from

"Hick's Neck, the Story of Baldwin, Long Island"

"Three hundred years ago the stream that fed the pond, wider and deeper than it is today, rippled through timberland of Hick’s Neck down to a mud-walled channel among the cattails and reeds of the marshes. Ever widening as it progressed, it emptied into Baldwin Bay, a cove off Middle Bay. Thence by Garret Lead or East Channel the water sought East Rockaway Inlet, beyond which tossed the Atlantic. A few Indians roamed the Neck seeking deer, bear, partridges, or quail, fishing in the creeks, digging in the bay for clams that served a two-fold purpose: the meat for food and the shells as a medium of exchange. By 1650 there were perhaps a dozen white families in this little wilderness…

Early highways were not planned, but evolved from footpaths and forest trails. Hick’s Neck Road, now Milburn Avenue, was one of the earliest; another was the highway known as Grand Avenue, the route to Hempstead…

Life on Hick’s Neck must have been much the same as in other American colonies. Economically, it was a farming-pastoral, home-industry community; politically a part of Hempstead, it was governed by the Town Meeting with the blessings of the Crown; socially, life centered in the church and the taverns.

Course clothing was made on the old spinning wheel and shoes were cut from crudely tanned hides of the farm cattle. Food was grown in the garden patch, hooked from the waters of Parsonage or Milburn Creek, dug from the shallows of the Bay, hunted against the fall skies above the marshes or along the woodland trails. Wood was the tableware of the common folk, supplemented by copper or iron cooking pots and pans. Evenings were short. Eight o’clock found everyone in bed – in winter, in the company of the warming pan!

Most farmers raised stock, the cattle being herded together in a common pasture. The keeper, appointed each year at Town Meeting, went from house to house in the morning to collect his charges, his horn sounding warning of his approach. Detailed ordinances were enacted for the care of cattle, construction of fences, earmarks, penalties for straying. It was the duty of the "hay-warden," and later of the "fence-viewer," to "keep y’e Jadges or Cattle or other 'Cretors' from destroying any Corne…in the filed."

Politically, the town meetings were the life of the community. Neither Dutch or English rule interfered greatly with these local councils. They had the power to grant and lease land, grant mill rights, provide for the poor, make changes in the common land. Serious crimes were uncommon. Wrangles were usually over land boundaries; in one of these, the Smiths brought charges against the Pine family for cutting up and crippling some of their hogs.

Politics, education and religion were closely entwined in the colonial Long Island structure. Church attendance was compulsory; absence was punished by fine, or by banishment for the habitual offender...

For nearly a century after 1683 the Neck enjoyed rural peacefulness and prosperity; to our age of crowded living, the lifer seems to have idyllic. But imperceptibly Hicks Neck found itself involved in America's first mass upheaval as rebellion became a reality. Men gathered together in homes, in taverns, and in meeting houses to discuss the news. Imports from England were tabooed by an extra-legal Continental Congress; persons of "no family" and no business or public experience were assuming unwonted powers; news came of tar-and-featherings and riots and bloodshed. When the smoldering sparks burst into flames, the Neck population was hopelessly divided...." 

07/24/2007