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Setauket becoming self-sufficient: 1657 to 1662
History Close at Hand
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Part 3
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| | | Polychrome statue of Richard Woodhull on the peak of the Setauket School auditorium.
Photo by Beverly Tyler (click for larger version) | |
The period between 1655 and 1665 was one of change for the new settlement. The village was first under the legal protection and jurisdiction of the General Court of the Colony of New Haven and also under the eye of the Village of Southold, where a number of the original grantees lived or maintained their ties. In the first year or two it is not surprising that the small settlement had trouble establishing itself.
On March 27, 1657, Lt. John Budd of Southold, a New Haven Colony deputy, offered a petition to the court from the residents of Setauket:, "There are some poore people aboute twelve in number come into their plantation [Southold] form ye Island where they have suffered much hardship, and they carry it orderly and well, but are in greate wante. Their towne hath been at some charge with them and doe desire the jurisdiction to be helpfull to them in this time of their needs."
Historian John Innes reported in 1914, "The court considered it, and ordered that five pounds be allowed to them [per man] in corn or otherwise as may suit their needs, to be paid by Southold and set off in their rates."
In July 1657, Richard Woodhull (1620-1690) purchased land on the south shore of Long Island that connected with the 1655 purchase and gave Brookhaven shorelines on Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. It also gave Brookhaven a connection to the vast off-shore whaling industry. Woodhull's elevated status, with a statue of his likeness on the Setauket School Auditorium, is a tribute to his leadership as magistrate and town recorder during the formative years of the Settlement. No man was more responsible for its success and for the establishment of the Town of Brookhaven from sound to bay.
In 1658, the small Brookhaven Settlement expanded from the area of the Original Settlement around the run that empties into Conscience Bay to Stony Brook on the west, Mount Sinai (then Ould Mans) on the east and Mastic on the south.
Setauket (Brookhaven) became known as Cromwell Bay in 1659, in honor of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), and petitioned to come under the protection of the stronger and more tolerant colony of Connecticut.
By 1659, the settlement at Setauket became more self-sustaining with a few more families arriving and with the orchards and fields taking hold. Homes were constructed of local white oak, white pine and red cedar.
The settlers were Puritans in the New England tradition, but by this time much of the religious fervor of the earlier period had begun to lessen and a more liberal attitude toward differing religious viewpoints was emerging. The attitude in the new settlement at Setauket welcomed men such as Arthur Smith, the Quaker, and others who were forced to leave various colonies.
In 1660, exiled King Charles II was restored to the English throne and Setauket (Brookhaven) ceased to be known as Cromwell Bay.
Hartford voted to accept Brookhaven in 1661, and appointed Woodhull and Thomas Pierce as magistrates. The settlement was expanded to include six-acre lots in the area west of Conscience Bay, now Old Field.
An outbreak of smallpox among Long Island's Native Americans in 1662 was disastrous for the small population. Setauket's Setalcotts, living mainly on Little Neck (Strong's Neck), were decimated by the epidemic. Daniel Lane bought the southern half of Little Neck for the settlement from the remaining Setalcotts.
George Wood, in 1662 the newest town resident, was directed to keep an ordinary (an inn for travelers) in Setauket. The same year Richard Bullick, a traveler, purchased timber and plank from John Ketcham, but was given four months to build a boat and leave town. He was also directed not to disturb anyone in town or to buy land there.
Zachariah Hawkins, the progenitor of the Hawkins family in Brookhaven, is first mentioned in town records in 1662, as are New Town (East Setauket, the commercial part of the settlement) and Mount Misery (Belle Terre). Brookhaven (Setauket) continued to expand in 1662 as Woodhull and Richard Smith purchased meadows on the south shore between Unkachak (a neck of land in Mastic) and Sequatake West (a neck of land in Islip).
Beverly Tyler is Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from the Three Village Historical Society: phone 751-3730 or visit www.tvhs.org.
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