Oysterponds: East Marion and Orient

By Amy Kasuga Folk

Oysterponds, located on Long Island at the eastern end of the North Fork, was inhabited by colonists soon after the settlement of the town of Southold in 1640. The people of the area have a proud heritage divided between the land and the sea. During the first quarter of the 19th century, the hamlet divided into two communities: East Marion and Orient. Little has changed since the Civil War, as the two communities are still composed of graceful homes and shady streets. Popular with tourists during the late 19th century, the area continues to draw artists and photographers, as well as sailing enthusiasts and fishermen, with its rural charm and miles of shoreline. Although many of the commercial enterprises that once made up the business area are long gone, the buildings remain, transformed into elegant houses that give no hint of their commercial pasts. Vintage photographs from the collection of the Oysterponds Historical Society open a window into the past and allow a brief glimpse into the history of the area.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Apr 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439651018

Amy Kasuga Folk

Author Amy Kasuga Folk is the manager of collections for the Oysterponds Historical Society, as well as the manager of collections for the Southold Historical Society and the town historian for Southold. She is also the past president of the Long Island Museum Association and the Region 2 co-chair of the Association of Public Historians. She is the coauthor of several award-winning books focusing on the history of Southold.

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Society.

INTRODUCTION

The history of Oysterponds, on the easternmost tip of the North Fork, begins with the settling of Southold in 1640. Rev. John Youngs and his followers arrived from Connecticut to found a plantation for the colony of New Haven on the shores of Peconic Bay. The new community spanned from what is now Wading River out to Orient Point. In 1649, the plantation gained its independence from New Haven. The area thrived, and with the arrival of an increasing number of new settlers, the physical size of the settlement became a burden on the church-led community. By 1661, Southold partitioned the lands on the western and eastern ends, forming three new sub-communities known as Occubogue (Aquebogue), Cutchogue, and Oysterponds.

The easternmost division, Oysterponds encompassed the area now known as East Marion and Orient. The name probably came from the lush oyster-filled ponds that divide the two communities. According to the records, when the town opened the area for private ownership, Oysterponds was divided into 40 lots, each about 50 acres. Prospective owners entered into a lottery to decide the order each would be allowed to choose what property to claim. The plots were taken by 16 owners, all of whom had drawn early numbers in the lottery. Rev. John Youngs, Capt. John Youngs, the widow of Joseph Youngs, Thomas Moore Sr., Thomas Moore Jr., Lieutenant Glover, Richard Brown, John Herbert, John Corey, Thomas Osman, John Conklin Sr., John Conklin Jr., John Payne, Geoffrey Jones, Abram Whitter, and Thomas Rider took up all of the land in the area. Most of these of new owners never moved to Oysterponds, instead selling or trading the lots for other properties. Augustus Griffin, a local 19th-century historian, tells the founding of Oysterponds somewhat differently. In his book Griffins Journal, he claims that Peter Hallock owned the whole area but soon left to get his family from England. During his absence, the land was taken by several others, including the Tuthill and Youngs families.

During the American Revolution, the North Fork was virtually deserted by all of the major landholders, who heeded George Washington’s orders to flee to Connecticut to avoid the British forces. While some stayed on to harass the British troops stationed in the area, other locals determined to maintain ownership of their farms generally had a least one family member stay and swear loyalty to the crown while the rest of the family joined the resistance.

When the War of 1812 broke out, the inhabitants of Oysterponds, remembering the chaos and financial devastation of the American Revolution, were determined not to repeat the past. Instead of resisting the British, the village established a cooperative relationship with the warships controlling the area and profited from the association.

Locally, the area differentiated itself into two sections: the western end, known as Upper Neck, and the eastern area, known as Lower Neck. In 1826, the Upper Neck and Lower Neck formally split into two separate communities; the Lower Neck retained the name Oysterponds, and the Upper Neck chose the name Rocky Point.

When Oysterponds applied to the US Postal Service for a local office, it was told that the name Oysterponds was too similar to another Long Island community, Oyster Bay. The government then suggested the name Orient, as the community was on the far eastern end of Long Island. The name was formally adopted in 1836.

Rocky Point also faced a similar problem. In the early 1850s, the community applied to get its own post office, but the US Postal Service rejected the name Rocky Point, since the name was already in use by a community in western Suffolk County. During a meeting to discuss the situation, Warren Griffing suggested the name Marion in honor of his favorite general of the American Revolution, Gen. Francis Marion. Unfortunately, the post office already had a community named Marion in upstate New York and countered with East Marion, which stuck.

Both communities had been farming and fishing economies since their founding. Families frequently had business interests in both trades. While residents during the colonial period practiced subsistence farming and fishing, when the industrial revolution changed the economy in the North, it made little impact on the Oysterponds area. It was only with the discovery of a method to efficiently process the oily fish menhaden that the industrial revolution touched the communities. The fish, locally known as bunker, was processed in small factories into a cheap fertilizer as well as an inexpensive lamp oil. Many residents joined local bunker fishing companies as tons of bunker were pulled from the bays during the warmer seasons. After processing, the fertilizer and oil were then sold to customers across the country.

In 1861, when men were needed to fight in the Civil War, young men from the area volunteered, signing up with one of two groups recruited locally, the 127th Company H Infantry or 165th Duryée Zouaves. Several men who did not wish to fight on foot joined the 6th Calvary, which recruited volunteers in New York City. Each of the groups saw action in either South Carolina, Louisiana, or Virginia.

In the 1870s, the East End was discovered by city dwellers desperate to escape the summer heat. Tourism became a big business opportunity for the area. Many residents converted their homes into boardinghouses and took in visitors. Some started tea rooms, ice cream shops, candy and cigar stores, or other businesses that catered to the influx of tourists.

Just after World War I, the mass production of affordable automobiles changed the nature of the tourist trade on the North Fork from long-term summer rentals to short one-day trips. East Marion and Orient, for the most part, were left out of the new tourist boom. Many of the boardinghouses and small tourist businesses that flourished in local homes closed down, and the communities returned to being mostly residential, interspersed with a few farms, which remain today.

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