The Lester family had been in East Hampton only about two hundred years according to the reliable book by Jeannette Edwards Rattray, “East Hampton History: Including Genealogies of Early Families.” And that was published sixty years ago. She might also have generalized a bit: John Lester was documented in East Hampton records in 1747 but was likely here twenty years or more before that. The family is now approaching 300 years and into its tenth generation in East Hampton.
The oldest Lester house in East Hampton is located on Three Mile Harbor Road in an area known to the early settlers as Round Swamp. This vernacular shingle house, over two hundred years old and shaded by chestnut trees only slightly younger than the house, has never been owned by anyone out of the family. The second oldest Lester house is next door and the story is the same. Ditto for the 16 acres of farmland in back of the houses and the expanded shingle shed housing the Round Swamp Farm market. Even when Lester descendants die they stay close, with many buried in the Round Swamp Cemetery on Three Mile Harbor Road south of the homestead. Clearly, this is a family that does not squander its hard earned money on moving expenses.
Most people today are more aware of the exceptional and bounteous produce, seafood, baked goods and prepared foods sold at Round Swamp Farm—the outgrowth of a modest farm stand—than they are of the equally bountiful history of the place and the family. The Lesters had long been farmers and fishermen, and like most of the early families scratching out a living before the East End became a residential resort area, they also cut wood, hunted game and birds and clammed in the marshes and harbors—sometimes for commerce but mostly for subsistence. The retail side started with a small red wagon that Albert Lester built more than fifty years ago for his daughter Carolyn to sell some of the tomatoes, cucumbers and corn harvested in his fields just yards away.
There is nothing unheard of in this history, nothing really that was out of the ordinary for local families until Carolyn’s little red wagon led to remarkable changes in the destiny of the Lester family. As a result, the Lester history is the kind of exemplary American entrepreneurial story everyone admires because it reflects the virtues of being industrious, being close to the land, maintaining strong family links and teaching the younger ones. Four generations of the extended family now work in the business, with Carolyn Lester Synder the matriarch since the death of her mother Barbara Lester at age 90 in January of 2014. The business supports six households, with Carolyn’s sisters and daughters and various spouses and children all involved.
In May of this year Round Swamp Farm opened an outpost on School Street in Bridgehampton. For most enterprises enlarging or opening a branch operation like this would be evidence of smart business development. For Synder and the other Lester descendants it is certainly that, but it is also a demonstration of the family commitment to making room and keeping this food business going for future generations.
Carolyn Snyder is the kind of woman who would probably never dream of saying “farm-to-table,” a term that describes not just a cuisine but a movement and philosophy. For her such concepts are not trends but entirely ingrained, a part of life as natural as the yearly cycle of planting and harvesting and preparing foods, hardly something to be remarked on. “Farmers of the land and sea” is the more fitting expression for the descendants of the Lester family. It is the Round Swamp Farm tagline, and the meaning is unique to this family.
On land, a wide variety of vegetables and fruits are planted and harvested on the Lester farm by Charles Niggles, Carolyn’s son-in-law, and his son Steven. The farm qualifies as a Bicentennial Farm, a designation from the New York Agricultural Society that recognizes farms in continuous operation by one family for 200 years or more. Farming from the sea acknowledges the long fishing tradition examplified by Carolyn’s husband Harold Synder, a lifelong bayman, plying the inshore waters for fish and shellfish, until his death in 2005. He practiced, among other things, haul-seining, a fishing technique using a dory launched from the beach, long a visible sight on the East End beaches and now merely a part of history. Niggles, following the tradition of Harold Snyder, is a commercial fisherman as well as farmer, and family member Al Schaffer is a lobsterman.
Lisa Niggles, Carolyn’s daughter, is one of the recognizable faces of the business for many Hamptons residents and visitors. Recognizable, that is, if not obscured by a hot tray of her much loved baked goods. She started baking at age twelve and continues just as enthusiastically nearly four decades later, rising early and turning out cakes and pies, muffins, cookies and brownies. Long one of the pleasures of East Hampton, her bakery treats, with universal appeal and with the opening of the Bridgehampton location, can now being savored everywhere from the volunteer fire department (across School Street) to the homes of the hedge fund managers on the lanes farther south.
It would be facile to say the Lesters were merely in the right place at the right time. They had been in the right place—more accurately the same place—for hundreds of years, sustaining themselves from season to season with farming and fishing and odd jobs as well. Only in the late twentieth century did the right time come along—more accurately the right opportunity as the summer and weekend population increased in size and wealth. When the circumstances were favorable they fused their skills on the land, on the sea and in the kitchen with their ethic of hard work and patience. The outcome is something we all now taste and delight in.