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Southampton

In the early 1900s, chauffeurs often gathered to talk shop at the H.G. Squires carriage and auto shop in Southampton. The road was still dirt, but the cars were top of the line. (Collection of Robert Keene)

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Southampton was arguably the first English settlement in what would become New York State -- with the exception of Gardiners Island -- though the ``first town'' distinction also is claimed by Southold.

Southampton began with a small group of families from Lynn, Mass., who landed in June, 1640, at Conscience Point in what is today North Sea. Southold says its pioneers came a little earlier that year, but historians have been unable to resolve the conflicting claims. Although many think the town was named for the English port of Southampton, it was actually named in honor of the Earl of Southampton, a benefactor of new American settlements. Gardiners Island, in East Hampton Town, was settled in 1639.

The first boatload of Southampton settlers, said to be eight men, a woman and a boy, landed at North Sea on Little Peconic Bay. With the help of friendly Indians, the Puritan band migrated about five miles south to what is now Southampton Village near the ocean to establish crude housing.

They soon built a meetinghouse, used for church services, town meetings, court matters and other purposes. Historians think the building was built around 1641, on the small hill where Southampton Hospital stands today.

The town's trailblazers learned from the Indians how to plant corn and fertilize it with fish, how to grow crops, dig clams, trap game and make ``samp,'' a nourishing porridge. The original land acquisition from the Indians covered the eastern portion of the town; the area west of Shinnecock Canal was acquired in 1666. The town was first patented in 1676. It wasn't recognized as a town until after the Revolution, on March 7, 1788, but had kept records since its founding days.

In those early times, residents in the town meetings made laws, elected officials, levied taxes, tried cases - and built a jail as well as the church. The late Robert Keene, town historian, said the population included 40 families by late 1640, and had grown to 738 whites, 80 blacks, 152 Indians ``and two merchants'' by 1689. But Southampton grew slowly during the next two centuries. Farming and fishing predominated. After 1850, the town saw rapid change. Well-to-do New York City people came to vacation. The advent of the railroad in the 1870s accelerated the process, and by 1890 the first tourist boom had begun.

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