Rev. Samuel Herrick D.D. in his paper made before the 250th anniversary celebration, when in making a shaming plea for a library for Southampton he turned to his contemporaries from the platform and said “Mr. Howell and Mr. Pelletreau, How much do you and I owe to that old Historical Library which used to be kept in Capt. Harry Halsey’s [c 1835?] back kitchen? It did not do as much perhaps to fit us for college examinations perhaps but that back kitchen was the portal through which we entered into a knowledge of good literature.” This was in 1890 and years later the Rogers Memorial Library was dedicated.
Mr. Edward Huelling writes us that as a boy he distinctly remembers being sent by his father to Capt Harry Halsey’s to retrieve a library book for his father.
--Lizbeth Halsey White, author, suffrage leader, town
historian
