University of Virginia Library

A CHRONICLE OF
THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON.

In all great actions two elements are indispensable.

First—the task must be exceedingly difficult in order
to develope those heroic qualities—fortitude and perseverance.

Secondly—The result must be an equivalent for the
labor; a consideration which appears to have been overlooked
by all legislators, or it might have prevented most
of the battles, massacres, burnings and bloodshed since the
beginning of the world.

Whether or no I have succeeded in gaining the latter,
posterity shall judge, and as regards the former, I can only
ask of those who have any knowledge of the Babylonii, if any
thing in the shape of information is not exceedingly difficult
to get at among that sage and taciturn people? In

fact, a genuine Long-Islander, like one of his native oysters,
is held to be of little value unless he can keep his
mouth shut. Judge then of the labor it has cost to bring
into the world this true and impartial history. To search
the misspelt records of the township; to dive into numberless
authorities; to collect the waifs and floating straws
of tradition; to collate, examine, sift, weigh, accept, refuse
and discriminate among these heterogeneous materials, has
been to me a labor of love; and fearing that no other person
will ever undertake the arduous task for the benefit
of posterity, with much brain-work and wasting of the
midnight oil, I have at last perfected this invaluable
work.

Unfortunately there are no authentic antediluvian records
of Babylon. Neither do we find a distinct and reliable
account of such a place among the travels of those ancient
navigators, the Phœnicians; but from the known habits of
that mighty hunter, Nimrod, it is but reasonable to suppose
that after the dispersion of the builders of the tower
of Babel, he would be likely to look out some place to
gratify his peculiar tastes, and the South Side affording
him every facility, he might naturally settle there for the
remainder of his days. Nor is this merely a matter of
conjecture, for there is a vague tradition floating around

the village to that effect, the most powerful argument in
its favor being this:

“If Nimord did not go to Babylon, where did he go?”

Until this question is satisfactorily answered, I shall
claim the great Assyrian as the founder of the ancient
village of Babylon.

Having thus settled the postdiluvian era of the discovery
of this ancient and renowned village, there still remains,
in mysterious obscurity, a vast interval. I shall
not, after the manner of many historians, attempt to bridge
over this dark period with idle conjecture, but rather let it
remain a shadowy and fathomless sea in silent sublimity,
adding beauty by contrast to the lifelike picture of a later
and more eventful age.

Babylon is bounded north by the railroad, south by
the great South Bay, east by Coquam or Skoquam Creek,
and west by Sunkwam or Great Creek; whether these
fertilizing streams ever received the names of the Euphrates
and Tigris is not known. Yet it is but reasonable to suppose
that the Chaldean monarch gave them these titles in
honor of the ancient city of Confusion. For several thousand
years the descendants of the great hunter occupied
the territory bequeathed to them in peaceful security. The
Syrian merged in the red man; his very language was unknown,

his origin forgotten; the beautiful oriental Chaldaic
was changed into the barbarous dialect of the Massapequas,
and a rude tribe, “a mere handful of men,” was all that remained
of a nation whose greatness had o'ershadowed the
earth.

But the lapse of centuries had not altered the natural
beauties of the land. The primitive forest still extended
to the verge of the green meadows that bordered the bay.
The antlered deer stooped to drink from the clear streams
that wound their sinuous way through the shadowy woods.
The patient beaver “built his little Venice” upon their
banks, while the elk upheaved his proud neck like a monarch,
and bounded away at the scream of the wild cat or
the cry of the rapacious wolf. The swan rippled with her
snowy bosom the placid waters of the bay; the pelican
reared its rude nest amid the pines, and the plumed and
painted Indian in his slender canoe floated like a dream
upon the transparent bosom of the waters. The Massapequas,
a peaceful piscivorous nation, had but a faint idea of
the glories of war; a night excursion to steal some trifle
from the neighboring Secatouges or the Shinecocks (a tribe
noted for anointing their bodies with the fat of the opossum),
or the laughter-loving Merrikokes, was the extent
of their predatory forays.

Even these night rambles were unsuited to the genius
of a quiet people; retaliation soon quenched this warlike
spirit; and like the Babylonii of modern days, they preferred
making raids upon the peaceful inhabitants of the
bay—for in those days salmon did abound, yea, plentiful
as shirks and blue fish; and many a black canoe,
with the spearman standing out in bold relief by the light
of his pine-knot torch, could be seen, where now the solitary
tower on Fire Island casts its menacing glare upon the
waves.

Such was the enviable condition of the territory of
Babylon or “Sunkwam,” as it was then denominated, and so
it remained until the discovery of the island of Manhattan,
and the landing of the pilgrim fathers and mothers upon
the famous rock at New Plymouth. It is not my purpose
to repeat these familiar portions of the history of the new
world. The rise and fall of the Dutch dynasty, and the
colonial government of the Puritans are well known to
every man, woman and child in the country. The patient
Netherlander slowly populated the peaceful city of the
Manhattoes. The Pilgrims took possession successively of
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. But Sunkwam
was reserved for greater things, and therefore her day
came later than the rest. It was not until the middle of

the seventeenth century, that the first irruption of the
white men into the territory of the Massapequas took
place. The western end of the island nearest New-Amsterdam
had been deliberately settled by the phlegmatic
Dutchmen, while their more mercurial brethren had extended
themselves over the largest portion of the island,
from Montauk Point to the present western boundaries of
Suffolk county. At the latter place an imaginary line had
been drawn defining the limits of the respective settlements,
but in 1642 a party of Orientals started from the
town of Lynn, and, with true Yankee audacity, squatted
themselves at Cow Bay, directly within the boundaries of
the Dutch territory. Now Governor Keift was a little
man, and not over brave for a governor, but like many
other little men he could do a great deal of fighting—at a
distance. So he forthwith dispatched a rascally bailiff, one
Cornelins Van Tienhoven, with directions to capture this
band of “infamous Yankees,” who had dared to come (from
Lynn) “between the wind and his nobility.” Whereupon
the said Cornelius took with him six good men and true,
and after a laborious journey of three weeks, five days and
twenty-three hours, arrived in sight of the embryo colony.
Here he reposed for two days and a half to recover his
wind, and then taking off his coat and tying his suspenders
around his capacious abdomen, started off alone to take
the settlement by storm, leaving his valiant army behind
as a “corps de reserve.” As luck would have it, just as he
reached the brow of the little hill which rises before Cow
Bay, his foot slipped in something, and he rolled down the
hill toward the ill-fated colony. When the Yankees beheld
this huge Dutch avalanche coming down, and threatening
to demolish the whole of them in a twinkling, they
were seized with a horrible panic, and ran away as if the
devil was after them.[1] Then, as is the custom with puissant
conquerors, did the aforementioned Cornelius take a
view of the village, which, by the law of nations, had again
become a possession of the States General, and twisting
his mighty moustache, seize and carry off with him the
spoils and prisoners of war, namely: an old woman
with the fever and ague, a yellow-headed baby with gooseberry
eyes, together with a bag of corn meal and a huge
rasher of pork, and march back to Nieuw-Amsterdam

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 527EAF. Page 102. At the top of the page is an image of Cornelius walking up a hill and turning to glare at the reader. In the background is the image of an elderly, and clearly ill, woman who is tied to Cornelius by a string attached to her wrist. Cornelius has a sword hanging from his waist, which is dragging on the ground, and a musket thrown over his shoulder. Tied to the end of the musket is a wailing infant. The baby is tied by its ankle to the musket and hangs upside down.]

like a modern Mexican hero, fresh from the “Halls of the
Montezumas.”

But this little circumstance was productive of a great
result, for one of the aforesaid Yankees, Hosea Carl by

name, ran straight across the island and never drew breath
until he came in sight of the pleasant waters of the Great
South Bay. Here he beheld the wigwams of the renowned
Massapequas, and finding them to be an indolent devil-may-care
set of savages, forthwith took them under his
kindly protection. It was on this memorable day, namely,
the twenty-third of May, 1642, that the first blue-fish
was eaten by a white man within the precincts of Sunkwam,
or Sunquam as it is sometimes erroneously spelt.
Nor must I omit to relate that this same Hosea Carl had
in his waistcoat pocket some pumpkin seeds, which he
planted without delay, for the pumpkin is the mystic symbol
of the Yankees, and the planting thereof gives as good
a title to the soil as right of possession by flag-staff, or any
other ingenious invention by which barbarous tribes are
taught to respect the rights and claims of civilized nations.
Being thus in a manner under the shade of his own vine
and fig-tree, Hosea sent a faithful copperhead, Squidko by
name, to hunt up his wife, who had fled before the terrible
splutter-damns of Cornelius Von Tienhoven, like a struck
wild-fowl at the sound of a rusty gun.

The daguerreotype painted upon the memory of Squidko
was a perfect likeness, and in a few days the hapless fugitive
was found. Hosea then made a “clearing,” and before

many years a small tribe of musquito-bitten, saffron-headed
Hoseas, surrounded the parental clapboards. About two
years after this memorable epoch, certain Indians who had
been committing various depredations, were attacked by
the famous Captain John Underhill, in the palisado called
Fort Neck, about eight miles from Babylon, and utterly
routed with much slaughter. Now this said John Under-hill
was not only a terrible fellow among the savages, but
he used to raise the devil's delight in every village where
he happened to be quartered, for he was a great favorite
with the fair sex (which is always the case with warriors
and other noted characters), and although doubtless an
innocent man, yet the viperous tongue of slander will
assail the purest and the most virtuous. Hence we
find it recorded in Thompson's admirable History of
Long Island, out of Hutchinson, that “before a great
assembly at Boston on a lecture day and in the court-house,
he sat upon a stool of repentance, with a white cap on his
head; and with many deep sighs, a woful countenance, and
abundance of tears, owned his wicked way of life, and
besought the church to have compassion on him, and deliver
him out of the hands of Satan.” Which after all was
only a general and not a specific acknowledgment of any
one sin with which he had been charged, for doth he not
affirm when he had been privately dealt with for incontinency—That
“the woman being very young and beautiful,
and withal of a jovial spirit and behaviour, he did daily
frequent her house, and was divers times found there alone
with her, the door being locked on the inside, and confessed
that it was ill, because it had the appearance of evil in it;
but that the woman was in great trouble of mind and sore
temptation, and that he resorted to her to comfort her;
and that when the door was found locked upon them they
were in private prayer together?”—an explanation which
ought to be perfectly satisfactory to every reasonable mind.

Moreover, doth not the following extract from his letter
to his “Worthee and Beloved friend, Hansard Knowles,”
clearly show that the times, and not the man were in
error?

“They propounded that I was to be examined for carnally
looking after one Mistris Miriam Wilbore, at the lecture
in Boston when Master Shepherd expounded. This
Mistris Wilbore hath since been dealt with for coming to
that lecture with a pair of wanton open-worked gloves, slit
at the thumbs and fingers, for the purpose of taking snuff.
For, as Master Cotton observed, for what end should these
vain openings be, but for the intent of taking filthy snuff?
and he quoted Gregory Nazianzen upon good works. How

the use of the good creature tobacco, can be an offence, I
cannot see. Master Cotton said, `Did you not look upon
Mistris Wilbore?' I confessed that I did. Master Peters
then sayd, `Why did you not look at sister Newell, or sister
Upham?' I sayd `Verelie, they are not desyrable women,
as to temporal graces.' Then Hugh Peters and all cryed, `It
is enough, he hath confessed,' and so passed excommunication.”
Now I would like to know what would become of
our modern church-gallants if they were liable to be excommunicated
upon such charges?

Having thus redeemed the character of this jolly bacholor
from the foul aspersions of a cynical age, it but remains
for me to say, that from him sprang the present race
of Underhills, who are to be found by every shady hill-side
on Long Island; men celebrated all over the face of the
earth for their morality and bravery.

The first Yankee discoverer of Sunkwam did not remain
there long without having neighbors. The Smiths, the
Seamans, the Hicks, the Willetts, the Coopers and the
Udells, planted themselves side by side with the primitive
adventurer; and about this time the family of the Snedicors,
springing up earth-born, the Lord-knows-how, began
to overrun the country like a wild cucumber-vine, and
finally shot up in a single night in the hitherto purely

Yankee village of Sunkwam. The Orientals initiated the
Indians in the mysteries of rum, gunpowder, pumpkin-pies
and jewsharps, and the Indians rewarded their instructors
with plentiful grants of land and prodigious clambakes.
On the fourth of July, 1657, Tackapausha, the
sachem of the Massapequas, made a treaty with the Dutch
Governor, by which Sunkwam became nominally a province
of the Nieuw Netherlandts; but the conquest of the latter
place, in 1664, by the English, restored the settlers to that
liberty which they had lost only in name. And now
peace and serenity was with Sunkwam. The conical wigwams
of the savages were giving place to the clapboard
castles of the industrious Yankees. Here and there a
snowy sail careered over the bay where erst had been seen
only the bark canoe of the aborigine. Population thrived,
agriculture flourished: the sportive cucumber meandered
among the green corn, the peaceful pumpkin rolled its fair
round proportions on the sunny slopes; and the commerce
of Sunkwam spread like a battalia of white moths over the
neighboring bays and inlets.

Such was the happy condition of Babylon an hundred
and fifty years ago; it is a picture I am never weary of
contemplating. Let me lay aside my pen, and look upon
it with the delight of a father who gazes upon his firstborn

with those exquisite feelings known only to the parental
heart!

It was toward the close of the seventeenth century that
the redoubtable Captain Kidd, of pious memory, dropped
anchor off the fertile shores of Long Island. The purpose
of the expedition, which was to put an end to the robberies
upon the high seas; the fruit of his experience with these
modern “Vikings,” which ended in his becoming a pirate
himself; and his end at Execution Dock in 1701, are well
known to every one; but on board of his vessel he had
many innocent persons, who were subordinate officers, seamen,
and the like, shipped with no other motive than that
of serving their king, the press-gang, and their country.
Among those who had become pirates by compulsion was
the sailing-master of the vessel, one Jacob O'Lynn; probably
a lineal descendant of that famous Bryan O'Lynn,
who had

Be that as it may, Lynn (for he was an Englishman,
and had dropped the Hibernic `O') was a warm-hearted,
double-fisted, square-chested sea-dog, who did not care the

toss of a biscuit who he served under, if there was plenty
of fighting and the liquor was good. His chief amusement
was playing on an enormous conch-shell, given him by
some princess on the coast of Africa, who had taken a
fancy to his broad shoulders and manly proportions; and
his favorite position was to get astride of the bowsprit,
blowing his enormous conch like a jolly triton playing
“Come o'er the Sea” before Queen Amphitrite; from
whence he received the name of “Conch Lynn,” since corrupted
into “Conklin.” It is necessary to be particular in
these matters, because they are the stepping-stones of all true
history. But this said Conch Lynn, disliking exceedingly
the customs of those sea anti-renters, the pirates, took an
opportunity while Kidd was asleep, after a hard day's drinking,
strapped his beloved conch-shell around his neck, filled
his pockets with doubloons and jewels, dropped overboard,
swam ashore, and landed high and dry on the beach at
Fire Island. Here he blew a terrific blast upon his conch-shell
in honor of his safe arrival, the sound of which killed
a whole flock of snipe who were skippereering along the
beach; then turning a somerset in his joy, and making
telegraphic signals with his legs, whereby he lost many
jewels and other valuables out of his jacket-pockets, he
swam and waded across the bay, and finally landed safe
at Sunkwam. Here he was sumptuously entertained by
the inhabitants, and royally feasted upon skillipots and
snappers, beaver-tail, baked quohaugs, blue-fish, moss-bunkers,
and other delicacies, washed down with copious
libations of switchel and hard cider; and being of a domestic
turn of mind, he took possession of a deserted
wigwam, hired a buxom-looking squaw for a housekeeper,
and in the fulness of his heart kept up an infernal blarting
upon his conch-shell from morning till night. This hideous
concerto was more than the Sunkwamites had bargained
for; accordingly, in a very eloquent remonstrance, now in
the possession of the Historical Society of Babylon, they
requested him “right lovingely either to cease blowinge
ye aforesaid konke, whereby ye peace of ye community had
beene much endamaged, or to take his d—d shell and
blow it without ye jurisdiction of ye colony.” As might be
expected, the jolly sailing-master took offence at this, and
shaking the dust off his shoes, departed from the place as
mad as a bear with a sore head. After trudging for two
or three miles across the swamps and pine-barrens, he
turned round and gave them a parting blast upon his sea-trumpet
that sounded like the famous horn of Orlando at
the dolorous rout of Roncesvalles; then settling himself in
the interior, he married out of sheer spite, and begat the
numerous race of Conklins, who are renowned for blowing
their own trumpets even to this day. Nay, it is asserted
that the sound of his conch-shell can be heard even now
swelling upon the wind across the bay whenever there is a
storm brewing to the southward. Still the little settlement
thrived in spite of these untoward mishaps, and it was
christened Huntington-South, in honor of the great hunter
who had founded it.

It is delightful to review the manners and customs of
this little colony. Every one assisted his neighbor; the
laws were administered with strict impartiality, and I have
quoted from the aforesaid “History of Long Island” the
following record as a specimen of what evenhanded justice
was in those patriarchal days.

“Town-Court, Oct. 23, 1662.—Stephen Jervice, an
attorney in behalf of James Chichester, plf., vs. Tho.
Scudder, deft., action of ye case and of batery. Deft. says
that he did his endeavor to save ye pigg from ye wolff, but
knows no hurt his dog did it; and as for ye sow, he denys
ye charge. Touching ye batery, striking ye boye, says he
did strike yee boye, but it was for abusing his daughter.
Ye verdict of ye jury is, that deft.'s dog is not fitt to be
cept, but ye acsion fails for want of testimony; but touching
ye batery, ye jury's verdict pass for plff., that deft. pay

him ten shillings for striking ye boye, and ye plff. to pay
five shillings for his boye's incivility.' Having thus found
a verdict against the dog, the plaintiff and the defendant,
the jury were allowed to proceed to their respective
homes.

And now, even as a laborer after a hard day's work
stretches himself and slumbers in tranquillity, did the little
town of Huntington-South enjoy a long period of repose.
The old settlers were gathered in the silent folds where all
must slumber—the Indians melted from the land like snow
before the sun in April. Piece by piece the land had been
purchased by the whites; nor must I omit to mention the
story of Sally Higbee, “who didd receive a notable tracte
of land from one Smackatagh, by reasonne of a kisse which
he did begge of herr, and which she bestowde in consideracion
of havinge the said lande given tow herr by the salvage;”
and also the manner in which one Jones did out-jump
an Indian for a wager (the latter staking forty square
miles of good land against a barrel of hard cider), and being
a springy varlet, and full of quicksilver, did thereby win
the same from him by a foot and a half. With the exception
of such events, Huntington-South slumbered on for
above a century. The war of the revolution broke out and
rolled like a sea of fire around her scrub-oak barriers; but

she knew it not, and even to this day, it is said, some of
the inhabitants pray devoutly for the restoration of King
Charles the Second, of blessed memory.

At last the nineteenth century dawned upon the world.
Voluminous as are the records of this period, one important
circumstance has escaped the notice of every historian.
Seizing upon this event with the joy of one who has found
a treasure, and scarcely credits the evidence of his senses,
I shall forthwith reveal how Sunkwam came to be christened
by the name it now bears. In 1801, one Nat. Conklin
(or Conkelynge) kept a store in the village, and transacted
a profitable business with the inhabitants. At the
same time an Irishman, Billy Callighan by name, had a
similar establishment for the vending of rum, red herrings,
tape, tobacco, mackerel, molasses, cod-fish and calicoes.
“Huntington-South” had always been a stumbling-block in
the way of the native orthographists (I myself have seen
more than seventeen different ways of spelling it, every
one of them wrong), so this merry little Irishman, in honor
of his native city, determined to name it Dublin! But
Aunt Phœbe Conklin, a lineal descendant of the doughty
Jacob, settled her spectacles firmly upon the tip of her
indefatigable nose, took a sharp pinch of snuff out of a
testy-looking little box, clapped the box in her side pocket,

and with her thumb and fore-finger tightly pinched
together, as if she held the weasand of the presumptuous
Billy Callighan squeezed between them, declared she would
not have it so: “And since the place wants a name,” said
she, “I'll name it: I'll call it Babylon!—because there's
always so much `babbling' going on there!” And thereupon
she took out a red bandanna, and sounded a terrific
blast with her nose, that was like unto the sound of the
mighty conch-shell of her valorous ancestor. So the village
became Babylon by sound of trumpet!

Nor must I now omit to describe the nominatrix of this
puissant village. She was a tall, spare, mathematical-looking
lady, with a face like a last will and testament, with
amen! written in every corner. Moreover, she was bedlight
in a crimp-cap and white short-gown, with a black silk
kerchief pinned crossways over her neck, and a quilted
calico petticoat, that by dint of repeated washing looked
like the ghost of a defunct dolphin.

Meanwhile, one Thompson, who was likewise an aspirant
for fame, must needs have his say in the matter; and
being of a milky disposition, of wonderful good-nature, and
wishing every body well in the world, would fain give Babylon
a more euphonious title; so he called together all the
inhabitants, had a grand “pow-wow” at his house, and

spent several dollars in the purchase of sundry gallons of
corn-whiskey, apple-jack and New-England rum, with
which the company became wonderfully mellow. Then,
after much preliminary backing-and-filling, he proposed—
in a terribly long-winded speech, which the limits of the
work will not permit me to give entire—“that the village,
being a quiet, peaceful little place, where all were `Unitas
Fratrum,' should be henceforth known and denominated
as Harmony;” which was unanimously ratified upon the
spot by all present. This important ceremony over, the
Harmonians proceeded to the more serious business of the
night, and took unto themselves sundry juleps, slings, toddies,
etc. Then, according to the records of the time, did
they become bucked, boozy, bunged up, corned, sprung,
swipesy, swizzled, soaked, smashed, slewed, sewed-up, sick,
mellow, maudlin, hot, funny, toddied, top-heavy, half-snapped,
keeled-up, drunken, inebriated, intoxicated, one
eye open, in liquor, weeping, shouting, swearing, roaring,
flabbergasted, all talking at once, kicked, cuffed, torn,
fisted; in a word, they made as infernal an uproar as ever
had been made at the building of the veritable tower of
Babel upon the plains of Shinar! But how vain are human
efforts to contend with fate! The sun rose in the
morning, and breaking several panes of glass in the windows

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 527EAF. Page 116. At the bottom of the page is a chapter-ending illustration. The image depicts various elements of "vice," including three pipes resting on a box of tobacco, a corkscrew, a carafe of wine, a silver pitcher, an array of cigars, and a variety of glasses holding liquors.]

of the east, looked through and smiled in peaceful
serenity upon the slumbering village. And lo and behold;
it was Babylon still, and so it has remained even to the
present day. Having thus brought this philosophical and
philological history to the beginning of the present century,
I lay aside my pen. I pass over, as apocryphal, the
popular rumor of Babylon having been once named “Dogville;”
but justice to the Babylonii demands that I should
affirm, upon the word of an historian, that since the unfortunate
issue of the “christening,” they have continued and
still remain A Strictly Temperance People.