’ll do things good—getting’ a little dry. Rain’ll help the corn.”

As if to reinforce the old man’s statement of fact, a little trail of dust followed the heels of Jimmy’s horse down the street.

“Now, Sis, you run fetch that pail of red top settin’ inside the woodhouse door. I”ll show you how to sow grass seed.”

Little Eliza turned into the “gap,” sped across the deep yard and presently returned with a wooden bucket half filled with the feathery stuff. The Cap’n bent his rheumatic back, scattered the seed along the ruts and over the bare spots that interspersed the green that already covered the greater part of the ground.

“Let me try, Gramp!” And with that the child began to ladle out small handfuls of the seed.

“Not that way, Lizzie, spread it ‘round like this—this. Don’t take much if you put it in the right place.”

Quickly following the old man’s example, the child took over the sowing while the old gentleman, straightening his back with a half-suppressed grunt, began to rake in the seed after the child.

“Yes, it’s goin’ to rain. Rheumatism in my back tells me that.” And with that he glanced up toward the weather vane on his old barn. “Swingin’ into the east’ard,” he mumbled to himself.

The big weather vane, fashioned to simulate a sperm whale, hung lazily with its upturned tail toward the south. The angular square knob of a head and the open jaw with sawtooth edges pointed dead north.

“Won’t stay there long,” thought the old man. “Always goes to the east-ard when it comes ‘round backwards.”

Several neighbors came along the street, passed the time of day with Cap’n Harry, and went about their business.

Miss Deborah came out of the big house across the street, chatted for a moment and out from the folds of her apron, brought a couple of molasses cookies for little Liza.

“Didn’t hear you say, ‘Thank you, Lizzie.’ But then I don’t hear too good. I know you would.”

Like Dr. Johnson, his model, Cap’n Harry had found that most people responded to a hint better than a reprimand. Likely this had been the secret of his popularity and efficiency. Who can say?

The old man and the little girl dragged the heavy stone roller up and down over the new sown grass and the old lawn, exhausting most of their surplus energy.

Jimmy Bishop, coming back from his long errand, dismounted, took a turn of the bridle reins around the hitching post and, with a boy’s enthusiasm, ran the roller back and forth two or three times, finishing the area, then dragged it back to its place in the yard under the sour apple tree. Little ‘Liza seated herself in the wheelbarrow, holding the rake and shovel, and the Cap’n pushed the girl and the barrow into the yard and out by the woodpile.

Reaching the pump, both of them vigorously washed their hands and faces and came through the back door into the kitchen.

“Dinner is not quite ready, Father. Why don’t you go in and lie down.”

Crossing the dining room, the pair reached the Cap’n’s cubby hole. In later times it would be called a “den” or “study” but the agglomeration of all sorts and conditions of things made it a place wonderful to behold. In a prominent place on the wall just over the deal table, which served as a desk, but just visible above the piled disorder, hung a framed certificate signed by the Governor of the Commonwealth and granting Cap’n Harry the authority of “Wrecking Master” for ten miles of the Atlantic shore.

“Tell me a story, Gramp,” whispered the little girl as she climbed on the old man’s knee.

“Not now, child, I’m too tired, but this evening after supper . . .”

As grandfather fell off into a quiet snooze the little girl stated out of the back door, only to find that it was beginning to rain. “Gramp is right,” she thought, “he said it was going to rain. He’s always right.”

True to his promise, when the evening lamp was lighted and the supper things had been cleared away and little Eliza had helped to dry the dishes, grandfather began one of his tales of the sea.

“Twenty years ago, just before the war, there was a big ship came ashore off Flying Point in a snowstorm. Old Cap’s Bill White, who had been wrecking master for a good many years, got a crew together and managed to launch a whaling boat. For some reason or other he gave me the leading oar and, after a rough time of it, we managed to get out under the lea side of the ship and took off the passengers and the crew. Two or three days later, on a high tide, the vessel was floated and I went with Cap’n White and the crew that sailed ‘er into New London.

“The owners and the insurance company between them paid Cap’n Bill the two thousand dollars for his part in salvaging the ship. This he divided among the crew, and I got one hundred dollars, which was a good deal of money in those days but a good deal more before the war was over.

“Some years later when Cap’n White had retired, Governor Thompkins made me wrecking master. That’s my old certificate hanging over my desk.”

The storm was howling outside, and the rain could be heard in torrents on the low shingle roof, but a bright fire burned in the fireplace. The warm spring day had reverted to the wild March and an easterly storm swept the coast. The state of the elements seemed to be reflected in the old man’s mind and, while it was no uncommon thing for the family circle to hear the round of stories that the old man’s experience had accumulated with the years, that night he was “wound up,” according to neighbor Clark, who had dropped in for an hour.

The next morning little Eliza, venturing out before breakfast, discovered with dismay that the heavy rain had washed grass seed and ground alike down into the gutter and carried it away. The strip between the great trees and the road was washed clean and the old ruts had reappeared. But by afternoon, when the sun had come out and the mud had dried up, the energetic pair, Gramp and ‘Liza, were making the same repairs and scattering more seek. This time no neighboring boy came by to help with the roller and, though the afternoon sun was out bright and warm, the last few turns up and own thoroughly exhausted the old captain and his helper; and that evening there were no stories.

Years afterwards I asked my [sister], Eliza, now a middle-aged woman with children of her own, what most impressed her in her youth, and she answered, “My grandfather’s perseverance. He was wrecking master of the shore before the days of lifeguard and lighthouse. It was his business to organize the volunteer crews from the village to help a vessel in distress, and then to salvage the vessel, or its cargo if the vessel was hopelessly wrecked. This endangered life and limb, but no matter what the conditions of the weather my grandfather could always command the help for the villagers. Everyone fit to row and oar was a volunteer if he said the attempt should be made. Everyone knew that if it were humanly possible he would meet the situation—nothing would turn him back.”

I knew something about my [sister]’s life –ill health, financial reverse, disappointment; none of these had ever baffled her. I felt that the old man had had an apt pupil in his granddaughter.

Another decade passed and I visited the old village again. In front of Cap’n Harry’s place from the church to the beach stretched a smooth macadam road. Most of its way, beginning in the north end, it is shaded by great elm trees, but in front of Cap’n Harry’s place, where his descendents still live, there are two giant trees, called the “trees of heaven” by the Chinese. These were little saplings when Cap’n Harry planted them, now eighty years or more ago, saved from a French freighter whose crew he salvaged. His was not always an easy or popular job. When this boat, the Lavalley, had stranded to meet the necessity of casing a tide, he ordered his crew to board and cast offboard the cargo, or part of it. Now, the captain of a ship, it is well known, is supreme lord of his own vessel—when she is afloat. But this boat was aground and Cap’n Harry had authority to salvage as much as possible.

With his crew he went aboard and told the French captain, through a poor interpreter, that in order to meet the next tide and save the vessel the cargo must go overboard. The captain objected vociferously in his Gallic fashion, but Cap’n Harry’s blunt New England manner and word had its way and overboard went the cargo. Great bundles of fruit and shade trees were first jettisoned. These drifted up on shore and were being appropriated by the native population when Cap’n Harry, knowing it was his business to save as much as possible for the owners, went ashore and forbade his neighbors to take the trees away. He was a deputy sheriff and, knowing that he had authority back of his determination, most of the people desisted. But, with his ready ability to meet a situation, he sent for local squire, who was always the auctioneer, and on the beach the trees were sold. Many orchards in the section were planted or replenished from this stock.

On either side of his front gate, Cap’n Harry planted a couple of ailanthus trees, a novelty in those days. He said he was tired of nothing but elms. But he lived to regret his choice. In his later days his chief pride in the village street was the overarching of elms planted by an earlier generation than his. But today his great grandchildren go in and out between the old ailanthus sentinals.

He had been not only the master of his vessel and the master of his shore, but, I have gleaned from the reminiscences of his contemporaries that he was mater of most situations.

He was the oldest of a family of five. His father, the owner of the local water mill, died when he was nine. Energetically he set himself, under his mother’s direction, to help about the farm and assist his uncle at the mill. When they were old enough, his mother, to give them an education, moved to New York, kept a boarding house and put the children in school.

This was unusual. In that neighborhood most boys, as soon as they were able, went to sea and engaged in the whaling trade. Harry and his brother, after a couple of years’ schooling, began to learn a trade and became expert builders. Then, after a couple of voyages whaling, they settled down in New York and began building operations.

During the early 30s of the last [19th] century they amassed a considerable fortune, only to lose it through a crooked partner in a "depression" in 1840. Cap’n Jim, the younger brother, went back to the sea and made an enviable reputation and snug fortune from the whaling industry.

Cap’n Harry, however, with his young wife and child, went back to the old farm. The mill had been sold to pay for his sisters’ schooling. Rebuilding the old farmhouse and introducing some of the refinements that he had built into city developments, he settled down to work the farm and carry on his mason’s trade.

Dozens of fireplaces in that now-fashionable community burn to this day and no one that he fabricated was ever known to smoke. He was short and stocky, broad shouldered and rather portly, but quick on his feet, and his grandchildren remember how he could out-run them and, at eighty years of age, hold a broomstick in his hands and jump over it.

He saved the wreck of his New York fortune and rehabilitated it. When the Civil War broke out, though far from a young man, he volunteered his services, but was rejected. His heart was not sound, they said. Forthwith he organized a company, drilled it on the village green and sent it away to the war, feeling that he had done his bit, saving from the wreck of his own disappointment his patriotic usefulness.

When the railroad first came through that rural community it cut his farm in two. He negotiated a trade with a neighbor so that the two dismembered farms were made units, but both became triangular, as the railroad caught them on the bias. In the trade, Cap’n Harry acquired a big street frontage, but this was poor compensation for the rich upland as the hill ran out into a sand bank and five acres of useless land were his and five acres of the best upland went to the neighbor. But, always resourceful, the old wrecking master, at the protest of his son, but with the help of his rugged grandson, turned this sandy area into a productive asparagus bed, the first in the community. Even in his last days rheumatism did not prevent him from going into the woods for berries in the their season and, though he couldn’t bend his back, he would put a pail under the huckleberry bushes and knock the berries off with his cane and then take them home and pick them over.

He was fat enough to be good-natured, was a regular Yankee Jack-of-all-trades, and good at most. Very expert and painstaking was he in the construction of a building. Some of his houses still stand in Greenwich Village in the metropolis and many of his plastered walls have outlasted newer ones in the island village where he lived in his later years. One of his grandchildren still has the old framed certificate signed by the Governor: “To whom these presents may come be it known . . . Harry Halsey Wrecking Master.”

A note on the progression of Jesses

Sarah Fithian and Henry Halsey had a son Jesse in 1739, who married Charity White and signed the Articles of Association in Southampton in 1775. That first Jesse Halsey was a captain in the Revolutionary War and suffered injuries at the Battle of Monmouth. Captain Jesse and Charity had seven children: Charity, Jesse, Charles Fithian, Keturah, Sarah, Hannah, and Abigail. Their son Jesse died in infancy. Jesse died in 1818. His son, Charles Fithian, and Phebe Rogers had Henry (my Great-Great-Great Grandfather, known also as Captain Harry), along with Elizabeth, Captain Jesse, Captain Edward (both of whom were whalers), Mary, and Hannah.

Captain Jesse married Mary Budd and went to sea, they had no children. Captain Jesse's older brother, Henry, builder of 49 North Main (in 1832 or 1842?) and 88 Grove Street, however, named his third son Jesse in 1845, tho that Jesse would die in 1861, a month short of his 16th birthday.

Henry's eldest son, the first Charles Henry, married Melvina Terry in 1863. (Complicating things further, Charles Henry's brother Wilmun married Melvina's sister Augusta--aka the famous Aunt Gus--and they had, in 1874, the first in a series of Aunt Ednas). Charles and Melvina had Harry in 1864, Lizbeth in 1869, Abigail Fithian in 1873, and Jesse (later Rev. Dr. Jesse and my Great Grandfather) in 1882. Melvina, known as Binn, died in 1887, when Jesse was 5. A year later, Jesse witnessed the accidental drowning of his father's brother, his beloved Uncle Wilmun, while the two were clamming together. Following those tragedies, Aunt Gus and her fourteen-year-old daughter Edna became de facto members of Great Grandfather Jesse's household; in a biographical sketch Jesse writes that he was raised by his eldest sister--18 at the time of her mother's death--and his Aunt Gussie.

The Winter of Our Discontent

Captain Henry Halsey (b. Aug. 19, 1803, d. 1880), known as Cap'n Harry of North End, was married to Eliza Halsey (b. 1803, d. 1878) of Long Island. They lived at Southampton.

from "The Wrecking Master" by Jesse Halsey, p.10-11

He was the oldest of a family of five. His father, the owner of the local water mill, died when he was nine. Energetically he set himself, under his mother's direction, to help about the farm and assist his uncle at the mill. When they were old enough, his mother, to give them an education, moved to New York, kept a boarding house and put the children in school.

This was unusual. In that neighborhood most boys, as soon as they were able, went to sea and engaged in the whaling trade. Harry and his brother, after a couple of years' schooling, began to learn a trade and became expert builders. Then, after a couple of voyages whaling, they settled down in New York and began building operations.

During the early 30s of the last [19th] century they amassed a considerable fortune, only to lose it through a crooked partner in a "depression" in 1840. Cap'n Jim, the younger brother, went back to the sea and made an enviable reputation and snug fortune from the whaling industry.

Cap'n Harry, however, with his young wife and child, went back to the old farm. The mill had been sold to pay for his sisters' schooling. Rebuilding the old farmhouse and introducing some of the refinements that he had built into city developments, he settled down to work the farm and carry on his mason's trade.

Dozens of fireplaces in that now-fashionable community burn to this day and no one that he fabricated was ever known to smoke. He was short and stocky, broad shouldered and rather portly, but quick on his feet, and his grandchildren remember how he could out-run them and, at eighty years of age, hold a broomstick in his hands and jump over it.

He saved the wreck of his New York fortune and rehabilitated it. When the Civil War broke out, though far from a young man, he volunteered his services, but was rejected. His heart was not sound, they said. Forthwith he organized a company, drilled it on the village green and sent it away to the war, feeling that he had done his bit, saving from the wreck of his own disappointment his patriotic usefulness.

The House at 88 Grove Street

This house in the West Village was built in 1827, by my Great-Great-Great Grandfather Henry Halsey, a mason, and his brothers Jesse and Edward.

According to a letter written by my Great-Great Aunt Babbie in 1936 to the then owner of 88 Grove Street, Henry's father, Charles Fithian Halsey, had died in 1814 and his mother, Phoebe Rogers (daughter of Capt. William Rogers of Bridgehampton), "unable to give her boys a college education although she owned much land here, [left Watermill and] took them to New York and apprenticed them to a master mason. They built 88 Grove Street for themselves, buying Lot No. 52 from Thomas R. Mercein at the time, I think, when Greenwich Village was taken into the city. Henry brought his bride [Eliza Halsey] there, and his mother, brothers and two sisters [Elizabeth and Mary] lived on one floor, he and his wife on the other."

Aunt Babbie goes on to say that her father, my Great-Great Grandfather--the first Charles Henry Halsey--was born in the Grove Street home in 1830, as were his siblings Amanda in 1833, Wilman in 1836, Mary in 1839. A third son, Jesse, was born in Southampton in 1845. In an interview I conducted in December 2005, Aunt Abigail, however, contended that 49 North Main was built in 1832 and Amanda was the first child born in that home.

(A note on the progression of Jesse Halseys.)

In 1843, Jesse and Edward Halsey would become whaling captains and go to sea, while Henry (known as Capt. Harry of North End) would return with Eliza and their children to Southampton in 1832 and build the family home on North Main, employing many of the same architectural devices (including interior cornices and trim) that are found in the house at 88 Grove Street.

After the Halseys had returned to Long Island, the house at 88 Grove Street played a notable role in the history of 20th century social change.

In 1902, 88 Grove Street was owned by Ferruccio Vitale, a landscape architect, and rented to 5 staff members of the nearby Greenwich House settlement, serving as the colony's men's annex. The 5 residents were deemed "only the first among many well-to-do social progressives to occupy either 88 or 90 Grove Street over the next decade."

In 1903, former headworker of the University Settlement Robert Hunter and his wife, Caroline Stokes, moved in. They purchased the home in 1907. The house next door, No. 90, was purchased by Caroline's unmarried sister, the painter and social activist Helen Stokes, and let to various friends in her upper-middle-class socially progressive circle.

Starting in 1907, Grove Street housed various members of the A Club, a "more or less radical" writers' collective and "residential community in which gender roles did not divide along the conventional lines of men doing the 'real' work and women taking care of the the kids, meals, and the laundry." A Club member, social reformer, novelist, and journalist Ernest Poole took up residence in the house for a year, along with his family. In 1910, following the death of her first husband, another A Clubber--suffragist, writer, labor activist, witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and single mother of three who was written out of her own wealthy mother's will for her bohemian ways--Mary Heaton Vorse moved into the home with her aged father and small children.

In 1915, Helen Stokes's brother, James Graham Phelps Stokes, bought 88 Grove Street and moved in with his wife. J.G., and sisters Harriet and Caroline, were the scions of New York merchant and banker Anson Phelps Stokes. After a short but successful stint with the railroads, J.G. made headlines in 1902 when he left his parents' Madison Avenue mansion to become a settlement worker in the East Village. A frequent name on the city's Socialist ticket, Stokes would make headlines again in 1905, when we became engaged to Rose Harriet Pastor, "a young Jewess, who until two weeks ago was a special writer on The Jewish Daily News, and prior to that worked in a Cleveland cigar factory."

Quite the rabble-rouser, Rose Stokes would garner significant press attention for her presence at the 1918 trial of Eugene Debs and, according to the New York Times: "While the Stokeses lived at 88 Grove Rose Stokes risked arrest by passing out birth-control literature at Carnegie Hall in 1916 and was convicted in 1918 of Federal espionage charges for antiwar statements, although her 10-year sentence was set aside." The charges ultimately would be dropped, but on the night of November 3, 1918, police raided 88 Grove Street and arrested Rose for registering to vote in New York while under bail in Kansas for seditious utterances.