HUNTINGTON, LONG ISLAND, NY, HISTORY
The History of Long Island,
from its earliest settlement to the present time.
Peter Ross.
NY Lewis Pub. Co. 1902

[transcribed by Coralynn Brown]

HUNTINGTON

Peter Ross.
A history of Long Island: from its earliest settlement to the present time.
New York: Lewis Pub. Co., 1902

This township, which extended its authority across the entire island until 1872, when the southern half was raised into the dignity of a separate local govenment and became the township of Babylon, was incorporated under a patent issued November 30, 1666, by Governor Nicolls. It is not clear when or where the first settlement was erected. The earliest Indian deed, between the Sagamore Raseokan, of the Matinicock tribe, on the one hand, and Richard Houlbrock, Robert Williams and Daniel Whitehead on the other, when certain lands in the township about six miles square were sold by the Sagamore to the pioneers for "6 coats, 6 kettles, 6 hatchets, 6 howes, 6 shirts, 10 knives, 6 fathoms of wampum, 30 muxes, 30 needles," is dated April 2, 1653, and it was not until six years later that a town meeting was called, so far as existing records show. Another tract of land was in 1656 sold by "Asharoken, Marttinicock Sachem, and the rest of the Indian owners with him," to Jonas Wood, William Rogers and Thomas Wickes, "for themselves and the rest of their associates," covering land from Northport and Smithtown Harbor, and including Eaton's Neck. That neck, however, was afterward claimed and held under a supposed Indian deed dated 1646 to Theophilus Eaton. This claim was allowed in law and was confirmed by a grant by Governor Nicolls. Where the pioneer white settlers came from seems also uncertain. Mr. C. S. Street says: "I incline to the belief that the first and oldest came across the Sound, perhaps under the leadership of Rev. William Leverich, from the vicinity of New Haven and Branford, landing at Huntington Harbor and locating principally along the valley where the eastern part of Huntington village now is, this having been always called "the town spot" or "old town spot," that the second immigration was an off-shoot from the Hempstead colony, led thither by Rev. Richard Denton soon after 1640, originally from Wethersfield, Massachusetts, and for a time at Stamford, Connecticut; and the third influx came from the vicinity of Salem, Massachusetts, after stopping a short time in Southold and Shouthampton, principally in the former town."

The Indian name of the terrotory was Ketewomoke, and its English name may either be a corruption of that of the old town of Huntington or of Huntingtown - the latter being significant of the abundance of wild game when settlement began. Probably the first surmise is the correct one. The Indians gave little trouble. They were few in number, remnants, in fact, of the Matinicock, Marsepagne and Sencatogue tribes, and the advent of the white man completed the process of extinction which had been begun by the evil fortunes of war with the tribes on the mainland.


"In the first years of the settlement," says Mr. C. R. Street in his "Town Records," vol. I, p 13, "the pioneers built their rudely constructed dwelling around and near the 'town spot,' where they had a fort and watch houses and where the 'train bands' were drilled. Their animals were daily driven out and herded under guard, some in the 'east field,' now Old Fields, and some in the 'west field,' now West Neck, and at night the cattle were driven back and coralled near the watch house. Gradually, however, the more adventurous pushed out in all directions and made themselves homes where they found the richest soil and most attractive surroundings, and at their meetings granst of 'home lots' were made. At first the women pounded their corn in mortars, and the men wrought logs and clapboards for building with axes and cleavers, but soon dams were constructed across the streams, small mills were built for griding grain and sawing lumber, rude tanneries were constructed for tanning leather, and spindles or looms were made or procured for the manufacture of coarse flaxen or woolen fabrics for clothing. The ox-cart was their only vehicle for travel and cart-paths their only highways. They used wooden ploughshares tipped with iron. Their match-lock guns were even more clumsy than the old flint-locks, but some of their swords were wrought by Spanish artisans and were tempered with a skill that is among the lost arts."


The patent of 1664 covered with the privilege of a township the entire region between Cold Spring and Nesaquake River and from the sound to the ocean. The exact boundaries were not very clearly set forth, neither were they in the Dongan patent of 1686 or the Fletcher patent of 1694, and this as well as the weakness of the Indian deeds afterward gave rise to much litigation, which once occupied a great deal of thought and temper, but does not invite any genearl interest nowadays. But the town as a settled and self-governing community dates really ahead of the Nicolls patent, for the town meeting was in operation as early as 1659, and one would judge from one entry in the records that the brethren had advanced so far in the art of governing that by 1660 the stocks had been built wherewith to detain and punish offenders. The town meeting at once rose into power. It divided and awarded lands, voted allegiance to Connecticut, elected deputies to the General Court at Hartford, made and repaired highways, fixed legal fees, administered justice in criminal as well as civil cases (thirty trials being recorded up to 1664), apparently according to the pioneers' ideas of justice until the Duke's laws were forced upon them; elected contables; ordered fences built to keep cattle and hogs from wandering; and fined without mercy. The town meeting even banished a man - Richard Latting - agreeing "that ould Laten shalle take away his cattel out of this town bounds within a fortnight, or 14 days, or pay to the town 10 shilling a head." His imputed offense was, according to Mr. Street, his refusal to recognize the sovereignty of Connecticut, but he must have been a bad man clear through, for he was afterward expelled from the immediate jurisdiction of Hartford, where he had taken refuge, for his "turbulent conduct." He then apparently wanted to settle in Huntington once more, but the town meeting would have non of him, and resolved that if any person "shall either by way of gift or paye do give or selle entartanement to Richard Laten for more than the spase of one week every person or offending shall pay forty shillings fine for every time he shall offend in brakeing this order made fot the pease of the Town."

But the significant evidence of independence was, - as in all of the town meetings in the Island towns - that the meeting was the sole arbiter as to who should settle within their domain, andin 1662 the Rev. Mr. Leverich, Will Smith, Thomas Weekes, John Lum, Goodman Jones, James Chichester and Jonas Wood were appointed as a committee to pass upon the character and credentials of every applicant for admission into the little community. No one interfered with the town meeting's edicts; it was a law unto itself; its verdict was supreme, and there does not seem to have been any idea of an appeal from its decision to a higher court. With Governor Nicolls and the Duke's laws that state of independence passed away.


Huntington was not a theocracy. Its early Magistrates were elected by the people, and if the confirmation of the General Court at Hartford was asked, it was more in the nature of a formality than anything else. The Rev. William Leverich, whom we have already met in our studies, was one of the pioneers and preached to the people and exercised his sacred offices, but he was necessarily absent from among them frequently, and besides his worldly occupations must have occupied quite a part of his time. He built and ran the first mill in the township, and seems to have been a general merchant, selling cloth and other articles, so that while he was the first minister in Huntington he could hardly be rightly described as the first minister of Huntington. A Presbyterian Church was erected in 1666 and enlarged in 1686, but the influence of the church did not seem to become dominant any more than it would in any well-regulated Christian community. In 1676 the Rev. Eliphalet Jones was chosen as the first minsiter of Huntington, but he was chosen by the respresentatives of the town meeting, and as a result of a vote of a town meeting and not so far as we can see on the initiative of the church session and congregation,as such. Mr. Jones ministered in the town until his death in 1731. He had then attained the patriarchial age of ninety-three years. In 1719 the Rev. Ebenezer Prime became his assistant and successor. In 1766 the Rev. John Close became Mr. Prime's successor, but withdrew in 1773. Six years later Mr. Prime died. By that time the British had taken possession of the church building and turned it into a storehouse and so it remained until 1782, when it was torn down. There were two other Presbyterian congregations in the township, one at Comac in 1730, and another at Fresh Pond (now Northport), but later by several years.

In 1746 St. John's Episcopal Church was constituted under the name of Trinity Church. It was ministered to by the Rev. Samuel Seabury, rector at Hempstead. In 1749 the first church building was erected, and in 1773 the Rev. James Greaton, of Boston, was settled as the first rector.


Loyal, in sentiment if in no other respect, to Connecticut, Huntington made short work of the claims of the redoubtable Capt. John Scott in 1663 as the direct representative of King Charles II, but we are inclined to think that if Connecticut's claims to active sovereignty, which she made in 1664, when shs sent commissioners to collect taxes and establish additional courts on Long Island, had been pushed the sentiment of Huntington would not have proved powerful enough to have yielded. Fortunately the envoys of Connecticut did not reach Huntington, so the reign of sentiment continued. Governor Nicolls cut it short, however. He summonded a meeting of all the Long Island towns at Hempstead, and Jonas Wood and John Ketcham were chosen representatives at Huntington. As such they attended the meeting, accepted all the Governor's promises and changes, and signed the obsequious address to him which was so hearily repudiated as far as possible by the people, and returned to their constituents with a manuscript copy of the Duke's laws, which were henceforth, except for Colve's brief interruption, to rule the roost. These two men were the most popular in Huntington when they set forth on their journey to Hempstead, but when they returned and their doings were known they lsot their popularity entirely. However, it was too late. The die was cast. Long Island was a part of New York; there was to be no more dallying with Connecticut; a strong man was at the helm; the Duke's authority and laws had been accepted, and having no choice in the matter, little town governments like Huntington had no recourse but to accept the conditions that presented themselves and get along as well as possible. But it ws not long before the fact was experience that the old perfect freedom and autonomy were things of the past; a higher power than the town meeting had come, and come to stay, with Colve's opera bouffe sort of interruption, until the Revolution, and then, although changed in name and style, the outside power remained.


The annals of Huntington, outside of a lawsuit or two, each now an obsolete story, and a little grumbling at much of the Duke's laws, might be described as quiet and peaceful until the advent of the Revolution, calling for the recital of nothing more than purely local and domestic in point of interest. But then the history of the Revolutionary movement began early in Huntington. At a town meeting held on February 21, 1670, consideration of a demand by Governor Lovelace for a "contribution" toward the cost of repairing the fort at New York was discussed with the folloiwng emphatic result:
"We of the town of Huntington can not see cause to contribute anything toward the Repairacon of the forte for these following reasons: First, because we conceive we are deprived of the liberties of Englishmen; secondly, we conceive we have little or no benefits of the Law; thirdly, we can not conceive of any benefit or safety we can expect from the fort; fourthly, we find ourselves so much disenabled by manifold troubles when we thought ourselves in peace that we can not imparte with any such disbursement."

A copy of all this was sent to Lovelace, and he pronounced it "scandalous, illegal and seditious," and had the document publicly burned. But Huntington did not pay, and so this spirited protest was one of the earliest defiances against "taxation without representation," and accomplished its purpose.

This meeting, however, was the beginning of the Revolutionary movement in the town. When Governor Andros came in after Colve's short reign he made the usual array of glittering promises, and then the old restrictions and the Duke's laws were enforced more rigidly than ever. The town meeting protested, Andros sent several of the citizens to jail, but even that did not cause the grumbling to cease.

Governor Dongan tried to pacify every one by calling a meeting of deputies at New York, but the meeting accomplished nothing practical. Dongan pretended he saw a weakness in the old patents of Huntington, and directed a new one to be made. It was drawn up in such a way as to meet the views of the local authorities, and in their fullness of heart they offered to pay 20 for the document, but Dongan fixed the price at 29 4s 6d, and this was eventually paid with much grumbling.

When the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 sent Governor Slaughter to these shores a greater meed of liberty followed, and popular representation in the affairs of government ws no longer a dead letter, but afterward the blindness of Parliament and the unfitness of many of the royal Governors gradually aroused the spirit of opposition and led to revolt. In this Huntington was outspoken from the first, and was most pronounced and determined in its adoption of the patriotic cause. At a town meeting held June 21, 1774, it was declared, among other things:


"That every freeman's property is absolutely his own, and no man has a right to take it from him without his consent, expressed either by himself or his representatives.

That, therefore, all taxes and duties imposed on His Majesty's subjects in the American colonies by the autority of Parliament are wholly unconstitutional and a plain violation of the most essential rights of British subjects.

That we are of the opinion that our brethren of Boston are now suffering in the common cause of British America.
That it is the opinion of this meeting that the most effectual means for obtaining a speedy repeal of said acts will be to break off all commercial intercourse with Great Britain, Ireland and the West India colonies.

And we hereby declare ourselves ready to enter into these or such other measures as shall be agreed upon by a general congress of all the colonies."


There was thus, so far as the surface indications go, no thought of separation; but as events unfolded themselves and militia companies were formed and drilled, independence became the issue, and 100 pounds of gunpowder was sent by the Provincial Congress to Huntington in September 1775. On June 20, 1776, a local war committee was chosen, consisting of Joshua Ketcham, John Buffet, Platt Conklin, Platt Carll, Josiah Wood, Wilmot Oakley, Jesse Brush, Timothy Ketcham, Gilbert Fleet, Richard Conklin, Jonas Rogers, Thomas Wicks, Benjamin Y. Prime, Timothy Conklin, Solomon Ketcham, David Rusco, Henry Smith, Gilbert Potter. The enrolling and drilling of the troops continued and preparations were zealously prosecuted for meeting the armed crisis which, it was felt, was near at hand. In a general appendix to the story of Suffolk county the names of all her military heroes are given, so there is no use in mentioning any of them here [transcriber's note: OH BOY, looks like I'd better find them! I may put them on a separate page, though, as they're from all over Suffolks County, not just this town.]...but on January 24 Chairman William Smith of the Suffolk committee, estimated the county's entire militia as 2,000 men.

On July 5, 1776, Congress sent 1,000 pounds of powder to the Huntington committee. By that time the immorral Declaration of Independence had been launched, and the fiat had gone forth that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."

On July 22 the edict of independence was celebrated in Huntington amid much rejoicing. A letter from there, written the day after and published in Holt's New York Journal, tells the story:

"Yesterday the freedom and independence of the thirteen United Colonies was, with beat of drum, proclaimed at the several places of parade, by reading the Declaration of the General Congress, together with the resolutions of our provincial convention thereupon: which were approved and applauded by the animated shouts of the people, who were present from all the distant quarters of this district. After which the flag used to wave on liberty pole, having Liberty on one side and George III on the other, underwent a reform, i.e., the union was cut off, and the letters George III were discarded, being publicly ripped off; and then an effigy of the personage represented by those letters, being hastily fabricated out of base materials, with its face black like Dumnore's Virginia [negro] regiment, its head adorned with a wooden crown, and its head stuck full of feathers, like Carleton's and Johnson's savages, and its body wrapped in the union instead of a blanket or robe of state, and lined with gunpowder, which the original seems to be fond of - the whole, together with the letter above mentioned, was hung on a gallows, exploded and burnt to ashes. In the evening the committee of this town, with a large number of the principal inhabitants, sat around the genial board, and drank 13 patriotic toasts, among which were: The free and independent States of America, the General Congress, The Convention of the 13 States, Our Principal Military Commanders, and Success and Enlargement of the American Navy. Nor was the memory of our late brave heroes who have gloriously lost their lives in the cause of liberty and their country fortoeen."


On August 12, 1776, Josiah Smith marched from Smithtown for Brooklyn, picking up the companies of his regiment on the way. There seems some doubt as to the number of men he took with him into the brief campaign which ended in the retreat of the Continental forces from Long Island. Mr. Henry P. Johnston, in his "Campaign of 1776," estimates the whole at 250, but Mr. Pelletreau seems to think this an underestimate. Nor can we determine exactly the number of men from Huntington, who were in the disaster of August 27th. It would seem, however, that on that day 100 men were sent from Huntington to join General Woodhull and assist him in his humble mission of driving away the cattle from before the enemy. The results of the battle of Brooklyn paralyzed all military effort, although some of the ardent spirits at Huntington were for continuing the struggle; but on Septebmer 1st General Oliver De Lancy and the Seventeenth Dragoons were in full control, and a day later Huntington's Chief Magistrate, Issac Wood, formally surrendered it to the royal authority, and the awful reign of the army of occupation commenced.

Then followed the ususal acts of pillage, confiscation, and ruin, of which we have seen so much. In Huntington there was no room for doubting the sentiments of the great body of the people, as there might have been justly in Queens, and so it seems that the troops carried on their mission in a much more high-handed manner in this township than even in Oyster Bay. One of the first of the British hauls was a prize of 160 casks of oil and twenty gallons of molasses, which were put on board two vessels, which were virtually confiscated, and sent to New York City. Every horse fit for troop or team work was seized, wagons, boats, grain, live stock, forage - all that could be useful to an army were seized, paid for at valuation fixed by the military authorities when the victim was a Loyalist or confiscated when a pronounced or suspected Patriot. Even men were impressed into the royal service to drive the teams or convey the live stock to Jamaica, or to cut down wood for the use of the military. The requirements of the troopers pressed heavily on all classes, many of the most pronounced Patriots abandoned their property and sought refuge in Connecticut or service in the Continental army; the oath of allegiance was ordered to be taken by all of the adult male population, and the records show that 549 of the dwellers in Huntington gave this evidence of their lip loyalty at least to the dominant cause. Those who had belonged to the local militia were compelled to do military duty, such as guard mounting, etc. As the period of the occupation progressed and the township was overrun by the Loyalist regiments - the scum of the population in the large cities - robbery and wanton destruction of property became the rule and all pretence of any law except that of might and the drum-head was abandoned. The people were openly accused of being rebels, even those who had taken the oath being regarded with suspicion, and those who escaped that declarataion of lip loyalty were few, for Governor Tryon had swept Suffolk county as with a dragnet and forced the acceptance of the declaration with the alternative of an enforced trip to Connecticut.


Huntington was strongly guarded, for its position on the sound made it a likely place for landing parties of Patriots. Fort Franklin, at the west end of Lloyd's Neck, with seven or eight guns and a garrison generally of 300 or more men, was supposed to safeguard this bit of coast from attack, but it became a place from whence marauding parties fitted out expeditions for shore robberies, and the pirates cared little when a chance for plunder appeared about distinguishing whether their victims were Loyalists or Whigs, whether the booty was money, blankets or teaspoons. Even the regular soldiers got up pillaging parties, and "the Honorable Board of Associated Loyalists" was simply a refined name for a gang of thugs and cutthroats who, under the name of loyalty, enjoyed a season of liberty and rascality, and robbed wheneer, wherever and whoever they could. An attack on this fort was made on July 1, 1781, by a force of Americans and Frenchmen, but they were repulsed by superior numbers, and the fort as a centre for pillaging parties continued for a little while longer.


In the center of the village of Huntington is a hill commanding a fine view of the sound. The people of the village had selected it as a place for a burial of the dead, and for over a century it had been so used, and the stones which marked its graves bore the names of every family in the place. It was, in fact, to them, holy ground, and we can imagine the indignation that was felt when, in 1782, Colonel Benjamin Thompson (afterward known as Count Rumford) decided to build a fort on the hill, and especially when his edict went forth that the people of the village were to assemble with spades, axes, and teams and help in the work of desecrating the graves of their ancestors. The local militia were impressed into the unhallowed work, and over a hundred tombstones were removed and the ground leveled. [Transcriber's note: AKKK!! No wonder people have trouble finding their ancestors in graveyards!]. For the erection of the fort a church was torn down, and even buildings in use were stripped of their outer walls, while orchards, trees, fences were cut down or carried away without the slightest regard to personal property. The tombstones were used as flooring, some went into the construction of ovens, and bread was often seen bearing part of the insciption on a tomb from contact with one of these stones in the oven. The fort was completed and bore the appropriate name of Golgotha. Its remains are yet discernable. Some of the old gravestones left untouched by Thompson's troopers are more or less unwilling helpers are still to be seen, fragments of them, rather, for the hill was often swept by cannon shot. The hill itself is a veritable memorial of the Revolution, more precious than mere human hands could contrive.


These cruelties and oppressions and robberites, however, belong to the past, and time has helped to soften the sense of their miseries and degradation. But the events of the Revolution have left in Huntington one memory which is as bright as ever, one hero whose name, which in and ever will be held in the very foremost rank of American patriots and whose dying declaration "I regret I have only one life to live for my country," will always be regarded as among the watchwords of liberty.

Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1755, and was educated at Yale with a view to entering the ministry. After he graduated, in 1773, he taught school at East Haddam, and afterward at New London. He was so engaged when the news reached New London of the engagement at Lexington, and ws one of the speakers at the town meeting that was called at once to consider the situation. He advised immediate action, saying "Let us march immediately and never lay down our arms until we have obtained our independence." He at once enrolled and was given rank as lieutenant. After the seige of Boston, in which his regiment participated and where he was promoted to a captaincy, he was ordered with his command to New York. There he distinguised himself by capturing one of the supply boats carrying provisions to the Gubernatorial ship of refuge, the "Asia," and the provisions provided quite a feat feast for his soldiers. In response to a call from General Washington Hale volunteered to pass the British lines in serach of data, and in the guise of Loyalist schoolmaster he entered most of the British camps on Manhattan and Long Islands, estimating their forces, sketching their fortifications and acquiring other information which he deemed might be useful. His work was almost completed on Long Island. He had crossed the sound from Norwalk, landed at Huntington Harbor at a point called the Cedars, and traversed all through the British posts, returning to Huntington according to a date previously arranged about two weeks later to meet a boat that was to take him back to Norwalk. He saw a boar on the morning arranged appraoch the shore of Huntington Bay, and, supposing it to be the one he waited for, stood on the beach until its crew was landed. Then he saw he had made a terrible mistake, and the lowered rifles pointing at him made escape impossible. He was taken on board a prisoner and rowed to frigate "Halifax," then in the bay, and the evidence found concealed in his boots left no doubt of his guilt. Hale was taken to New York and condemned to death as a spy. His execution took place September 22, 1776, in New York City. The exact place is not known, although it is generally conceded to have been elsewhere than in City Hall Park, where MacMonnies' statue representing Hale just before his execution now stands.

Huntington is proud of her association with this hero. In 1894 a neat fountain lamp was erected in the village "to commemorate the patiotism of Nathan Hale," and on the shores of the bay, near the scene of the capture, a boulder, weighing forty-five tons was laid from a field nearby. It bears three massive bronze memorial tablets, one of which repeats a part of Hale's words when he accepted the mission which demanded his life, "I will undertake it. I think I owe to my country the accomplishment of an object so important and so much desired by the commander of her armies * * * * Yet I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful and every kind of service for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service its claims to the performance of that service are imperious."


Huntington Bay is about a mile from the village, and is one of the most delightful "hits," as a landscape painter might say, along the coast of Long Island Sound. "As a whole," said a writer in Scribner's Magazine for May, 1881, "it resembles the track of a bird. The rear claw is the narrow entrance from the sound; the center of the foot is the main body of water, and three or four claws are spread from this westward, southward and eastward. Each long, narrow harbor is diversified with many points and coves that surprise you as you explore it. You pass farther and farther inland, along the wooded hills and along the clean sand beaches. A sloping field here and there, an orchard covering a low farm-house, or a villa on a commanding knoll, are minor points in the charming panorama of the shores. In-and-put, in-and-out, is the course of land and water; and in their devious way they play many tricks at hide-and-seek, and draw you on from rock to rock by the most attractive pictures. At last you reach the head of the harbor, with its salt meadow of waving grass, its old tide mill, its pond, and the shady village sheltered among the encircling hills. You can explore still father with pleasure by following the roads and lane through scenes of unusual beauty. The road may skirt the beach of a sand-locked bay bordered with forest; it may lead past old farm-houses, orchards and typical barn-yards; or it may mount the hills of a headland or neck commanding extensive views of tortuous harbors, rounded headlands, long tongues of white and dividing the blue water, the wide horizon of the continenet, and the sound stretched eastward to the Atlantic."


When hostilities ceased the population was only a little over 1,000, and the township's losses by the occupation were figured at about 75,000lb. Civil law was quickly restored; the town meeting again held its supreme position as the arbiter of local affairs, and farm and mill combined to make Huntington once more a prosperous as well as a peaceful community. By 1790 the township had doubled its population, but it would seem that some of the newcomers had not proved either well-doing or prosperous, or perhaps deserving of either for the overseers of the poor then found it necessay to buy a building in the village for the purposes of a poor-house. This house was continued to be used for that purpose until 1868, when a poor farm was bought at Long Swamp. In 1872 the paupers belonging to the township were removed to the county institution at Yaphank, Brookhaven township.


The War of 1812 caused a good deal of alarm in Huntington, considerable powder was sent there, as in 1776, and the local militia once marched to Lloyd's Neck on a false alarm that the British were landing troops in that vicinity. But the war only brought rumors, and the township was permitted to work ut its problems of progress and development in peace.

The Civil War found Huntington again raedy to "rally round the flag." Many of her sons went to the front and never returned, but the handsome soliders' monument and memorial house show that their devotion has not been forgotten. The course of the Civil War brought into active service, after he had been officially retired, a veteran whose home had been in Huntington for many years. This was Admiral Hiram K. Paulding, a son of John Paulding, one of the trio which captured Major Andre. Admiral Paulding entered the navy as a midshipman in 1811, took part in the victory of September 11, 1814, on Lake Champlain under McDonough, and was promoted liuetenant in 1816, during the Algerian War. By the usual slow process of promotion through the various grades, he was retired with only the rank of captain, when he reached the age limit for active service, December 21, 1861. On July 16, 1862, he obtained the rank of rear admiral and was in command of the Brooklyn Navy Yard until 1865, when he returned to Huntington and again resumed the pleasures of private citizenship. He died there October 20, 1878.


In 1872 the township was divided by the general consent of the people, the southern part becoming an independent township under the name of Babylon. It was said at the time that the reason for this change was simply lack of sympathy or coherance between the people on the northern side of the township and those on the south, but possibly the real reason was that the Long Island Railroad, when it had completed its road from Hicksville to Greenpoint in 1844, practically divided the township into two sections, and in 1868 the northern half got a railroad of its own by the extension of the branch from Syosset. In these modern days Huntington village is a thriving country place, proud of its past and more than hopeful as to its future. It has eight churches, a bank, two weekly papers, exceptional educational facilities, and an estimated population of 4,000, a Masonic lodge (Jephtha, No. 494), and Odd Fellows' lodge and a number of other organizations.


Northport, formerly Great Cow Harbor, now boasts a population of some 1,800. Its Prysbterian Church has a record dating from 1794, although not always located in the village. The most famous of its ministers was the Rev. Joshua Hartt, who held forth to its people from about 1780 until 1809, by which time the congregation had dwindled down until only a handful remained. The Rev. N. S. Prime, the historian of Long Island, then took hold and succeeded in reviving it so that at the conclusion of his stay of eighteen months it had a membership of forty. The Rev. Mr. Hartt continued to act as "pulpit supply" until his death in 1825. He was a graet "marrying minister," for some reason or other, and probably mated more couples in Huntington than any other clergyman, one record placing the number as high as 500.
It is now a manufacturing village, with an increasing summer boarding business. As much might be said for Centerpoint, which in olden times rejoiced in the name of Little Cow Harbor, and for Cold Spring, the surroundings of which have been decribed as being "as charming as those of the Lakes of Como." There are several other smaller settlements all through the township. It possesses many splendid agricultural sections, but its glory lies in the part lying between the railroad and the coast, and in that portion of the township there is little doubt that rapid and wonderful developments are certain in the immediate future.