Flower Hill

From Forest to Farms, a Village of Growth

Beginnings: The village, which now occupies parts of Manhasset, Roslyn and Port Washington, was farms and pastures in the 1600s, thanks to hardy pioneers who cleared away forest and brush. The early settlers - Hewletts, Kissams, Loves and Motts - operated farms so large and productive that the sons of one farm family, the Hewlett brothers, had their own canning factory, the largest in the Town of North Hempstead by the late 1800s, each season shipping 200,000 cans of fruits and vegetables and 150 barrels of ketchup. Only three of the early farmhouses remain. One of them, the Sands-Willets House, now the headquarters of the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, was part of the inland farm of the Sands family (who also owned Sands Point). The farms extended to Manhasset Bay on the west and to Hempstead Harbor on the east.

The Name: Who knows? This was the conclusion of the late local historian Milton Hopkins, who discounted the theory that the name was based on the abundance of wildflowers in the meadows, since, he said, a large part of Flower Hill was not meadow but forest. ``Flower Hill is an old name, appearing in the oldest documents found and we had best leave it at that,'' concluded Hopkins.

The Hospital: The Hewlett farm was purchased in 1900 by Carlos Munson, a Cuban-born Quaker and owner of the Munson Steamship Co. He acquired a neighboring home and 15 acres, which he donated to the Sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1922, for use as a summer camp for inner-city children. By 1936 the sisters were caring for children suffering from rheumatic fever, in the Munson carriage house converted into a sanatorium. It has since expanded to St. Francis Hospital, the second largest cardiac center in the country.

Where to Find More: ``Manhasset, the First 300 Years,'' in the Manhasset Library.