I have always been very fond of Flushing. I have some little interests there, and I know a good many of the people, and the place itself is quaint, old-fashioned and interestin’. It is a very nice sort of place for New Yorkers to go to on a hot afternoon, and Flushing Bay is one of the prettiest sheets of water to be found anywhere; and I may be pardoned if I “chip in” a word or two here about Flushing.
Flushing itself is a sort of Quaker town, quiet and shady. Its streets are unpaved, but lined with old gardens and older elms. There is a Quaker meetin’ house over two hundred years old, and the Bowne homestead is as old as the meetin’ house. There are two chairs in the homestead over one hundred and fifty years each, and a chair only a hundred years old is quite young. Old John Bowne, the first owner of this house, was as proud as a king in his Quaker way, and refused to take his hat off before the Governor. George Fox once preached under an old oak near the house.
All around Flushing, along the north shore of Long Island, are a number of quaint old places that contrast strikin’ly with bustlin’ New York, and seem as if they belonged to some other world.
There is Sands Point, and the old Sands house, for example. This old Sands house was the scene of many a secret meetin’ in the first war between England and America.
It was one of the places where the Americans on Long Island used to meet to pass money and news to the American army on the main land. Any amount of what some called “treason” and others called “patriotism” was talked here, and distinguished leaders of the American cause visited the place from time to time. The house originally belonged to Captain Sands, a sailor, and he did one good thing that people of all shades of politics would endorse. He brought from Virginia on one of his voyages a number of young locust trees, and planted ‘em along the shore, and thus is entitled to the memory of a public benefactor. There may be a discount on politics, but there can’t be any on locust trees.
Many of the homesteads in this part of Long Island are a genuine “hereditary estates” after the English fashion, and have descended from father to son right along for many generations. Some of ‘em haven’t even got any title deeds, bein’ grants from the Indians direct. What is more wonderful still, some of the best farms and buildin’s here haven’t even got a mortgage on ‘em, and every New Yorker will certainly confess that there is something decidedly novel in real estate that has neither title deeds nor encumbrances. Hempstead Harbor is one of the prettiest bays on the north shore of Long Island, and near it stands the old Bogart homestead, which was, about a hundred years ago, robbed by the whale boatmen, as they were called.
These whale boatmen were the most peculiar class of men who ever had anythin’ to do with this part of the world, and their adventures were quite excitin’ and interestin’. They have passed into history now, or rather almost passed out of it and been forgotten, yet some of their expeditions were as entertainin’ as any sea or pirate novel. For they were pirates–the pirates of Long Island durin’ the first war with England.
They were called whale boatmen because they went about in long whale boats, and they were simply robbers and freebooters, embracin’ men on both sides of the war question who went in for stealin’ from their neighbors and makin’ money. Their headquarters was a place called Lloyd’s Neck, on the West Side. There used to be a fort near here called Fort Franklin, built by the British, and named not after the philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, but after Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, who was a great Tory.
This Fort Franklin used to be the chief startin’ out place, or depot, for the whale boatmen. They had some twenty-five or thirty whale boats, and plundered all along the sound, chiefly by night, makin’ Oyster Bay one of their headquarters. They were generally pretty rough sort of fellows, and were often cruel–kind of Captain Kidds on a reduced scale. The whale boats were sharp at prow and stern, almost like a canoe, manned by from four to twenty oars, and fitted for any kind of sharp, quick work.
Some of ‘em were sort of blockade-runners, as it were, dealin’ in contraband supplies and takin’ their chances of big money or a capture; but not a few of ‘em were out and out buccaneers, makin’ war with anybody they met, Whig or Tory, American or British. Some of the leaders of these whale boatmen were very expert and darin’, and undertook all sorts of perilous enterprises.
One man named John Dutton was a very impartial sort of a chap, and got money once from the Americans for tryin’ to get hold of Lord Howe; and then got money from the British for tryin’ to get hold of Washington. As a card player would say, “honors were easy” with that sort of a fellow.
This sort of thing made it very lively for the whale boatmen, but it played the deuce with the quiet people who lived along the shore. They lived in constant dread of a visit from the whale boatmen, and hid all their money and valuables in all sorts of places, and kept changin’ the places.
One family named Dent were reported to have a good deal of coin in their possession, and were visited three times by the whale boatmen. The first time they tied the old farmer up by his thumbs to make him confess where he had hidden his money, and probably would have forced the old man to confess if they hadn’t been interrupted by a raid of the inhabitants just at that critical moment. The second time the whale boatmen not finding the old farmer at home set to work and flogged the women, but still they held their tongues; they couldn’t be forced to talk this time. At last the pirates got mad, and the third time they absolutely killed one of the family, shot down one of the children. But they never got the money after all, and this murder made such an excitement that the whole whale boat system had the bottom knocked out of it, and no decent people, British or American, would have anythin’ more to do with it.
Before it wound up, though, one bold affair transpired. One hot Sunday in July–it was the fourth day of July, too, as it happened, though that fact had no political meanin’ then–three large whale boats crossed the Sound and landed with thirty-eight men near Norwalk, at Darien, Connecticut.
The people were all at church, which suited the whale boatmen exactly, for they surrounded the meetin’ house, and when the church services were over the people found ‘emselves all prisoners–parson, sexton, deacon, congregation all prisoners. The whale boatmen were heavily armed with pistols and cutlasses; the good people had nothin’ but their hymn books. So the whale boatmen had everythin’ their own way. They robbed the congregation one by one, takin’ away even their hymn books, and then they carried off a lot of horses and about thirty men. They took the prisoners to Oyster Bay, and on the village green, where there now stands a liberty pole, the poor Darienites were fastened together in pairs by rivetin’ hoop iron around their wrists, and were marched in the hot sun to New York, where they were put in jail. This robbin’ a congregation and takin’ a church to jail has always struck me as a very peculiar proceedin’, and yet it is difficult to realize now, in the quiet of these old-fashioned towns, that ever such wild scenes were enacted in their midst.
[Editor’s notes: The historical marker at Darien notes: “By 1744 a meetinghouse was completed and the Reverend Moses Mather became first minister. During the American Revolution, Middlesex Parish was frequently raided by local Tories who had fled to Lloyd’s neck on Long Island. They disrupted services at the meetinghouse on July 22, 1781, captured Dr. Mather and forty-seven other men, and transported them across the Sound. Dr. Mather with twenty-six of his parishioners suffered five months in foul British prisons in New York City before those who survived their confinement were exchanged and returned to their homes.”
