Richard Hendrickson Richard Hendrickson

Transcription

Bridge
the
SUMMER 2009
Th Ann
Brid e Histo Sandfor
geha ric B
d:
u
mpt
on’s ildings
Main on
Stre
et
Richard
Hendrickson
Remembering Old
Bridgehampton
Best Wishes
for a successful Rally!
Building a stronger community from the ground up.
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Bridge
the
ANNUAL MAGAZINE OF THE
BRIDGEHAMPTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SUMMER 2009 EDITION
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
John Eilertsen, Ph.D.
CONTENTS
From the Editor’s Desk by John F. Stacks.................................. 2
From the President by Gerrit Vreeland .................................... 4
From the Director by John Eilertsen, Ph.D............................... 6
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Gerrit Vreeland
John A. Millard
SECRETARY/TREASURER Andrew Steffan
Paul Brennan
Carrie Crowley
Kevin Hurley
Francine Lynch
Andrea Madaio
Kevin Miserocchi
Robert Morrow
Debbie Romaine
John Stacks
PRESIDENT
From the Program Director by Stacy Dermont ........................ 7
VICE PRESIDENT
Richard Hendrickson
Remembering Old Bridgehampton by John F. Stacks .............. 8
A Modernist in the Old Mill: Agnes Pelton
at Hay Ground 1921-1931 by J. Kirkpatrick Flack ...................... 14
The Historic Buildings on
Bridgehampton’s Main Street by Ann Sandford ...................... 20
STAFF
Stacy Dermont
Julie Greene
MUSEUM ADMINISTRATOR Mary Gardner
COLLECTIONS MANAGER Nora Cammann
HISTORIAN Richard Hendrickson
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
PHOTO ARCHIVIST
ADVISORY BOARD
Barbara Albright, Fred Cammann,
Leonard Davenport, Clifford Foster,
Craig Gibson, Hon. Nancy Graboski,
Jane Iselin, Michael Kochanasz,
Weezie Quimby, Ann Sandford,
Meriwether Schmid, Dennis Suskind,
Hon. Fred Thiele
RALLY STEERING COMMITTEE
Barbara Albright
Susan Blackwell
Paul Brennan
Fred Cammann
Tony Dutton
Earl Gandel
Chuck MacWhinnie
Danny McKeever
Peter Mole
Alan Patricof
Stanley Redlus
Cecile Smith
John Stacks
Ed Tuccio
Jeffrey Vogel
Jack Sidebotham, Rally Cartoonist
P.O. Box 977 Bridgehampton, NY 11932
631-537-1088
www.bridgehamptonhistoricalsociety.org
www.bridgehamptonrally.org
Life on the Turnpike:
Bridgehampton Today by Kathryn Szoka ................................ 24
A Rally in the Rain by Arthur R. Lange .................................. 28
Jeanelle Meyers and Friends
by John Eilertsen and Stacy Dermont ...................................... 30
BHHS Members and Supporters ............................................ 33
Gift Memberships.................................................................... 36
The Rogers House by Huntting W. Brown .............................. 37
Cover: Richard Hendrickson
from the
Editor’s Desk, John Stacks
It may sound strange, but I find myself frequently thinking
about Richard Hendrickson. This has been the case for
many years, actually more than twenty years, long before
I was the editor of The Bridge and Mr. Hendrickson
became the subject of our 2009 cover story.
The conjuring of Richard Hendrickson began not long
after we became weekend residents of Bridgehampton in
1987. It did not take us long after buying our house on
Lumber Lane to learn that the beautiful farm across the
street was his Hill View Farm and not long after that, we
learned that the very land upon which our house was built
was once a minor sliver of that enterprise.
The Hendricksons of course still lived across Lumber
Lane from our place, but we had only the occasional wave
and hello. What brought him to mind all the time was
that fact that every bulb or seedling or little tree or piece
of privet we stuck in the ground immediately grew into
robust specimens. It surely had nothing to do with our
gardening acumen. The volcanic growth was the result
of the years and years of work by Richard Hendrickson.
As he explained in our interview this spring, Hill View
Farm was once home to as many as 5,000 chickens, and
before them, steers and dairy cows. Richard Hendrickson
for years, of course, had spread the voluminous by-products of those animals on his land, which meant of course
on what became our land. It was no wonder that Hill
View Farm was such a success. And it was no wonder that
Richard’s new neighbors had such a verdant lawn and
garden. I must add, however, that the things that grew so
abundantly were not just those plants we had selected.
Weeds too seemed to enjoy the fruits of Hill View Farm
and not every thought I had about my neighbor was
altogether positive.
Weeds not withstanding, living next to Hill View Farm
and to the Hendrickson family has been a special reason
for us to love Bridgehampton. From our front porch, the
house and barns stand as a reminder of the old Bridgehampton, the one that Richard Hendrickson remembers
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so well. The agricultural land still stands in corn or grain
most summers. The chickens are gone, but their long
houses are still standing. We have in our dining room a
beautifully realistic painting of the farm by Ralph Carpentier. We acquired it some years ago in case our view
across Lumber Lane ever changed. The Hendrickson
family no longer owns Hill View and I don’t know who
does. But I hope the new proprietor is as good a steward
of the land as were the Hendrickson. I’d hate to have to
rely on a painting to keep appreciating this remnant of the
agricultural heritage we all appreciate.
This year we have three volunteer writers in The Bridge,
which I take as a sign that the magazine is a good place to
write about things important to Bridgehampton. The first
volunteer is J. Kirkpatrick Flack, a retired history professor
from the University of Maryland, who has now focused his
historian's attention on Eastern Long Island. He became
fascinated by why a modern artist like Agnes Pelton
happened to live and paint in the old windmill at
Hayground. The second is Hunt Brown, a descendant of
Captain James Huntting who was an owner of what we
now call The Rogers House, at the corner of Montauk
Highway and Ocean Road. Captain Huntting was a whale
man and Hunt Brown’s profile of his ancestor has some
hair-raising accounts of the dangers of that old trade. It
turns out that the captain’s own brother died on one of
their whaling voyages. The normal practice was to bury
the dead at sea, but the captain pickled his brother’s body
in alcohol and brought it home to be buried in Sag
Harbor. And third among the volunteers is Arthur Lange
who wrote this year’s story on the Classic Car Road Rally,
held each autumn by the Historical Society. Arthur drives
his gorgeous MG TC every year, but last year’s rally was
especially challenging since it was driven in near-flood
conditions.
Ann Sandford is undoubtedly the most distinguished
historian of Bridgehampton and she has contributed
learned articles about our past each year. This year’s
contribution is a survey of the historic buildings on
Bridgehampton’s Main Street. We always learn a great
deal from Ann’s efforts.
Also returning this year is writer/photograher Kathryn
Szoka. Last year her contribution was a set of luminous
photographs of the vanishing landscapes of the East End.
This year, she gives us wonderfully observed pictures of
the residents of the Bridgehampton-Sag Turnpike who are
such an important and integral part of our community.
All of us at the Bridgehampton Historical Society hope
you enjoy this year's edition of The Bridge. !
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from the
President,
Gerrit Vreeland
Last year was a year of historic extremes. The economy
entered the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The stock market responded with a decline of historic
proportions. We, the Bridgehampton Historical Society
(BHHS), on the other hand, had an historically great year.
The Society hosted a record number of events and
exhibitions, brought our membership rolls to record levels
and had our largest operating budget. This was truly the best
of times and the worst of times.
While it would be tempting and natural to focus this letter
on our success last year, my instincts tell me it is more
important to focus on the national events and their likely
impact on our community. Two years ago Bridgehampton
celebrated its 350th birthday as a Hamlet. During this long
and rich history, we have survived depressions, recessions,
wars and natural disasters. Much of our recent history – the
last 150 years – has been influenced by our proximity to New
York City. The city consumed our wood, ice, crops, and
whale oil. When demand for these products declined or
disappeared because of business cycles or new technologies,
the economic consequences in Bridgehampton were very
serious. The recent implosion of the financial service industry
in New York, which had fueled our growth for the last two
decades, is yet another chapter in that history.
The consequences of this decline in business activity will be
profound and will endure for some time. All businesses will
feel the affects and many will not survive. Neighbors will
struggle and friends will need assistance. I think this will bring
out the best of Bridgehampton.
In response to these circumstances, the BHHS has renewed its
commitment to provide our community with events and
exhibitions that will entertain, educate, and offer a perspective
on the events that surround us today. We started the year with
our successful parlor music series. The summer season will
begin with a tribute to Dick Henderickson who is 97. Dick is
the oldest active weatherman in the United States. Later in
the summer, antique shows, craft fairs, and the annual road
rally will provide terrific entertainment for members and
guests. Our objective is to give people the opportunity to
celebrate and enjoy the rich and diverse history of our Hamlet.
Finally, in a matter of months we will start work on the restoration
of the Nathaniel Rogers House. Getting to this point has
been a long and tedious journey. This project will have an
important impact on Bridgehampton, so I hope you share our
excitement. We appreciate your patience and your support.
I want to thank our growing list of members for their support.
If you are not a member please join. Your support will help us
improve our activities. !
MARY GARDNER
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from the
Museums and historical societies play an integral role in
their respective communities, and we like to think that the
Bridgehampton Historical Society is no exception. In a
recent publication of the Museum Association of New York
(a member-based professional organization), it was noted that
New York State’s Museums are places of awe and discovery,
that they inspire appreciation for collections and information, they reflect the values of diverse communities, they
support lifelong learning, and they contribute to the
economic development of their localities.
Director,
John Eilertsen, PhD.
History offers a storehouse of information about how people
and societies behave. Only through studying history can we
grasp how things change and comprehend the factors that
cause change. Only through history can we understand what
elements of a society persist despite change.
In fact, there are approximately 1,900 museums and historical
societies throughout New York State employing over 17,000
people, with almost 12,400 volunteers contributing over
9.6 million hours. These organizations are generating more
than one billion dollars into the state’s economy every year
while serving more than six million school children with
standards-based programs. And museums and historical
societies are a key reason why tourism is the second largest
industry in our state.
Some people study history because they enjoy the information, while others enjoy the process of learning. At the
Bridgehampton Historical Society, we welcome everyone
who enjoys any facet of history. Our goal is to encourage the
study and celebration of our local history, oral history and
cultural traditions in order to assist local residents and visitors
alike to appreciate contemporary Bridgehampton in terms
of the social, political, economic and religious networks that
have been part of our community’s fabric of life for over three
hundred and fifty years.
BHHS may be a small institution, but we are part of a much
larger state-wide network of heritage organizations. As we
grow into the future here in Bridgehampton, we know that it
will be your continuing support and encouragement that will
drive our efforts and successes. !
Morgan MacWhinnie
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6
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from the
Program Director,
Stacy Dermont
I’m Leading Parallel Lives – History is Stranger than Fiction!
Last spring I was seated at the bus stop in front of the Bridgehampton Community House, gazing at our museum. For
museum gazing this is a particularly good vantage point. You face
the Corwith Homestead head-on and in the waning light, you
can imagine it disappearing into the night, like farm houses did
when their people worked from dawn to dusk.
Ours is a quaint, little house by modern Hampton’s standards.
I was pondering why its shape seemed so very familiar to me. Then
it hit me – more than six months after I starting working here five
days a week (sometimes 8 or 9 days a week in the summer) –
I grew up in an 1830’s farm house in North Otto, New York!
People often refer to having “Aha! moments”. For me this was a
big “Duh! moment”. Of course this house’s outlines are bone
familiar to me, it’s basically the house I used to gaze longingly at
from across the road when I waited for my school bus.
My home was on a small hill and when I waited for my old school
bus I was often menaced by the neighbor dog, Lad – apart from
that it’s a continuation of the bus stop experience.
Last year in this journal I wrote about how I might be related to
the local Woodruffs through my mother. I meant to look into that,
I really did. The Woodruffs here are very nice people – but,
despite doing lots of research into other matters – I just didn’t get
around to it.
This past Christmas while visiting my Mom, I wondered aloud if
we might be related to the Bridgehampton Woodruffs. She said
“Of course we are!” and moments later tossed an 800+ page
“Woodruff Book” at me. (Possibly only Woodruffs CAN toss such
an item.)
This year I co-curated my first historical exhibition, it was titled
“Bridgehampton’s Historic Turnpike”. Our Photo Archivist Julie
Greene and I put it together with Collection Manager Nora
Cammann’s help. We were able to gather quite a lot of information but we weren’t able to find out much about the McCullin
family, the long term residents of our toll house.
So my Mom casually says, “You know you grew up in a toll house.
Sort of.” What?! ‘Turns out that the Fosters who originally settled
my family’s farm operated a toll road behind it that lead to Zoar
Valley. The road was located well behind the house, but, sure
enough, I grew up in the house where the local toll keeper lived.
Frequently as Julie and I did the research toward the turnpike
exhibition, we were pursuing particular questions. More often
than not the answers led to new questions. “When was the toll
gate removed?” led to “Who was our last toll keeper?” which led
us to the family of Daniel and Anna McCullin. The census
records seemed woefully incomplete. The only “Daniel
McCullin” listed in the area was a shoemaker in Sag Harbor.
A lot of pieces didn’t seem to fit together. We put just about
everything we could prove up on the museum walls and hoped
that this exhibition would bring us more answers. It sure did.
At the exhibit’s opening reception Mr. Richard G. Hendrickson
showed up with a wheelbarrow wheel from the turnpike’s
brickyard. Apart from bricks, this wheel is the only known artifact
of the brickyards, which were in operation for over 40 years. Mr.
Richard H. Hendrickson brought in a WW I era bicycle to
compliment the photos of Ernest S. Clowes, who left the society
a number of images of the turnpike. A couple weeks later we got
a call from Barbara Rossi who told us she was Toll Keeper Daniel
McCullin’s great granddaughter.
Mrs. Rossi was born into the Bill family in Sag Harbor. She
doesn’t live around here anymore but she has answered some
central questions and has helped us to draw a fascinating picture
of her family’s history.
Because Mrs. Rossi’s grandmother Arrabelle McCullin was
widowed when her daughter Frances was only two, the two of
them lived in the toll house with the McCullins. Mrs. Rossi’s
mother Frances was about fourteen years old when the toll house
burned in 1909.
Frances told her children many colorful stories about life in the
toll house.
Mrs. Rossi’s most vividly remembered stories were about the
“gypsies” who were common in that period. This certainly struck
a chord with me.
My family always told how they used to worry about my grandmother, Arlene Woodruff, being stolen by the gypsies when she
was a young girl. They worried about her especially because she
was very beautiful and had brown eyes. I only knew my grandmother when she was in her 50’s. She was still very beautiful and
had long, jet black hair. As a child I used to wonder if maybe she
really was a “gypsy” after all.
We at the society continue to “tap” Mrs. Rossi, and her sister
Thelma McLane, for more memories and for family photos. They
have been a great aid to our work. Of course the link to this rich
history is their mother, Frances WOODRUFF. !
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Richard Hendrickson
Remembering Old Bridgehampton
Sniffing the Wind, 1939
by John F. Stacks
Sitting with Richard Hendrickson in the comfortable study
of his home on Lumber Lane is like being in a museum.
The room is stuffed with artifacts from the past. There is a
Revolutionary War flintlock musket that may have been
used to help defeat the British. There is a double-barrelled
flintlock shotgun, exquisitely engraved on the stock and the
firing mechanism from 15th Century France. There are
plaques on the wall commemorating his decades of service
as the longest, continuously working weather observer in
the United States. There are pictures of Richard himself in
his youth. More pictures of Hill View Farm, where he was
born and raised, when Lumber Lane was still a dirt road
and the fields north from the barn were unimpeded by new
houses and trees and thus offered a clear view of the hills
to the north. A cabinet holds a selection of flintlock pistols.
There are old signs from the farm itself.
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But this is no conventional museum, because here the
past comes to life as Richard Hendrickson talks about the
nearly century of life in Bridgehampton which he has
seen and lived and can recall with crystalline clarity. He
will be 97 years old on September 12 of this year. Asked
to recall an event from the distant past, Hendrickson
closes his eyes and scrunches his face, as if he is struggling
with his memory. That is not the case at all. His sister
Edith was a student at Colby College in Maine. In 1935
Hendrickson drove a Model A Ford roadster up to Waterville to fetch her from school. “Coming home, we got lost
in the fog in Worcester, Massachusetts. The drive took exactly 33 and one half hours,” he says, as if the ordeal happened this past winter.
He does not directly address his secrets of longevity.
Instead he recalls another story. During a long-ago visit to
Miss Nellie Hedges rooming house in Bridgehampton,
a guest asked her how she had come to live to a very old
age. “Must be the salt air,” she replied, “because salt
preserves meat.”
The more likely answer in his case is that Richard
Hendrickson is interested in nearly everything. “Learning, learning,” he exclaims. “You think you know everything, but there is so much more to learn. Never close
your mind.”
One life-long passion has been the weather. The National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration honored
him last year for being the longest serving official weather
observer in the country. Of course he remembers exactly
how he came to be a weather observer. “It was 1925,” he
says after some face scrunching. “Ernest S. Clowes was a
friend of the family and an author. He would come out
here in the summer and in the evening he would walk up
to the farm to watch the sunset and play chess. He ran a
weather station upstate. Our family was always very forward on new things just starting out—new poultry and
dairy technology for example. “Clowes thought the farm
would be a great place for a weather station.”
Hendrickson was in high school and took to the idea
quickly. The parts for the station were ordered from Cornell University and Clowes supervised its construction.
From then on, twice a day at 8am and 8pm, Hendrickson
recorded the high and low temperatures from a pair of
minimum and maximum thermometers which are still
functioning in the wooden case in the back of his house.
They are the original thermometers. “I have been very
careful,” he says. He still has his very first monthly weather
report.
He would also record his own observations of the skies and
the weather. Anything noteworthy he would record, a
Richard hugging a lamb, 1915
hailstorm or a late frost or a rainbow. The weather still
moves him to lyrical descriptions of what he has seen.
“Sometimes you get layers of clouds and the sunlight
shines through the upper clouds and then through the
lower clouds and you get a partial rainbow between the
layers of cloud.” Hendrickson was outside all the time,
working the farm, but he wasn’t just feeding chickens and
mowing hay, he was learning and watching, enraptured
by the world around him.
The core of Richard Hendrickson’s life has been Hill
View Farm. It has been sold on, but it still looks much as
it did when his grandfather bought it for his father in 1908.
And Hendrickson can see it from his back door.
In the backyard with mother Edith Louise, father Howard F.,
and children (left to right) Edith , Richard G., and Edwin F.
The Hendricksons were of course Dutch and settled in
New York when it was New Amsterdam. Richard’s father
and grandfather were farmers on Long Island, but not the
East End. That farm was where the Belmont Park race
course is today. Grandfather Hendrickson very much
wanted his son to get out of farming and go into business.
But Richard’s father was in love with farming. Grandfather brought his son out to Bridgehampton and apprenticed him to another farmer on Mitchell Lane. “That was
to get the farming bug out of his head,” Richard recalls.
But the plan backfired and two years later, Grandfather
bought what his son then named Hill View Farm. The
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What really sticks in Hendrickson’s memory, however, was
the outhouse. “It was a four holer, two higher up for
adults and two lower ones for children,” he recalls. “It
was plastered inside and shingled outside. There was a
four-pane window with lace curtains.” But what really
made the outhouses special were the covers on each of
the seats.
There was a well in the corner of the kitchen, and from
that well Hendrickson remembers hauling water by the
bucket for the livestock. What he calls “street water”
came just before World War I and that made possible a
great expansion of the farming operation. At its zenith,
the farm had 5,500 laying hens, producing 2,000 chicks a
week. At one time there were also as many as 50 steers
being fed for beef, and a herd of dairy cattle. “My father
had the last heard of Guernsey cows on Long Island,”
Richard says. They sold milk directly from the farm. “Dad
was so proud of that herd. He lived it seven days a week
and half the nights.”
Dogs and Ducks, 1948
price was about $8,000. The house had been built just as
the Civil War ended and there was a barn (still standing)
and a corn crib. The fields were bounded by two-rail
fences –“Three rails was for millionaires,” quips Richard- with chestnut rails and red cedar posts. Hendrickson still
has the ax used to shape the posts.
Just as his grandfather had wanted his father to get off the
farm, Richard’s mother urged him to find other work.
“She’d say ‘Dick, get off the farm. You are not going to
amount to anything around here.’” But Hendrickson
loved the farm life as much as his father. His innovation
was to expand the chicken operation. He took a course at
Cornell University on the science of poultry raising and
worked with the university to develop the flock over the
The New Ranch Wagon, 1954, with (left to right) father Howard and Richard G, and farm hands Dorsey Walker and
William F. Smith
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Prize Roosters held by father and Richard, 1963
In the orchard, 1950
years. “The chicken business was growing as fast as car
dealers are closing today,” he says. But eventually the 75
or so breeding roosters became a problem when the area
around the farm was settled by non-farmers. “They would
crow all night,” he remembers, “you could hear them
down at the flagpole.” Eventually, the chicken business
was phased out, but the poultry operation left a legacy.
The eighty acres the Hendrickson’s farmed must be the
richest in Bridgehampton. ‘I can’t tell you how many tons
of manure I spread on those fields,” he says.
Richard Hendrickson can not talk for long without
stopping to praise the two women to whom he has been
married. His first wife Dorothea died in 1980 and his eyes
still brim when he thinks of her. His second wife
Lillian also grew up in Bridgehampton. “I’ve been blessed
by two beautiful women.
Two great women and a life on the farm he loved. He
remembers cutting ice from Kellis and Long Ponds to fill
The farm was very nearly self-sufficient. “ I’d get sent
down the street to buy flour,” he remembers. “And my
mother would buy vanilla extract from a man on a
big-sprocket bicycle.” They bought puffed wheat and
corn flakes cereal and sugar, but very little else. He was
a teenager before he was given an orange to eat and
didn’t eat a banana until he was grown up.
It was hard work, but he remembers his whole life as a
great adventure. The first tractor came to their farm in
1926. It was an International with steel wheels and steel
lugs on the wheels for traction. “The only thing not steel,”
he laughs, “was your behind.” They still used horses for
plowing, however, well into the 1950s. There was always
something new to try. Once they began planting grass and
clover seeds from Finland and New Zealand to produce
an especially dense pasture and thus increase milk
production. As World War II began, the Air Force sent
experts to examine the fields to determine whether they
could create grass landing strips around the world. The
idea was ruled out in favor of asphalt.
Richard in the upstairs Gun Shop, c. 1950’s
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Richard Hendrickson blasting away with one of his many cannons, 1973
ice boxes before refrigerators. He remembers when
children said “please” and “thank you” and respected their
elders. He remembers always going to Sunday School and
to church on Sundays. He remembers sitting with his
maternal grandmother, who used a trumpet hearing aide,
as she told about her family’s experiences on whale boats.
He remembers life before electricity and the automobile
and a time when no one ever cursed in public. He
remembers family funerals in the farm house when
sometimes they had to take out the windows to remove
the casket.
He remembers Fourth of July celebrations on the
farm with fireworks mail ordered from Bellefontaine,
Ohio. There were the usual roman candles and
firecrackers. But the best were hot air balloons, made of
tissue paper and powered by burning excelsior that
had been soaked in paraffin. “They would fly five, six
hundred feet in the air,” he remembers with a broad
smile, as if it was yesterday and he was still a kid on the
farm in old Bridgehampton. !
A catch of weak fish, 1939
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“A Modernist in the Old Mill:
Agnes Pelton at Hay Ground, 1921-1931”
“I love it here, and feel happier & more contented than I have
anywhere before... The air & sunshine here are as good as can be...
I have my good piano here too, which is a pleasure. I have plenty
of nice kindly neighbors so I am not as isolated as I seem...”
—Agnes Pelton, Hay Ground Windmill, 1923
diseases. Rather the observer sees nothing but sunny
serenity, an affirmation of the artist’s decision to make the
Hay Ground windmill her home and studio.
Photo by Peter Papademetriou
by J. Kirkpatrick Flack
At the Bridgehampton Historical Society, hanging in the
director’s office, is an oil painting of the Hay Ground
windmill. It is a romantic rendering of a local scene on an
idyllic summer day. Soft white clouds float in a powder
blue sky. A meandering path invites one to Hay Ground
Hill where the mill door is open wide, conveying a sense
of welcome. The virtual visitor feels gentle warmth and
pastoral harmony. There is nary a hint that at times the
mill was a less than peaceful, dusty workplace with the
ever-present threat of miller’s lung and other respiratory
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This painting by Agnes Pelton is of her world in the 1920’s.
By that time the windmill had long been a landmark
between Bridgehampton and Water Mill, at the crest of
the rise from Montauk Highway where Windmill Lane
and Hay Ground Road met, just below the railroad tracks.
The Hay Ground Cemetery was immediately to the east
and the Hay Ground School stood toward the west. The
owner/miller was Maltby Rose, great grandson of General
Abraham Rose who, together with Benjamin Rogers,
Ethan Topping, and Nathan Cook, built it during the first
decade of the nineteenth century. For over one-hundred
years it ground locally grown corn, wheat, and oats,
producing flour, feed, and meal. Its functional importance diminished, however, in relation to Bridgehampton’s Beebe Windmill; the latter usually operated
a couple of months longer during the year and its grist
production tended to more than triple that of Hay
Ground’s. But then, shortly before Pelton arrived, the
old mill unexpectedly took on a different function. Fleeting in duration, this turn of events offered Maltby Rose’s
mill something of a second act.
“Miss [Mary] Pickford and company are stopping at the
Hampton [Nathaniel Rogers] House in Bridgehampton,”
the Southampton Press reported in 1916, during a
break from filming at Hay Ground. Paramount-Famous
Players, with Pickford as its phenomenally rising star, had
come out from their Manhattan studio in search of a
location for the opening sequences of Hulda from
Holland. They found it, and the windmill was recast as
the centerpiece of a contrived Dutch street scene. Hulda
is an immigrant orphan caring for three younger brothers
and striving to make her own way in New York City. The
plucky heroine survives a string of melodramatic
adversities before finally winning the heart of a railroad
president’s son. All this after embarking from her Holland
concoction near the Montauk Highway.
According to Pickford biographers and studies of early
moving pictures, Hulda did not do much for the star’s
career. She had already signed a contract guaranteeing
over $1 million a year, had secured a substantial share in
the Famous Players business, and was fast becoming the
most popular film actress in America. Yet her portrayal
of the hazards of fortune turning out favorably could be
seen as a parable of the windmill. Its stones might no
longer grind consequentially, but it was hardly expendable. The vicissitudes of change seemed to hold out new
possibilities. Mary Pickford’s use of the mill, prompted
by expediency, could be considered a springtime fling. Its
next adaptation to changing circumstances would prove
more complex in both motivation and meaning.
If the past is prologue, a meditation on Agnes Pelton’s
windmill experience should begin with her maternal
grandparents. Elizabeth Richards and Theodore Tilton
lived for social reform and moral progress. In the 1860s
the young Brooklyn Heights couple channeled their
evangelical energies into Plymouth Church, where Henry
Ward Beecher preached captivatingly. Elizabeth, who
was educated at the Packer Collegiate Institute, taught at
a school for working class women; Theodore edited the
Independent, an abolitionist weekly tied to the church (its
publisher was a wealthy member of Plymouth’s congregation) which gained a wide circulation and influence
that spread beyond the metropolitan area. Early in 1864
he was one of the newspapermen, led by New York Herald
Tribune editor Horace Greeley, who secretly discussed
with prominent Republicans the possibility of Abraham
Lincoln not being renominated. The President, from
their perspective, seemed bent upon saving the Union at
the expense of equal rights for emancipated slaves and free
blacks. Two years later he joined with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and others in forming the American Equal Rights
Association, an umbrella organization dedicated to enfranchising women as well as black males—or vice versa.
Whose cause should rank first on the radical agenda?
Susan B. Anthony was adamant that the goal of women’s
suffrage be the top priority, announcing “that she ‘would
sooner cut off my right hand than ask the ballot for the
black man and not for woman.” Tilton saw it the opposite
way, declaring “this to be ‘the Negro’s hour.”
Privileging race over gender in the equal rights movement
of the Civil War era indicated Tilton’s relationship with
Frederick Douglass. Douglass marched in both crusades
and welcomed Tilton’s editorial support. “He rejoiced in...
the ‘bright and young’ Theodore Tilton... ‘gloriously and
beautifully’ working for radical reconstruction of the
South and for the vote for blacks nationwide.” The Independent endorsed Douglass as a delegate to the Equal
Rights Convention in 1866. That summer, when advocates of a forward moving society met in Philadelphia,
Douglass and Theodore Tilton led the procession to
Independence Hall, arm-in-arm.
Elizabeth Tilton, meanwhile, may have become sexually
entangled with the Rev. Beecher. A mentor to both
Tiltons, Beecher visited their house often—especially
when Theodore was away on lecture tours. The charismatic minister was also a comforter in times of sorrow, and
probably dispensed consolation with great ardor. After the
Tiltons’ lost a son, he was particularly solicitous of the
grieving mother. Beecher had a reputation and Theodore
Tilton had his suspicions. In July 1870, “Libby” admitted
to her husband that she had been unfaithful, whereupon
“Dory” sued their minister for adultery. The case was
dropped after a six-month trial when the jury failed to
reach a verdict. Theodore was voted out of the Plymouth
congregation and Beecher was exonerated. In 1878, Elizabeth was banished after publicly confessing her infidelity.
This seemed to confirm what Theodore had been told
privately by their daughter. “The tale of iniquitous horror
that was related to me was enough to turn the heart of a
stranger to stone, to say nothing of a husband and father.”
The source of this disclosure must have been thirteen
year-old Florence Tilton. Apparently she inherited her
parents’ sense of righteousness. She also shared an artistic
inclination with her younger sister Alice, who grew up to
be a painter. Florence played the piano and became a
music teacher. Most importantly, with regard to sensibilities that ran in her family, she was none other than the
mother of Agnes Pelton.
Agnes Pelton’s pedigree partially foretold her development
as a painter, and subsequent experiences furthered her
aesthetic evolution. Pre-World War I New York provided
a stimulating setting for personal and professional growth.
She graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1900, following
childhood years in Switzerland, France, and Stuttgart,
Germany, her birthplace. Thus she was a New Yorker in
her late twenties and early thirties during the cultural
ripening characterized by avant-garde art, modern dance,
the photo-secession, experimental theater, innovative
poetry, dissonant music, little magazines, New York
intellectuals, Greenwich Village radicals, and more. What
has been called “The New Radicalism in America”
pervaded her environment.12 “Bohemianism” was another
trope for the time and place where rebellious ideas and
behaviors flourished in opposition to “Puritanism.”
Mabel Dodge Luhan, an ex-socialite who had turned
against bourgeois morality, played a part in fueling the
rebellion by hosting Wednesday evening discussions at her
Fifth Avenue salon. Pelton attended the “evenings,” and
Luhan bought at least one early painting. Luhan also had
something to do with the 1913 International Exhibition of
Modern Art at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington
Avenue, which gave Pelton a momentous opportunity.
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15
Agnes Pelton was one of the few women painters whose
work was included in “the first major exhibition of
European and American post-impressionist artists in
the United States.” Organized by the Association of
American Painters and Sculptors, in conjunction with the
innovative group known as “The Eight,” the Armory Show
celebrated modernism and validated techniques and
approaches that departed from academic tradition.
“Before it,” observed one critic, “a painting truly modern
was a rumor.” By openly defying the establishment it
generated shock and controversy; it also marked America’s
artistic coming of age and opened the way for modern
American painters—Pelton included.
Another project that she was part of in 1913 helps to explain her ethos. More of Agnes Pelton’s outlook on life
can be inferred from a novel which she illustrated that
year. When I Was a Little Girl, by Zona Gale, was a paean
of humanity, virtue, and optimism. The author had been
a New York Evening-World reporter early in her career
which introduced her to reformers such as Jane Addams,
Lillian Wald, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She read
Zora Neale Hurston, joined the National American
Woman Suffrage Association, and was a charter member
of the Women’s Peace Party. In 1924 she campaigned for
presidential candidate Robert M. LaFollette and three
years later participated in the “Save Sacco and Vanzetti”
cause. All the while her literary stature grew. Gale was
the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama for Miss
Lulu Bett (1921). What must have engendered Pelton’s
sympathies, from the outset, was her commitment to
convince readers “that it was their responsibility to make
the world a better place.”
The tale for which Pelton produced seven illustrations
involves a group of girls in a midwestern town who enjoy
a summer of fanciful adventure. They also learn personal
lessons of living-up to higher ideals. Mary Elizabeth, “who
seemed always to be listening for a voice to tell her what
to do, and trying to find these things in nature” becomes
particularly instructive. She is perceived as one of the
vague “poor children,” and there are uncertainties about
her father who “belonged to no business, to no church...
he merely lived across the tracks.” Then astonishingly, at
the local 4th of July observance, he rises to read the
Declaration of Independence, concluding with, “we are
in danger of forgetting about it—some of us.” His
common eloquence serves as a prelude to the girls’
subsequent discussion of King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table:
“’Why couldn’t we get a quest?’ inquired Margaret
Amelia ... ‘Girls can’t quest, can they?’ Betty suggested
doubtfully. We looked in one another’s faces. Could
it be true? Did the damsels sit at home? Was it only
the knights who quested? Delia was a free soul...
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‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know whether they quest, but
we can quest. So let’s do it ... What should we quest
for? ‘I wonder,’ said Mary Elizabeth, ‘if it would be
wrong to quest for the Holy Grail, now? Why not do
something beautiful? Why not—why not...”
Pelton’s pursuit of “something beautiful” circled back to
Mabel Dodge Luhan. In early 1919 she was a guest at Taos,
New Mexico, where Luhan had moved two years earlier.
Luhan was drawn to primitivism and her rejection of
“overcivilization” prompted “leaving it all” in favor of
spontaneous, more intimate personal relationships. She
regarded sex as communication, the essence of spiritual
discourse and emotional fulfillment because senses, not
intellect, were trustworthy. Regardless of the extent to
which Pelton concurred with this “new thought” creed,
she certainly applauded her host’s quest for a simpler
existence, especially her approach to domestic space.
“[Your house] was a positive influence in my life... Its
living freshness and the feeling of light as well as beauty
seemed—and was—so new. Beauty, when I had seen it in
houses before—which was seldom—seemed derivative,
usually static: But of course you always infuse life into
any place where you are.” Inspired by Taos modernism,
Pelton sought beauty and simplicity in her new home at
Hay Ground.
Metaphysical motives mixed with Pelton’s practical need
for a place to paint. During late summer 1921 the studio
space which she rented in the Village of Southampton
was sold, forcing her to vacate. According to her so-called
“press agent,” Annie Laurie Tilton Hopkins, “the artist
happened along the Montauk Highway and became
interested in the mill.” What transpired next is unclear,
nor is it certain when her search for a studio to rent was
combined with a place to live, but in October Pelton
became artist-in-residence at the Hay Ground windmill.
Her landlord had done something which, a couple of years
earlier, would have been beyond his wildest imagination.
Maltby Rose was bound to be anxious about the windmill’s
future. It ceased to operate in 1919 and, having lost its
original purpose, might be rendered a relic of a bygone era.
Presiding over the irrelevance of General Rose’s legacy must
have troubled him. But, as the Hulda episode suggested, the
mill could be put to other uses. Pelton’s offer thus made
sense from an objective standpoint. Still, the prospect of a
New York City artist living there must have been hard for
Rose to come to grips with; Pickford had been temporary,
Pelton wanted to be a tenant. Eventually he found this
acceptable, which turned out well for both of them.
“I greatly enjoy the mill already and know I shall like to
live there,” she wrote to Rose while her new home was
being made ready for occupancy. Preparations mainly
entailed taking out “the big bin” to provide more room,
cheered-up the old miller: “ ...am glad Miss Pelton is back.
I know she will sympathize and understand, being fond of
animals herself.” Pelton often spent winter months away,
and if she returned before the windmill had been
reopened, the Browns would give her hospitality.
Being friends with the Browns made it likely that she
would know the Orrs. The two families sons were partners
in the Montauk Highway automobile garage (later
Corrigan’s) just below Pelton’s studio. Louisa Brown
Smith sat for a portrait, and Pelton painted Kellis Pond
for Mary Orr. Apparently Pelton also was attentive to the
Orrs’organist daughter. Winifred Orr, for her part, could
have been inspired by both her visionary artist and
medically-trained neighbors. In the fall of 1930 she
embarked on an educational opportunity at the Henry
Ford Hospital School of Nursing and Hygiene in Detroit,
presumably drawn to some degree by the institution’s
promotion of “high ideals for service.” Orr became the
junior class president, president of the Young Women’s
Christian Association, and a glee club regular. Her 1933
yearbook entry read: “Winifred D. Orr Bridge Hampton,
Long Island ‘Music is the inarticulate speech of her
heart—sincere, faithful, practical,” a blend of qualities
gratifying to exemplars back home.
Agnes Pelton in her studio, 1925. (Courtesy of the Agnes Pelton
papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
“as I need space to paint in.” Water and electricity went
unmentioned; space for painting—and for inward contemplation—were her chief concerns. She seemed satisfied with the simplicity of the place, and recalling Mabel
Dodge Luhan’s house, its authentic beauty: “... neither you
nor I mind primitive conditions when there is peace &
plenty of another sort—most of the time!” When Agnes
Pelton said “live there” she meant really live, to experience
the mill in all its vitality. In a way, for the time being, her
Zona Gale-like modern quest had been realized.
She clearly enjoyed her neighbors. From scrapbooks and
snapshots in the Agnes Pelton Papers at the Archives of
American Art in Washington, D.C. it is evident that she
struck-up friendships quickly and easily. The Mounts
resided closest, just past the schoolhouse; Caroline Cook
Stoots, along Hay Ground Road, was a little farther away;
Maltby Rose’s relatives were on the family farm across
Montauk Highway. Phebe Louisa Brown was the younger
sister of Maltby Rose and the mother of Louisa Barnard
Brown [Dr.]Smith, a future founder of the Bridgehampton Historical Society. These Hay Grounders drew Pelton
into their web of neighborliness. Bert Mount would help
should something at the windmill need attention; when
Caroline Stoots’ dog ran away while Maltby Rose was
supposed to be watching him, during her absence, Stoots
It would seem that Pelton was looked upon as a kind soul
with a good sense of humor more than an embodiment of
modernism. Made-up nicknames (a 1926 Model T coupe
was called “Tallulah”) or the made-up story, in collaboration with Ernest Clowes, that she had devised an official
hamlet coat of arms revealed her whimsical side. Pelton’s
artistic work that was viewed and acquired locally
conformed to a conventional paradigm. For example, she
painted the Southampton Garden of Mrs. Samuel L.
Parrish, several scenes of the windmill, and portraits of
children, notably Rosalind Baldwin (Tooker) and Blanche
Siegfried (nee Worth). When she showed at the
Community House in 1923 (“fifty percent of the proceeds
of sales during the exhibition will be given to the
Community House”), or at the mill in 1925 and 1927,
visitors admired familiar subjects made with no apparent
mystical traces.
At the same time, however, she was tending toward the
surreal expressions on which her reputation would
ultimately rest. During the mid-twenties, alone in the
windmill, she began to paint abstractions of her inner self,
musings which yielded Being (1926). There was a
spiritual component to her abstract imagery, but not
formally so. As she put it: “Though not consciously
religious, it may give that impression to those who
conceive of spirit as force.” “Her interest was not in
materializing the spiritual,” according to a recent study of
modernism, “but in spiritualizing the material world.”
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These modernist impulses emerged in conjunction with
her profound sensitivity to the past. Agnes Pelton could
be taken for an early historic preservationist. “The
windmill is to be a cultural center,” she noted in 1926,
“50% of anything sold in the windmill [is] to go to preservation of the windmill.” Moving to the mill meant, in
part, adapting an old structure so that its new utility would
justify its existence and increase comunity appreciation of
its heritage value. Maybe Maltby Rose, remembering
Hulda, shared this inchoate sense of adaptive use. He
consented to the addition of a new room in 1924 and, three
years later, D.R. Halsey built an abutting kitchen. Living
in the present while learning from what went before was
a precept taught by the artist’s windmill.
Charlotte Havens, a Bridgehampton high school student,
discovered this when she visited Pelton late one afternoon.
The girl was going to see her grandmother, who lived with
the Mounts, and along the way stopped at the windmill. Its
“homelike atmosphere” impressed her, as did the “aroma of
a tasty supper” drifting from the kitchen. She admired crystal candle sticks, a purring cat in an armchair, and an old
piano which the artist proceeded to play. Most remarkable
of all among this memorabilia was the portrait of Theodore
Tilton. His dedication to the timeless principle of equal
rights had resonance for both host and caller.
Dane Rudhyar was a windmill guest in whom modernism
resounded. A Paris-born pianist, he moved between New
York (where he associated with Martha Graham) and
California lecturing on advanced interpretations of art
and philosophy. Hindu wisdom informed his pursuit of
an eternal Truth that would transcend all belief systems.
Subsequently he was drawn to Santa Fe through the
urging of Charles Ives, among others. Pelton seems to
have had a particular affinity for him as one who
comprehended the direction of her work. In 1930 she told
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him that, “These pictures are conceptions of light—not
as we see it in the material world but as the radiance of the
inner being. They are produced from that state of
consciousness from which the creative impulse is a unified expression and solidified to the presentation of material forms in the natural world.”
Could this “creative impulse” attain its fullest expression
in the Southwest where the likes of Rudhyar and Mabel
Dodge Luhan gravitated? Perhaps Hay Ground had
provided all the inspiration possible, and now it was time
to engage nature in the desert. Had nature signaled as
much in 1931 when a March storm knocked the arms off
the windmill? Locating there ten years earlier answered
an ascetic quest.; it served as a fortuitous gathering point
for her creativity. This was abundantly true during the
final phase of her stay, when “she produced more
drawings for paintings and completed more canvases than
at any other time.” But the mill might no longer be the
ideal place for deeply introspective pursuits of beauty.
“Left Bridgehampton December 30th [1931]—took
Sunset Limited to Palm Springs December 31 after one
night in New York.”35 Lying ahead of her in Southern
California was a three decade career of abstract art
emanating from her expanding awareness, and a long
association with the New Mexico-based Transcendental
Painting Group. What remained behind were the oils and
pastels, in public institutions and private hands, that
recall Agnes Pelton at Hay Ground. Prior to her death in
1961 the windmill was moved to an East Hampton estate;
contextually inappropriate from a strict preservation
standpoint, but at least the old mill was saved. She
doubtless would have wanted to keep it as the approving
painting at the Historical Society, an evocation of her
tenderhearted feelings for Hay Ground. !
NOTES
1. Robert J. Hefner, The Windmills of Long Island (New York: W.W. Norton
& Co., Inc., 1984), 68, 78.
2. Southampton Press, April 13, 1916.
3. Geoffrey K. Fleming, Bridgehampton (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 1617; Marlene Haresign and Marsha Kranes, eds., Water Mill, Celebrating
Community: The History of a Long Island Hamlet, 1644-1994 (Peconic, NY:
Peconic Co., 1996), 16.
4. Kevin Brownlow, Mary Pickford Rediscovered: Rare Pictures of a Hollywood
Legend (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), 20, 29, 122; Eileen Whitfield,
Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 1997), 144, 147; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of
Public Amusements (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 196-197;
Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry rev. ed. ( Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1985), 154-159.
5. Michael Zakian, Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature (Palm Springs, CA: Palm
Springs Desert Museum, 1995), 15.
6. Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry
Ward Beecher (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 292, 307-309, 363.
15
7. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995),
531-532; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of
Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 656.
8. William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991),
266.
9. Ibid., 256.
10. Altina L. Waller, Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian
America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 1-12, 38-63, 103-108;
Zakian, Poet of Nature, 16; Richard Wightman Fox, Trials of Intimacy: Love and
Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999),
11-46; Applegate, Most Famous Man, 367-370, 376-380, 394-399, 454-455; Barry
Werth, Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph
of Evolution in America (New York: Random House, 2009), 103-108, 177-179.
11. Lois Beachy Underhill, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives
of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, NY: Bridgeworks Publishing Co., 1995),
154.
12. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America [1889-1963]: The
Intellectual as a Social Type (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), xiv-xv;
Zakian, Poet of Nature, 31.
16
13. Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (1961; repr., New York: Avon Books, 1963),
33; Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel Dodge Luhan: NewWoman, New Worlds
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 86; Zakian, Poet of
Nature, 26-27.
14. Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan, ed. Lois
Palken Rudnick (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999),
255; Margaret Stainer, “Biographical Sketch,” Agnes Pelton (Fremont, Calif.:
Ohlone College Art Gallery, 1989), 25.
15. Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American
Prose Literature (1942; repr., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 135.
16. Julia C. Ehrhardt, Writers of Conviction: The Personal Politics of Zona Gale,
Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 2004), 19; Harold P. Simonson, Zona Gale (New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1962), 36, 41-45.
17. Zona Gale, When I Was a Little Girl (New York: Macmillan Company, 1913),
62, 197, 348-351, 389-390; Zona Gale to Agnes Pelton, August 14, 1913, Agnes
Pelton Papers, Biographical, microfilm roll 3426, frames 0084-0087, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution (hereafter, Pelton Papers, AAA).
18. Lasch, New Radicalism, 117-118.
17
19. Agnes Pelton to Mabel Dodge Luhan, November 21, 1938, Mabel Dodge
Luhan Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, box 28 folder 808, 1921-1938, Yale University
(hereafter, Luhan Papers, YCAL).
20. “Story of a Well Known Artist,” Pelton Papers, Scrapbooks, microfilm
roll 3427, frame 0343, AAA.
21. Agnes Pelton to Maltby Rose, October 17, 1921, Louisa B. Smith Estate
1996, box B, Letters to Maltby Rose, no. 100, Bridgehampton Historical
Society (hereafter, Letters to Maltby Rose, BHHS); Liza Kirwin with Joan Lord,
Artists in Their Studios: Images from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art
(New York: Collins/Design, 2007), 11, 100-101.
22. Agnes Pelton to Mabel Dodge Luhan, n.d., 1923, Luhan Papers, YCAL.
23. Caroline C. Stoots to Maltby G. Rose, June 7, 1924, folder 101-124, no.
123, Letters to Maltby Rose, BHHS.
24. U.S. Census, 1930, N.Y., Suffolk County, Southampton Town, roll 1652, sheet
22, E.D. 52-123, National Archives; School of Nursing and Hygiene, #93.08, p. 9,
#98.05, p. 48, Conrad R. Lam Archives, Henry Ford Health System.
25. Zakian, Poet of Nature, 12-13.
26. Pelton Papers, microfilm roll 3427, frame 0317, AAA.
18
27. Margaret Stainer, “Agnes Pelton,” Jan Rindfeisch, ed., Staying Visible:
The Importance of Archives (Cupertino, CA: Helen Euphrat Museum of Art, de Anza
College, 1981), 8; ibid., Agnes Pelton, 26; Zakian, Poet of Nature, 44-47.
28. Tiska Blankenship, “Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Pierce: The Two Women
Artists in the Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-1945,” Susan R. Ressler, ed.,
Women Artists of the American West, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company,
Inc., 2003), 154; Stainer, Agnes Pelton, 8.
29. Lois Palken Rudnick, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the
American Counterculture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996),
87.
30. Stainer, Agnes Pelton, note 12, 26.
31. Charlotte Havens, “A Visit to the Hay Ground Windmill,” Literary, n.d.,
Scrapbook I, folder 5, Pelton Papers, AAA; Zakian, Poet of Nature, 18, 119;Local
History Interview Between Ann Sandford and Charlotte Doxey Havens Schug,
September 25 and October 22, 2003, transcript in the possession of Dr. Sandford.
32. Blankenship, Women Artists, 15; Zakian, Poet of Nature, 120-121.
33. Stainer, Agnes Pelton, 26.
34. Zakian, Poet of Nature, 64.
35. Pelton Papers,Scrapbook II, folder 1, AAA.
1 8 7 5
S I N C E
I N S U R A N C E
Dayton Ritz&Osborn
78 Main Street . East Hampton, NY
fax 631.324. 3326
Phone 631.324.0420
2414 Main Street . Bridgehampton, NY
fax 631.537. 0356
Phone 631.537.oo81
info@droins.com
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The Historic Buildings On
Bridgehampton’s Main Street
by Ann Sandford
Whig Party’s candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.
William Gardiner resided in this grand house during his
retirement in the 1870s and ’80s. (See write-up on the Hampton
Library below).
The mansion was purchased around 1900 by the wealthy businessman Henry N. Corwith, a founder of the Bridgehampton
Golf Club, longtime president of the Hampton Library and
owner of a large dairy farm in Hay Ground (known as Two Trees
Stables, today). From its front porch facing the intersection of
the highway with three other roads, occupants in 1900 would have
seen a pedestrian or bicyclist negotiate among a mule or two. But
they would more likely watch people dart the horses pulling carts,
wagons, carriages and, perhaps, a stagecoach on its way to Sag
Harbor.
This aerial photograph of most of Main Street was taken from
the west in 1949. Counter-clockwise from the top left are the
bank, the drug store, the library (set back); further on are the
newspaper office (after the driveway), Henry’s (the former Basso’s
and the second building in from the upcoming corner), Sinclair
gas station, Corwith house (foreground); crossing Main Street are
the Candy Kitchen, three residences, the water company, the
Presbyterian Church (with the cemetery in the background), the
Episcopal Church, and Muller’s Market (originally, Chester’s, at
the top).
Judge Abraham Topping Rose
2546 Montauk Highway
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On the same property,
Judge Abraham T. Rose house from the south,
north of this house and
Montauk Highway, in 2007.
facing the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, is a Dutch Revival residence with a
barn structure behind it. Both appear to be ca. 1915 and are
marked on the 1916 Hyde map.
Pharmacy 1898
ca. 1842
This imposing Greek
Revival mansion with
cupola, pilasters, and an
elaborate door frame is
located on the northeast
corner of Montauk
Highway and the Sag
Harbor Turnpike. It
Photo of the Judge Abraham T. Rose house
reflects the stature of the
at the crossroads; from the west, 1932
Rose family that dates
from colonial times. Abraham Rose, the Yale-educated Suffolk
County judge and a prominent local attorney who engaged in a
variety of civic and business activities, was a presidential elector
in 1848 and ran four times in this congressional district as the
20
In recent years the Rose
House has been used to
house restaurants, inns,
and antique shops.
Marked on the 1858
Chace map; 1902, 1916
Hyde maps.
Drugstores stood on this site
for over a century beginning
in the 1880s. Sivigny’s was
the last to occupy the central
section of the frame building. Currently, women’s apparel shops and a barber shop occupy
the first floor. Marked on the 1902, 1916 Hyde maps.
Hampton Library 1877
Charles Rogers (1806-1880) led
the effort to establish the new
Bridgehampton library built in
a Queen Anne style with gable
ornamentation and a hipped roof. Raised in Hay Ground, Rogers
went west as a young man and built a fortune in lead mining and
banking. Later, he settled in Queens and became friendly with
William Cullen Bryant, the poet and editor, whom he met at his
social club. He involved Bryant in selecting the first book list for
the library, donated $10,000 to the project, and served as trustee
from 1876 until his death in 1880. William Gardiner (1807-1880),
Rogers’ brother-in-law, supported the project from the start. He
donated the land for the building and $10,000. Gardiner had become a successful merchant in Manhattan and retired to Bridgehampton. He served as trustee from 1876 until his death in 1880.
In Judge Henry P. Hedges (1817-1911), Rogers and Gardiner found
a civic leader who would lend stability to the new institution for
over 25 years. A local historian, Hedges became the library's first
president and served until 1904. Educated at Clinton Academy
and Yale, he farmed and practiced law in Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton. He helped found New York State’s Republican Party
in 1856, became a Suffolk County judge in 1865, and served as
president of the Sag Harbor Savings Bank for 30 years (1868-98).
This energetic resident, born on a farm in Wainscott, the hamlet
just east of Sagaponack. Hedges became the first practitioner of
modern agricultural methods in the hamlet after he purchased a
130-acre farm on Ocean Road in 1854. As early as 1866, speaking
before the Suffolk County Agricultural Society, Hedges described
his practice of rotating oats and barley with a year or two of
pasture, and exhorted his listeners to “learn where science points,”
to track yields in bushels harvested per acre, and to “fertilize
liberally” by applying manure and fish to crops such as feed corn
and clover.
Finally, John F. Youngs (1824-1903) served as first secretary and
treasurer of the library for more than 25 years. The Civil War
veteran became librarian in 1877-78, and again in 1898-1903.
Youngs lived in the library building and earned a salary of $300,
a meager sum even for the times. He was trained as a teacher
and farmed. Henry Hedges, his close friend since the late 1850s,
wrote that Youngs became the library’s “practical manager and
guiding spirit. He...was the animating genius of that Library.”
When it opened in 1877 with over 3,500 books, this institution
held the largest collection of any library east of Brooklyn. The
building itself had a single floor until 1892 and was equipped with
electric lights in 1916. Both the structure and the grounds have
undergone improvements over the years as the library has
expanded and updated its services. The library added space in
1902, 1913, and 1974. It launched a major restoration and
expansion of its building in 2008 with a planned reopening in
2010.
Since 1984, summer Fridays at Five lectures by leading authors
have been held on the back lawn. Marked on the 1902, 1916 Hyde
maps.
Basso’s Restaurant ca. 1910
When Frank and Celestina
Basso opened their restaurant
during the Roaring Twenties
on Main Street, it quickly
became a popular pub and
eatery, part of a west end of
Main Street that became the social center of the hamlet, day and
evening. The restaurant survived both Prohibition (1919-1933)
and the Great Depression (1929-1939). Much later, in 1969,
restaurateur and pianist Bobby Van occupied the site and for a
time it counted Truman Capote, James Jones, Kurt Vonnegut,
Willie Morris, and other writers and artists among its clientele. It
remains a restaurant today. The building is in the Tudor Revival
style with half-timbering and bracketed cornice. A building
appears on the 1916 Hyde map.
William Corwith
House ca. 1840
Currently the Bridgehampton
Historical
Society and Museum,
this house, a five-bay
Greek Revival style
structure with interior end chimneys and a central hallway was
built by William Corwith, scion of a prominent local family whose
wealth derived from agriculture and other businesses. William
figured prominently in the community as chairman of the
Southampton Town Trustees, a justice of the peace, a trustee of
the Presbyterian parish, an overseer of the poor, and, for thirty
years, a town “pound master” with authority for rounding up stray
horses and cattle. After his death, the house remained in the
family until 1960 when it was bequeathed to the Hampton Library
and later purchased by the Historical Society. The house is on the
New York State Registry of Historic Places. Marked on the 1858
Chace map and the 1902, 1916 Hyde maps.
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary
Catholic Church 1914
The Catholic parish between Water
Mill and Wainscott, bordered on the
north by Brick Kiln Road and on the
south by the ocean, was formally established in June 1913; its church
was dedicated two years later. F.
Burrall Hoffman, Jr., a society architect, combined romantic lines and classical details with an almost
Gothic pitch to the front-gabled roof. The congregation reflected
a growing diversity in Bridgehampton’s population from the 1880s
onward, as the predominately Anglo American community came to
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include residents from Ireland and eastern and southern Europe.
About ten percent of the hamlet’s population was Catholic at the
time the church was built. The 1938 hurricane blew off the steeple
but its bell was rescued. It now rests on the east lawn of the church.
Marked on the 1916 Hyde map. The rectory to the east dates from
1924.
Methodist Church 1833 / 1871
By 1815, early Methodist circuit riders, popular in rural areas and
preaching salvation through grace
by faith, drew large followings to the
first Hay Ground schoolhouse, located on Montauk Highway west of
the community of Bull Head. After
the congregation had outgrown its
own 1820 building on Ocean Road, its 1833 replacement structure
was moved to this site, greatly expanded, and rededicated in 1871.
Its tall east steeple was blown off in the 1938 hurricane but the bell
survived. A shorter steeple replaced it in 1940. The parsonage at
the same address is ca. 1890. It is shingle-clad with Queen Annestyle motifs including a bracketed entry porch and an oculus
(round) gable window. Marked on the 1902, 1916 Hyde maps.
Community House 1923
Epitomizing a sense of civic
responsibility, construction
of the Bridgehampton
Community House was
financed by donations from
the broad population it was created to serve. Eminent historian
James Truslow Adams advanced the original idea, with American
Legion Post 580, to honor those who served in World War I. They
were supported by the Berwind family, wealthy summer residents.
It has accommodated organizations from the Legion and the Fire
Department (the Hook & Ladder Company No. 1 celebrated its
100th anniversary in 1995) to the offices of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons and the Bridgehampton Association today.
Built in the Classical Revival style with a two-story height entry portico. See photo on the cover of this report.
Candy Kitchen 1925
A favorite gathering place since
1925, the Candy Kitchen dishes
out breakfasts, sandwiches, and
homemade ice cream to locals
and visitors alike. Farmers and
firefighters exchange early morning gossip, Hampton Jitney passengers grab newspapers and
coffee to go, and, by noon on weekends, the eatery turns into a see
and be seen venue. The Stavropoulos and Laggis families have
made this a special place in the life of the hamlet. Built of brickstucco in a triangular plan with a chamfered entry bay.
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Henry H. Chatfield House
ca. 1900
Judge Chatfield (1866-1912)
served at the first president of
the Bridgehampton National
Bank, 1910-1912, and as president of the Board of Education, 1908-1912. A niece was Ernestine Rose, founder of the
Bridgehampton Historical Society. This Queen Anne style house
has a turret on the front. An antique and gift shop today. Marked
on the 1902, 1916 Hyde maps.
James A. Sandford & Sons’ Plumbing and Heating 1911
In 1882, Sandford purchased the Beebe Windmill (see below) that
was used to grind feed and meal and eventually moved it from its
site south of today’s Hull Lane to one north of the railroad station.
A year later, he partnered with Nathan N. Tiffany (see Rose Hall)
from East Hampton to establish a flour and feed company. The
two entrepreneurs then built a steam-powered grist mill for flour,
not the first in Bridgehampton but the largest. It, too, set east of the
railroad station and north of the tracks, a choice location since
Bridgehampton was the terminus for the Long Island Rail Road
(LIRR) at the time and a crossroads for people and goods on their
way to Sag Harbor and points east.
One of the three charter trustees of the Bridgehampton Hook and
Ladder Co. in 1895, Sandford also established the hamlet’s public
water system. Prior to that, residents relied either on private wells
or water distributed from tanks connected to windmills. In 1906
he dug a 300 foot well, set up a gasoline-powered engine, installed
air-pressure tanks, and laid out larger mains, developing a pumping system which resulted in the Bridgehampton Water Company.
The company significantly expanded the water supply as indoor
plumbing and lavatories slowly began to replace outhouses. His
largest customer was not a home or a shop, however; it was the
LIRR. His grandson recalled (on a Bicentennial tape): “The railroad was the principal customer because the quality of the water
didn’t rust up the tubes in their engines’ boilers.” The elder Sandford even invested in a windmill and tanks to pump and store water
at the railroad yard. In 2004, Richard “Dick” Hendrickson, the National Weather Service recorder for over 75 years and local poultry
farmer, recalled the operation from around 1920: the windmill had
“thirty or forty [wooden] vanes in the propeller and pumped water
up into two very large cypress tanks. When the steam engine trains
came by, water poured from a pipe into the reservoir in the coal
car. For a young fellow to see the volume of water that came out
of that pipe was a wonder.”
In 1901, Sandford built a private acetylene gas plant, and later secured a franchise to pipe the streets. By 1908, gas lamps lit Main
Street. With multiple, growing businesses—a hardware store, a
plumbing and heating shop, a water company, a coal yard, and a
gas business—this entrepreneur required a fireproof structure to
protect his property against sparks from engines in the shop that
could ignite the wooden store and office. In 1911, Sandford constructed a large structure of concrete and stucco just west of the
Presbyterian Church, where it stands today. Today, the Konner
Building leases space to a range of businesses. (It was followed by
his stucco house next door, now owned by the Konner Co., the
concrete silos for coal at the railroad in 1915, and the stucco Candy
Kitchen in 1925.) Marked on the 1916 Hyde map.
Presbyterian Church
ca. 1842
This building serves the parish
which worshiped initially as the
Church of Christ in a small
structure on Bridge Lane west of
Sagg Bridge where a granite
marker notes the date 1686. By 1737, as population shifted north
toward Bull Head, a new meeting house was built on Sagaponack
Road, east of Ocean Road. The church joined the Long Island
Presbytery in 1794, roughly a decade after the end of the American
Revolutionary War. Until 1816, men and women sat divided on
either side of the high pulpit, ranked according to age and status.
Today’s church was built by a Sag Harbor contractor and Nathaniel
Rogers sat on the building committee. It is in the Greek Revival
style and features Ionic pilasters, pointed-arch windows, and the
original spire. Marked on the 1858 Chace map; on the 1902, 1916
Hyde maps.
St. Ann’s Episcopal
Church 1910
This church building was a
former golf clubhouse used
mainly by summer residents
and located east of Sagg
Bridge on the north side of
Bridge Lane in Sagaponack. Towed over the ice in 1907 and along
Bridge Lane to a site near Ocean Road, the clubhouse became a
summer chapel. Moved to the corner of Main Street and Hull
Lane, the improved former “summer chapel” held its first service
on this site in 1910. In 1915 the parish house (to the rear) was built.
The church’s pipe organ was installed in the late 1920s and the belfry added in the early 1980s. The rectory to the east, in Dutch Revival style, dates from 1915. Marked on the 1916 Hyde map.
Monument 1910
Intersection of Montauk Highway,
Ocean Road., Sag Harbor Turnpike
The unveiling of the four-sided, spread-eagle
memorial to war veterans on July 4, 1910
marked the high point of Bridgehampton’s
250th anniversary—the settlement date then
pegged to 1660. Made of granite, rising seventeen feet, weighing twenty-five tons, and
expressing permanence, it was intended to “stand for the ages to
come as a stone of witness and appeal,” stated the Celebration Planning Committee. Charles Evans Hughes, a former New York governor (1907-10), was in attendance. He was an associate Supreme
Court Justice at the time. (In 1916, when he became the Republican nominee for the presidency, he was in Bridgehampton, at the
estate of the Esterbrooks—fountain pen fame—on Ocean Road.
He lost to Woodrow Wilson). Reverend Arthur Newman, who had
proposed the monument, blessed the event. Civil War veterans
raised the American flag and the air resounded with “the shout of
the thousands who surrounded the Liberty Pole.” Subsequently,
local historians discovered evidence of a Sagaponack homestead
built in 1656 and changed the hamlet’s settlement date from 1660
to 1656. The 350th anniversary celebration took place in 2006.
Colonial structures and militia activities were centered in the immediate area of these crossroads, making this monument area an
important archeological site requiring a survey should any roadwork be planned.
Nathaniel Rogers House
(aka Hampton House)
ca. 1840
Four fluted columns with Ionic
capitals and heavy cornices,
Postcard from ca. 1905
resonating ideals of beauty and
democracy, compliment this house that owes its Greek Revival
motifs to a local artist, Nathaniel Rogers. The door surround has
side and transom lights. The earliest known remnants of any
building to have survived the period of the 1720s to the 1820s on
Main Street are part of this house and date from 1824: significant
sections of this earlier house became part of Rogers’ project.
The Rogers House in 2006
Rogers, a well known painter
of miniatures with a studio in
New York City, suffered from
tuberculosis and enjoyed his
residence for only a few years.
By the outbreak of the Civil
War in 1861, James R. Huntting (1825-1882), the prominent
whaling captain, occupied the
house.
Captain Huntting had served as captain of many whaling ships in
the Sag Harbor fleet. He went to sea at 16, became a farmer, and
later a business partner of Nathan N. Tiffany of Bridgehampton.
A prominent and wealthy citizen, Huntting sat on the Hampton
Library board from its start in 1877.
(Note: Years later, Huntting built a house just south of the
Nathaniel Rogers House on Ocean Road. It reflected the Second
Empire style, with a stately mansard roof; much altered over the
decades. Demolished October 2008).
In 1895, the Rogers-Huntting residence, by then named the Hampton House, became a boarding and restaurant establishment. It
was operated by John Hedges and his daughter, Caroline Hopping,
who made it a favorite location for summer visitors until 1949.
Through World War I, the livery and boarding stable was run by
Frank Hopping and primarily served the needs of the summer
boarders and owners of summer homes. In the 1920s and ’30s,
guests were entertained by the goings-on of the lively young female
teachers who boarded there. Listed on both the State and National
Registers of Historic Places, when restored it will become the offices and a museum of the Bridgehampton Historical Society.
Marked on the 1858 Chace map; on the 1902, 1916 Hyde maps. !
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Life on the Turnpike:
Bridgehampton Today
by Kathryn Szoka
“I love Bridgehampton,” Annie Hopson said during a recent
conversation in her home on the Turnpike. Wife of Thomas
Hopson, Annie found herself in the middle of the Hopson clan
when the two married in 1942. After World War II ended,
Thomas returned from service in the Army, and Annie left her
family in Riverhead to set up home with Thomas in Bridgehampton. Annie was born in Ballsville, Virginia and moved to
Riverhead at four where her dad went to work on a Sound
Avenue farm.
Annie Hopson
My photographic essay, Life on the Turnpike: Bridgehampton
Today reflects life in the primarily African-American neighborhoods along the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. It
captures the current community with informal portraits taken in
the home and at community activities at the Child Care
Center, school, and local churches. Working on this project I
have discovered many names, many people who hold
Bridgehampton in their hearts and who are proud to share their
legacy with me for the Historical Society’s archive.
The Historical Society, eager to improve their archive honoring
this community’s legacy in Bridgehampton, asked me to make
a “snapshot” of the community at the turn of the 21st century, a
time of transition; as development pressures and the march of
time mark shifts in the population. Many, like Annie Hopson,
trace their ancestry to Virginia. They migrated north to escape
Jim Crow laws and to find better work. Today, some young
residents are returning south in the face of development
pressures, looking for better jobs than a primarily resort
community can offer.
Four generations of the Hopson family
How remarkable that I would embark on this documentary the
year Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United
States. It has been a privilege to meet and photograph
Near to Annie live many members of her extended family
including Margaret Hopson with daughter Julie, and brother-inlaw Russell Hopson. One rainy Sunday after church service,
Julie invited me to her home where four generations of
Hopsons gathered for a meal, over twenty in a cozy living room.
They were a lively, joyous crowd extending a warm welcome.
Julie captured the spirit and family pride, declaring that the
Hopsons are at the heart of Bridgehampton.
Brenda & William
Pickney
24
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Across the road, another family member, Brenda Hopson Pinckney, lives
with her husband William Pinckney.
William’s parents ran the famous
Pinckney’s Inn on the Turnpike.
Pinckney, too, is a name at the heart
of Bridgehampton.
Michael, Dottie & Elijah Jackson
Kids under a jungle gym
Paul Jeffers - Child Care Center Director
community members at this pivotal moment in our nation’s
history. The day before the election, I was with Michael and
Dottie Jackson and their son Elijah. Their anticipated joy was
palpable. The following Sunday I worshipped with the First
Baptist Church and listened as a member thanked the Lord for
the promise Barack Obama’s victory gave her and all in the
community; “Oh Happy Day!” they sang. Then, on Inauguration Day, I watched with the Bridgehampton School student
body as President Obama was sworn into office. The students
were rapt and joyful; the adults were, too, black, white and
brown alike, some shedding tears.
timers – residents in their community, and Black & Green –
contemporary life in an Irish-American coal mining town in
eastern Pennsylvania. My photographic interests have been in
capturing the changing nature of community and the environment over time. Life on the Turnpike: Bridgehampton Today
fits naturally within this context.
The community has opened doors and arms to my efforts. I have
witnessed great joy and sorrow; most heartbreaking, the
funeral of young Pablo Saldivar, a 16 year-old student on the
basketball team who died in a car accident. I continue photographing residents. This exhibition is the first chapter of a work
in progress. Future exhibitions and multi-media presentations
are planned. The images, made on medium format black &
white film and 35-mm digital color, will reside in the Historical
Society’s archives.
A primary emphasis of my photographic career has been to
study landscapes and communities over time. For over twenty
years I have documented the East End’s rural landscape and
way of life in the photographic essays The Vanishing
Landscapes© series and the Americana series. In the past several
years, I have worked on essays documenting people in their
environment. These include Crooked Knee – chronicling the
last year of my father’s life with dementia, and Through the
Seasons at Quail Hill Farm – a year- long study of workers and
members of the organic Community Supported Agricultural
farm. Recent projects include Sag Harbor Portraits: the old
I encourage community members to contact me to be included
in the documentary. I have received grants from JP MorganChase and the New York State Council of the Arts. I am also
seeking private donations for my continued efforts. If you are
interested in assisting on the project, please contact me. Enjoy
the exhibition this fall which celebrates and honors life on the
Turnpike. I love Bridgehampton! !
Deacon Kent Brown
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A Rally in the Rain
by Arthur R. Lange
It was with some trepidation that I left for the Bridgehampton Classic Weekend on Friday afternoon with my
61 year old MG. The rain was coming down in buckets and
there was no sign of any let up. For the first time in a coon’s
age, I had the top up. Thanks to a liberal amount of RainX, and with a bit of luck, I was able to see what was in front
of me. Hampton traffic was not too bad. Winston, the MG,
was purring along like a well oiled sewing machine. All was
going well.
Once at the Bridgehampton Historical Society, the car was
passed through “Tec Inspection” and given the number 4.
There were some pre-war cars on the field and four or five
other early MG’s. I overheard a few of the owners expressing
their surprise at my car – it really did have a top! I had run the
Bridgehampton Classic Rally for over ten years, and no one
had ever seen the canvas up.
The schedule of events was as follows: Friday night, a real
drive-in movie, the racing film “The Green Helmet” was to
be shown (with appropriate refreshments). On Saturday, the
rally for pre 1969 cars was planned with a drivers’ meeting at
8:30 am and first car off at 10:01.53. Following the rally was to
be an awards party. On Sunday, a Concours car show for rally
cars and other vintage cars. It all sounded fantastic. Then the
Dan Rowen and navigator Coco Myers finished second in a
1953 Siata 208S.
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2008 1st Place Finishers Richard Weintraub and Navigator
Stephen Geller in a 1955 MG TF-1500.
movie for Friday night was cancelled due to rain. The rally
was announced as a “go” – rain or shine.
My wife and I were staying with friends in Bridgehampton.
They were also ralliests, so we watched a tape of Terry
Thomas and Tony Curtis in “Those Daring Young Men in
their Jaunty Jalopies” to keep the mood up. All was still going
well.
On Saturday morning it was raining harder than ever. The
stop watches, route book, clocks, and MG Club pennant
were all in place, so Winston was off through the mud and
flooding promptly on time. Off, off, and away!
My wife was running one of the check points, and my navigator was one of my former students. (Experience tells me
NEVER to have your wife as a navigator!)
There was a run of fifty miles and many checkpoints before
lunch. All the Hampton locals must have thought we were
crazy to run vintage cars in such weather. It was almost a
game with them to see who could splash the most sports cars
with an SUV! By the time we got back to Bridgehampton for
a fine gourmet lunch, everyone was very wet. Then we were
off again in a different direction. The rain kept up; if anything, it got heavier. The car forded floods, avoided trucks,
splashed through mud roads and, to use the old rally term
“pressed on regardless.” Only one car, another MG, broke
down and did not finish. Then, back at Bridgehampton, the
bar was opened, food served, and awards presented. Everybody has a wonderful but exhausting time.
On Sunday the rain held off. A bevy of very fine cards
showed up for the Concours. Even the rally cards looked
good once the mud was scraped off. I spread out my tool kit
and showed off Winston. The MG was a big hit. One couple even said, “Gee, doesn’t that look like the car from that
old Terry Thomas/Tony Curtis movie?”
Winston won a silver plate for the engine compartment.
Then we all drove home. My old MG had run like a top
for the whole weekend. It took two days to dry everything
out, but it was worth it. A rally in the rain can be fun. !
Anthony Liberatore and navigator James DeMartis finished
third overall in a 1956 Ford Thunderbird.
2008 Road Rally Winners
1st place: Car 13, Richard Weintraub and navigator Stephen Geller in a 1955 MG TF-1500
2nd place: Car 11, Daniel Rowen and navigator Coco Myers in a 1953 Siata 208S
3rd place: Car 14, Anthony Liberatore and navigator James DeMartis in a 1956 Ford Thunderbird
2008 Car Show Winners:
People’s Choice 1st Place:
Robert Schmitter’s 1973 Porsche Martini
People’s Choice 2nd Place:
Stanley Redulu’s 1931 Cadillac 355 Cabriolet
Best American Sportscar:
Mary Redlus’ Kaiser Darrin
Best Foreign Sportscar:
Anthony Narosi’s 1966 Jaguar XK13
Best in Show:
Jack Hassid’s 1963 Porsche 356B
Best Hotrod/Custom:
Chuck MacWhinnie’s 1932 Ford Tudor Sedan
Best Interior:
Chuck MacWhinnie’s
1932 Ford Tudor Sedan
Best Paint:
Jack Hassid’s
1963 Porsche 356B
Best Under Hood:
Arthur Lange’s
1947 MG TC
Arthur Lange in his 1947 MG Midget TC
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Jeanelle Myers and Friends
by John Eilertsen and Stacy Dermot
“I call them dolls because I don’t know what else to call them,”
explained Jeanelle Myers in a recent gallery talk at the Historical Society. She was describing her handmade human figures,
a number of which were on exhibit in the Corwith House this
past winter and spring as a celebration of folk art.
Sometimes starting with old doll bodies, or building bodies from
scratch, she adds man-made hair and ink-stained clay hands,
feet and faces, along with artificial eyes and eyelashes. She then
adorns the figures with bits of vintage fabric, buttons, fur, beads,
lace, leather, pins, and myriad other objects to create forms that
are imposing but not threatening.
“I’ve always been fascinated with masks and faces. Before I started
on my first series of dolls, I had made up all of the clay faces on
display here. I don’t know why I made them or which ones I
made first. They laid around for a couple years while I made
mostly pots and other things. I didn’t make these faces to become
doll faces; they were just going to exist as faces, maybe heads.”
In 1981 Jeanelle made a cloth doll for her niece’s first
birthday. The creation of this doll began what the artist calls a
“28 year hectic trip of doll making.”
Thus far she has created five distinct series of dolls. “I work on
a series until I can’t do it anymore – that tells me it is
finished. And I always take a break between series, sometimes
making a quilt, or two.”
“The dolls in my first series are very complete. I was very
concerned with making them complete and honest and
making sure they had everything they needed.”
Her second series contains many figures relating to her
childhood—family members and friends.
Her third series included large “Women Warrior” figures.
At the time of her fourth series, she and her husband were
redoing their house. “I had to work in our garage, so I call those
dolls the “Garage Dolls”.
Her latest series, the fifth, was the first done in her new
studio. “I call my fifth series ‘The White Figures.’ They are
armed with all the potential wisdom of the world, the
alphabet. I made twelve dolls in this series, all with premade
doll bodies. The tallest began as a large Barbie doll. Some of
the others were once Patty Play-pals.”
“I make a body, then go through the clay faces I have until I
find one that fits or grabs me the right way. I only have three of
30
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the original clay faces left. They are really BIG. I make all of
the dolls’ fabric bodies and all of their clothing and
accessories. I work on a doll for some time before I decide what
gender it is. Sometimes the gender changes during
construction. All of my male dolls are anatomically correct.
That’s very important to men. And all of the early dolls have
complete undergarments. All of their clothing is removable.”
Some of the dolls have names,
some don’t. Some of them are
in remembrance of particular
people. “I don’t plan who a doll
is going to be ahead of time. If I
had known that the doll who
became my Grandma Grummert was going to be her, I
would have given her a corset.
Otherwise she’s just like my
Grandma – short, curly hairs which she referred to in the plural because her first language
was German. Cool blue eyes,
not-too-ostentatious jewelry, big
uni-boob, a church dress with a
little belt and a little buckle, slip
hanging out a little bit, baggy
nylons, big black ugly shoes. A sausage-shaped woman, very
severe. She would not have shown so much skin at the neck.
She was a good Lutheran lady, after all.”
Jeanelle was born in Superior, Nebraska in 1947, and learned to
sew from her mother and grandmother. At age five she made
her first doll out of clothespins. Her next doll was
created in imitation of a small Czech doll that the artist’s great
grandmother brought with her from Czechoslovakia, when she
immigrated to the United States in the late 19th century.
Building upon her family-inspired appreciation for work and for
art, she earned a college degree with a double major in Pottery
and Sculpture at the University of Nebraska.
“I like work. I like the idea of work and I like doing it. To
me, work is prayer. I also like to do things for myself, am fiercely
independent and I can’t stand to owe anyone money, true to
my Lutheran Nebraska upbringing. And I am inspired by the
intricacy of so-called ‘women’s work’ - lace patterns and crochet.
For a woman to work hard all day and then make the time to do
such precise, beautiful work is awe inspiring.” !
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31
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NAME
Cap’t Huntting and
the Rogers House
by Huntting W. Brown
As restoration of the 19th Century building at the corner of
Montauk Highway and Ocean Road is about to begin, a
descendant of one of the early owners of the building recounts
the life of James Rogers Huntting.
One of the first things to say about James Huntting is that he
was a big man. One writer of the time described him this way:
“Just figure to yourselves a young giant, seventy-eight inches in
his stocking-feet, two hundred and fifty pounds in weight, and
not an ounce of fat to cut his wind---proportions of Hercules,
and the face of man." Another wrote: “[h]e loomed up like Saul
in stature, a King.” Still another said his “towering form and
build always attracted attention and wonder, and marked him as
one of nature's chieftains.”
Historian William S. Pelletreau, one of those quoted above, also
had other praise for James Huntting. In a short biography
included in a History of Suffolk County, Pelletreau said in part,
“He was so modest, diffident and retiring that his
conspicuous form caused him embarrassment rather
than pleasure. He was generous, thoughtful, tenderhearted as a child, full of sympathy for his fellow men,
considerate and kind to the unfortunate, inclined to
judge himself more severely than others, strong in his
convictions, strict in his sense of justice, steadfast in
integrity, sparing of words, a man of both thought and
action; universally esteemed, trusted and loved; the
favorite of children and young men; a tower of defense
to the helpless and unprotected; as much at home in
the chamber of the sick as on the quarterdeck, for he
could use his immense physical strength soothingly and
tenderly to the lame and helpless, and with an intuitive
knowledge that seemed marvelous.”
Bridgehampton News columnist Ernest Clowes included this
brief story about James in his book Wayfaring;
“[P]erhaps the finest story about [James] was told the
writer years ago by a woman who as a child used to buy
candy at his store after school. ... She said the other
people in the store measured out the candy carefully and
gave exact weight for the price but '[ ] Jim' would thrust
his great hand deep into the candy barrel and come up
with it brimming over with sweetness which his little
customer got for the same price."
Was this just a large lamb of a man? Given what has been said
above, you might think so. However, his fame stems more from
his exploits as a captain in the rough and tumble whaling
industry, an occupation known for its lions not its lambs.
In 1825, James Huntting was born in Southampton as the
second son in a family with strong connections to the sea. His
grandfather, Benjamin Huntting, has been credited with
helping initiate the revival of the Sag Harbor whaling industry
following the Revolutionary War. The connection didn’t stop
there. His uncles were also whaling merchants and three of his
brothers were fellow whalemen. Later on his daughter married
the son of another Sag Harbor whaleman.
At the unripe age of sixteen James first went whaling and worked
his way up the ranks and by age 23 became a whaling captain.
During a later interlude in his whaling career, he engaged in
agricultural pursuits and after retiring from the sea he entered
the mercantile business. He was also both husband and father
and was active in local civic affairs. He died in 1882.
While the second son in age, James was the first among his
brothers to go to sea. He shipped from Sag Harbor on the
Portland which at the time belonged to the fleet of whalers
owned by his prominent uncles Samuel and Benjamin
Huntting. Upon return, he shipped three more times on that
ship in increasingly responsible roles as boat-steerer, second
mate and finally first mate.
Each of the four voyages lasted between one and two years, and
the interval between each of them was only about 6 weeks.
Thus, during the years from 1841, when he was 16 and first went
to sea, through 1848, when he was 23 and returned from the
fourth voyage of the Portland, James spent a total shore time
between voyages of less than 5 months.
During those years at sea he served under different captains and
with varying crews. He traveled to many of the world’s important
whaling grounds and experienced both the boredom of life
aboard ship looking for whales and then once located, the terror of chasing down and killing them from a 26 foot whaleboat.
His performances during voyages on the Portland must have
impressed the whaling merchant community back in Sag
Harbor, because later that same year (1848), still at age 23, he received his first commission as captain. The ship he com-
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37
manded was the Nimrod,
managed by Charles T. Dering, another prominent Sag
Harbor whaling merchant.
James made several additional successful whaling
voyages before taking his last
and longest, which lasted
four years. During this
marathon trip, this time
as captain of the whaleship
Fanny, a notable event
occurred which to my
Capt. James R. Huntting
knowledge has never been
written about. According to
the ship’s log, the whaleship was north of Kodiak Island off the
coast of Alaska while on its way back to the seasonal whaling
grounds in the Arctic Ocean. James’s brother, William, third
mate at the time, became very sick and died two days later.
What was his brother the captain to do? It was the practice for
crewmen who died at sea to be buried at sea. But the captain
made an exception. Instead, the log of the voyage notes for June
29, 1867 states that: “Carpenter finished the Box. Put Mr. Huntting in it & filled it up With Rum and lashed it on the house.”
(My thanks to Mr. Paul Cyr, former Curator at the New Bedford
Free Public Library for helping decipher the log. Mr. Cyr also
recalled to me that British Admiral Lord Nelson was similarly
preserved in liquor after his 1805 death at the battle of Trafalgar.). William’s body continued North to the whaling grounds
and was not brought ashore until the ship docked in San
Francisco over four months later. William’s body was ultimately
returned to Southampton and buried with his family in the
North End Graveyard.
Interesting as these events might be, they are not what later
made Capt. Huntting a legend. Rather it was a book by another
whaling captain, William Davis, who wrote Nimrod of the Sea.
(Recall that in Genesis Nimrod was a mighty hunter, and the
name is particularly apt for inclusion in the title of a book about
the exploits of whalemen.) In fact Capt. James is reasonably
considered Capt. Davis' model for such a mighty hunter.
Captain Davis recounts two stories directly naming Capt. James
Huntting, and two others that are widely and logically
considered to be about him. One or more of these stories have
been widely retold in other whaling books. I only quote Davis’s
account of the first two stories, which Davis attributes to a
shipmate named Posey. Capt. Huntting later affirmed the
essence of these stories in a letter written shortly before he died.
Rather than paraphrase, I quote extensively from Davis so the
reader gets the full impact of the stories and the adventurous
style in which they were written in 1874.
Davis' first story involves Capt. James's quick-wittedness and
strength:
38
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“When [Captain James Huntting] was a boat-steerer, a
sperm-whale stove his boat, and rolled it over on him.
He came up under it all tangled in the line that was
coiled in the stern-sheets of the boat. He fought like a
giant to throw off the deadly coil. It was about his body,
his arms, and his neck. It was for dear life that he was
working, and he knew the odds were against him. He
got rid of the line, as he thought, and had got a breath of
the blessed air and a glance at God's sunlight, when he
was jerked out of the sight of his horrified shipmates. A
bight of the line, yet attached to the sounding whale,
was around his ankle, and he bid good-bye to this world
as he was plunged into the deep sea. Yet he was alert to
take instant advantage of a slack in the speed of the
whale. Drawing himself forward by the line, with his
sheath-knife he severed the cord beyond the entangled
foot, and rose to the surface, exhausted by the time he
had been under and the lacerating wounds inflicted by
the tight-strained line. The boats picked him up. No
one on board knew any more of surgery than he did. So,
with help from willing but unskilled hands, the broken
ankle was patched up after a fashion, and kind Nature
healed it, with the bones unshipped and out of place,
leaving him nearly as good a man as he was before his
awful plunge.
In Davis' book, the second story about Capt. James directly
follows the first. It is a little gristly but gives an idea of both his
fortitude and the primitive nature of medicine aboard a mid
19th century Sag Harbor whaleship.
“Another instance of wonderful preservation from a
cruel death by the line occurred in his experience many
years after this, and goes to show how the whaleman is
educated to perform, and inured to suffer in the stern
vicissitudes of the chase. By some mishap the line kinked
in the boat and a man was caught and jerked from the
boat by the running whale. After being drawn with frightful speed some one hundred and twenty-five fathoms
from the boat, he was released by his limbs giving way to
the strain. Thus freed, and almost unconscious, he rose
to the surface and was picked up and carried on board
the ship. On examination, it was found that a portion of
the hand, including four fingers, had been torn away,
and the foot sawed through at the ankle, leaving only the
great tendon and the heel suspended to the lacerated
stump. From the knee downward the muscular flesh
had been rasped away by the line, leaving the protruding
bone enveloped in a tangled mat of tendons and bleeding arteries. Saved from drowning, the man seemed
likely to meet a more cruel death, unless some one had
the nerve to perform the necessary amputation. At that
time the New Bedford ships were the only ones that carried surgical instruments to meet such a case. But Captain Jim was not the man to allow any one to perish on
slight provocation. He had his carving-knife, carpenter's
saw, and a fish-hook. The injury was so frightful, and
the poor fellow's groans and cries so touching, that several of the crew fainted in their endeavors to aid the captain in the operation, and others sickened and turned
away from the sight. Unaided, the captain then lashed
his screaming patient on the carpenter's bench, amputated the leg, and dressed the hand as best he could."
Taking his whaling experiences together with his life ashore,
Capt. James was clearly a man of stature. Not surprisingly, after
reflecting on the many facets of his life, an obituary in the Sag
Harbor Express ended with these lines:
“In the death of Capt. Huntting the whole community
feels a deep loss, as men like him can illy (sic) be
spared.” !
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theBridge
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