Menantic Peninsula Street Names

Do you know where your Menantic Peninsula street name comes from?

Many of the street names in the Menantic Peninsula come from the history of the Dickerson family, but some date back even earlier to the Lord family, and to the time of the Manhansett people.

The word Menantic means ‘an island in a stream’, so named by the Manhansett people because at the time, “Shell Beach”, was an island off the mainland of Shelter Island.  It remained this way until sometime in the 20th century.(see map of ‘Shell Beach’)  The original farm developed by Benjamin L’Hommedieu and Patience Sylvester was known as “Menantic Farm” and occupied the whole of the Menantic Peninsula. Menantic Road was officially laid out in 1872.

Lord’s Lane was named for the Lord family of ship builders who lived there for most of the 19th century.  A neighbor and friend of the Rev. Daniel Lord was Hagar, an old Indian woman, said to be the last of her tribe.  She lived in a shanty on a small spit of land in Menantic Creek, east of the Manor House which was near Lord’s Lane. Hence Hagar Road. (Map showing shipyard)

After the death of the Rev. Daniel Lord, Menantic Farm was parcelled and was soon associated with the Dickerson family.  Nathan P. Dickerson (1830-1894) came to Shelter Island as a child.  He later married Louisa B. Simpson. At age 21 he became the 1st Mate on the clipper ship Flying Cloud. On its first trip, in 1851, around Cape Horn from New York to San Francisco, it broke the world record by 24 hours.  On its 4th voyage it reduced the time even more, to 89 days and 8 hours, a record never broken in the age of sail. In 1853, Nathan was presented with an original print of the Flying Cloud made by Currier & Ives. (Flying Cloud Images)

Eventually Nathan settled in Shelter Island and took up farming. He had five sons, two of whom, Albert Sr. and Fred, farmed most of the land on Menantic Rd. They also farmed land in what is now Silver Beach.  In order not to have to drive around from one area to the other, they created a ferry using a powerboat to pull a heavy scow for carrying horses, wagons, and farm equipment.(Ferry pic)  From the photo, it appears that the ‘ferry’ may have left from the end of Simpson Rd. All the produce they grew was shipped by horse to the Shelter Island ferry slip, and then by steamboat overnight to the Fulton St. Market.

Albert Sr. married Charlotte, who was brought to Shelter Island by her widowed mother. Her mother eventually married Carl Conrad, who owned a meat market in Shelter Island. The next generation of Dickersons included the three sons of Albert Sr and Charlotte. Two of the sons, Albert Jr. and Elliot farmed in the Menantic area for 25 years until the 1960s. In 1950 they formed a Farmers’ Cooperative with 10 other farmers. They grew cauliflower and lima beans, froze them, and sold them to companies like Birdseye. (images of Farmer’s Cooperative) They also trapped and iced fish and shipped them to the Fulton St. Fish Market.

Elliot Dickerson married Anna Jones. They named their daughter Rachel Evans after Anna’s mother.

In 1922 Albert Jr. and Elliot developed the Montclair Colony at the end of Menantic Rd., so named because many of the initial buyers were wealthy residents from Montclair, NJ. who bought the lots to create vacation homes. Among the first houses built was #11 Montclair Ave. (See Picture where you can also see the house at #1 Bay Ave.)

While we can’t be certain that the streets in our neighborhood were named for the people in this history, it seems a good likelihood that they were.

Street names associated with the Manhansett:
Menantic Rd.

Street names associated with the Lord family:
Lord’s Lane, Hagar Rd.

Street names and places associated with the Dickerson family:
Dickerson Dr., Simpson Rd., Fred’s Ln., Conrad Rd., Evans Rd., Montclair Ave., Dickerson Park

Still a mystery:
Gibbs St., Margaret’s Dr.

It is probably safe to assume that Bay Ave. was named for its proximity to a ‘bay’, but it is odd because it fronts West Neck Creek rather than West Neck Bay or Harbor.

Thank you to the Shelter Island Historical Society for providing resources and images for this piece.

A Brief History of the Menantic Peninsula

For centuries Shelter Island was lived upon by the Manhansett people, a discrete and autonomous Algonquin Tribe. According to the exhibit at the Shelter Island Historical Society, “Witness the Manhansett”, Shelter Island was the home of the Manhansett people for 11,000 years.

The Manhansett named the area in the western part of Shelter Island Menantic because it described a tidal stream with an island at its’ outlet. (Probably a portion of the current Shell Beach). Thus, Menantic or Manantuck, means an island in a tidal stream.

Nathaniel Sylvester purchased the entirety of Shelter Island c. 1652.

The land between the two creeks in the southwestern portion of the island was among the first to be broken away from the Sylvester holdings. The 500-acre area became known as Menantic Farm after a daughter in the Sylvester family, Patience Sylvester, married Benjamin L’Hommedieu. They were the area’s first owners. A large house was built in 1732 known as the Menantic Grove House. Half of the farm’s acreage was cultivated and half was prized white oak forest.

The land remained in the L’Hommedieu family until 1798. It was sold several times ending with the sale in 1802 to Samuel Lord. Samuel Lord was from a shipbuilding family who bought it with an eye on the 250-acre forest called the Great Woods.

The Lord family established a shipbuilding business on “Shipyard Creek” a tributary of West Neck Creek not far from the house. They built ships using lumber from the white oak forest. One ship, the Paragon, was famous for evading Napoleon’s blockade of England in 1804.  The brothers in the Lord family were sea captains taking grains and vegetables from the north to trade for gold and sugar in the West Indies. After all of the brothers died, the Manor House was lived in by two remaining sisters and their 40 named cats.

Eventually, the house and land were inherited by the Rev. Daniel Lord (c. 1844) who became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in 1848.  The lumber to build or enlarge the Presbyterian Church also came from the ‘Great Woods’ of the Menantic Farm.

After the death of Daniel Lord in 1861, the property of the farm was subdivided into 10 parts, and then further subdivided. The fields were cultivated with cauliflower and other vegetables. By the end of the 1800s, the house came into the hands of Henry Walther who ran it as a hotel called the Menantic Grove House, which became known as one of Long Island’s best summer hotels. It was torn down in 1968.

Images are of Menantic Grove House, courtesy of the Shelter Island Historical Society

Sources:

This information came courtesy of the Shelter Island Historical Society. The following sources were used:

“Menantic Farm Noted History”, Lillian Loper c. 1930

“A Glimpse of the Original Menantic” 1970

Literary Essay #23, Ralph Duvall

“The Distressing Death of the Reverend Daniel M. Lord”, October 1861, New York Observer.

The Indian Place-names on Long Island and Islands Adjacent,  William Wallace Tooker & Alexander Francis Chamberlain, 1911, digitized 2012

“Witness the Manhansett” exhibit brochure 2021, Shelter Island Historical Society