Schools of Old Southampton

by Mrs. Edward P. White | 1932

 

from Southampton Magazine | c 1913

EARLY SCHOOLS—The settlers established a school soon after they moved from Old Town to the present village. Richard Mills was Schoolmaster in 1651. He was also town clerk and hotelkeeper. He earned many an extra penny writing wills and deeds and letters for people. The first schoolhouse that we know about was built in 1664, and the Town meeting that year orders that there “shall be a schoolhouse 20 ft. long and 15 ft. wide at the town’s charge and finished fit for use before winter.” This schoolhouse stood on Jagger Lane and probably had a fireplace at each end. Like the church, it was swept once a week and sometimes scrubbed by the girls of the school. In these days, no law compelled a parent to send a child to school. Few girls attended. They often learned to read and write at home, making letters in tiny cross-stitch on the beautiful samplers, which we have from our great grandmothers. One lies before me worked by a little girl of twelve years. The letters, small and capital, are carefully formed, and the motto worked in dainty stitches,

“!Tis education forms the tender mind,

Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.”

Girls in those days learned their domestic science and domestic art from their mothers at home and left the “book learnin’” largely to the boys. The teacher in the new school was paid $175.00 (thirty-five pounds a year) and he was allowed only “12 days in ye year for his own particular occasions.” The hours were eight A.M. to eleven A.M., and one P.M. to five P.M. The three R’s—Readin’, Writin’, and ‘Rithmetic—were, as the old rhyme goes, “Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.” One of the first rules of education in the school, as in the home, was “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

The schoolhouse was unpainted with board seats fastened to wooden benches. Each pupil brought his daily stick of wood, and the fire was started each morning by live coals from the nearest house. Just before the recess in the morning, two boys were sent next door to get a pail of water, and the gourd dipper passed from mouth to mouth with no one fearing germs from that ancient drinking fountain.

EARLY SCHOOL BOOKS—The earliest books used in the school were hornbooks. A hornbook was a thin piece of wood with a printed piece of paper on it. On the paper were the alphabet and simple sound combinations: a-b=ab, e-b=eb, etc.—a book of only one page with a thin sheet of yellow horn across it. A hole in the wooden handle made a place for a string, and the book was often carried around the neck. There were few books in the school. The New England Primer with its alphabet rhymes served the purpose of all the readers we have today. The A B Cs were taught first to rhymes like these:

            A – In ADAM’S fall we sinn-ed all.

            B – Thy life to mend this BOOK attend.

            C – The CAT doth prey and after slay.

A tiny picture followed each rhyme. A was a man; B was the Bible; C was a cat ready to catch a mouse. The children always liked Z—“Zaccheus he did climb a tree His lord to see.” In the back of the book was the Lord’s prayer and rhymes like this:

            Birds in their little nests agree

            And ‘tis a shameful sight

            When children on one family

            Fall and quarrel and fight.

All wrote with quill pens. Each child had to take his own goose quill to school, and it was the teacher’s duty to keep the quill sharp. They used homemade ink. Do you remember the mottos George Washington used to write in his copybook? “Labor to keep alive in your breast that divine spark called conscience” was one of them. Then they did their sums; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Here is an old rhyme the children used to say:

            Multiplication is vexation,

            Division is as bad,

            The rule of Three it puzzles me

            And fractions make me mad.

NORTH AND SOUTH END SCHOOLS—The next schoolhouse stood on the corner of Main Street and Nugent Street, only there was no Nugent Street then. The schoolhouse was a long one-story building with a fireplace at each end. Here, our great grandfathers and grandmothers studied the queer old schoolbooks, which we find in our attics today. This schoolhouse must have been a large one, for we read that when the district was divided into North and South End, the schoolhouse was cut in two and made into two buildings. The South End School stood on Job’s Lane where the old firehouse is, and the North End School stood on Windmill Lane, south of the place where the Bethel Church is now. These were called district schools and were free to all children under twenty-one, living in either district.

The littlest children went to the Dame School. This was a private school kept by a woman. Miss Sayre kept a Dame School in a little house that stood on the triangle in Bowden Square, and in later years Mrs. Jane Proud kept one in a low house on the hill where the Grammar School has stood in recent years. One of her puils has told us much about Mrs. Proud. She was “a widow lady and always wore a black dress and steel spectacles and was always knitting a blue stocking. She had a stick that weighed seventy-five pounds. At least, that is the way it felt to me. I always wondered how she could knit that blue stocking and also see us whisper at the same time.” To the New England Primer, this later generation of children added “The Child’s Guide” and “Peter Parley’s Geography,” with its wonderful poetry:

            The world is round and like a ball

            Is swinging in the air,

            The atmosphere is round it all

            And stars are shining there.

Mrs. Proud’s low one-story house has long since made way for the Grammar School, and of all the little girls and boys who sat on the low benches and studied Peter Parley’s Geography and read The Child’s Guide and wrote in the copybooks and played at recess on the hill—not one remains. Their names are in the stones in the old North End graveyard across the street.

After Mrs. Proud’s day, Miss Amanda Halsey kept a private school for little girls in her home. Her father, Captain Harry, had an apple orchard, which grew south of the house. The girls were forbidden to pick the apples from the trees. They obeyed very carefully the letter of the law, but found a way to get the fruit by climbing the trees and eating the apples from the stem.

The Southampton Academy was built in 1831, when the town had grown so large that a high school seemed necessary. East Hampton had built Clinton Academy in 1795, the first high school in New York State. These were private schools, where boys and girls had to pay for their schooling. There was no graduating from the district school. One day your father said, “Thomas, take your books and go down to the Academy,” and willy-nilly you went. No Regent’s Examination to pass for entrance! Peter Parley’s Geography and Saunder’s Fourth Reader and Smith’s Arithmetic were left behind; you studied History and Grammar and Algebra and maybe Latin and became a proud “Academy Shoat.” A few of the boys went to college and became ministers or doctors or lawyers. The old Academy stood on the corner of Main Street and Job’s Lane, where Rogers Memorial Library stands today. It was moved to make a place for the Library and is standing, The Elks’ Clubhouse on Monument Square.

UNION FREE SCHOOLS—In 1891, the North and South End Schools joined and formed a union school. The new schoolhouse on Windmill Lane, housing all grades and the new high school, was considered a very large building then, and people forty years ago little dreamed that we should ever need the large schoolhouse that became necessary in 1913. And what would the first schoolmaster, Richard Mills, say to the still larger schoolhouse now ready for use in 1933?

FATE OF RICHARD MILLS—FIRST SCHOOLMASTER—Poor Richard Mills, our first schoolmaster in Southampton—probably the first English schoolmaster in the Province of New York. He left Southampton in 1657, and went to the Dutch settlements where he was declared by Peter Stuyvesant to be the “Ringleader of the English.” He was thrown into prison. From prison he wrote a piteous letter to the Dutch Governor, saying he “had been tenderly brought up,” and that “the prison fare endangered [his] health and life.” This was true, for the old English account tells us that, “His imprisonment caused his death, which happened soon after his release.” Such was the sad fate of the first schoolmaster of the Town of Southampton.

from "Some Stories of Old Whalers"

by Mrs. Edward P. White about 1932

…..

Hubert Anderson White (Cap'n Hubie) | Whaler, Farmer, and Civil War veteran

Another old sea captain whom I knew well used to sit on the side porch of his home smoking his pipe. I liked to ask him for stories of his whaling days—long past. He would always answer questions but never disclose any of his varied experiences. He had a little motor boat, and often sailed across Long Island Sound to New London. He was Captain Hubert A. White. One day he was arrested in New London because the motor was running with a muffler off. He paid his fine, and next morning appeared in court with thirty others who promptly pleaded “Not guilty” to the same offense.

“Guilty or not guilty?” said the judge to the captain.

“Guilty,” said Capt. White. “I didn’t know your law, but that is no excuse. I am guilty.”

Edward Post White, Sr., Lizbeth Halsey White, Hubert Anderson White, Albert Jessup Post, ?, Edward Post White, Jr., Sarah Elizabeth Post White | c. 1907

The judge then asked, “How long, Captain, since you have been in New London Harbor?”

“Not since I shipped from New Bedford in 1886.” (This was 1915.)

“How old a man are you?” asked the judge.

Edward Post White, Sr, Hubert Anderson White, Lizabeth Halsey White, Edward Post White, Jr., Sarah Elizabeth Post White, ?, Albert Jessup Post

At this, the white-haired, bright-eyed old captain proceeded to tell the story of his life in the space of three minutes. He came forward with a limp, left from the days of the Civil War, and said in tones that echoed over the quiet courtroom, “I was born the fourteenth day of May, 1832. I’ve been around the world three times, around Cape Horn seven times. I’ve sailed from Latitude 161 South to 76 North. I’ve been shipwrecked three times. I’ve been through the Civil War—and this is the first time I’ve been pinched.”

The courtroom broke into cheers, the judge waved the American flag and said, “Well, Captain, I think we will have to excuse you this time, here’s your money back.”

The old captain was never tired of telling the story, but I tell it here because it gives in a few words a glimpse into the lives of fearless hardihood of our old Long Island seafaring men.

Text courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center; Photographs of Lizbeth and Edward Post White, Captain Hubie, et al, courtesy of Con Crowley, from a collection of photos belonging to his grandfather, Captain Ed White, Jr.

Whaling Days

by Mrs. Edward P. White | circa 1932

The years 1828-48 were the great whaling days on eastern Long Island. Sag Harbor or the Harbor of Sagg on the border of East and Southampton Towns became an important whaling port. New Bedford, Nantucket, and New London were the New England ports, but Sag Harbor stood first in New York State. Southampton, East Hampton, and Bridgehampton were all flourishing villages before the Harbor of Sagg boasted a house. Then in 1707, one Russell had locate don Hog Neck—now North Haven. But the Harbor of Sagg was so good that it soon forged ahead of North Sea Harbor in Southampton and North West Harbor in East Hampton. By 1770, we find inhabitants from both towns building a wharf there and we know that by 1795, Prime’s shipyard was established. It seems impossible to believe, but in 1790, Sag Harbor had more tons of square rigged vessels engaged in foreign trade than New York City. Her custom house was established in the same year as New York’s, 1788, and to Sag Harbor goes the honor of the first post office and the first newspaper on eastern Long Island.

This thriving town owed its growth to the deep sea whaling industry. Soon after the Revolution, Capt. Ephraim Fordham cruised for whales along the southern shore of Long Island. In 1786, we find ships which had outfitted in Sag Harbor docking in New London with 360 barrels of whale oil brought from Brazil. Heretofore trade had been in horses in the West Indies, and the New London Gazette of that day writes, “Now, my horse jockeys, beat your horses and cattle into spears, lances, harpoons, and whaling gear, and let us all strike out, many sprouts ahead, whales plenty, you have them for catching.” In 1817, we find the good ship Argonaut of Sag Harbor venturing around Cape Horn into the Pacific and brining home 1700 barrels of sperm whale oil from a voyage of twenty months. This gallant ship under Capt. Eliphalet Halsey had made as fair a voyage as that of Jason when in the older day he sailed in the Argo to find the golden fleece, for whale oil came to be the “golden fleece” that made the golden years for Sag Harbor and all of eastern Long Island.

Mr. Harry Sleight in his book, “The Whale Fishery on Long Island” says, “The Sag Harbor whalemen were the flower of eastern Long Island. Every boy’s ambition was to become a boatsteerer or master mariner, and a young man was not considered to have arrived at his majority until he had doubled Cape Horn. The whalers were a hardy, fearless lot of men, officers and crew sharing thrilling dangers and emerging form hair breadth escapes with the stoicism of red Indians. And they were ever to the fore when their country needed strong arms and cool heads, fired only by the flame of patriotism.” The whaling business made the whole countryside prosperous. By 1836, Sag Harbor owned twenty-one vessels, by 1843, more than twice that number. Business grew in all the trades related to whaling. “There were the coopers who made the barrels, the block and pump makers, the ship carpenters, sail makers, whaleboat makers, the masons for trypots, the stevedores, and all the other business that goes along with Provisioning a crew of a score to fifty men.” The great year was 1847, when the Sag Harbor fleet numbered fifty vessels with eleven more from Greenport registered in its custom house, bringing a million dollars into the town. At the lowest estimate one thousand able-bodied seamen were employed besides those who found work in the village in connections with the whaling industry.

All this made a busy and a lively town. To “go to the Harbor” in those days meant more to the boys and girls of Southampton than the first trip to New York does today. There were always ships going out to sea, always some young men of the family or neighborhood to “see off.” It was often a brother or a father, and we must remember that whaling voyages lasted two or three years. Duke Fordham’s Inn (where the Sea View House now stands) at the head of the Long Wharf was a merry place the night before a ship sailed, for the sailors not knowing whether they would ever see home and friends again made the most of their time.

And when a returning ship was sighted “down the bay!” “Flag on the mill, ship on the bay!” the old saying ran from mouth to mouth. People rushed to the wharf. Long before the ship docked the whole town had gathered to welcome her home. The ship owners, always a little more prosperously dressed than their neighbors, would get aboard a small sloop and go out to meet the ship. The crew, decked in their best with gifts from far away countries, were welcomed by their friends and loved ones. There was work for all in the discharging of the cargo of oil and bone that had to be transferred to packet slops and taken to New York for market. The ships had to be re-fitted and made ready to sail again shortly. Riggers, carpenters, masons, coppers, and caulkers, found ropes and spars to be replaced, timber and planks to be renewed and strengthened, try works to be set up, casks to be stowed and seams to be caulked. Painters swarmed over the hull, and grocers’ clerks and supercargoes ran to and fro, taking orders and delivering provisions and supplies for the outward voyage. But the returning sailors—Long Islanders, Portuguese, Kanakas, Figians, Malays, and Montauk and Shinnecock Indians—all good whalemen—walked the streets, flush with money, spending and giving away lavishly. They rolled along Sag Harbor’s Main Street, frolicking as they went, knowing their fun would soon be over and they would be aboard ship and sailing for the strange and unhomelike places of the earth.

For the whalers were explores as well. To them the coast of Patagonia and the Okhotsk Sea were as familiar as the coast of Connecticut. The whale ships Arabella, Daniel Webster, and Franklin were the first to make the long voyages in the Pacific Ocean.

Capt. Royce of the Sag Harbor whaling bark, Superior, was the first master to pass through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. He found whales very tame and easy to spear. Other whalers followed, and the coast of the Kamchatka and the Sandwich Island became familiar words on the lips of seamen.

It was a Southampton man and Southampton crew who first entered the closed port of Japan—Capt. Mercator Cooper in 1845. He had rescued some Japanese sailors, and in his ship, Manhattan, took them into Yeddo. He was received courteously and allowed to remain four days, although he was requested never to come again.

In 1851, the bark Martha carried the first American consul to Japan.

It was the Sag Harbor whaleship Cadmus that brought Lafayette to the United State in 1824.

Many an old whaleman, sunning himself on his back porch, smoking his pipe, could tell us more thrilling tales than the movies could picture. But whaling was dangerous business and not many whalers lived to die in their beds. In Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor stands a beautiful whaling monument to record the names of six captains under thirty years of age who were lost at sea. The inscription reads: “To commemorate that noble enterprise, the whaling fishing, and a tribute of lasting respect to those both and enterprising shipmasters who periled their lives in a dangerous profession and perished in actual encounter with the monster of the deep. Entombed in the ocean, they live in memory.”

Roughly estimated, over one thousand brave men lost their lives every year in whaling trips, and those who returned alive had either grown rich or lost their all.

The whaling boon died in 1848, when gold was discovered in California, but many old houses standing today in Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and Southampton point back to whaling days. The Presbyterian churches in Southampton and Sag Harbor are monuments to these prosperous times. The Sag Harbor Church was built with a spire two hundred feet high, so high that the returning mariner could see it as he rounded Montauk Point. The hymn, “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me,” was written by a minister of this church, Rev. Edward Hooper, D.D. He wrote it in memory of those hardy adventurers whom he had seen “go down to the sea in ships.”

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

Note Book: Dr. Francis Landey Patton

Dr. Francis Landey Patton

Note Book

November 26, 1932

Jesse Halsey

Dr. Patton died today in Bermuda, nearly ninety. It brings back old times. I remember when first I saw him; at Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration as president (of Princeton, 1902). He had a cadaverous figure and face; sideburns that made him ‘look like a monkey’ (I thought to myself and have never breathed before). He had a biting wit, was keen as a brier in repartee, and could preach for an hour—and interest freshmen—by his eccentricities of manner and lapses into slang and homely and cogent illustration, and then keep the faculty going thru the sermon by his comprehensive knowledge of philosophy and unusual thought forms. He was a great preacher—and a lazy man. He delivered and sold some lectures at Lake Forest twenty odd years ago—and they have never been finished.

My admiration for him as a keen minded heresy hunter changed after I saw him in action in Princeton. Partly because my point of view changed and David Swing the heretic, whom Dr. Patton had prosecuted, became one of my heroes, and Dr. Patton’s star declined in my young mind. I had more admiration for the old colored janitor—Charles—in Miller Chapel at the Seminary and when he brought in with great ceremony the glass of water just before service and handed it to Dr. Patton, Charles and not Prexy pronounced the benediction—on me.

Dr. Patton would come to class about half the time—this was in Theism, at the Seminary; often late, and would mumble over his notes and yellow MS written thirty years before. Unless you sat in the front seat you couldn’t hear. Some of the boys used to complain, but he never would speak louder. There is a legend (true in the case of Dr. McQueen of Pittsburgh) that a

***

[Ed note: The text is missing the next page! In my text, the following inexplicably appears instead.]

Five to sixteen letters every week there is a vacancy in our Presbytery. We have nearly seventy churches and ordinarily there are one to two vacant. As soon as this church is listed by Dr. Mudge’s Office—sometimes before—the letters begin to come. There are a lot of repeaters. These are briefly and courteously answered, but receive slight consideration. A letter from a friend is better than one from a candidate himself; though sometimes a man who writes a direct application without rationalization as to why he wants to move, will receive favorable consideration. This chairman then checks on a man by every available reference, and when meeting with the session of a vacant church talks over with them the qualifications of two or three of the most likely candidates.

We then decide on the preferential order and the pulpit committee undertakes to hear the prospective candidate, preferably without his knowledge, a committee visits his church and community and gets their impression, this is reported back and after conference the man may be invited to preach, preferably not unless the committee is practically unanimous as to his desirability.

***

[Ed note: Thanks, however, to the generous assistance of the archivist at Princeton's Theological Seminary this summer, I now have the missing part of the story.]

Dr. Patton would come to class about half the time—this was in Theism, at the Seminary; often late, and would mumble over his notes and yellow MS written thirty years before. Unless you sat in the front seat you couldn’t hear. Some of the boys used to complain, but he never would speak louder. There is a legend (true in the case of Dr. McQueen of Pittsburgh) that a student went to him and asked him to read louder. “You wouldn’t understand it if I did,” came the answer.

But there were mornings, not a few, when, after ten minutes with the MS., he would throw them aside and sit and talk. Sometimes it was concerning the news of the day, sometimes some problem of philosophy, but most often, something about St. Paul, who was his hero. His sketches of the Pauline Epistles, given off-hand in these hours, stand out as among the most inspiring of my experience.

One day in class Dr. Patton thought he was being horsed (to use the Princeton term for roughhouse). He could deal with any situation, as one day when he heard students leaving the back seats during his lectures (he was very nearsighted) he was heard to say, (this time so all could hear), in his cracked falsetto voice, “our blessings brighten as they take their flight.” This particular morning he slammed his book, took up his coat and strode out and went home. The noise was from the hall, made by another class going to its recitation room. Sensing that he knew none of this, our class got quickly together and delegated me to take their explanation, and apology, to Prexy.

 ***

With fear and trembling I was ushered into his study. The colored servant announced my name. Dr. Patton was storming up and down, puffing a black cheroot. “Halsey? Halsey? You belong to that class that just insulted me?” “Yes. Sir.” “Well, explain—never had such outrageous treatment from any class in the thirty years I’ve been in Princeton!” And much more. At last, when he was exhausted, I simply told the fact. His face changed. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Young man. Sit down.” He talked for thirty minutes—one of the most surprising, and in a manner, pathetic things I’ve ever heard, or read. He said, in substance, that he’d never had a friend in college days, didn’t know what it was to be hailed as an equal and fraternized with as an undergraduate. “I was an Ishmaelite—always have been.” His poor eyesight was one reason, he said.

Then he told how his reputation was made as a heresy hunter; how he came to Princeton on the reputation, and intimated that it was a bad thing to have a reputation to live up to. And, as I gathered, that many times he would have taken a more liberal slant in public utterance if he hadn’t felt charged with the responsibility of orthodoxy, and the urge toward consistency. He talked a long time, as to an equal, an overflowing of the soul.

I left, hardly knowing what had happened; went back to my class and reported that we were absolved and non one else was implicated—but never told the rest of the story. From that day I had a unique place in my memory, and sympathy, for Dr. Patton.

Some of the most brilliant discourses I ever listened to, or expect to, fell from his lips.

One item more. The day after Mr. Wilson’s inauguration was Sunday. Dr. Patton preached to a crowded chapel. I sat, as it happened, just in front of Nicholas Murray Butler. As Dr. Patton went on scoring one philosophy after another in his sermon, Dr. Butler would whisper to Mrs. Butler, “That’s Spencer; Kant, now; Spinoza.” Once I heard her ask, “Who’s that?” He answered, “I don’t make out.”

I ought now, while the iron is hot, to add that Dr. Patton was more or less forced to resign at the College. At the very meeting when he did resign, he had that influence with the trustees, that, before they had adjourned after his resignation, they had, under his influence, elected Woodrow Wilson.

How People Lived in Southampton in Colonial Times

by Mrs. Edward P. White | circa 1932

HOUSES—The people who first came to Southampton came from England, and the houses they built were English homes. The old Halsey house standing in the South End (the last old house on the right before you come to the beach) was probably built by Thomas Halsey, the pioneer, about 1660. The stairs go up a few steps and turn to the left twice before you reach the top. There is a huge chimney in the middle of the house with a big fireplace in the south room, also one in the north room, and another in the kitchen at the back. The south room in the old days was probably the “parlor” or the best room, a place nicely furnished with mahogany chairs and a large sofa. But it was rarely opened except for weddings and funerals. The north room was perhaps the parents’ bedroom. In it would be a great mahogany bed, large chests of drawers, a highboy, and a trundle bed which could be pushed under the big one by day.

THE KITCHEN—The kitchen was the place where the people really lived—a great big room—a large fireplace on one side and small windows on the other. Here the cooking was done over the open fire, the bread was baked in the brick oven built into the chimney, the meat was roasted on the spit that was kept turning in front of the glowing coals. The floor was covered with white sea sand, pushed into patterns with a home-made broom. A long table stood in the center of the room, around it stood wooden chairs painted yellow. A Big arm chair stood by the fireplace, and bright pewter platters and blue china dishes stood on the big dresser in the corner.

THE TRUNDLE BED—Beside the fireplace stood a heavy wooden cradle. In this all the babies of the family were rocked to sleep in their turn. If the fireplace was big enough (and it was), there was a little seat or settle inside it where the children could creep on wintry nights and by the hickory log blaze read in the Children’s Primer until Mother lighted the candle to put them to bed in the cold trundle bed in the next room. It was not so cold though, for there was a goose feather bed to sleep on and wool patchwork quilts to sleep under, and between the homespun linen sheets, she would place the warming pan for a few minutes. The warming pan, you know, was a copper bowl with a long wooden handle. Inside the bowl, Mother placed live coals from the hearth. Their warmth made the trundle bed as warm and cozy as the settle in the kitchen had been. The trundle bed fitted under the big bed only by day, at night it was pulled into the room and there little brother and sister slept “like tops” until morning.

The older children slept in what was called “up chamber.” This was often an attic finished with only a partition. In an old diary we read of a night when the girls “darst not sleep up chamber but came down stairs and slept by the fire. There was a great wind and hail with frightful gusts, we have hardly a dry place in the house.”

If you want to see one of these old houses kept just as it was in the old days, go to Home Sweet Home in East Hampton. It was built in 1684, and was later the home of John Howard Payne who wrote the song we love so well—

            “Mid pleasures and palaces tho’ we may roam—

            Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.”

FARM LIFE—There was plenty to do in those days for girls and boys as well as men and women. Everything that people wore or ate had to be raised on the farm. A man might be a weaver, a magistrate, a minister, a doctor, a teacher, a tanner, a shoemaker, or a fisherman, he was first and always a farmer. The crops must be sown and cultivated and harvested, the cows must be fed and milked and butchered to provide food for his family. The flax must be sown and reaped to make linen, the sheep must be cared for and shorn to make wool for clothes. The cattle must be grown and butchered to make leather for shoes. This is what Judge Henry P. Hedges says about these old days, “From his head to his feet the farmer stood in clothes of his own and his wife’s make. The leather of his shoes came from hides of his won cattle; the lien and woolen were from produce he raised. The wife and daughters braided and sewed the straw hats on their heads. The fur cap was made from fox or chipmunk he had shot, and the feathers that filled the beds and pillow were plucked from his own geese. The pillowcases, sheets, and blankets, the quilts and the towels and the tablecloths were all homemade. The harness and the lines the farmer cut from hides grown on his own farm. Everything about his ox yoke except the staple and ring, he made. His whip, his oxgoad, his flail, ax, hoe, and fork handles were his own work.

The shoemaker came once a year to make the family’s shoes. The children went bare foot in summer time, and woe betide them when winter came if they did not have shoes left over from last year, for there were many families to visit, and sometimes the shoemaker was late in the season getting around to his customers. The stockings were all knitted by the women and girls of the family. A little girl of six was taught to knit and had her daily “stint” to finish at her grandmother’s side before she might go out to play. She usually began by knitting garters for her father, long narrow strips to hold up his woolen stockings, which he wore inside his boots.

OCCUPATIONS—There were many occupations which are forgotten today. Tallow dipping was a yearly task, when all the candles had to be made at home from the mutton tallow or the bayberries. When whale oil lamps were invented, it was a great help to the women of the household. An old saying runs:

            “Provide for thy tallow ere frost cometh in,

            And make think own candles ere winter begin.”

GIRLS’ WORK—The feather beds had to be stuffed from plucked goose feathers. Every girl had her feather beds and pillows to take to her new home when she married, also thirteen patchwork quilts she had pieced. The thirteenth was called “the bride’s quilt,” and when it was finished this was the announcement of her engagement. Spinning and weaving, too, were done by the women and girls. Often they took their spinning wheels with them when they visited. The weaving was done by the old girls and women, and must of course be done at home. There was all the cloth for men’s and women’s clothes as well as the table and bed linen for the household, and the beautiful woolen coverlids which each girl must have when she married.

BOYS’ WORK—The boys had all the tasks of the farm to learn from driving the cows to curing the beef for winter, from sowing the wheat to thrashing it and taking it to the watermill to be ground into flour, from cutting down the trees in the forest to fashioning the wood into his dwelling in the town.

PLAY—Although they worked hard, girls and boys had time for play. Old games like hop scotch, prisoner’s base, and tag come down to us from the early days. In old attics we find old skates that speak of jolly winter days on the ice and old sleigh bells that ring as clearly as every, though the merry straw-riders have long since gone their ways. Quilting bees and husking bees were times when whole neighborhoods came together, and barn raisings were signals for friends from other towns to “hitch up” and come over to Southampton and lend a hand. In the woods at Millstone Brook the oldest beech trees are still covered with initials of boys and girls who came to the church picnics there one hundred years ago. The greatest day of all was Town Meeting Day but the story of Town Meeting Day will have to be told in a chapter all its own.

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

Stories of the American Revolution

by Mrs. Edward P. White | circa 1932

Many local stories have come down to us from the days of the American Revolution. Tradition sometimes speaks louder than historical fact. With this in mind let us listen to some of the tales told by our great grandfathers, and remember that they heard them from their grandfathers who had really lived in Revolutionary times.

One of the most famous characters of those days was Pompey, a slave in the Mackie family. He was born in the colonies, was shrewd, a man of good sense, of much force, always ready to make or take a joke. Some English dragoons were quartered on his master in the winter of 1778. They made the mistake of insulting Pomp, and one day to get even he mixed pounded glass in the feed of some of the horses. Suddenly the horses were found dead in their stalls, Pomp was questioned by his master and cross-questioned by the officers, but was ignorant and innocent of any knowledge of the calamity. Sometime after the English troops had been withdrawn from these parts, Pomp’s master said to him one day, “Tell me, now, Pomp, what really happened to those horses.”

“Ground glass mighty good for hosses, Massa, ground glass mighty good for hosses.”

On another occasion he had difficulty with a soldier who was interfering with Pomp’s barn yard arrangements. The dragoon drew his sword. Pomp quickly charged at the soldier with his pitchfork and routed the man from the fields. (Howell’s History of Southampton)

Mrs. Betsy Bush of Southampton has the original bill of Pomp’s sale to his master.

MRS. LEMUEL PIERSON             Major Cochrane was the commanding officer in Bridgehampton. He is still remembered as a merciless tyrant. Bridgehampton suffered much from lawless soldiery by day and night. Cattle were carried off, forage seized without payment, and sometimes they even destroyed furniture in the houses of the inhabitants. One day they came to the home of Mr. Lemuel Pierson and turned him out. He was determined to take some of his furniture with him, and although the soldiers stood over him with drawn swords he gained his point. His wife proved to be as good a fighter as he for when the soldiers called another day in her husband’s absence, she met them at the door with a teakettle of hot water and threatened to scald the first man who came in. She was unmolested. (Howell)

EDWARD TOPPING                        In a house on Main Street and Corwith Avenue, Bridgehampton, lived Edward Topping. One night a number of English soldiers with blackened faces and coats turned inside out came to his house on mischief or trouble intent. Mr. Topping was awakened by their noise, and seizing his gun ran to defend his house. One man raised a window and started to enter. Topping commanded him to get out and said he would shoot if the man persisted. No attention was paid to his warning, and he shot. The man fell back dead and was carried off by his companions. The next morning word was sent to General Erskine in Southampton. General Erskine came down to learn the facts. When he learned the truth, the General said to his soldiers, “Is this one of the flower of the British army?” Then kicking the body, he said, “Take him down to the ocean and bury him below high water mark, and let me hear no more of it.” The same affair under Major Cochrane might have had a different ending for Mr. Topping. (Howell)

MARTHA HALSEY                        There is a pretty story of Martha Halsey, a young girl who lived in Southampton at the time of the English occupation. One day an English soldier approached her and asked her for a kiss. She angrily reached up and pulled off his hat and trampled it on the ground, much to the amusement of his companions, who jeered at him. Muttering, “You cursed little rebel,” he picked up his dusty headgear and slunk away. (Howell)

DR. SILAS HALSEY                        The town furnished four surgeons for the war of the Revolution: Henry White, Shadrack Hildreth, William Burnett, and Silas Halsey. Dr. Silas Halsey was a very determined man. There are many stories told of him. He lived in the Old Post House on Main Street at this time. It is said that once in crossing the ford at Water Mill, he met a squad of English soldiers, who threatened to capture him. In that day everyone was terribly afraid of small pox. They had reason to be, because vaccination was unknown. Dr. Silas on this occasion pulled a vial from his pocket and shook it at his captors.

“I’ve small pox enough here,” he shouted, “to pepper the whole British army. Let me go or I’ll fire it among ye.” No one stopped the doctor. He afterward moved to Connecticut among the refugees. His wife died there, and when the war was over, he moved to Ovid, New York, where his descendants live today. (traditional)

CAPT. DAVID HAND                        Captain David Hand had been a prisoner of war five times before his twentieth year. He was one of those unfortunate prisoners on the old Jersey, worst of prison ships. He was a man of great courage and daring. He was at one time robbed and plundered of his clothing by English sailors. He marched up to the captain of the ship and demanded it saying, “All I ask now is to begin at your traffrail and fight the whole ship’s crew forward and die like a man.” He was taken to Halifax, and footed it home across New England in winter. After tramping through the slush all one day, he thought he had taken his last step on earth, but he fell in with kind folks who nursed him back to health. He returned to Sag Harbor where he lived to the age of eighty-one, having had five wives. Their five gravestones may be seen today in Oakland Cemetery, Sag Harbor, and on his own this inscription:

            “Behold, ye living mortals passing by,

            How thick the partners of one husband lie;

            Vast and unsearchable the ways of God,

            Just but severe his chastening rod.”  (Adams)

CAPT. JOHN WHITE                        Deacon John White of Sagg was one of the refugees who had gone to Connecticut. While the English were in possession of Sag Harbor on May 23, 1777, he piloted the Meigs expedition which successfully crossed Long Island Sound, transported their whale boats across the north side of the island, crossed Peconic Bay, landed at Sag Harbor, arrested the English garrison and destroyed twelve English brigs and sloops, one hundred tons of hay, ten hogsheads of run, and a large quantity of grain. They returned to Connecticut in twenty-five hours without the loss of a single man. (Mather)

REV. SAMUEL BUELL                        One of the most noted characters of this section was the Rev. Samuel Buell, minister in the East Hampton church at this time. Although a staunch patriot, he made friends with the English officers, and was able by his friendly relations to do more for his people than if he had been unwilling to meet the invaders half way. He and General Erskine were very good friends and often went hunting together. One day General Erskine brought one of his young officers over to East Hampton to meet the minister. “And what division of His Majesty’s army do you have the honor to command?” Dr. Buell said pleasantly.

Lord Percy, young and arrogant, said quickly, “A legion of devils straight from hell.”

Not to be outdone in repartee, the old minister bowed low and said courteously, “Then I suppose I have the pleasure of addressing Beelzebub, Prince of Devils?”

Another time when General Erskine said, “Dr. Buell, I have just ordered your townsmen to appear with their teams at Southampton at seven o’clock tomorrow (Sunday) morning.” Dr. Buell replied, “Your Excellency, you are in command six days a week. Sunday is the Lord’s day. I am in command then. I shall countermand your order.” The teams did not go out the next day. (East Hampton History)

These are a few of the stories of the Revolutionary war, listened to by girls and boys of Southampton for generations. In recounting them we are reminded of Emerson’s Concord Hymn:            “The foe long since in silence slept,

                                    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.”

The enemies of one hundred and fifty years ago are firm friends today, and England and America stand together, leading the world in understanding and friendship.

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

Occupations of Colonial Southampton

by Mrs. Edward P. White | circa 1932

The people who first settled Southampton were all English men and omen. We would like to know just what each man did in England before he came. Some left beautiful homes to come, others came to find a home. Some came for faith, some for adventure, some to make a living. Each man put a certain amount of money into the venture, and received three acres of village land, the farm land which he tilled, and the wood land [on] which built his home and kept his home fires. Besides the common pasture land, there was undivided land in which the first settlers had rights that were passed on to their children.

In 1649, nine years after the town was settled and one year after the people moved to the new village on Towne street, there were twenty-nine families; in 1657, there were sixty-one. In the beginning, every man was a farmer, because everything that the family ate or wore or used had to be made or raised on the farm. But if we read the Town records carefully, we find other occupations growing in number as the town grows in size. The Reverend Abraham Pierson was a staunch leader. He was a man of learning and judgment as well as a preacher of sound doctrine. Not only did he preach on the Sabbath, but he framed the laws, married the people, baptized their children buried their dead, visited them in sickness, advised them in difficulty, and corrected them in wrong-doing.

CAPTAIN OF SHIP—Captain Daniel Howe was the captain of the sloop that brought them from Lynn, Massachusetts. They engaged him to make three trips a year to the mainland, and although he never settled here, he had his allotment of land. Later when Sag Harbor became a port, many Southampton boys found work on boats. In 1791, John Price, master of the packet Speedwell, ran from that port to Hartford, and Luther Hildreth, Master of the sailing sloop Industry, ran to New York “every fortnight or oftener, wind and weather permitting.”

TOWN OFFICERS—We know that magistrates and other officers were elected by the General Court. The town clerk was paid for writing wills and letters, but most of these men served without pay. “The secretary shall have four shillings per annum for keeping the towne books, but none for the General Court.” “Richard Mills, recorder of lands shall have two pence for every paper drawn.”

SOLDIERS—Every man was a soldier. He had to take his turn watching the fields while others worked, and in carrying his gun to meeting on Sunday. He must also belong to the train band, that is, take military training with the rest. WE find a captain of the train band elected very early in the history of the settlement. In the deed made with the Indians, the settlers promised to help defend them against all enemies. There were times, too, when rumors of Indian troubles made it necessary for every man to “bear arms.” In the town record of October 9, 1642, “It is ordered that every man in this town that beareth arms shall watch and ward and come to trayenings [trainings] in their coats.”

COWKEEPER—The General Court appointed a cowkeeper or herdsman to watch the cattle. He must see that they did not wander on the planted lands. The town record, 1643, reads, “It is ordered that whosoever shall be cowkeeper and shall according to his agreement have his wages due unto him, that it shall be lawful for the said herdsman to, with the marshal, levy said wages on the person who shall make default therein.”, which is an old fashioned way of telling us that the cowkeeper had to collect his pay from the man whose cows he watched. A very old man once told us that he could remember an old Indian who kept the gate for the Gin into the Little Plain. October 1643, the record reads, “It is ordered no cattle shall go without a keeper from the first of January to the tyme that every man’s Indian corn shall be carried home from the Playne of each side of this towne.” The Great Playne was the west, and the Little Playne east. Cattle meant cows, goats, sheep or hogs. Each owner of a fifty pound lot was entitled to pasture “8 cow kind.” Six sheep or goats were equal to one cow or one horse. Persons pasturing more than their share had to pay one shilling sixpence per head.

FENCEVIEWER—Another occupation that sounds strange to us is Fenceviewer or Haywarden. This is a very old occupation and comes down through many generations of Anglo Saxen people. It means a warden of the hedges or fences. In 1657, John Jessup and Thomas Halsey were appointed to view the fencing about the great and little Plains. At the same time it was voted, “every inhabitant of the towne that hath fencing in or about the Great and Little Playnes and Ox Pasture shall at both ends put his rails in his own posts, and this is to be done in the present month.” A custom that comes down from very ancient times is “viewing the bounds.” In England, the whole population turned out—the bounds of the parish must be followed exactly, over fences, houses, walls, up and down ladders, across roofs, through fields and woods. Young boys were always taken on the trip. They would remember longer; and in Germany, the boys were given a sound spanking at the Bound [boundary] Tree to impress the place on their minds. In Southampton, the work was done by men appointed, and under the date of January 7, 1643, we read, “Justice Cooper shall take two young men with him and visit Bound Tree about four miles beyond Parker’s, and set their names upon said tree to keep the said Bounds in memory.” The Duke’s Laws, made in 1665, provided for viewing the bounds once in three years. It was called “Triennial Perambulations.” When we find an old oak standing alone in a field, or at a corner of an unused wood lot, it is probably a Bound Tree—a tree that has marked the boundary of long ago.

BLACKSMITH—“At a Towne Meeting in June, 1641, it was granted by the inhabitants of this towne that Jeremy Veale, blacksmith, from Salem shall have a hundred pound lott, provide he come and settle here before January next, and that o his power, he be in readiness to doe all the blacksmith work that the inhabitants do stand in need of!” We wonder what the inhabitants did for a blacksmith before Jeremy Veale came. Probably every man had been his own blacksmith. Another question, “Where do you suppose the first blacksmith shop stood?”

At the same town meeting, four other men are provided with a fifty pound lot on condition that each one “make use of his trade to the best of his power.” If they do not, the “lotts shall return.” We can but wonder what their trades were. Maybe one was a shoemaker. Grandfather used to tell us that the shoemaker sometimes came late in the fall to make the shoes, because there were so many families and only one shoemaker to go around.

MILLERS—In 1644, the town granted Edward Howell forty acres of land if he would promise to build a mill to supply the necessities of the town. This mill is the old watermill at Water Mill, standing today near the spot where Edward Howell built his. The town furnished the mill stones. One came from a rock at Millstone Brook (at Sebonac), and the other from a swamp in the brick kiln (at Long Springs). We find that a man named Ludlam was engaged as miller, and ye Mill Path soon became a well travelled road.

FULLING MILL—Later there was fulling mill at Sagg Swamp, and to this day, when the water is low, the timbers of the old mill may be seen. After the sheep were shorn, the wool was spun. When the cloth was woven, it must go to the fulling mill to be cleansed, shrunken, and thickened. All these processes have now passed from the work of the home.

FISHING—As well as being a farmer, every man was a fisherman. The waters abounded in good fish, clams, oysters, scallops. The settlers were not slow in using them for food. As early as 1645, the General Court ordered that when a whale came upon the beaches, no one should take any part thereof, “but shall send word to the magistrate that it may be shared. He will receive five shillings, but if he find one on the Sabbath Day he shall receive nothing.” In an old book written in 1670, we find this: “Upon the south shore of Long Island in winter lie stores of whales and grampasses, which the inhabitants look to make a trade catching to their no small benefit.

TEACHING—We have seen that Richard Mills was the first school teacher. In 1694, John Mobray was employed to teach the school at twelve shillings “per scholler” for a six months term. The fact that Richard Mills had so many other jobs shows that teaching was poorly paid. Either Richard was a jack of all trades or (what is more likely) a very smart man. We know that he was the first inn keeper. Another inn keeper, John Cooper, kept a tavern and sold horses and had the exclusive right of catching and selling fish in Mecox and Quaquantuck creeks for four years.

CARPENTER—On the fourteenth day of November, 1650, John White undertakes to make a pair of stocks ordered by the General Court. In December of the same year, Richard Post is ordered to make “a sufficient bridge” of lumber in the new highway, “and the same Richard Post is to have for the said work, the summe of twelve shillings trewly paid as soon as the work is done.” We have already seen how Richard Post and Ellis Cook built the meeting house on the Towne Street for the new village.

INTERPRETER—Thomas Stanton was paid four pounds “for his paines about interpreting between the townsmen and the Indians about setting forth the bounds of their lands.”

MILLWRIGHT—A mill wright was one who set up the machinery in the mill. The Southampton mill or watermill must have a good report in the other towns on Long Island for in January, 1676, we find this order in the Huntington Town records: “That the constable and overseers shall with as much speed as possible send to Southampton a man that is a millwright to see if he will be willing to come to this town to agree with our town about a mill to the end we may obtain our expectation of having a good mill.”

BRICKMAKER—The first brickmaker was John Berwick who lived in Mecox. The earliest record of his work is in 1677. The old bricks were more irregular than ours, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, sometimes highly glazed. They were made at the brick kiln back of Hampton Park. Some of its remains are seen today. There was another one at Sebonac. When the chimney of the Old Post House on Main Street was built over, a brick was found dated 1684, which accords with the time the house was built.

DOCTOR—We do not know just how early the town had a doctor of medicine. Most mothers were doctors in their own families. Every garden had its bed of herbs, hops, fennel, tansy, catnip, cammomile, [sic] and many others. The older women usually acted as neighborhood nurses, and girls were taught by their mothers to go out and “watch” with the sick. In 1698, Dr. Nathaniel Wade was living in Bridgehampton, but does not seem to have been successful, as he was ordered by the town to “forbear to meddle with his patient” any more. If you walk into any of the old graveyards, you will find the graves of many infant children. Doctors were few, and medical knowledge was scanty. Many a mother early earned the epitaph of Amy, wife of Zebuon Howell, whose grave is in the old South End Burying Grounds. “She was a faithful wife and a good mother.”

The census of 1686 gives the number of inhabitants, “old and young, Christians and hethen [sic], freemen and servants, white and black, 786. And two merchants. To bear arms, 176 soldiers and troopers. The number of marriages, christenings, and burials, 175.”

SLAVES—Slavery existed in the early days of Southampton. There were three types of servants. First the indentured servants who served for a certain term of years. The town records tell us that Edward Howell took the one-year-old child of two of his servants. She was to be “provided with meat, drink, apparel, and necessaries until the said child should be of the age of thirty years.”

Sometimes Indians bound themselves out for a term of years, sometimes their guardians did. There is this account from the East Hampton town records. “John Kirtland sells to the Rev. Thomas James my servant, Hopewell, Indian, aged 16, whom I bought of his guardians, being an orphan and not one year old for the balance of the term of 19 years, at the end of that time he [is] to receive ten pounds and a suit of clothes.” The boy was six years old when he was sold, and would be free when we was twenty-five. He was sold to a minister. This shows that people of these early days had no thought of wrong in keeping slaves. It is strange to us to read of a man buying in open market in New London a captive Indian girl about thirteen years old named Back. The man gave the girl to his wife, “and on my wife’s death to pass on in fee to her children.”

Negro slavery was common, altho’ we find many masters giving freedom before the Act of 1788 providing for it. In some of Southampton’s homes today, the names of “Aunt Tempie,” or “Uncle Silas,” or “Old Pomp” are cherished in loving memory of their faithful service in days long past.

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