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Sayville

The World Was Its Oyster

By Tom Morris | Staff Writer

In 1836, 50 years after its official settlement, Sayville finally got a name. But it wasn't easy.

Tired of being called simply ``over south,'' the area's residents met in the old Bedell Tavern on Main Street to pick a name. The result was a tie between Edwardsville and Greenville, which referred to community founders. Then someone suggested Seaville. This was adopted but, local histories assert, the clerk misspelled it ``Sayville.''

Things haven't always been so wonky. Over time, Sayville has been a major source of wood for New York City, the oyster capital of the United States, a center of Long Island theater and a bustling resort town after the railroad arrived in 1868.

Sayville was part of the huge royal grant given to William Nicoll, a wealthy New York City politician, in 1697 that is the root of Islip Town. After the Revolution, mainly because of British ravaging of the land, William Nicoll IV was in debt and successfully petitioned the new State Legislature - a requirement at the time - for the right to sell off some land to pay bills.

As a result, in 1786, in the first sale of the original Nicoll holdings, John Edwards, 48, of East Hampton, who had already settled in the area in 1761, bought what is now the eastern part of Sayville for about $3 an acre. It stretched from Great South Bay to about a mile north of modern Montauk Highway. Edwards' son Matthew built a house that is believed to be contained within the circa-1830 structure that now houses the Sayville Historical Society.

The section now called West Sayville was acquired by John Greene, a member of a Huntington family, in 1767. One of Greene's sons built a house, still standing on what is now the corner of Montauk Highway and Cherry Avenue, that is mentioned in the diary of President George Washington as a stopover, on April 22, 1790, during his tour of Long Island.

The first settlers were Congregationalists, but were without a church of their own. In 1845, a prominent Brooklyn cleric, Nathaniel Prime, decried that there were only two churches in all of Islip Town. ``The greater part of the population must be living in utter sin without means of salvation ...'' Prime declared. ``The state of morals in Islip Town presents the most undesirable residence of any area on Long Island.'' Two years later, a Methodist church was built in Sayville. It remains the community's oldest church.

By 1830, New York City's growth had created a market for wood and the cutting and shipping of locally abundant pine soon became a very important part of Sayville's economy. Its economic history also became tied to that of West Sayville, notable as a stronghold of Dutch settlers who came to dominate the regional fishing industry. By 1912, Dutch oystermen led by John Ockers established the famed Bluepoint Co. at the foot of Atlantic Avenue in West Sayville, which long reigned as the world's largest producer and shipper of oysters.

Meanwhile, the South Side Rail Road had reached Sayville in 1868, and summer tourism opened wide the gates of change. In the succeeding five decades, 30 hotels were built in the area. One of the lures for visitors was Fire Island across Great South Bay. The period between 1880 and 1930 is also remememberd as the era of Sayville's greatest beauty, with its grand Victorian homes, wide, tree-canopied streets and vibrant shopping.

Among the finest houses of the period were those of Frank S. Jones, president of the Jewel Tea Co., and Meadow Croft, owned by John Ellis Roosevelt, a cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited. It is now part of the Suffolk County Sans Souci Lakes Nature Preserve. The Florence Bourne Hard estate, reaching from Montauk Highway to the bay in West Sayville, was purchased by Suffolk County in 1967 and is now the West Sayville County Golf Course.

Henry C. Bohack, a grocery chain founder, lived on Main Street in Sayville for many years and built a store there in 1925.

One other notable resident was an itinerant preacher named George Baker. The son of a Georgia slave, he moved to a house on Macon Street in Sayville in the 1920s and said he had a vision that he was God and that his name was Father Divine. His Sayville home, called Heaven, drew busloads of followers on weekends. After a few bouts with the law, Father Divine moved his mission to Harlem.

The community has a long history as a theater center, perhaps best symbolized by the 1,500-seat Sayville Opera House, which opened Aug 7, 1901, and operated for almost a half-century before movies and radio ended its run. The building burned down in 1961. The opera house attracted top performers including Lillian Russell and Fred Stone and was used to warm up several Broadway shows.

During World War I, Sayville was the site of the German-owned Telefunken wireless radio station that was suspected of informing Germany of the whereabouts of American and other allied ships. All Germans were ordered out of the station in February, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to the site.

Where to Find More: ``A History of the Sayville Comunity, Including Bayport, Bohemia, West Sayville, Oakdale and Fire Island,'' by Charles P. Dickerson, 1975; ``A History of Early Sayville,'' by Clarissa Edwards, Sayville Historical Society, 1935; both at Sayville Public Library.