Greater Astoria
Historial Society
35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor | L.I.C., NY 11106
718.278.0700 | www.astorialic.org
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Mondays & Wednesdays 2-5 PM
Saturdays 12-5 PM
Exhibits ~ Lectures ~ Documentaries ~ Books
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This image adapted from an invitation to the
Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909.
32 JUNE 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
Photo courtesy of the Greater Astoria Historical Society
“HARD MEN”
BY GREATER ASTORIA
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
In the early years of our Republic,
New York already
stood out as a place
cut from a different cloth. Virginia might
lay claim as Europe’s first outpost, Boston
the cradle of revolution, and Philadelphia’s
population outranked all others, but everyone’s
eyes instinctively turned to New
York – for it was there that the new nation’s
spirit was conceived. But, if were not for
events that transpired in western Queens,
our Republic could have died before leaving
its cradle.
After the Revolution, New York was in
ruins for it was devastated by fire and depopulated
by occupation. But it did recover
quickly as its outlying districts, such as Long
Island City, the engine of renewal remained
intact. Throughout war and subsequent
peace, our tide mills never stopped. They
were ready to provide the spark to restart
the region’s economy.
Throughout that occupation, the British
kept those mills working overtime. Enormous
quantities of bread were needed
to feed a hungry army and farmers were
forced to hand over a portion of their harvest.
It was no secret that the mills played
a vital role in supporting the British war
effort. Yankee whaleboat men from as far
away as Connecticut made periodic raids
to Queens in an effort to destroy those mills
(and rob their owners – who were making
a fortune while their neighbors were being
impoverished.)
When garrisons were set up to protect
them, the millers, with a long reputation as
hard, tough, men, took this as an advantage
to make yet more money, for they built taverns
adjoining the mills. Quickly becoming
social centers of sorts, these places soon
spawned wartime fraternization between
troops and young ladies of local farmers
– something that created deep bitterness
among the colonials. John Ryerson, who ran
the tide mill at Dutch Kills, unwisely stayed
on after the conflict and was murdered in
his taproom during an argument. In 1902,
during excavations for Long Island City
High School, his coffin was unearthed at
29th Street and 41st Avenue.
Our community also played a noteworthy
role in ending the conflict between Great
Britain and the United States. A copy of
the original treaty was carried across the
Atlantic and presented to the American
government (then in New York) by Major
John Delafield, a merchant who lived in a
magnificent mansion in Ravenswood. The
war was over, but for many there would be
no peace. The old order was gone. Some
families, such as the Blackwells, were split
by the conflict. Others, as the pro-British
Halletts, forced to sell their property, were
almost swept away in the tides of that time.
It is with some irony that the Hallett Farm
was purchased by a semi-retired Continental
Brigadier General, Ebenezer Stevens, a participant
in the Boston Tea Party and witness
to the battles of Saratoga and Yorktown, both
pivotal events in the road to Independence.
It was General Stevens who organized
the defense of New York during the War of
1812, a conflict which has been called by
some the ‘Second War of Independence.’
His supervised the building of a series of
forts (in Astoria and on the offshore Hell
Gate islands) which stopped the British
from sailing through Long Island Sound,
landing an army, and marching on to New
York to destroy it – as they had done with
the burning of our capital, Washington.
New York’s end could have well ended the
Republic, too. Coupled with New England’s
active desire to have peace with Britain, the
loss of Washington and New York would
have made the nation’s future uncertain.
Our community can lay claim for halting a
precipitous chain of events which could have
led to the dissolution of the United States.
Jefferson’s 1804 Louisiana Purchase,
and the end of the War of 1812, opened up
the vast interior of the American continent.
At the head of Newtown Creek, within sound
of the humming clatter of the tide mill at
English Kills, a man sat thinking while looking
at a map. His name was DeWitt Clinton.
He was to bring the Inland Empire to
the Empire City.
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