by Lizbeth Halsey White | circa 1932
Some years after this, a certain young man living in the
South End was so attracted to this same gambrel-roofed house that he desired it
for his home in case he could persuade a certain young woman living at Long
Springs to share it with him. She was cool to his suit and he sailed away on a
whaling voyage with his dream unrealized no news was heard of him, nor of the
ship, for many a long day.
The vessel was wrecked on the shores of Brazil and twelve
sailors made their way, as best they could, through the tangled forests to Rio
de Janeiro. It took them a month to reach it—torn and bedraggled. They told
their story to the captain of a small vessel sailing for New Bedford. He could
take only a part of their number. So they drew lots, and the young man of our
story was not one of the fortunate. When the ship sailed, however, it carried
one more than the lot had selected and the stowaway was not discovered until
the ship was far at sea.
So he received with cheerfulness the captain’s order that he
should sail “before the mast” for his passage. Thus it happened that on a
September afternoon of this same year two men, grimed with dust, were walking
toward Southampton. Meanwhile, the good ship Warren had been given up for lost,
and the crew also. A woman standing by her gate on the Sag Harbor road that day
saw the men. She looked at them, then looked again. She grew pale, and ran down
the street crying, “Oh, Lord a Massy! There comes them two poor fellows that
was drowned in the bottom of the ocean!”
The young lady meanwhile had changed her mind and not very
long after this incident, Austin Herrick and Mary Jagger went to live in the
gambrel-roofed house which has furnished history and atmosphere for the
neighborhood and for the village for many years before and since.
Capt. Austin Herrick made seventeen voyages to sea and after
he retired he kept the store attached to the house. He is described as tall and
very dignified, especially in his elder days when he carried a cane. It is
related of him that on the Sunday morning after the Rev. William Neal
Cleaveland, pastor of the Presbyterian Church, had preached his sermon in
defense of African slavery, Capt. Austin Herrick arose and walked out of church
with a very decided step. Though none followed, his action was much approved
and the Rev. Cleaveland soon afterwards resigned his charge. Capt. Herrick’s
son, the Rev. Samuel Edward Herrick, was a prominent minister in Boston for
many years and his daughter Mary remained in the old home.
In the early days when only wood fires were known and the
only means of lighting them was by the slow process of flint and steel, it was
the custom if the coals burned out to seek live coals from a neighbor that the
fires might be replenished. Coals were not the only things borrowed for there
were no markets and grocery stores were not as convenient as today.
One woman of the olden time was heard to say, “The devil is
always around, even in church on Sundays, taking your mind off the sermon by
reminding you that you owe your neighbor a loaf of bread.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Howell Pierson of the South End and Mrs.
Elizabeth Jessup Post of the North End were having tea together. In the course
of conversation, Mrs. Pierson remarked, “Well, Elizabeth, you know the South
End is the Court End of the town because the minister and the doctor and the
squire all live there.” Theodore White in his composition written about 1850
when a boy of 13, upon the “South End,” said there was one advantage the North
End had: “The farmers could raise a better crop of corn on their land.”
So there have been rivalries; but since the Methodist Church
has given to the North Side its quota of the clergy; since doctors, village
presidents, and bank presidents are counted among its leading citizens and the
Town Hall has marked its boundaries, many of these have been eliminated. We
suppose, however, we must concede to the South End the Summer Colony. The North
End, too, has its “city voks”—we remember well the Bonner family who were at
Charles Selden’s, and Connie’s birthday parties when all the children of the
neighborhood were invited, and you had ever so much ice-cream!
The Gemmells and the Duers who were sometimes at the Wilmun
Halsey’s. The mother of Katherine Mackay O’Brien was a little girl and her toys
and dainty ruffles were the admiration of all the neighborhood children. Her
dresses, like her mother’s, were pressed each time they were worn and we
discovered for ourselves a secret, even though there was no maid to do the
pressing. (Southampton has learned many tricks from the “City Folks”—and is
still learning.) Then there was the very friendly Mrs. [Lizzie Jean Nelson wife
of Cyrus*] Sears and the dainty Aline? We still can see Madame Sears sitting and
rocking in our mother’s kitchen, chatting gaily while the Saturday baking was
going on—but mother could bake and listen, too.
The North End has good reason to remember the Coffin family
who were at Wm. Jagger’s, for they must have furnished several parlors with the
priceless heirlooms they gleaned in the North End. In our grandmother’s parlor
were six high-back fiddle-backed chairs of Queen Anne pattern. Mrs. Coffin
succeeded in persuading her to part with three of them at the (then) fabulous
sum of $5.00 each.
In general, however, the North End has been too far from the
ocean for summer rentals and she has been left to follow her accustomed ways,
and much of the informal neighborliness, which is one of her traditions,
remains, unbroken, as in the years agone.
A prominent representative of the South End when asked by a
prominent resident of the North End how his next door neighbor was, (who was
chronically ill), he replied he did not know, then added somewhat
apologetically, “You know in the South End we do not boil our teakettles on our
neighbor’s stoves as they do in the North End.”
The North End has adown the years cherished her traditions
of old-fashioned neighborliness and when families have commenced together for
several generations the ties of friendship become very strong.
There was one especially, who has but lately left us [Mary Herrick] (and
the gambrel-roofed house still speaks), whose life among its many graces is
remembered, first of all, for its kindly interest and friendly neighborliness,
which like the flowers in her garden have made the years of her generation
fragrant and sweet. It is spirits such as these that have made the atmosphere
of the old North End, and happy shall be those who make a like contribution to
the perpetuation of her traditions.
Courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files,
Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center
*[Cyrus Sears was for some time in the wholesale grocery
business in Boston, with his brother, under firm name of Sears & Co., but
removed to New York City and engaged in the real estate business. He served
from 26 Sep 1862 to 7 Jul 1863 as 2d Lieutenant 45th Regiment, Mass Volunteer
Infantry, with much credit, the officers and soldiers associated with him,
becoming much attached to him. He died of apoplexy at his summer residence in
Southampton, L.I.]
