Committee uncovers story of Rocky Point Black and Indigenous settlement

On a drizzly Saturday morning in early summer, a group of eight is gathered around a table in a back room of the Hallock Homestead Museum in Rocky Point..

Before them were piles of papers and screen-loads of information: Brookhaven Town census records dating back to 1790; mortgages and bills of sale; original account ledgers; church registers; clippings from long-defunct local newspapers; legal documents; and tax rolls.

All are shared, studied, noted and commented on.

This is a working meeting of the Rocky Point Historical Society’s Committee on Black and Indigenous Farmers  of Rocky Point 1790-1850 — formed in late 2024 to collaborate on an investigation into a largely forgotten slice of local history.

"We’re finding so many new things," said committee chairman Charles Bevington, of Rocky Point. "We’re learning every day. It’s very exciting."

Building on archaeological research of the area that began in the early 1990s, the committee is piecing together a detailed picture of a small community of Black and Indigenous people who lived along this part of Suffolk County’s North Shore. Emerging on the cusp of  manumission — the gradual abolition of slavery in New York from 1799 to 1827 — this enclave of four or five homes may have existed into the 1850s. 

The committee of about 30 members and contributors that Bevington heads includes a cross-section of representatives of local historical societies, librarians and archivists, as well as five people who are listed on the committee roster as descendants of some of the families who might have lived in this community. Local museums and churches, as well as Brookhaven Town, Suffolk County and Stony Brook University, have also shared historical materials with the committee.

The committee plans to  share what its found as they’ve followed the trail of history, in a series of exhibits at the Hallock Homestead, starting next month.

Landowners in time of slavery 

One of the most surprising things members have discovered is that at least some of those who lived in this enclave seem to have done more than just eke out a living.

"These were individuals who were trying to make a life for themselves within an oppressive structure," said committee member Allison McGovern, an independent archaeologist from Mastic. And to some extent — at least based on what the documents and physical evidence suggest — they succeeded. "I think they navigated the landscape with a certain amount of agency," she said.

Slavery was certainly a prominent feature of late 18th and early 19th century Long Island. The fact that even a small group of Black and Indigenous individuals and families owned land and seemed to live in modest comfort at that time is striking. 

Chiitra Wells, of Bellport, has been researching her fourth great-grandfather, Titus Sells, whom she described as a "person of color, with Black, Native American and white ancestry." She has learned he was born in 1772, that in the 1810 census he is listed as a free man and that Sells and his family owned 400 acres of land in the area -- a significant amount, especially for people of color.

As part of her own research, Wells got in touch with Lynne Scofield, a docent at the Hallock Homestead Museum in Riverhead, who told her about the committee. Wells is now part of the team, sharing her research with the group, and helping to learn more about her ancestor and the community he was part of.

What they have discovered is eye-opening. "Titus could read, he could write," Wells said. "He had a subscription to The New York Times that showed up in a ledger. He paid for his children to go to school in Rocky Point."

Wells thinks that what they’re learning about Sells and his relatives and neighbors offers a different perspective on local history. "It shows that back then, people of color could be successful. It wasn’t just about slavery or indentured servants," she said. "Titus proves to us that we were prominent, we were respected."

CATTLE, LAND, TEA SETS

While Wells and most of the other members of the committee are not professional historians, they are making critical contributions to our understanding of this time on Long Island.

"This is an important part of our history that has been largely overlooked," said Natalie Naylor, emeritus professor of history at Hofstra University in Hempstead. "I applaud what the committee is doing."

Consider how the committee has pieced together a partial chronology for Jonah Miller, one of the prominent members of the enclave:

Miller first appears in the records in 1789, when he is listed as owning cattle. According to church registries, he joined Mt. Sinai Congregational Church in 1802. Two years later, he and his wife purchased, for $528.52, a house and barn and 270 acres of land from Merritt Woodhull. The records show that, in 1816,  Miller sold 175 acres of that land to another member of the Woodhull family for $1,125 — a tidy profit for Miller, who, two years later, is found to have a child attending Rocky Point School  #7. Miller would live on for another two decades, dying in 1837.

Along with documents, a key tool for historians can be physical evidence. The spark for the Rocky Point committee’s research was the discovery, during the widening of Route 25A in Rocky Point in 1993, of what appeared to be the foundation of a house. When archaeologists investigated, they uncovered a 13 foot-by-11 foot foundation with a 6 foot-by-8 foot kitchen "wing" that retained vestiges of a fireplace and a brick chimney. It would have been a typical New England-style clapboard house, then common on eastern Long Island, according to McGovern.

A total 7,095 artifacts were recovered at the site which, initial  research determined, had been owned at one point by a Black woman, Betsey Prince. Some of the most impressive and revealing of those artifacts are pieces of formal tea sets — fragments of different sets of cups, saucers, strainers and sugar bowls. The finding suggested the occupants of the house — possibly Prince herself — served visitors in what at the time would been considered fancy dishes: creamware, Chinese porcelain and, later, pearl ware.

According to an article about ceramics on the website of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, creamware — ceramics made of white clay and flint — was both cheap and fashionable in the American Colonies and early Republic. "Even George Washington," the museum notes, "had an affinity for imported creamware."

While not necessarily indicative of high status, the simple fact that Prince or other residents of the house owned creamware suggests a level of economic stability, according to Naylor. "It’s good to see they weren’t living in hovels," she said.

Were these individuals former slaves? Some, maybe. Others, likely not, according to Bevington.

WOOD WAS A CASH CROP

The Black and Indigenous farmers of that period recognized opportunity. For them, it was the burgeoning local firewood business of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

"Cordwood was critically important as a cash crop to these farmers," Bevington said.

Based on early maps the committee has studied, Hallock Landing Road was used to cart cordwood harvested on nearby farms  down to the beach, where it would have been loaded onto sloops. These   shallow-draft craft would beach themselves before loading up and then sailing back to fast-growing New York City, where demand for firewood in the early 19th century was intense. In a 2025 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, historian Nicholas Z. Muller estimates that, in the first half of the 19th century, 85% of the energy consumed in the United States was from wood. "Cordwood," wrote one observer, quoted in the paper, "was about as plentiful as air."

It was particularly so in the sparsely settled part of Long Island we now call the pine barrens.

"The wood would be stacked up all along here, 12 to 14 feet high," said Bevington, gesturing to an empty stretch of beach. In 1800 or 1820, however, it would have been a scene of bustling activity. Much of it, at least on this landing, performed by people of color. And specifically, members of some of the various families — Prince, Miller, Sells, Jessup — that were likely residing, together or in close proximity, in the area around the Prince House, two miles from the beach.

The lucrative cordwood industry, however, was undone when the world transitioned to a new source of fuel.

"When coal came along, cordwood was no longer as profitable," Bevington said. "You’re going from heating your house in New York City with wood until about the 1830s. After that, you’re heating by coal."

In addition to a changing economy, a series of major fires in the area may have contributed to the dispersion of the residents. 

NEIGHBORS MOVE ON

By the decade before the Civil War, the families here had moved on, some to the larger Black and Indigenous enclave in nearby Setauket that itself has been the focus of archaeological study over the past decade, and is now the Bethel-Christian Avenue-Laurel Hill Historic District. 

While there is a state historic plaque marking the Betsey Prince house, the site is difficult to get to, located on a narrow strip of tall grass south of Route 25A. 

Meanwhile, the investigations continue.

"We’re researching, we’re discovering, and it’s fun," Bevington said.