HISTORY OF MILLER PLACE
An Account of An Early Seeker of Economic Freedom
Andrew Miller a 17th Century cooper (cask and barrel maker) left East Hampton, a township, where land ownership was restricted by a closed economy and where he was employed building barrels for the whale oil industry. Miller sought his fortunes in free and unfettered Miller Place on Long Island Sound where he found economic freedom to ply his trade and make his fortune. His new location gave him access to the expanding economy, across the Sound, in the rapidly growing English colonies of Connecticut.
Miller Place is a hamlet in north-central Suffolk County, New York, located just east of Mount Sinai Harbor, a navigable bay and tidal inlet on Long Island’s north shore.
The first known dwelling in the area, was constructed by a shadowy, little known, Captain John Scott. In the 1660s Scott, a British “land agent” was actually operating in what was Dutch territory. As a result, he may have had to keep his identity and agency activities “sub rosa” or secret. Perhaps for that reason, he was known only as “the old man”. The land sales activities of the “old man” of the eponymous “Old Man’s” harbor remained an “under the table” affair until 1664. when the British took over all of Long Island. Perhaps it was through the agency of Captain Scott that Andrew Miller eventually purchased his 30 acre tract in Old Mans in 1670 or 1671.
The Harbor is a shallow, marshy bay, separated from Long Island Sound by a bay-mouth-bar, a sandy spit of land originally arising on the west side and which partially closed the small, half-square-mile-in-area bay from the waters of Long Island Sound.
In its early years, the eastern inlet permitted coastal vessels access from the Sound. A navigable channel into the interior permitted small boats to enter most of the bay, especially on flood tides. The Harbor, with its potential for maritime travel and trade must have been an attractive asset to Andrew Miller who may have planned to exploit the surrounding area for its forest products. The Harbor itself was an asset to other settlers for its shallows teeming with shellfish, its salt meadows which provided cattle fodder and bedding, its salt hay was valuable roof thatching and its access to the deep waters of the Sound permitted use of trade routes to Connecticut, and other English colonies on the coast.
Although there may have been several houses on or near the harbor at Old Man’s (Mount Sinai) legal title of these lands in central Long Island was not secure. Prior to 1664 the Dutch, barely 80 miles to the west in New Amsterdam (later New York) claimed this part of Long Island. While the English colonists of Connecticut, had made inroads onto that claim in the 1620s by establishing colonies on the extreme east ends of the Island, in Southampton and East Hampton, the central part of the Island was too close to Dutch settlements on the Island’s west end to attract settlers. These vacant central Long Island territories of rich woodlands and potential farm lands remained unsettled and unclaimed due to fear of potential legal disputes, outright eviction, and uncertain ownership. And without a prospect for a secure title to the land, investors and settlers were hesitant to immigrate or invest.
However, all these concerns ended abruptly when an English squadron under Colonel Richard Nicholls sailed into New Amsterdam Harbor in 1664 and took that colony from the Dutch governor. Nichols renamed the colony “New York”. That event spurred an early L.I. land boom, in the formerly disputed and vacant central parts of Long Island.
These events did not go unnoticed in the minds of more recent immigrants in East Hampton. That colony, settled in 1640 by a Puritan band of investors or “proprietors” from Lynn, or Salem Massachusetts , comprised a colony which occupied much of the extreme eastern half of the South Fork, as well as Gardiner's Island.
These early colonists were not simple subsistence farmers, but like many immigrants —they were entrepreneurs— eager to exploit the resources of the new world and improve their economic status. And once achieved, perhaps they would return to the mother country as an affluent former colonial. In East Hampton the “proprietors” were in fact invested in an early form of “corporation”, in which each member owned shares in the enterprise. Their formal contract or agreement provided all original investors and shareholders a modest land plot in the center of town, where they built their homes, but they also owned “shares” in all of the rest of the township’s acreage, which was designated as “commons”. These commons were owned jointly by all the original “proprietors” and were available to the shareholders to graze their cattle, and to exploit the woodlands for their fuel and timber needs.
As a consequence of this system, the growth of the colony was limited by the closed nature of land ownership and restricted access to the commons.
In this early East Hampton which was in one economic sense a form of “feudal manor” there was little opportunity for new families seeking their fortunes to expand and prosper.
As the Town grew, the apparent weaknes of this closed form of economy became apparent. For soon the desperate need arose in the Town for essential artisans, craftsmen, and professionals, such as blacksmiths, coopers, apothecaries, physicians and others, but the closed economy limited immigration of these craftsmen and professionals. To remedy this problem and assure the Town’s survival, the proprietors were forced to offer “allotments” of several acres each to those whose services were needed, such as a blacksmith, carpenter, farm worker, cooper, shipwright or other craftsman.
The offer required them to work in the township, and provide their services to the town for a contracted period of years, at the end of which the allottee would then own the small plot of land offered to him or her. But this ownership was limited to the formal allotment. For these individuals opportunities for expansion or entrepreneurship was strictly limited.
It was into this Puritan dominated, closed economy that the Miller family migrated in mid 17th Century. The first member of that family, John Miller, probably originally from Sussex in England, settled first in Lynn or Salem, Massachusetts. But Miller found opportunities for economic advantages there limited. So seeking “fresh pastures” he moved on with his family to Southampton in 1643, and then finding similar restrictions continued on to East Hampton, where he arrived about 1649.
A year earlier in 1648, the East Hampton proprietors had purchased additional acreage to the east of Town from the Montauk Indians, giving them vast new meadows for grazing their cattle. It may have been on part of this new purchase that the recent immigrant Miller family settled. after applying for and gaining an allotment from the Town proprietors.
John’s occupation is not stated, but he may have been a farmer. His son Andrew Miller, who was born in 1634, probably in Lynn Massachusetts, arrived in East Hampton in 1649 with his father, and brothers, John, and George.
With these new east-end lands the East Hampton proprietors were able to expand one of their main enterprises and sources of income: the raising of cattle, sheep and beef on the grazing lands of the township for profitable sale to other English colonies. The Miller family may have been employed in this town enterprise.
And just as importantly, to the proprietors’ income was the new stretches of beach which were part of their new acquisition which extended to Montauk Point in the east. Along these beaches they could increase the exploitation of the pods of migrating Right Whales passing just offshore. Catching and killing whales for their valuable whale oil (and an even more rare and valuable fluid known as spermaceti) was the town’s main and hugely profitable commercial enterprise.
The Miller family were permitted allotments by the proprietors becaue they had skills needed by the town for these enterprises. In time the Millers were to eventually become involved in both of these profitable town enterprises.
Whales —Right Whales, (Eubalena glacialis)—were common visitors to Long Island waters in the !7th Century, as they migrated along the Atlantic Coast seasonally. Stranded whales or beached whales were also regular occurrences along the sandy shores of the South Fork, and initiated the process of hunting the slow swimming beasts in small boats launched from the beach. In earlier days these strandings even provided a large portion of the food of the Montauk Indians. (The choice portions were the fins and tails of the giant mammals).
The distinctive “V” shaped spouts of these huge fifty-ton, slow swimming creatures were spotted by (often young) whale watchers on the south shore beaches of East Hampton who would alert their elders at home often by lighting a smokey signal fire. Small boats were launched from the beach to row up close to the slowly swimming fifty foot long whales. The whales were harpooned and then killed just offshore. The floating carcasses were then towed back to the beach, where the body was cut up. The skin, with the valuable blubber which comprised about 40% of the animal’s weight was cut into blocks and rendered into oil by firing in huge vats. The oil—used as a lubricant—but most importantly for oil lamps—was stored and transported for sale in 42 gallon wooden barrels.
Exploiting migrating Right Whales for oil along the south shore beaches, and the production and sale of beef cattle on the east-end meadows and grasslands were the two most important sources of income for the East Hampton proprietors and their most protected and favored enterprises.
It was into this economic and social environment that Andrew Miller arrived in East Hampton in 1649 as a 15 year old youngster.
As a young boy, he must have been apprenticed to the town cooper, where after serving a seven year apprenticeship he would have mastered the essentials of the craft and the intricacies of the trade of making casks, buckets, barrels and “pipes” of oak wood. In 1656 after completing his apprenticeship, and at the age of 22 years, he was then a journeyman cooper, and would have been able to leave his master and start a business of his own.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries being a cooper insured one of a well paying job and financial security. Coopers were the 16th century equivalent of “engineers”, or “web developers”, of the 21 century. In those early times, wood was used as we use plastic and cardboard today. The cooper made the casks in which all products were preserved, stored, or sold. Every house had its well-water bucket, its milk pails and water troughs, its butter churns, and barrels to store preserved salted meat, barrels for dry storage, for flour, seeds, etcetera, etcetera.
Barrels (42 gallon capacity) and larger containers called “pipes’ (126 gallons) were in great demand as the essential container of almost all trade. Whale oil, salted meats, fish, shellfish, grains, flour, gunpowder, etc., were all stored and shipped in barrels. While wine and beer were brewed and shipped in barrels too.
Great numbers of these casks were needed for the whale oil industry. A cooper was THE essential craft in a time when practically the entire economy rested on exploiting local products, packing them in wood barrels and casks and then shipping them off to other colonies or overseas to the mother county. As a result, a cooper was guaranteed a high demand for his labor, respect for his craft, and a substantial and stable income.
In the 17th and 18th centuries an age of extensive maritime trade all carried out in wooden sailing ships, each ship’s hold was filled with products stored in wood casks. With this great demand for wood forest products to build the ships and the casks were in great demand.
Wood was the “petroleum” of those centuries. It was the main fuel of that age. And like the plastics of today was a building material too. Oak was needed for the frames and ribs of ships, pine and cedar for their hulls. Oak and hickory were the materials that the cooper used for his craft, especially the white oak wood for the staves and barrel “heads”, and the hickory wood for the barrel hoops. These wood species were consequently in great demand.
The British, as islanders, became a powerful maritime economy early in their history. The need for ships and barrels for that economy put great demand on their native forests. The great oak trees of that well wooded island were cut down early on for fuel, for the pottery and iron smelting industry, and for shipbuilding, and even more wood was needed for the barrels in which the products and supplies the British produced.
By the 15th Century most of British forests had been cleared. Britain, needed a secure source of wood for domestic fuel, for ship building and for the barrels in which all of its products were shipped.
In the 16th and early 17th centuries that nation had to turn to the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia) for the oak lumber it so desperately needed. But these nations were poor and could not buy British agricultural or manufactured products. Thus a “balance of trade” problem developed, whereby the British began to run a dreaded “trade deficit” with the Baltic states. This required the government to continually pay cash for their desperately needed forest products. In those days cash was the gold bullion held in the Royal mint. These withdrawals removed visible “wealth” from the nation and transferred it to the Baltic states. Such circumstances were a very much undesirable drain on the royal treasury. This economic situation and high demand for forest products may have contributed in large measure to what happened far across the Atlantic in the latter 17th Century.
In 1664 a British squadron under the command of Colonel Richard Nicholls entered New York Harbor (then known as New Amsterdam). The British took over the Dutch colony without firing a shot. The acquisition of all of New England from the Dutch in 1664, changed the economic situation for England. For by taking of New Amsterdam from the Dutch they opened up the vast forests of New York and New England to the British, and their wood-starved shipping industry.
New England’s pristine forests were the answer to the desperate need for tall spruce and pine trees for the ships’ masts and pine and cedar wood for hulls and oak for the frames of British ships. But as important, the vast oak forests also provided for the many many more white and red oak wood trees needed for the innumerable barrels required to store and ship British products and fill the holds of British ships.
After 1664 these resources in New York were all there for the taking by enterprising and ambitious colonials. And many British colonists already situated in New England and on Long Island were well prepared and placed to take advantage of this opportunity. We will see that one of these entrepreneurs was Andrew Miller.
By 1656 East Hampton Town records state that “John Miller, Andrew Miller and George Miller are added to our combination.” The “combination” was an early association of town residents—often ones who had been allotted parcels within the town. Andrew who had arrived in the town as a 15 year old youngster, and had served out a seven year apprentice as a cooper, was at this time, a man of twenty-two years and an established journeyman cooper. It was at this young age and time that he becomes a member of the “combination” in the Town of East Hampton.
Eight years, later in 1664, Town records indicate that Andrew Miller had apparently been living for much of the preceding years on Gardiners Island, located about ten miles northeast of East Hampton town in Gardiners Bay. There Andrew was presumably employed at his trade as barrel maker. At that time Gardiners Island was a semi-independent colony of East Hampton owned and controlled by the Gardiner family, as East Hampton was owned by the “proprietors”.
In that year (1664) Andrew sold his allotment house on Gardiners Island and land to one Jeremiah Conkling and departed the Island. Andrew, was then 30 years of age, was married to Margaret (—no surname known-) and the records tell us the couple had three children: Andrew, John and Samuel.
It is unclear where Miller moved his family after leaving Gardiners Island. Perhaps he joined his brother John in Two Mile Hollow in East Hampton.
John Miller (Andrew’s brother) was a farmer and whaler who lived in east Hampton. close to the south shore beach, on Two Mile Harbor Road, just about one mile and a quarter southeast of East Hampton village. John, was active as a whaler, and probably operated a town sponsored whaling enterprise with the proprietors as major stock owners, and with their approval. This whaling enterprise was operated from his sea shore property on Two Mile Hollow Road. It is possible that it was here that Andrew plied his trade of barrel maker, providing casks for his brother’s (and the
Town’s) whale oil enterprise.
Perhaps the partnership (?) and business (?) flourished. For four years later, in 1668 the town proprietors allotted Andrew Miller eight (8) acres of woodland next to his brother John’s property on Two Mile Hollow Road. The allotment agreement with the proprietors stipulated that Andrew would make whale oil casks “for the town use”, but he had to live in East Hampton for three years before the land was his to sell.
We can assume that Andrew continued his probably well paying, but hard manual labor of building casks for the Town and the whalers until 1671 when he finally owned his allotted acres.
He was then 37 years of age. He was a successful craftsman. He had a wife and family. It was a time in life when many see an opportunity and realize that rather than continue to work for others, it is their time to make an opportunity for themselves a reality.
Miller must have envisioned his economic opportunity to be in far off Miller Place, then an unsettled land in the wilderness of the north shore of Long Island.
For at the first opportunity he had for selling his property on Two Mile Hollow Road, he did so. He left the Puritan sect and the closed economy of the “proprietors”dominated Town of East Hampton and its economic restrictions on ownership. He chose freedom, entrepreneurship and growth and moved his business and family to far off Miller Place.
There with his savings and the cash from the sale of his Two Mile Hollow eight acres, he purchased a thirty acre parcel of woodland in “Old Mans”. But why?
Miller Place did not exist, there was no settlement, no colonists. It was vacant woodland with no established customers and no need for whale oil barrels, no settlers in great need of a highly valued, highly paid master cooper. Miller could have gone anywhere to ply his trade, but he chose heavily wooded, isolated Miller Place, where huge white oak trees and ancient hickory grew in primeval profusion.
And as well as this profusion of forest products, Old Mans was close to a small but navigable harbor which debouched onto Long Island Sound, only twenty four miles (or a four hour sail) across, to the English colony of New Haven, at that time with a population of about 12,000 citizens. From there too he had maritime access to all the English colonies..even New York
Andrew Miller like his forebears was an entrepreneur who seems to have sought economic freedom and opportunity unfettered by the established religious sect and the closed economy he had experienced in East Hampton. He sought advancement that was denied him in East Hampton.
I suggest here that Miller was attracted to the small north shore harbor of Old Mans because he had a vision of exploiting the Miller Place forests to cut and prepare especially valuable four foot white oak wood staves —for barrels called “pipes’ —the larger barrels—which were in great demand in the British colonies of the Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean.
In the British Caribbean colonies where molasses was produced from sugar cane, oak wood for barrels was scarce. British colonies needed oak barrels to store, process and ship this product to the rum distillers in New England. The barrel staves, heads and hoops were sold and shipped in the “broken down” stage. When needed, the staves and barrel heads were put together to form the cask to be filled.
Miller may have envisioned an enterprise in which he simply produced barrel staves and their parts, packed them for sale and transit and sold these to various agents in the British colonies. And perhaps too the new rum distilleries and manufacturers which had a burgeoning trade in New England colonies.
It is very likely that on a warm late spring day in 1671 Andrew Miller and his family, his dogs, livestock, his tools and household, simply boarded a small coastal sailing vessel in Springs or Devon in East Hampton and sailed north through Gardiners Bay, around Orient Point, through the “gut” and there set a course following the curve of the Island’s North Shore bluff to the west
A southwest sea breeze billowed the ships oak-tanned sails as they proceeded west southwest along the North Shore of Long Island. They continued on this course following the steep yellow sand bluffs, topped with greening forests which here and there extended down to the shore. A pod of bottle-nosed dolphins, played at the bow of the ship and sea birds flashed white and gray against the deep blue sky.
Sailing closer to shore. they navigated among clusters of huge boulders washed by the salty waves and draped in sea weed, where drowsy gray seals stared at them as they passed.
Finally, a strip of sandy beach and a break in the bluffs signaled they were close to their destination, what was then known as Old Mans harbor.
Changing course and lowering sail, they proceeded ahead under reduced sail and with the aide of the flood tide glided through a narrow sand choked inlet to enter the small marshy harbor. The tall mast and fluttering sails flushed up several pair of geese and ducks as the ship worked its way though a narrow marsh-lined channel where an otter breached to the surface, then
dived below the hull.
Ahead, they came to a small sand delta where a fresh water stream entered the Harbor. They nosed the shallow draft boat into the soft fine sand. Andrew jumped off and taking the bow line tied the craft to a tree stump above the sand bank.
“This is the place,” Andrew called to his family. He up the sandy bank and looking inland.
The stream flowed along a glacial drainage channel, marked with a faint foot trail and now known as Pipe Stave Hollow. Here the family loaded their possessions on an ox cart and following a faint foot trail that paralleled the course of the stream bed, they continued southwestward along what would later become Pipe Stave Hollow Road.
It was here perhaps that Miller took note of the profusion of mature white, black and scarlet oaks growing on the slopes of the glacial hills. It was from these trees he could cut and fashion the valuable “pipe staves” he planned to sell.
A half mile upstream, the Millers turned left, East onto a faint ox cart track that followed the rising course of a dry tributary-stream bed which continued inland for about one mile to a wooded, level upland.
Here among huge oak and sycamores trees they came to an opening where a small pond surrounded with cypress and tupelo sparkled in the sunlight. A doe deer it’s muzzle dripping water into the still pond surface stared at them as they approached. then bounded off.
It was here where their 30 acre parcel was laid out. Miller let his oxen and cattle drink at the pond’s edge, as he unloaded his wagon.
Miller’s original 30 acre tract may have been laid out from a “big rock” located at the east edge of the pond, then extending 400 feet west, along the cart path to be later designated as North Country Road, then south for 3000 feet, and then east for 400 feet (where it would in later years meet the extension of North Country Road), and thence north 3000 feet to the point of starting at the big rock at the northeast corner of the pond.
This is a likely discription of the boundaries of the original Miller 30 acre tract, based only on the size and the most likely landmarks that may have been used at that time. I base this clearly conjectural account on my interviews with early farmers ( J. Davis) in Miller Place and Mount Sinai in which he explained how he and his ancestors determined their own lot boundaries or marked off parcels of land for sale. All of which was completed not by formal surveys but by pacing along known boundaries or roads from prominent landmarks.
In choosing his homesite Miller must have recognized the advantages of a parcel which afforded the owner access to water for his horses and cattle and the possibility of digging a well for domestic water close to the home site.
The original site of the Miller home must have been very close to the present day MillerPlace Pond. Here Miller would have had access to pond water for his stock. and with a water table close to the surface, this site also permitted one to easily dig a shallow but free flowing permanent well. These attributes of the geology of this place were a critical attraction encouraging its settlement. And all subsequent early settlers took advantage of the pond and the shallow (perched) water table to site their homes.
The result was eventually a small hamlet with homes clustered over a subterranean aquitard (a layer of clay or sediment of low permeability which impedes the downward flow of surface water ) and which produced this unique access to fresh water. This unique geology was a distinct advantage along the North Shore where the permanent water table is often one hundred or more feet deep. Too deep for a hand dug well. But not the case in Miller Place where permanent flow of potable water was often less than ten or twelve feet down
It is not known where Miller’s original house was located, but Mrs Margaret Gass (nee Davis) the venerable dean of town historians indicated to this author that she considered the house located just west of the pond, (#187 North Country Road) to be the likely candidate. But she cautioned that the two elderly brothers who owned that house near the pond over much of her early childhood had so altered the structure that she thought there would be little evidence of it early history. (Pers comm. @1995)
Wherever Miller’s original home was located in the hamlet, (and it was likely closer to the pond) he must have practiced his trade of cooper. We have no record of Miller making major sales of pipes or barrels to other British colonies. But it remains a possibility.
Perhaps with the rapid immigration of settlers and growth of Miller Place, Andrew Miller’s business stayed local where he had more than enough work making casks, “pipes”, hogs heads, water buckets, butter churns, and barrels of wood—and selling them to local homesteaders, fishermen, baymen and others who used them to store and preserve their products of their trade or business .
The local road Pipestave Hollow Road, may have been named by Miller himself as a place to secure, along its wooded slopes, the red oak or white oak logs he needed to produce the barrel and pipe staves necessary for his trade. Of particular value were the staves for pipes which had to be over four feet long. Raw cut and trimmed pipe staves were one of the earliest exports to England from its New York colonies. The longer red or white oak wood for pipes was scarce in England and Miller may have when the opportunity arose exploited the virgin woodlands in Miller Place for this valuable product.
In only a few decades the Miller family had grown and prospered. Its members soon owned several houses in the hamlet. Other settlers arrived and purchased plots close to the pond and within the zone where they could dig a shallow well for potable water.
This author excavated the site of a 19th century blacksmith located just north of the pond.
The small community was known as “Miller’s Place”, where at the Miller cooperage settlers could buy either finished casks or the parts to make, pipes and barrels to store or pack for trade their products.
Among the several Miller homes in Town are the William Miller House, still standing today, built by Miller’s grandson William Miller in 1720, and added on to over the decades until about 1816. The Samuel Hopkins House on Pipe Stave Hollow Road near the Harbor was built in 1770, and the lovely Timothy Miller House right on North country Road in the heart of the hamlet was built in 1785.
The large house across from the pond owned by the Davis/Gass family was once the home of the Mayor of New York City Caleb Smith Woodhull (1792-1866) who served as mayor of the New York City from 1849-1851.
