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The Daytons and Mulfords arrived in East Hampton before1650. The Herricks and Piersons settled in Southampton even earlier. Their descendants are still here.
Richard Barons, Executive Director of the East Hampton Historical Society, deals not only with the buildings and the furnishings and clothes and tools and artifacts that make up the heritage of East Hampton, but also the people. “I find it fascinating that after 350 years there are so many descendents of the first colonists still playing active roles in our community,” he said. “There is the Osborne name gracing the façade of a Main Street insurance firm; the Osborne Law Office has been in an early 18th century Village house since 1898. Robert Osborne is an emeritus trustee of the East Hampton Historical Society. And when it comes to Gardiners, they are still ensconced on the Island that Lion Gardiner purchased in 1639. There are Edwards, Lopers, Talmages, Mulfords, Hedges and Daytons all still involved in boards, churches and commerce---just as it was (and should be) since the days of muskets and Madeira.”
Thomas Osborn emigrated from the Kent countryside to Massachusetts before 1635, was a founder of the New Haven colony in Connecticut in 1639, and was living in East Hampton by 1651. The Osborns were tanners for generations on the site now occupied by c/o The Maidstone, the inn on a small hill facing the pond on East Hampton’s Main Street. One of Thomas’s sons moved to Wainscott to farm. Osborns and Osbornes (both spelling are used by different branches) still reside in both places.
Farther north on Main Street, an Osborn house built in 1723, now known as the Osborn-Jackson House, was home to six generations of the family until it was donated to the Village of East Hampton in 1977. It is now administered by the East Hampton Historical Society with exhibitions and furnishings reflecting local life in the early nineteenth century.
The Osborns have been extensively involved in the life of the community for these many years. Thomas and John Osborn represented their town in a January 1667 agreement between the offshore whaling companies of East Hampton and Southampton, and in our time Robert Osborne and his son Tom have been carrying on that commercial tradition and arranging business as East Hampton attorneys.
Robert Osborne, looking back, told us, “Happily I have been able to spend my life in the place I know and love, leaving only for college, law school and the military. It is comforting to know my ancestors lived and worked here and aided the community, although I wish the results for the indigenous population had been more favorable.”
The Thomas Halsey homestead on South Main Street in Southampton was built in the 1660s and is believed to be the first English style house in New York. Since then the Halseys have worked and farmed on the East End, mostly in Southampton and Water Mill. The Green Thumb, considered the oldest organic farm in the state, belongs to one branch of the Halsey family, and The Milk Pail, famed for its apples, belongs to another.
John v.H. Halsey grew up in Southampton at a time when fields of potatoes or rye stretched from Montauk Highway to the ocean with an occasional farmhouse along the roads, and these memories became a driving force in his life. After graduating from Dartmouth College and doing his graduate studies in Sweden and U.C. Berkley, and working in San Francisco, he returned home in 1983 to start the Peconic Land Trust—harvesting and selling muskmelons while it got moving. His motivation came from seeing a neighboring family forced to sell their farm in order to pay inheritance taxes. From that modest beginning the organization has helped to protect more than 10,000 acres of land.
“For 30 years, I have been engaged in the work of the Trust,” John v.H. Halsey commented, “out of a passion to conserve the working farms, natural lands, and heritage that define Long Island and the community where my family has been for 13 generations. We have approached our work from a pragmatic, problem-solving perspective seeking win-win outcomes for all involved. The Trust has recently purchased 20 acres of farmland in Bridgehampton owned by the Smith family who have been its stewards for 9 generations, since 1682. Consisting of the most fertile, prime soils that we have on Long Island, this land will be more than simply protected from development; it will always be available to farmers who grow food.”
Southampton was founded in 1640 by about 40 families from Lynn, Massachusetts, and Thomas Hildreth may have been among them. Thomas Hildreth is first mention in Southampton Town records in 1643 because of a “controversee” with another settler. While Richard Smith only had to say he was sorry (for what we don’t know) Hildreth was penalized and required to pay Smith 18 to 20 bushels of “English Wheate.”
Thomas died fairly young it is believed, in 1657 leaving a widow Hannah and four children. Soon there were ten or eleven grandsons bearing the Hildreth name and an unrecorded number of granddaughters. In 1776 when the British gained control of Long Island many patriot families temporarily fled to Connecticut rather than take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, and a good number of Hildreths made this choice for independence.
Hildreth’s, the department store, has been on Main Street in Southampton since 1842, then selling basics such as salt, flour, cheese, sugar; clothing and textiles; butter churns and buggy whips. The store carried whaling harpoons in an age when fishing and whaling were important parts of economic life here, and buffalo robes, which were the latest thing in climate control systems for the cold East End winters. Beyond utilitarian goods, Hildreth’s may have had the first version of an East End art gallery. They sold scrimshaw made by whalers and objects carved by the Shinnecock tribe. In the 1890s and 1900s, as a result of the railroad, a summer colony of second homeowners took root, and Hildreth’s began to supply their needs, as it still does today.
Lion Gardiner was commissioned by King Charles I to build a fort in Saybrook, and his son David was the first English child born in Connecticut. He bought Gardiner’s Island from local Native Americans in 1639 and formed a close and lasting bond with the Montaukett Indians. He farmed the island for 14 years before moving to the recently established East Hampton settlement.
One part of the family still owns the island. From another branch, Olney Mairs (Bill) Gardiner lives on the original “homelot” near Town Pond (once a watering place for cattle) that was allocated to his family and has been occupied by Gardiners for the past 360 years. Lion Gardiner and many other generations of Gardiners are buried across from the homestead in the South End Cemetery.
We asked Bill Gardiner what it is like having not just streets but also an island and a bay carrying the family name. “I realize I am a link in a chain and I hope I can give to my children what my ancestors and family gave to me. In the meantime I try to be a good steward of the land and the historic buildings on the property. The Gardiner Mill on the family property is restored and is now maintained by East Hampton Village as a historic site.”
In a larger sense we all live with this history. The legacy of these old families, along with the bounty of nature, has shaped life and community on the East End and so their legacy now belongs to each one of us.