32 MARCH 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
Respectable
Temperate Men
BY GREATER
ASTORIA
HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
It is a mystery
why, unlike the
other regions
around New York,
Queens has little
original accounts
of its early years.
Lazy doodles on
the margins of
a seventeenth century town minutes
betray a clerk’s boredom, an astute
eighteenth century traveler records the
pace of village and farm life for perhaps
a season before moving on, and a run
of a nineteenth century newspaper for
but a few months slams shut a door to
the past almost as quickly as it opens.
But there are rare cracks of light in
the darkness, as this October 1, 1866
vignette entitled “A Little Sketch of what
Astoria was Twenty-five Years Ago.” It
places us from a vantage point around
1840, a few years after Astoria’s found-ing.
It was written by storekeeper Edwin
Mills who was involved in early civic
affairs of the community.
His narrative starts by mentioning two
churches, Episcopal and Reformed (while
ignoring the third, a Roman Catholic par-ish),
which had doubled in size during
those first decades, a period when a few
dozen homes had grown to a community
of about 400 people.
As is typical of the New York region,
the population was not stable: Mills could
count but a half dozen residents living
in the same homes over the course of
a generation.
His account mentioned that Manhat-tan’s
Third Avenue (with a right turn at
East} Eighty Sixth Street) were roads in
“splendid traveling condition,” and was
the favored route to the Astoria Ferry.
The Hell Gate Ferry terminated at
Flushing Avenue (Astoria Boulevard)
which was also the point of departure for
the primary road on Long Island’s North
Shore (now designated as ‘Route 25 A’).
Heavily traveled then (as it is today), “it
was not uncommon to see ten or twenty
hay and market wagons from Flushing
and points east patiently waiting for their
turn to cross to Manhattan on the ferry.”
Mr. Mills painted a vivid picture of
Astoria evenings during those first years,
“at the ferry stood two rival hotels, each
founded by a ship captain. Both were well
kept and did a prosperous business. It
was customary for many of Astoria’s best
citizens, middle-aged and older, to spend
a portion of almost every evening at one
of the hotels, to play a few games of
dominoes and take one or more of their
celebrated brandy punches.” Described
as “respectable temperate men,” they
went home and spent the balance of
their evening with their families.
“On Christmas and New Year’s eves,”
Mills continued, “they invariably had
a raffle for poultry, would stay a little
later, and indulge a little more freely.
This custom rendered the hotels more
respectable, better kept, more quiet
and orderly, and kept boys from fre-quenting
them; in fact boys at that
time had not got the idea that hotels,
strong drink and cigars were meant
expressly for them.
“At that time there were but two fami-lies
living west of Perrott Avenue (now
4th Street).”
