The first non-native settlers came to the Hamptons just twenty years after the Mayflower arrived in the New World. The eight men, one woman, and a child who disembarked at Conscience Point in Southampton in 1640 journeyed by way of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—as part of a pattern where English settlements sent out small groups to establish new communities in agriculturally promising areas. Geopolitics also played a part: the Dutch had colonized New Amsterdam and areas to the west, but eastern Long Island was still up for grabs.
Southampton and East Hampton favored communal systems whereby families—at least the men—were given home lots as well as larger parcels for cultivation and grazing, shares in woodland, and shared rights to beached whales. In the colonial years and following Independence, the economy was agricultural, but whaling became increasingly important, progressing from salvaging whales washed up on the sand, to offshore whaling in small boats launched right into the surf, to the age of the great whaling ships that plied the world’s oceans.
The small port and village of Northwest, north of East Hampton, handled much of the early trade. Whale oil and bone collected by offshore whalers in Mecox and Sagaponack came via Merchant’s Path to the harbor at Northwest, and were shipped to other colonial settlements, while locally bred horses were exported to the West Indies.
On return trips, timber and cider were received from neighboring colonies, and sugar, rum and molasses from the Caribbean. Northwest declined during the 1700s after the Long Wharf was constructed in Sag Harbor and trade shifted there. The little village at Northwest, with its schoolhouse and warehouses and commercial life, disappeared entirely by the end of the nineteenth century. But Sag Harbor went on to become one of the most important ports on the east coast and a very rich mercantile community.
Life for local families continued without radical or far reaching changes from the late 1700s until a century later when the railroad arrived. Transportation and communications soon altered the way business was conducted, but the more lasting contribution was the birth of the Hamptons as a residential resort area. Still, farming and fishing remained a way of life for the old families.
For the first half of the twentieth century “summer colonies” remained small, wealthy and inward looking, and local life still had a rural character. All that changed rapidly when the Second World War ended and great economic and sociological changes transformed the country. More people had leisure time; car ownership became common and the Long Island Expressway was extended in stages; mortgage money was made available to the middle class and owners of vacation homes. This led to a larger, more democratic and diverse summer population but also contributed to the decline of the farming and fishing economies—in other words, it led to the Hamptons as we know it today.
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The Halsey farm in Water Mill is one of the oldest organic farms in America, and one of the few to have maintained its family lineage. Among the earliest settlers in the Southampton colony in the seventeenth century, Halseys have been connected to the land here for over three and a half centuries.
The Green Thumb, on the Montauk Highway in Water Mill, where the Halseys sell their produce, is more than a farm stand: it is a must-go-to destination for everyone who cares about food and tradition in the Hamptons.
Two generations of Halseys—Ray and Peachy Halsey and their children, Larry, Billy, Jo and Patti—operate the business. A third generation is waiting, so the Halsey farm will remain a part of our lives for years to come.