Comment: From "Early Photographs of the Hamlet of Brookhaven Collected by George Perley Morse 1945-1959."

The William Rose - Charles Sweezey Home (1820-1845)

This home stood on the north east corner of Beaver Dam Road and Fireplace Neck Road, destroyed about 1920. The smaller part was the home of William Rose, born 1807 and married Everline Platt. He sold the old Rose homestead and much property to J. L. Ireland in 1841.

Mary, his first daughter married Charles Sweezey, a bayman and he built the larger part of the house. He became post master of Fireplace in 1853 and was known as a "copper head" during the Civil War.
Before the St. James Church was built the Episcopalians held their meetings in this house.
One fireplace from the house is believed to be built into the Thomas Morrow home.

This house is said to have been one of the settings in Louise Forsslund's novel Ship of Dreams. Louise Forsslund was a Sayville native who wrote novels placed in the Mastic and Brookhaven Hamlet areas, with characters closely drawn on the residents. Her second novel Ship Of Dreams published in 1902 mixes and matches thinly disguised members of the Tangier Smith family along with area locals. It is said that it was so closely drawn that the Smith's looked into a possible lawsuit. Forsslund aka Louise Foster lived for a time in Brookhaven Hamlet near Squassux Landing and gathered the long told folk tales of the fisherman and other locals

Comment: Note comment for photograph: "Home of Wm Swezey (Rose before Swezey). Eps Ch held mettings here before church was built."

The same photo appears in Morse, RG1 Series 3. Therefore not used.