Patchogue
Still Banking on the River
By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer
It was nicknamed Milltown because of the many mills -- gristmills, sawmills, paper, wool, cotton mills -- that operated on Patchogue waterways from as early as 1750. The village's permanent name may have derived from Pochaug or Paushag, which were the early settlers' interpretation of the name of Indians who lived in the vicinity.
It's a good thing the village's ultimate name was ``steered in the proper direction over the years, or the community might have become known as `Poached Egg,''' mused Frank J. Mooney in ``The Patchogue Story,'' a folksy 1987 account of 250 years of what he decided is ``Suffolk County's most enterprising village.''
So Patchogue it is, but no longer do villagers set their clocks by the noon whistle from the giant Patchogue-Plymouth Lace Mill, which closed in 1954. Most of the mills succumbed in the 1940s and '50s, outpaced by foreign competition and by the industry movement to the South and overseas for cheaper labor.
The lace works, now a burned-out hulk, was once known as ``the Patchogue College because so many Patchogue kids went there when they finished high school,'' says Marjorie Roe, president of the Greater Patchogue Historical Society. Workers also came by stagecoach from Sayville and other South Shore communities. The mill employed as many as 1,200 during World War II, when it manufactured camouflage netting and other war products.
Paradoxically, it may have been curtains for the lace mill because its products were too good for this modern, disposable world. ``They lasted forever and never had to be replaced - I still use a lace tablecloth my mother bought in the '30s,'' says Roe, a sixth-generation descendant of Capt. Austin Roe, a chief spy for Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Austin Roe's son, Justus, erected Patchogue's first hotel in 1808, and the family continued building ever-larger hotels for the rest of the 19th Century. Patchogue was then a thriving seaport with oyster, fishing and boat-building industries as well as mills on the Patchogue River and Great South Bay.
Its recorded history dates from 1664, when Connecticut Gov. John Winthrop purchased ``nine necks of land'' extending from Great South Bay to the middle of the Island. Some were sold to Humphrey Avery of Boston, who, in need of cash, disposed of them by lottery. The ``lot'' that was to become Patchogue was won by Leoffer d'Leofferda in 1759. It proved a good investment. Attracted by waterpower, settlers and shipping entrepreneurs soon flooded the area. Schooners set out from Patchogue to do commerce up and down the East Coast and even to the Mediterranean. The Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Patchogue River in 1890, making it the only deep-water port on Long Island's South Shore. Until 1922, Patchogue was a U.S. port of entry with a customs house on South Ocean Avenue.
It also proved a handy port for bootleggers during the Prohibition era of the '20s. The notorious New York City gangster Dutch Schultz set up a headquarters in Patchogue, giving lucrative employment to farm boys who helped unload and hide the illegal kegs. But that's getting ahead of the Patchogue story.
The Long Island Rail Road arrived in 1869, and for a while Patchogue was the end of the South Shore line. It brought thousands of summer visitors from the city, seeking the cool southwest breezes. The village, which incorporated in 1893, became a summer colony, with hotels accommodating as many as 1,600 guests. It was also the starting point for great bicycle races, in which Roe family members starred. The last of the family's hotels, the elegant Eagle Hotel, burned down in 1934.
Tourism gradually declined after 1920 as the affordable motor car took tourists to farther destinations, notes village co-historian Hans Henke in a just-published pictorial history of Patchogue in its boom years from 1840 to 1915. Village co-historian Anne Swezey and the Greater Patchogue Historical Society hope to bring back the tourist industry, if not the mills. They have restored the 1858 one-room schoolhouse, and the village hopes to reopen the elegant Patchogue moviehouse of the '20s as a community theater. The village plans to demolish the lace mill and replace it with a combination retail and housing development, according to Mayor Stephen E. Keegan.
Plans are also afoot to bring new life to the Patchogue River. The village, working with the Fire Island National Seashore, which has headquarters and a ferry terminal on the river, wants to develop a year-round commercial recreation area and visitors center. Meanwhile, the historical society is creating a showplace for an 1890 catboat by Patchogue's best-known boat builder, Gil Smith. The river is where Patchogue began, Swezey says, and where it will come back.
Where to Find More: ``Images of America: Patchogue,'' by Hans Henke, at many Patchogue stores; ``The Patchogue Story,'' from historian Anne Swezey, 101 Monroe Ave., Patchogue 11772.
