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

"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 

Jesse Halsey: Notes on Sermons 1937-38

AND IN THE PSALMS

The harassed mayor of a major American city lately confessed to a group of his friends that he constantly turned to certain of the great poets in times of stress as the best source of sustenance and balance. While others might find “escape” in detective stories he read Milton aloud and envies Macaulay who knew Paradise Lost by heart and once repeated four books of it while crossing the Irish Sea. The mayor said that once in time of grave personal crisis he found in Browning, “the courage to go on,” and added that Browing’s great spiritual message is that of courage rather than optimism. A memory stored with great poetry is as an arsenal for the soul.

“It shall be 

A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand like this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!"

See the Christ stand. Robert Browning

They that trust in The Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abideth forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even forever. Ps 125 1-2

READ: Your Favorite Psalm Aloud.

PRAYER. Unto Thee life I up mine eyes O Thou dwellest in the heavens, in thanksgiving for all the forms of loveliness and strength that speak Thy praise and reveal Thy nearness to human hearts and minds. I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait and in his word do I hope, through Christ the Word Incarnate. Amen.

IN ALL POINTS . . . like as we are that rebellious boy of yesterday who was being ‘educated’ in life’s best school used to wonder about Jesus the carpenter’s boy of Nazareth. He hardly dared to wonder even about HIM. But the preposterous parallel that he confided to no one, but carried in his secret heart, brought sweetness to many a bitter day. Jesus (too, he said to himself), Jesus wanted to go to the Jerusalem Schools, but for eighteen years stayed home to push a plane—and support his mother and sisters and brothers. That always brought help.

And that boy is but one of millions who have, to this hour, found help in Him—in what He did and what he said and what He was (AND IS).

JESUS MADE ANSWER AND SAID . . . Luke

“Go and do thou likewise” Luke 10:37

And . . . and . . . and . . . it is the heart of the parable—this conjunction. It is God’s plus sign; “and took, took him to the inn, and too care of him” and . . . This is God’s plus sign. Always adding, going second miles Himself, “while we ere yet sinners Christ died for us. Goodness and mercy peruse us, new every morning, fresh every evening are the tokens of his love. He loadeth us with benefits.

Can we afford to be stingy?

Read. Luke 10: 25-37

O Thou who givest us richly all things to enjoy, make us good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Grateful hearts come from Thee, and to Thee returns our Thanks. Thou are the source of all blessing. Things material spiritual and material—all are Thine, and we are Thine. Make us to realize our debt to Thee, and when we have given all, forgive us still our debts. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

TWO neighbors in the old days had gone to California in the gold rush. Young men and adventurous they had started out after selling all they had to by stock in the ship that should carry them round Cape Horn. One man struck it rich and came home to settle down in affluence, the other lost the little he had and came home to spend his days hoeing corn for his neighbors.

Uncle William and Grandfather and the Gold-rush

(Uncle Tom and none of the glamour of Kansas.)

LENT means Springtime. Let this be the Springtime of the soul. God is stirring in nature. Snows and sudden frost hinder her coming but come she will and must. Let God work naturally in your heart and life. No artificial apparatus is needed. Quiet, meditation, prayer, the Bible, and great poetry, the quiet stars, the out of doors, these were among Jesus’ sources of spiritual help. “As he was so are ye in the world.”

O GOD, who hast made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and didst send thy blessed Son to preach peace to them that are afar off, and to them that are nigh; grant that all the peoples who sit in darkness and the shadow of death may feel after thee and find Thee; and hasten, O Lord, the fulfillment of thy promise to pour out the Spirit upon all flesh; through Jesus Christ our Loud. Amen.

The East Riding of Yorkshire

By Jesse Halsey, c1938

The East Riding of Yorkshire. Thus it was called in the early days. The name has changed but the savor of the old time lingers.

Farmhouses low and sturdy with gray weathered shingles punctuate the flat countryside. Shingles three feet long, rived from red cedar that grew in the swamps, worn thin now where they have defied the east-wind-driven storms of two hundred winters and the bristling heat of as many summers, but with butts still thick enough to cast healthy shadows in endless parallel windows where the long sweeping roofs on the north side slope almost to the ground.

“Regardless of the direction of the highway those houses were set by their builders always facing the south—and the sun and the sea. Farm houses like that, gray and weathered but trim and tight against the weather, were built, some on village streets and some at the hub of the surrounding acres.

Tiny windowpanes peek out, diamond, and square and oblong, most from the days when glass came from over the water and was priced in shillings and pence and is bubble-scarred and blue streaked and is enchantingly distorting as one peers out.

Lanes there are that wind as one did the cow-paths. Lanes with names like this: Job’s Land, Gin Lane, Loylsome Lane, Hither Lane, Further Land, Middle Lane. Some lead through the woods and some across the meadows but all come at long last—or short—to some water, great or small, fresh or salt—any one of a dozen bays or ponds, or the beach banks and the Ocean.

Squat and square brick chimneys anchor the houses to the ground. Within, these chimneys are fed by fireplaces, one in each and every room. Floorboards creak when you enter, boards half as wide as puncheon head. Low ceilings, paneled woodwork, musical H and L hinges on gently squeaking doors.

Leaning barns and wood sheds where eel-spears and clam rakes and harpoons prod the latest agricultural machinery. A discarded seine is sometimes seen, used now for a net for tennis or volley ball, but a swift reminder of days when corn was grown with fish for fertilizer—“two bunkers to a hill.”

By trim white Churches, surmounted by pointing spires, one comes upon ancestral burying rounds where rhymed epitaphs quarrel with life’s adventures to attempt to perpetuate the excellence of some village worthy—or mayhem his idiosyncrasies.

Names nostalgic attach to the villages, reminiscent of Old England—Southwold, Maidstone, Southampton. The music of the Indian words echoes in geographic designations –Quoque, Quioque, Ponquogue, Kumsebog, Shinnecock, Amagansett, Montauk, as the New Yorkers say. Or as the natives say, Montawk. (I am a native.)

Hamlets, two house or a dozen, a mile apart, or two, the names come back as you flash through, remembering the days when in the springless farm wagon it took half the day to take a grist to the mill. Littleworth, Good Ground, Scuttle Hole, and Hecox. Tuckahoe, Seabonac, North Ben, or Hog Neck. Towd and Cobb and Little Cobb, Flying Point, the Sea Poose, and Wickapoque. Then there was—and is—Scuttle Hole and Wainscott, Sag and Sag Harbor, Water Hill and North Sea and Canoe Place.

Captain’s Neck is there, and Cooper’s Neck, First Neck, and Halsey’s Neck is there, and Cooper’s Neck, First Neck, and the Great and Little Plains.

Windmills, a dozen or so, some in wreck, some in good repair, one, or maybe two, still grinding! And Whalebone Landing, Sandy Hollow, and Coopers Hill, The Twelve Acres or Reeves’ Orchard. In each of these my grandfather owned parcels of woodland. They furnished fuel aplenty for his many fire-placed house. He had inherited the woodland from his father, and he from his, for seven generations since the settlement date. I own it now. It is worth little, that land, but it has furnished fuel for Halsey households for nigh on to three hundred years, one generation after another—ten of them now. A cutting of new growth, is ready, say, once each thirty years.

Some of the wood from those parental acres I heap upon the fire tonight—steady burning hickory with a back of fragrant cedar—and in its glow of memory many things come back some out of the dim past. For I have lived a long time. Sometimes I think it must be close on to two centuries. What I mean is this—in fifty years, and odd, I’ve seen in the village where I was born the change from colonial simplicity in belief, in practice, and in custom to the usages of modern mechanized today.

I can remember for example when one family in our community kept Sabbath from Saturday sundown to Sunday evening, when everyone kept Sabbath in some strict form, when many people had candle moulds and some used them. When the few cottagers were called Yorkers. When most families raised and cured their own pork and canned their own fruit and dried their own vegetables. When potatoes and turnips and cabbage were the sole and staple vegetables for nine months of the year. Salt pork, salt codfish, steady diet. Carrots were for horses, pumpkins would keep only up to Christmas and were never canned, hence the untiring profusion of “pumpkin” pie this time of year.

It is as it were, a sprightly evening in early winter and a fire is burning on the hearth. It seldom snaps; it never smokes for grandfather was a skilled mason and knew his trade. Supper is over and the dishes cleared away, from the kitchen come the sounds of cleaning up and the stirring of buckwheat cakes being “set to rise” for breakfast. A Kerosene lamp burns on the erstwhile dining table now covered with a turkey-red damask cloth. In a Boston rocker by the fire sits and old man and on a foot-stool, toasting his shins, stretches a little boy. Whether he is six or eight or ten I cannot quite tell—no it is not the smoke, grandfather was a capable mason—it must be my eyes. Against the wall, so near that the boy can lean on it, is a seaman’s chest. The old man is reading, the boy listening, when he gets drowsy he leans his head on the chest and dozes off, waking with a start as Napoleon leaves Moscow, or Alexander reaches Babylon.

We must open that chest. Its stout rope handle smell of oakum, its battered exterior betrays its history knocking ‘round the seven seas in more than one forecastle. We should like to see what’s inside. The hand-hammered strap hinges gently protest but the boy turns back the lid. I’ve read in William James that smells quicken sure remembrance—well, they are here in urgent suggestions of far Cathay, the Moluccas, of the Celebes and other spice islands. The old people call it “cassia,” though we say cinnamon; this chest must have brought home cassia on occasion: at any rate its lined with strips of red cedar and San Domingo mahogany and sandal wood. It has fragrance when opened that to me is pleasant, though pungent and pervasive.

The boy explores the contents while his father holds the lamp. A broken backed leather bound Bible, with s’s that look like f’s, an old log book, some maps and charts, a volume of town records, a bunch of yellow letters tied with a faded blue linen rag, a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, a Bodwich’s Navigator and a box that used to hold a sextant. These and some sea shells from the south seas, (the boy holds one to his ear to hear the throbbing ocean), a few small nuggets of gold from California, more books—a lot of junk, so the boy thought—then. Now—with reverence he closes the lid realizing that the chest is empty—except for memories.

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.”

Mary Ann

by Jesse Halsey

Thanksgiving is the Great Day in New England, or was so in my boyhood. We lived on Long Island, the east end of which is pure New England, while the wet end is Dutch---with a Kriskingle. So we had, both; Thanksgiving and Christmas. Grandfather was much of a Puritan and frowned on Christmas celebrations—in theory. Being a deacon he had to agree with the Parson who never would preach a Christmas sermon at Christmas nor an Easter sermon at Easter! (“It was papish.”)

But our grandmother was different. SHE was supreme in her own domain, indoors, and knew, moreover, just how to handle grandfather who was naturally fat and jolly and, as a young man, had lived in New York where Christmas and New Years were real celebrations that centered largely in the home. This was the beginning of the Nineteenth century—our grandfather’s boyhood; while our childhood was in the years near its close.

Mary Ann Cuffee

We were lucky, I say, with a New England Thanksgiving and a Dutch-flavored Christmas. And then we were blessed with Mary Ann.

She came to help on all great occasions. Funerals, births, butchering days, Town Meeting, Thanksgiving, the Christmas week, and many other times in between. No family occasion was complete without her. The little “back chamber,” a half attic over the kitchen, was her room, never used by another so far as I know.

An Indian of the Poosepatuck tribe, she was born before Eighteen hundred, near Montauk Point, but in our time lived on the Shinnecock Reservation, where she had married. Her features were as severe, as my faded snap-shot will show, but she was the soul of goodness and withal a most excellent cook.

Snow sometimes came with Thanksgiving, and almost always by Christmas time was continuously on the ground. It was my greatest joy, as a boy, early Thanksgiving morning to drive (with some of my cronies), in the old apple-cart, or in a sleigh, to the Indian reservation, two miles away “to fetch Mary Ann.” She had a grandson just my age who always came along.

Her mind was full of old sayings—this old woman; old traditions and superstitions. She believed in ghosts “and such like;” had hard common sense, stoic discipline, but a soft spot for us boys. She remembered wigwam days and knew the nature-lore of her ancestors, could predict the weather and, as I said, she could cook.

The simplest fare became ambrosial at her touch. I mean this in a countrified sense for she knew nothing of salads and appetizers. None were needed. The odors that hung round the home for hours before a meal, though kitchen doors were closed, these were enough to set one’s appetite agog.

She had no written recipes. Like all good cooks, she just guessed, but when my oldest sister was married “Aunt Mary Ann,” as we children called her, consented to be questioned regarding her art and with Grandmother’s help the bride got some semi-recipes on paper. With the passage of the years we came to think that sister “Nynne” had caught some of the culinary secrets of Mary Ann. From her cookbook and other family sources I have tried to write down some of the old Indian’s best dishes best suited to the Holiday Season.

Historic image courtesy Abigail Fithian Halsey Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center.

"the word hobbgoblin still chills my spine"

by Rev. Jesse Halsey

One word more about family prayers. I believe it was a bore to my brother and sisters just as it was to me. As a little boy I knelt by father's rocker and while he prayed I squinted with one eye half open out through the tiny panes of bubbled glass and saw all sorts of curious things in the trees and in the houses across the road, distorted by the window panes. Fairy stories were never read to me as a boy, but those window panes and the enforced leisure of family prayers gave me my opportunity. I pity children who have to depend on movies for their imaginative 'frame of reference.'

It's time to get back to Pilgrim's Progress. I remember it as The Book, the only one except the Bible that was available for Sunday use. It had in it a few pictures of the Holy City that I often looked at after my mother died. I was five then. Another picture, a steel engraving, showed Christians passing through the Valley of the Shadow. The very word hobbgoblin still chills my spine, to this hour. But the Valley was beset with them--hobbgoblins. I was afraid to look yet could not forbear.

Father would read by the hour. After mother died his loneliness made him my companion. Night after night he would read me to sleep. Week nights it was history, some poetry like Milton, stories from the Youth's Companion, but chiefly history. That and stories that he had heard Grandfather tell, Indians, the 'Red Coats,' whaling--no end of that from Father and all his cronies. I should say they were a dignified lot, mostly.

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.