Grist Mill

While I fully realize that I have already made this article more lengthy than perhaps you care to have it, I cannot properly close without telling of a grist mill, of a calamity, of your old schools and of the beginning of your two religious organizations. I will begin with the mill.
Grist Mill
At the town meeting held 5 May 1724, the people voted that Nathaniel Brewster should have the stream called Beaver Dam on which to build a grist mill and fulling mill to be begun within two years and the right to the stream to be his and his heirs, but only as long as it was used for mill purposes, otherwise to revert to the town.  At the time, Justice Brewster was the owner of, and was probably living in, Little Neck adjoining Fire Place Neck on the east and which he had bought of the Trustees at public auction 15 May 1716 for £40/13 shillings.  He was then 65 years old and it was very probably (sic) that after securing the grant for the stream, he considered it too great an undertaking to build and maintain a mill and dam at his age in life and that he dropped the project.  At any rate, on the 25th of March 1742, the trustees regranted Beaver Dam River north of John Hulse’s land, to William Helme, Jr. for a grist mill on the same conditions as given in the former grant.  There seems to be some evidence that he did build the mill, but it probably was not much of a success either because of the competition of the mill at South Haven or the lack of proper power due to an insufficient head of water, to get which would have flooded the road on the east of the stream which we all know is not much above the level of the bank of the stream.  The mill dam is today used as a road bed over the creek.

Terrible Calamity

Of the terrible calamity that befell this community, there is not an old family in this section but knows about it.  On Friday night, the 5th of November 1813, eleven men from this vicinity went as a fishing crew over to the South Beach.  Just what happened will never be definitely known, but from what was printed in the “Long Island Star” of 10 Nov. 1813 and from what my late grandmother and father and the late Capt. Chas. E. Hulse have related to me, the men went through “Old Inlet” and hauled their boat on the “dry shoal” in the ocean opposite the inlet.  The shoal was bare at low water but covered at high tide.  While busily engaged in shaking out their net, they did not notice that the tide was rising under their boat and it being not properly secured, it floated away in the swift current running through the inlet.  When the realized their predicament, they began calling for help, and set up such a howling that their cries were heard over here in Fire Place, it being a clam moon-light night.  One woman here, went to a neighbor’s and remarked that something must be wrong over on the beach, as she was sure she recognized her husband’s voice.  It is told that another rival crew was at the time, also on the Beach, and that they were fiddling and drinking and some of their members were drunk.  Some one of them heard the cries of the imperiled men and suggested going to their aid.  He was greeted with the remark:  “Damn ’em, let ’em drownd” from another member and the eleven men were left on “dry shoal” with the tide gradually rising over them.  Every man was drowned and there were six or seven women left as widows here the next morning. The names of the men were:  William Rose, Isaac Woodruff, Lewis Parshall, Daniel Parshall, Benjamin Brown, Nehemiah Hand, James Homan, Henry Homan, Charles Ellison, James Prior and John Hulse.  The boat came on shore in pieces and eight of the bodies were recovered.  I have located the tombstones of some of them.  William Rose was buried on the ground on which this building stands, but was removed some few years ago to the present village cemetery; Isaac Woodruff’s stone is in St. John’s Cemetery in Oakdale; the two Parshall boys have a stone in the old Patchogue Cemetery on Waverly Avenue; Benjamin Brown’s body and stone were removed to the Bellport Cemetery; Nehemiah Hand’s stone is in the Presbyterian Cemetery in South Haven.  If the other five have stones, I have failed in finding them.