SEASON'S END 

At this writing the Island Breeze in Cherry Grove has just one more weekend of being open. They certainly have extended the 2021 season further along than in many years past but for all intents and purposes the season is over except for residents visiting on the weekends.

Persons interested in following current events for the remainder of this season and the beginning of 2022 are encouraged not to look here but at the companion Facebook page for the most recent information: https://www.facebook.com/FireIslandStar

Less happening less content is the general rule but with one exception: history. A quick view of this webpage should inform that there's already quite a lot of history to be found here. In fact we are in need of a major make over to make it all fit. So until then it's a bit squeezed.

On point our very recent historical discovery about Jeremiah Smith, land pirate, pirate's nest owner linked by Charles Dickerson and others to Cherry Grove's founding history. That discovery: it's all a myth. The discovery was unexpected and welcome a 1834 newspaper report that we think is the smoking gun of the Jeremiah Smith tale. But such discoveries represent ripples in prior narratives that require amendments to what this editor has written before about the early history of Cherry Grove. 

As we began to take into account this new information we reached the conclusion that an additional history was needed. In our other histories of Cherry Grove and Hannah and Smith Oakes, we had mentioned him but over all finding information about him could use one central location and narrative. And that's what we have done. We have put together in one place everything we have learned about Jeremiah Smith over the past three years of research that has been undertaken to understand the early history of Cherry Grove which has led to understanding the early history of Fire Island and that certainly includes Jeremiah Smith as a result.

So due to our space constraints we have pushed our Hannah Oakes history (the real land pirate of Fire Island along with her husband Smith Oakes) to a place below our new Jeremiah Smith history although it does turn out that the Oakes history has some inclusion in his history too.

This history about Jeremiah Smith contains new information, it also contains new theories about his history because as well as we have researched Jeremiah Smith he is still of a period of time from which reliable sources are few and far between to find. Sometimes a good guess has to be made. 

That said this information is probably the most extensive and up to date information to be found about the legend and the man Jeremiah Smith anywhere in the world. 


Jeremiah Smith: a 21st Century Revisionist Tale
 
Who was Jeremiah Smith? A short answer is that he was and remains today a historical figure of the early history of Long Island and particularly Fire Island for some time in the first half of the 19th century.
He was a land pirate meaning he looted cargoes of ships wrecked on the ocean beach of Fire Island.
From time to time, a violent man, he victimized survivors of ship wrecks who found safety on the ocean beach of Fire Island by robbing of them including murdering them for their possessions.
He ran his land piracy operation from a small two-story home located on the beach most probably in modern day Cherry Grove. Stolen goods were shipped from the Fire Island beach to waiting confederates who loaded illegally gained goods from ship wrecks onto ships that took those goods under false cover over the waters of the Great South Bay then along the Atlantic Ocean coast to the harbor of lower Manhattan. From the harbor they were then unloaded and fenced to a no questions asked public by a network of no question asked buyers.
He was the first non-American native to build a house on Fire Island and reside there becoming the first person to live on Fire Island beginning in 1796.
He was for all the above reasons the chief land pirate of Fire Island beginning in the last decade of the 18th century and for the first several decades of the 19th century.
His property and home became the property of Archer and Elizabeth Perkinson who in 1868 converted his pirate haven into a bay side eatery becoming the first founders of Cherry Grove.
Or Jeremiah Smith is this person:
He was a legal scavenger of wrecked cargoes assisting law enforcement officers in the recovery of lost items tossed by the ocean waves onto the Fire Island beach.
He assisted those in distress who survived ship wrecks caring for them once they were ashore.
He did own a house on the beach on Fire Island where he served as a guide and provided overnight accommodations to locals and tourists from New York City who arrived at his small home as hunters of local Fire Island wildlife and marine animals.
These are obviously very contrasting views of Jeremiah Smith. But where there is agreement is that he is a folk lore figure of the Great South Bay and thus is also a part of the history of Fire Island and Long Island too.
 
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The question is what is real about these impressions of him? And that’s important for a number of reasons. One of them is that it’s become one of the engrained aspects of the history of Fire Island that he is the first nonnative American to live on Fire Island. He is seen as the chief pirate of his time due to his apparent sophisticated operation for removing ill gotten goods from Fire Island to the harbor of New York City making him wealthy in the process. And his home and person are bound up in the founding of the community of Cherry Grove. It’s the accepted tale of that hamlet that his house served as the first structure from which the community of Cherry Grove emerged later in the late 1800s.
Tools do exist to sift through the admixture of fact and fiction about Jeremiah Smith.
These are the base foundation facts about the life of Jeremiah Smith.
He was born in Smithtown NY on 9-17-1773. He is the son of Zebulon Smith (b. 1744 d. 20 September 1807 - 63 years) and Deborah Fleet Smith (1739–1808). He had a brother Israel Smith 1779–1851
At first he is the husband of Elizabeth Terry and father of Gilbert M. Smith. Later he is the husband of Rebecca Gildersleeve (1771-1842). Their union resulted in the birth of 12 children.
Biographical records for Elizabeth Terry do not seem to adequately exist. The appearance of Jeremiah Smith’s second wife Rebecca Gildersleeve is not otherwise explained. Rebecca Gildersleeve will remain married to Jeremiah Smith until her death. He will outlive her by almost two decades.
Newly discovered (2020) deed records document that Jeremiah Smith and his wife were Fire Island land owners who sold their landholdings off in 1814.
Newly discovered (2021) a newspaper account from the Long Island Corrector 11-21-1834 confirms public recognition of Jeremiah Smith’s connection to Fire Island when in a report about a family tragedy it describes him as “long a resident on the Beach at Fire Island Inlet”.
Census records indicate that in 1850, Jeremiah Smith, aged 76, was living in the home of his daughter Charity, and her husband Edward Mulford.

1860 census records indicate that, Jeremiah Smith, aged 87, was living in the home of his widowed daughter, Deborah (Smith) Biggs.
Jeremiah Smith died in Patchogue NY in 1860 where he remains buried to this day.
 
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These basic facts are recited to provide a reliable ground work for assessing the further versions of Jeremiah Smith’s life both whatever is real about it and the added fictions that have survived in the form of legend substituting for fact.

JEREMIAH SMITH: EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS   

1814
New discoveries about Jeremiah Smith now compels the inclusion of one of the few documentable instances of someone who saw Jeremiah Smith in the flesh for which there is an actual record. That documentation comes in the form of a notary who witnessed a land sale by Jeremiah Smith in 1814.
And that account not only says a lot about the historical Jeremiah Smith it also opens up a brand-new interpretation about just who he was. And that new information is the documentation that now exists that Jeremiah Smith, at least for some of his Fire Island years, was a legal land owner on Fire Island with substantial land rights shared with his wife Rebecca at least up until they both sold out their land holdings in 1814.
 
The 1814 Deed Discovered

Later in this narrative there will be a more in-depth discussion of land ownership on Fire Island. To understand how the Smiths 1814 deed was discovered it has to be mentioned that the early history of Fire Island begins with an arrangement dividing land in western Fire Island between 20 landowners collectively referred to by the term 20 Yeomen of Brookhaven. This land arrangement was reached in 1789. Their land rights would dominate land arrangements until 1871 at which time a lawsuit Green v. Sammis began and that was ended in 1878 with a new land arrangement for western Fire Island.

That 1878 new arrangement defined ownership not in common but instead with defined land parcels attributed to specific owners.
But great changes are often never completely tidy. Loose ends can exist and that brings us to the Valentine case of 1921.

Platt Conklin’s unexpected discovery

As persons from the period of 1878 died, as might be expected, their heirs inherited papers held by their parents to review to get their estates into order. In one such case, Platt Conklin came into the possession of a suit case his father had owned. He left it unexamined for years thinking nothing about it until one day he took a closer look at its contents.

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He noticed the case was old and needed repair and when he went to look it over for that purpose he found a “secret” door in the case. Inside that drawer a sheave of deeds to land on Fire Island never recorded were found by him.

One was a deed ceding a share of FI land from Jeremiah Smith and his wife Rebecca as a deed selling off those rights in 1814.  Although it would be more than a hundred years after it was signed that the deed was formally recorded with the Suffolk County Clerk back in 1814 it was notarized. And that notary’s seal is a record of both Jeremiah Smith and his wife Rebecca’s coming into the notary office proofing their connection to that deed and to the Fire Island land they were selling off too.
There is going to be greater discussion about that 1814 deed but for now its importance lies in that establishes a basis to rely on the notion that in the early 1800s Jeremiah Smith at least for some years did have some land rights on Fire Island and that makes him less a pirate and more a man of landed gentry than previously thought.
                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Circa 1821

The next eye witness account of Jeremiah Smith appears in Jack Whitehouse’s 2008 book “13 Legends of Fire Island: And the Great South Bay.” It’s lot different that the picture of Jeremiah Smith and his wife Rebecca appearing in a notary’s office to transfer a land deed.

If you are going to be a land pirate you might need some confederates to help. Wrecked cargo has to be grabbed quickly and stored. More importantly it has to be hauled off Fire Island to a boat to take it where it can be sold off. The more hands the better when the task is to move potential illegal goods quickly. Whitehouse writes about a diary entry from a person who helped Smith gets his goods off Fire Island who is otherwise unidentified. The diary entry apparently came without dates but of the two entries in the diary the last of the two refers to an 1821 incident involving Smith and a ship wreck salvage. So, the relevant time period for his first entry is no later than 1821.

If you are a land pirate hauling your goods off the beach you still need a system to fence your gains. Land pirate defined as a person illegally salvaging property washed up on the ocean beach from ship wreck cargoes. As per the diary entry Smith had an arrangement with a boat captain who had agreed to take his plunder and trans-ship it to nearby New York City harbor for sale. He is Jem Raynor. He is referred to in the account by the unknown diarist and interestingly he will appear in another account of Jeremiah Smith that will be described later.

The practical issue that remains is getting the loot off the island into a small boat for transfer to the larger craft heading west to New York city where in its large harbor a shadow market can be found
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where questions aren't asked about the origins of the goods being sold off.

As per the diary entry two of those responsible for doing this head off to Fire Island to meet up with Smith for just this purpose.

That diary entry of relevance:

“On this day Jem and I had sailed across the bay at early hour….We had arrived at Smith’s house expecting to find him at home. He was not there, and so we reasoned he must be at the ocean beach. We thus proceeded in that direction to the top of a nearby dune…Mr. Jeremiah Smith was on the beach in front of us…”.

It’s a crucial account for a number of reasons. It does one of just a handful of first-hand accounts that says that Jeremiah Smith did have a house on Fire Island although in this case it is otherwise undescribed. It locates the house on the Bay side of Fire Island since it recounts that the diarist, once his boat had landed, left the Smith house location and headed to the dunes to find Jeremiah Smith where he found him past the dune ridge below it on the ocean beach.

While the diarist is not identified the account does give us the name of Jem Raynor to consider. That inclusion also offers a way to look at where that boat “sailed across the bay” from because later on from another source we can identify that location as Islip.

This account is important for two additional reasons.

It provides a rare first-hand account of Jeremiah Smith’s appearance giving us all a chance to visualize the man. It’s actually the only such account so far discovered.

From the diary these words: “I will never forget the first time I saw him….The stubble on his chin caught the mist of the morning air the way blades of grass catch the dew. The shimmering dampness served to emphasize sharp, angular facial features that framed narrow hawk-like brown eyes. His face seemed to portray a permanent mental state of extreme physical aggressiveness. At no more than average height, he was nevertheless an imposing figure, not just because of that face, and those eyes, but also because of very broad, powerful shoulders, that slimmed down to a narrow waist and hips. His naturally lean and muscular physique, barely hidden under ragged shirt and trousers, had that smooth look of one of those big cats on the hunt”.

Jeremiah Smith was born in 1773 and died in 1860. This account of his physical appearance is roughly when he was in his late 30s or early 40s and reflects a person hardened by the physical challenges of the life of a bay man: sailing, rowing, hunting and fishing in both the bay and the ocean surf. 

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The other important aspect of this account is that the second diary entry places Jeremiah Smith at the wreck of the Savanna on Fire Island that occurred in 1821. It helps to locate a time frame for when Jeremiah Smith was present on Fire Island. 

Whitehouse reports that the diary he was able to read was a private diary not otherwise made public, buried away in the records of the New York Historical Society for decades before he got to read it. He published his book in 2008. That means that Dickerson could not have used is a resource. We have included it here in this timeline however since it begins to place Jeremiah Smith on Fire Island, and refers to his house and provides some sense of time about both.

Circa 1828?

The next eye witness of Jeremiah Smith and his house occurs in the form of what could be called the “Mulford transcript” which takes a bit of time to explain. In the late 1800s Samuel Arden Smith began compiling a family genealogy of his side of the Smith family. One member of that family E.S. Mulford added into the various accounts of the family tree his contribution. It was not so much about himself but about a man who he called “Uncle Jerry”. E.S. Smith was in fact Jeremiah Smith’s grandson.

In his short addition to the Arden Smith file he presented a vigorous defense of his grandfather extolling his many virtues as a fisherman, an honest salvager among many other positives he mentioned about him. He also provided some details about a visit to see Jeremiah Smith when he visited Smith’s home as a child.

This is one part of his account: 

"The House of (Uncle Jerry) in the Beach at Fire Island, though simple in its construction, and not containing room enough for an outside cook-room... his house was the resort for fishers and gunners who were delighted with his stories of practical life on the Beach, as well as his occasional legendary lore."…

“The writer has some pleasant memories of Jeremiah Smith and his home for sojourners on the Beach. When he was a boy about sixty-five years ago, his father sent him, in charge of a friendly attendant, to the house Jeremiah Smith at Fire Islands” …

“And he also remembers the manner in which the numerous guests at the house, himself among the numbers, took their repose during the nights. Blankets were spread upon the floors and on such common floor beds, all the guests, Gentlemen, fisherman, gunners, horse crab (or horse foot) catchers, in promiscuous confusion, sought repose.”

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This writer has been to the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead and has looked at the Mulford statement personally. It is undated. Moreover the Arden Smith file does not record the date of any entries of any material to it when contributions were made to it and added into a loose file of reports of family linage from a large number of persons.
 
The full text of the Mulford document can be found as part of a larger biograph of Jeremiah Smith: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90523520/jeremiah-kirkland-smith

Finding the date of Mulford’s visit is a bit of a guessing game.

E.S. Mulford was born on 4-8-1822 and he died on 6-6-1890.
He says he visited Jeremiah Smith when he was “a boy about 65 years ago”.
So the first qualification is the word “about”. Mulford himself does not say exactly when he visited.

In another reference source that will be discussed later Carl Luss, Cherry Grove’s historian, in his own assessment of the Jeremiah Smith narrative, estimates that the Mulford document exists from no earlier than 1883.

If the visit occurred about 65 years from 1883 that would date the visit to 1818 and that’s impossible since Mulford wasn’t born yet. Absent some new information allowing us to date Mulford's visit we are going to have to do some guessing. 

As an arbitrary yardstick let’s use 6 years of age for a child to have developed sufficient mental powers to form impressions and observations still active as relatable memories about 65 years later.

That would put an estimated date of circa 1828 for the young Mulford’s visit. That's not too far in time from the 1821 shipwreck that helps locate the time period of the anonymous diarist account previously discussed. So, there is some credible evidence to believe that Mulford as a child could have visited Jeremiah Smith house during a time period where there is again some evidence that Jeremiah Smith strode the sands of Fire Island. 

In this account Jeremiah Smith house is better described. The first eye witness account describes it not at all but not here. In this account it is a house of “simple construction”.

One of the most striking differences between the Mulford account and the first account of Smith’s house is that this is plainly not a pirate haven but a “resort for fishers and gunners”. This is not some lonely outpost either. Mulford recalls “numerous guests at the house… took their repose during the nights. Blankets were spread upon the floors and on such common floor beds, all the guests, Gentlemen, fisherman, gunners, horse crab (or horse foot) catchers, in promiscuous
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confusion, sought repose.”

This is not a description of a pirate crew. It is instead an inventory mostly of bay men i.e., “fishers”, “gunners” and that is a reference to the very common practice of the day of visiting Fire Island to shoot its huge bird population, and horse shoe crab catchers again a reference to one category of bay men who caught existent varieties of Great South Bay crabs for local consumption or sale to restaurants either locally or in NYC. There was also a separate market for horse shoe crabs to be sold for fertilizer for local farmers. They were also used as bait too.

The house such as it was fits in very much with Jack Whitehouse’s opinion published in another of his books “Fire Island: Heroes and Villains on Long Island’s Wild Shore” published in 2011.
                                                                                                                                              In that book he wrote that Smith was probably “serving as a guide/host for those willing to pay for the unsurpassed privilege of enjoying the unsurpassed hunting and fishing” (see page 2 Chapter 7).
Link: https://books.google.com/books?id=4_l-CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=jack+white+house+fire+island&source=bl&ots=325N2gWd-F&sig=ACfU3U2CX6ZRIKqDrWPU2_h-XGpw9FzfRw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinsrK5pfLoAhV9lnIEHRb4Bpc4ChDoATAAegQIChAo#v=onepage&q=jack%20white%20house%20fire%20island&f=false
 
Mulford does not provide an exact location for this beach or near beach house. But he does provide an important clue. He does provide a sailing direction for finding it:” to the house Jeremiah Smith at the “Fire Islands”.

And since the term “Fire Islands” is going to come up again in another account as a sailing direction reference now a small diversion to better understand that reference.

The term “Fire Islands” does not refer to Fire Island in general. It is a place name for a current nautical and historic area of the Great South Bay just east of the Fire Island Inlet. Using this source “Long Island Gazetteer (Proehl and Shupe) p. 91 this area is described as follows: “part of Great South Bay, consisting of West Fire Island, East Fire Island, Penny Island, Money Island and the Hassock”. And just as further note the term Hassock has its own description as a topographical term. From the Oxford dictionary it is a term to describe: “A firm clump of grass or matted vegetation in marshy or boggy ground”.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives a bit more detail. Hassock is an old English term to describe Sedge grass. At this time sedge grass when harvested for straw had the name “salt hay”.

There is actually a description of this area from a narrative describing it in a court case that is to be later detailed. But this excerpt from it applies:

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(1806) “Nichol, an infant, by his guardians, etc., against the Trustees, etc., of the Town of Huntington)…There is a cluster of low islands or small isles, which are separated by water, when the tide is full, but not so when the tide if down, and which are called…fire islands…all these islands of sandy land, and marsh, or meadow land…”
Source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=gdMzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=zebulon+smith+huntington&source=bl&ots=qI5ZJPg_Ff&sig=69bHsCOi2jkLeHV3YhdGZ4OVwUU&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwimw_Ps7cjfAhUHYVAKHXmpDooQ6AEwA3oECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=zebulon%20smith%20huntington&f=false
 
With a little navigating and magnification a very good map representation of the Fire Islands area near the Fire Islet can be found in the Chace map of 1858: https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:4m90f1959                                         
From his sailing direction to Jeremiah Smith’ house one probable location might be in the present Kismet-Saltaire area of the far western portion of FI not far from the FI Inlet even further west.
1834 Long Island Corrector news report
Newly discovered in 2021 there now exists for public consideration a news account from the year 1834 (12-24-1834) that references Jeremiah Smith. In that year his son Lucius has died under accidental circumstances and Jeremiah Smith is described in that brief death notice as “long a resident on the Beach at Fire Island Inlet”. The article appears in the Long Island Corrector a Sag Harbor based newspaper during a time period when there are few newspapers reporting about Long Island let alone Fire Island.
Viewing the news account as objective reporting the news account lends credibility to the narrative that Jeremiah Smith did have a connection with Fire Island already well recognized in 1834. The article does not state he had a house but does describe him as a “resident” and that certainly does allow for seeing him associated with some kind of structure a house included as explaining his resident status. And perhaps most importantly the news account targets where he is to be found on Fire Island: near the Fire Island Inlet a location consistent with that provided in the already discussed Mulford statement and soon to be discussed accounts provided by J. Cypress (Hawes), author.
The news article helps give the Mulford account and the Cypress account credibility at least for where Jeremiah Smith may have lived or operated his various business dealings of whatever shade.
The full news article can be found at this link (“Died” … bottom right-hand corner): https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031606/1834-12-24/ed-1/seq-3/

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The Hawes Variations   1835-1842

Now entering into this reconstruction of accounts relating to Jeremiah Smith we add these seminal accounts provided in “Sporting Scenes and Sundry Sketches: Being the Miscellaneous Writings of J. Cypress, Jr.,” (Forester, 1842).

These are “eye witness” accounts but come with some differences than the earlier eye witness accounts. These accounts come from the voice of narrator in these stories but are thought to have been based on the true-life experiences of the author himself. That qualification noted the sections below do represent key parts of the core of the future representations of Jeremiah Smith’s image that the public will come to learn and that’s why they are important.  

What's important to note about these two alleged eye witness accounts is that they are from the same source but are not consistent and that inconsistency tends to undermine the credibility or reliability of either one of them. Yet they must be assessed both separate and together as they represent key sources for the legendary information used to describe Jeremiah Smith's beach house on Fire Island and about him too.  

All that said there is one important point of agreement in both these house descriptions and descriptions of Jeremiah Smith. Where they both agree is that they both start from the same time period as each one of them refences the newly built Fire Island Light House and the historical beginning date for that structure is 1826. And that date pulls these narratives into the approximate time lines of the anonymous diarist and the Mulford statement. That means that between all these reports a general consensus as a time period for Jeremiah Smith is emerging (early 1800s). 
 
Reference to the above source https://books.google.com/books?id=8ZYCAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=SPORT+SCENES+AND+SUNDRAY+SKETCHES+VOL.+1&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDtZjd4s_oAhXxmHIEHSnrBREQ6AEwAXoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=SPORT%20SCENES%20AND%20SUNDRAY%20SKETCHES%20VOL.%201&f=false

From the chapter: “Fire Island-Ana”; or a “Week at the Fire Islands”:

“We have crossed the Bay, skirting by the Fire islands, leaving them a few hundred yards to the north, and have rested our prow on the classical sands of Raccoon beach…Upon our arrival there we put in alongside the new wharf of….Mr. Smith...a keeper of…the people’s lighthouse, adjoining his own tenement...the only householder upon the island ridge….”.

Over all this set of directions tends to support a location for the Smith House near the first Light House that was built on Western Fire Island and a bay side location for it as well. Otherwise, it
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makes no sense at all. Raccoon Beach is an ocean front beach. A landing on the "classical sands of Raccoon beach" taken literally would have to have been made by sailing through the Fire Island Inlet, then toggling east and that is not a sailing activity described in this account. Instead, the landing area is closer to the Kismet-Saltaire area as the Fire Islands would be the north of such a landing site. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Based on all these real geographical facts it appears that the author has assigned to the bay side beach the same identification that more accurately describes the ocean beach. He has made the bay beach a portal point to the ocean beach south of it incorporating it as a geographical feature of the ocean beach. The bay beach landing is the doorway to the ocean beach and a connected part thus bay and ocean features are really as one thus one descriptive term: Raccoon Beach.

This would make a lot of sense too if the distance from the bay landing was but a short hike to the beach which it might have been.

From the chapter: “The Wrecker of Raccoon Beach; or, The Daughter of the Sea”:

“Raccoon beach is a ridge of sand….It runs from its western point, seven miles south of Babylon, where Uncle Sam has lately built a light house, thirty miles due east averaging three quarters of mile in breath….Jeremey Smith put up…his hut on the side of one of the beach hills...it was cold, exposed and barren…years whistled over the point of the beach and saw Jerry’s establishment increased to a snug double one storied house with a spacious garret overhead, an outhouse, hog pen, But no landsman ever got sight of it except Jem Raynor” (Note: land pirate confederate of Jeremiah Smith previously referenced in the anonymous diary document already described).

This set of directions does put the location of a Smith House on the ocean beach: Raccoon beach known alternatively as the Great South Beach, today as Fire Island Beach although exactly where is not better described. 

It's an important advance in the Jeremiah Smith legend however since forever afterwards an ocean facing home will be associated with Jeremiah Smith when later contributors write about him.

In this chapter Hawes has a lot more to say about Jeremiah Smith on Fire Island. For this essay it’s been reduced to the key sentences above for the sake of conciseness.

There are inconsistences between the two accounts. They present two different images of Jeremiah Smith. In one chapter he is pictured with his wife and in another chapter his wife is a mermaid raising an issue of fable taking center place in Hawes’ telling of Jeremiah Smith’s tale. And there are differences as to what house he inhabited and where it was found.  

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We are not going to reinvent the wheel to do this examination of these inconsistencies.

Two authors, Jack Whitehouse and Carl Luss, have done a great job analyzing the information found in this book. We are going to use some edited text from Carl Luss’ account to provide a framework for understanding the content of this book.

This is an edited for conciseness representation of Luss’s over-view of the above book:

“Jack Whitehouse argues that the infamous biography of Jeremiah Smith is likely a fiction. A composite character borne of local legends cobbled to the stories of real-life adventurers to Fire Island. One adventurer was William Post Hawes (1803-1842).

Hawes, a New York lawyer, was also an avocational writer of Fire Island yarns. He crafted them from personal experiences, historic facts and fictional lore. Long Island local papers and the New York press popularized his fables.

He wrote under the byline J. Cypress, Jr., a pseudonym. From a collection of his short stories, “Sporting Scenes and Sundry Sketches: Being the Miscellaneous Writings of J. Cypress, Jr.,” (Forester, 1842), one first encounters the fictional “Jeremiah Smith” upon whom Fire Island legends were built.

Smith is introduced in “Fire Island-Ana”; or a “Week at the Fire Islands” [“Ana” being a collection of short stories].” Smith appears again in “The Wrecker of Raccoon Beach; or, The Daughter of the Sea.” “J. Cypress” appears in Wrecker as the narrator.

It is very likely the pseudonymous J. Cypress, Jr. visited Fire Island as William Post Hawes sometime after 1826 (the year the first lighthouse was built). Geographic and topographic details of the barrier beach and its inhabitants are accurately described.”
 
So just to get on the same page Hawes is the actual author using the pen name J. Cypress. His work is edited by Herbert using the pen name Forrester. In other words, the original author is using a pen name, and the editor of his work is doing the same.

Our research however has now produced some new information not surveyed by either Whitehouse or Luss. And that research is about Henry William Herbert the man we now suggest may be seen as the man who first promoted the legend of Jeremiah Smith for the masses.

Let’s remember that the anonymous diarist entry and the Mulford statement were documents from the 1800s privately held and did not reach public consciousness until the late 20th century.

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Herbert was not just a minor league editor. He has a place in American history as one of the co-founders of the American Monthly magazine that began to publish in 1834. He was one of its two founding editors. His term as editor was short and ended in 1835. Before the end of his tenure Herbert as Herbert not using an alias published in the August edition of the American Monthly magazine

This was a magazine with a public following. On 8-27-1835 the Evening Post publishes “Fire Island Anna Chapter 2” sourcing it to the August edition of the American Monthly. The newspaper account does not credit the actual author of the writing. But it is Hawes/Cypress as word for word the same content will appear in the Herbert/Forrester “Sporting Scenes and Sundry Sketches: Being the Miscellaneous Writings of J. Cypress, Jr.,” in 1842.

​It is in 1835 then that Jeremiah Smith makes his first public appearance on something of a mass scale. 

In the “Fire Island Ana Chapter 2” he is represented as a married man, tending to the FI lighthouse, his home is described as a "tenement" located as "the only householder on the island ridge". He is also a licensed vendor of "spurrets and things accorden". In this year Jeremiah Smith is not presented to the public as a land pirate. Instead, he's a law-abiding civil servant. There is a very minimal description of Jeremiah’s home, and a larger discussion of the beach hut of Rock Raynor (a far less known beach dweller, wreck salvager and ship wreck hero in his own right). 

He is not an outlaw, or outlier of any kind.

It's in the 1842 book and the chapter in that book "The Wrecker of Raccoon Beach" that Jeremiah Smith is presented to the public as he is now better known: a land pirate using a beach home on the ocean as a headquarters for his actions outside the law and his life on its edges. This is not civil servant Jeremiah Smith but folk lore Smith a free man living outside of the constraints of civil society and making a fortune for himself in the process. And Fire Island in all its pristine beauty is his kingdom by the ocean sea.

This inconsistent view of Jeremiah Smith was not addressed or referred to in any way in the 1842 book and today remains unexplained. Clearly how he was being presented to the public was undergoing a radical evolution but it was one cut short by real world events.

William Post Hawes (1803-1843) died at the early age of 40 due to a sudden illness.
Henry William Herbert (1807-1858) took his own life apparently due to mental depression at age 51 just a few years after the death of Hawes. 

It's perhaps ironic but with the death of these two men more tales of Jeremiah Smith ended but the
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legend of Jeremiah Smith would not. In fact, even as those men now are hidden in relative obscurity it's Jeremiah Smith that continues as legend and faux historical figure. 


This is the good link to the Cypress reference at p. 459 of this American Monthly edition 1835: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081752549&view=1up&seq=465

And this is a link to the 1835 newspaper article a lot easier to access for on point                            content https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83030384/1835-08-27/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=01%2F01%2F1830&index=13&date2=12%2F31%2F1835&words=Fire+Islands&to_year2=1835&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&from_year2=1830&proxdistance=5&page=1&county=New+York&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=fire+island+++&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&SearchType2=prox5 


Carl Luss and Jack Whitehouse both however have raised this issue with the entire content of the book: are the chapters relating to Smith credible?  The answer is: only that which can be corroborated can said to be so with any degree of certainty.

Jem Raynor could meet that test. He appears as a Smith pirate confederate in the anonymous diary and appears once again in the same role in “Sporting Scenes and Sketches”.  Whoever Jem was he has two totally unconnected and independent sources reporting about him. That certainly tends to lend credibility as to his existence and what he was doing and by implication what Jeremiah Smith was mutually involved in: black market trafficking of salvaged booty from ship wrecks (e.g., liquors, fabrics, furniture in sum things of value).

Knowing more about Jem Raynor does create the possibility of knowing more about Jeremiah Smith. He figures as one of those two Smith confederates who visited Jeremiah Smith on the Great South Beach in the earliest known account of him.


It’s in the Hawes/Cypress account specifically “the Wrecker of Raccoon Beach” that more details about him can be found. The section referenced in this narrative can be found at this link: #223 - Sporting scenes and sundry sketches; being the miscellaneous ... - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library | HathiTrust Digital Library
 
He is described as the captain of the sloop Intrepid. The ship is moored at Widows Creek in Islip a nearby south shore hamlet just across the Great South Bay from Fire Island. In its hold, covered by clams, a cargo will be received from Jeremiah Smith heading to the “slop shops” of Cherry Street (not otherwise located in the narrative).
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It turns out that Widows creek is in fact an old place name for Nichols creek in Islip which has an alternate place name of Nichols river an antecedent place name for today’s Connetquot River in Great River in Islip Township which is within short distance of Fire Island by bay sailing. So, there is some basis to hold the Hawes/Cypress account of that location as credible.

The reference to Cherry Street would appear to be a reference to Cherry St in New York City which in this time period was part of the Catherine market. It had numerous slips to accommodate ships bringing their cargoes to lower Manhattan. Again, there is a basis to hold the Hawes/Cypress account as credible as to just where the cargo could be heading.

​Lastly the term “slop shops” is an old term that describes a store at which cheap, ready-made clothing could be purchased. This certainly fits into the category of cargo described as being shipped: broad cloth. It’s certainly possible that the Catherine market had such shops in this time period. So, on all these points there is a ring of authentic reporting occurring.

That leaves the identity of Capt. Jem Raynor to be investigated. Nominated for that identity Capt. Jonathan Norton Raynor would seem to fit the bill. Jonathan Raynor (1810-1900) was according to several obituaries reviewed for this section a man of many reputations. He was considered an expert mariner of the ocean surf. From 1832-1845 he was a “smack skipper” sailing on a route along the Great South Bay to the Catherine Street and Fulton Street markets in New York City. Smack skipper is defined as the captain of a fishing vessel. Such ships were large enough to carry cargo. And of some interest, a lot actually, he had a connection to the Great South Beach on Fire Island. He was in charge of wreck rescues for a number of years.

It’s only speculation but the above information does put Capt. Jonathan Raynor within the Fire Island world of Jeremiah Smith at just about the same period of time. It certainly is some coincidence that he is a captain sailing from the Great South Bay to the very same market in New York city that in the Hawkes/Cypress account Jeremiah’s Smiths goods from Fire Island were ear marked for.

Certainly, too his wreck managing role too provides an interesting potential link to Jeremiah Smith a person either illegally, legally or legally and illegally at the same time salvaging wrecked goods off the Fire Island Beach. It can't be certainly said that their paths crossed. But in this time period the number of persons occupied in this niche industry of wreck salvage on a steady basis was small so the possibility that their paths crossed and their mutual interests coincided does exist. 
 
All other such references would have to meet the same test: is there anything else to make them dependable?

And at this point that seems to be a far and in between occurrence when considering all the content
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from the Hawes account of Jeremiah Smith. There are elements of fact mixed in with elements of fable. Reliability for truth in all cases requires more proof before claims can be depended on. How Hawes locates the Smith house serves as a good example. It's a tangle of both. 

But the Hawes accounts have a meaning beyond whether there are wholly truthful or not.  To the public the details he provided about Jeremiah Smith helped create a folklore character promoted into the public mind by his editor.  Herbert did so first by introducing Smith to the American public through the American Monthly magazine, and then later by editing Hawes stories in the form of a book that has gone through reprinting from 1842 to current times. A hard cover 2015 copy of this book is available on Amazon reprinted because: “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it”

For the purposes of this survey what the Hawes authored accounts have to say, whether credible or not, is that Jeremiah Smith did have a house on FI, a rather large one at that, location not exactly provided in his second account opening the door for including Cherry Grove as one of those areas on Raccoon beach where his house might have been located.

JEREMIAH SMITH: SPECULATIVE ACCOUNTS

We have finished looking at the “eye-witness” accounts of Jeremiah Smith                                                                                           
We have been outlining the beginnings of how the more public of those accounts set the foundation for public perceptions of Jeremiah Smith. The accounts varied as to the description of his house. One thing they all shared was a vagueness as to where any such house of any kind was actually located other than it was somewhere on Raccoon Beach or its better known place name of that time period the Great South Beach.

In time that will change as 20th and 21st century historical reports will begin to speculate with more specifics as to where his house may have been located while at the same time adding to the legend foundation created in the early 19th century.


1958

Douglas Toumey

In 1958 Douglas Toumey, a contributor to the Long Island Forum, authored an essay called “Fire Island’s Lone Wolf-Wrecker” his account of the history of Jeremiah Smith.

As for the location of the Smith house he relates that Jeremiah Smith “landed near a gloomy forest located at what is now Point of Woods”. He then relates much as in the second Hawes account,
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“The Wrecker of Raccoon Beach; or, The Daughter of the Sea.”, that Smith first built a hut later expanded into a house with windows snug enough to withstand the winter as it had a stove for Smith to keep warm.

He offers the very practical assessment that the first hut was built “out of the wreckage piled waist high on the beach” later expanded into a “large house, a one story rambling structure, having the garret floored…”.

Toumey also took the history of Jeremiah Smith one step further. Before him there is no one that has related this account of this action when he alleges Smith took: “”two large oil lamps gleamed through Jeremiah’s windows to guide any that might be thrown ashore by the breakers”.
“Breakers” definitely refers to ocean waves and not the waters of the Great South Bay which may rise and be whipped by white caps but is not the home of breaking waves.

That this house was located on the ocean beach Toumey further confirms by claiming that following storms Jeremiah Smith would only need to open the door of his house “to look east and west along the beach” to look for wreckage.

Toumey himself describes his essay as “part true and part legend”. Much of his content mirrors the content found in the Hawes account identified above. He does not otherwise corroborate his essay with any sources of any kind or independent facts.
                                                                                                                                              But he is the first writer to suggest a definite location for the Smith house: Point of Woods.

In terms of credibility this essay offers little if any verifiable information to allow for any judgement other than it is not credible unless verified by other facts if found.  

Nevertheless, its contribution to the legend of Jeremiah Smith is considerable as it may have influenced other writers such as Madeline Johnson and Charles Dickerson in later years.
 
1959 and 1961 Toumey and George Lewis Weeks Jr.

In March 1959 Douglas Toumey wrote again for the LI Forum this time an article entitled the “Fire Island Map of 1798”. He describes in vivid detail what appears to be his own review of map found in the archives of the Department of Public Works of the State of New York in Albany.

Among other details described about the map he also makes note of this historical feature included in it “Of particular interest to the writer is the fact that the map shows a house on the Island, labeled James Smith House, and almost at the identical spot where we saw the remains of a huge fireplace uncovered some fifty years ago, which we described in the February Forum”.

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The article written by Tuomey in February of the same year is entitled “An Ancient Brick Fire Place”. It recounts a fifty-year historical search by Toumey to explain the uncovering of a large ancient brick fireplace that occurred during a construction project he witnessed 50 years before as a child. In it he provides a location description for that discovery area: Ocean Beach.

But the story of the Wheeler map and the James Smith house does not end here. In October 1961 Toumey pens another article entitled “Sequence to Fire Island Legends” in the LI Forum.

Toumey acknowledges some blow back to his earlier claim that the Jeremiah Smith house as he had maintained in 1958 was located in Point of Woods.

In his defense he relates this information about the Samuel Wheeler map. He reports that the Samuel Wheeler map was found in the archives as noted above but not by him but by Islip Town historian George Lewis Weeks Jr. The map discovered by Weeks Jr. during independent research made circa 1955.

However in this 1961 essay unaccountably Toumey reports a claim made by Weeks about the Wheeler map namely “there in plain print appeared a small black square labeled “Jeremiah Smith House.” He then alleges the icon for the house in the map appears in Point of Woods thus substantiating his claims about where the Smith house was located that he made in 1958.

We used the words “unaccountably” because its’ clear that Toumey knew that the Wheeler map did not contain an icon designating a house as belonging to Jeremiah Smith but to James Smith. He said so earlier.
                                                                                                                                                                                                   
While this writer has not been able to find an online copy of the Wheeler map we did find a physical copy of it at the Long Island Museum in Riverhead and took some photos of it. One section has been published on the FI Star and for reference you can look there to see that map photo. Go to the Facebook page of the FI Star. There is a search box for content. Write Goodbye Jeremiah Smith. The article with that title from January 30 2020 should appear and along with it a photo of a section of the Samuel Wheeler map in question.

For some sense of orientation in the upper left-hand corner the map shows “the Fire Islands”, the house is located on FI itself south of that marine landmark.  Interestingly its location is very much in line with sailing directions provided in accounts earlier in this narrative that refer to the Fire islands as a reference point used to find Jeremiah Smith’s home on FI.

In this writer’s opinion the map locates a home west of modern-day Point of Woods and much more in the vicinity of modern day Saltaire. Find the map at FI
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Star: https://www.facebook.com/FireIslandStar

The real potential impact though of the 1961 Toumey article is that he did not disclaim that there was a map from 1798 that said there was a home on Fire Island proving the existence of Jeremiah Smith’s home. Since Charles Dickerson’s sources were not revealed by him it’s remains possible, again speculative, that as an active historian at the time he would have been keeping himself up to date on LI history and a good source for doing that would have been to have been reading the LI Forum. How he jumped to locate Jeremiah Smith in Cherry Grove and not Point of Woods is unknown but he is exact about locating Jeremiah Smith on FI with a house in 1795 very congruent with Toumey’s last words on the subject of when Jeremiah Smith had a home on Fire Island at all.

If that is what happened, as too often seems to occur, Dickerson will ultimately compound Toumey’s error and this double error will become amplified in time when the Dickerson narrative takes root as the go to standard for understanding Jeremiah Smith’s history and the history of Cherry Grove too.

1969 and 1975 Charles Dickerson

It is now time to look at Charles Dickerson, perhaps the most influential factor after Herbert and Hawes, whose writings promoted the Jeremiah Smith narrative and by incorporation the earliest purported accounts of the early history of Cherry Grove.
                                                                                                                                              We have looked at Suffolk County News accounts from 1974-76 concerning Charles Dickerson to get some back ground about him. He was born and raised in Sayville and appears to have been a lifelong resident. He was a Harvard graduate.  As an Army soldier in the Second World War, he earned four medals from his country for bravery and one from France. He was a real estate agent and an otherwise successful businessman. He was a member of the Sayville Historical Society. By 1974 he was widely recognized as Sayville’s community historian. He lectured in Sayville and nearby communities about Sayville and Fire Island. His lectures were often accompanied with a photo slide show of local historical landmarks. Some of his lectures were about early Fire Island history that included its pirate past.

He is identified in several articles as the “Mayor of Fire Island”. Cherry Grove historian Carl Luss has identified Dickerson as a  Cherry Grove resident during his lifetime.

He was a regular columnist for the Suffolk County News writing on community history. Before he published his “History of the Sayville Community” in 1975 Charles Dickerson published a newspaper article about the early history of Cherry Grove in the Fire Island News. It is referenced in Esther Newton’s 1993 history of Cherry Grove. It appeared in that paper’s edition on 7-19-69 under the title “A Century at the Grove”.  This writer has not been able to find a copy of that article. The Fire Island News archive is not online.  Its paper archive is not available to any member of the public to look at as per our personal contact with one of its editors. They have an archive; it’s just not
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organized sufficiently for review by researchers. We are still hoping to find one on a copy one day.

In the meantime we do have part of it excerpted by Esther Newton from her 1993 volume “Cherry Grove Fire Island”.  Her quote from the 1969 article is brief but it gets a place of primary mention as it appears on the first page of the Newton book.  It introduced the Dickerson Jeremiah Smith narrative to a larger public since Newton’s book has had both a national and international audience.

The Newton’s book still continues as Cherry Grove’s only real historical text for the period it surveyed. Her book has insured the preservation of a unique part of American history of interest to many all across this country and the world and has preserved Dickerson’s words as well.

This is what she culled out of Dickerson’s account 1969 account: “The nucleus of Cherry Grove, the oldest continuously inhabited resort on Fire Island, was created in 1869 when Archie Perkinson bought pirate Jeremiah Smith house for 1,250 dollars, and began serving shore dinners to the public”.

His 1975 book was previewed with some chapters appearing early in 1975 for the readers of the Suffolk County News before his Sayville history became hard bound and was sold at five dollars a copy to the general public locally in Sayville.

His book would have a profound influence on how the public would view the early history of Cherry Grove. His rather brief narrative eventually became adopted as the gold standard of that history by subsequent historians and writers of all kinds. Each adoption of his history sometimes recognized and credited and many times not, expanding the reach of his original work to a much larger audience.

Charles Dickerson in his 1975 Sayville history added to his 1969 Grove history account when he wrote these two entries about Jeremiah Smith.

In the first entry Dickerson writes: “The first white man to live on Fire Island was a pirate named Jeremiah Smith, who in 1795 built a cottage where Cherry Grove is now located. When ships got stranded on the sand bar off Fire Island in a winter storm, he would kill the crew and loot the ship”. (Pages 80-81).

In the second entry this is how Dickerson elaborated about Smith although by inference: “The oldest community on Fire Island is Cherry Grove. It was in 1869 that Archie Perkinson from Patchogue bought a mile of beach from the Smith Estate of St. George’s Manor in Shirley. He paid twenty-five cents per foot from bay to ocean Archie Perkinson took over the old pirate house that had been built in 1795…He erected a small dock and put up a sign Shore Dinners”. (p. 82)

We don’t know what sources Dickerson provided for his claims made in his 1969 newspaper article.
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In his 1975 book he provided no sources for any of his claims leaving them otherwise uncorroborated. Charles Dickerson never married and had no children. His photos and whatever historical documents he collected during his life time appear to have disappeared. This editor contacted the Sayville Historical Society to see if they had any of his papers in their archives. They advised they did not and did not have any other information as to whether they did survive his death or who might have them if they had.

What is notable about the Dickerson narrative though is that he has now added Jeremiah Smith squarely into the history of Cherry Grove. He directly identifies Jeremiah Smith as a pirate. He cites a 1795 date for when Smith constructed his house now called the “old pirate house” and he locates it in Cherry Grove. As we have speculated earlier it’s possible that an essay written by Douglas Toumey had influenced his views in this direction by error.
 
Dickerson is the writer however who has now shaped a wondrous story:  the little house a former pirate haven hidden amidst a grove of cherry trees, discovered by the Perkinsons who buy it, build it up, and found a new community.


1983 Madeline Johnson
 
Madeline Johnson is the author of “Fire Island 1650s-1980s”, the only book that reports a history of Fire Island as a whole. It’s considered a principal text due to that status.  At page 56 Johnson writes: “Smith built a house in the late 18th century between present day Point of Woods and Cherry Grove”.

Madeline Johnson does devote several pages of her book to Jeremiah Smith. She specifically references Charles Dickerson and Hawes for a lot of her reporting. Some of the Toumey account also appears to have been incorporated into her narrative without credit (i.e. Point of Woods location for house made of driftwood).

Reviewing it anew it’s now clear that her narrative represents an engaging incorporation of those authors presented as fact creating a renewed foundation for beliefs about Jeremiah Smith’s history.

Yet this must also be said about it, unlike Toomey who admitted his work was both true and legend Madeline Johnson does not distinguish between the two. She has accepted at face value prior accounts as included by her. Instead, she expertly codified “facts” published by a number of authors before her

But as with Weeks, Toumey and Dickerson before her through her widely read book, considered a text by many, the Jeremiah Smith narrative that has been evolving for decades earlier gets a new boost of visibility and acceptance. 
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1993 Esther Newton

In her 1993 book “Cherry Grove Fire Island” Newton incorporates Dickerson’s 1969 newspaper article “A Century at the Grove”. Borrowing from the Dickerson article she wrote: “The nucleus of Cherry Grove, the oldest continually resort on Fire Island, was created in 1869 when Archie Perkinson bought pirate Jeremiah Smith house for 1,250 dollars, and began serving shore dinners to the public”.

She thus places Jeremiah Smith in Cherry Grove and his house too. Since her book is considered a history text by many, and still continues to be read as a text and as a popular work of non-fiction it continues to magnify Charles Dickerson's views about the role of Jeremiah Smith and his pirate haven house. 


2008 Jack Whitehouse 

In 2008 Jack Whitehouse published “13 legends of Fire Island: And the Great South Bay”. A chapter from that book “Fire Island’s First and Foremost Infamous Pirate” takes up the Jeremiah Smith narrative.

We have already referred to this book since it contains the anonymous diary entry from the early 1800s that provides the first eye witness account of Jeremiah Smith and his house.

Most of the chapter is taken up with sourcing the diary and then republishing relevant sections in full. Whitehouse’s other comments appear to incorporate elements of what Hawes, Dickerson and Toumey have written before. It's another capsule version of the Smith narrative a la Johnson but concise.

One new fact presented by Whitehouse is that he says that the Smith “beach” house was built “not far from, if not immediately within, the business district of present day Cherry Grove.

He does not however provide any independent substantiation for the claim.

This chapter is online and there is a link to see it all.

His book emphasizes the pirate element of the Jeremiah Smith narrative and it pushes into the 21st century the Jeremiah Smith narrative into public imagination.




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Link:“13 Legends”…: https://books.google.com/books?id=SeT4TmFqF_AC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false


2011 Jack Whitehouse

In 2011 Jack Whitehouse authors another book about Fire Island called “Fire Island: Heroes and Villains on Long Island Wild Shore” He has a chapter about Jeremiah Smith entitled “The Truth About Fire Island Jeremiah Smith”.

We have already referenced this book in our look at the Hawes Variations section. We used an assessment from Grove historian Carl Luss to describe the essential content of this chapter. We have also referred to it because it presented then new information about the Jeremiah Smith narrative in the form of the Mulford document.

In his earlier work Whitehouse opened up new ground when he unearthed the anonymous diarist entries about Jeremiah Smith thought to be written in the early 1800s. Here he has a new document unearthed. He discloses a document from the late 1800s that offers potential new insights into Jeremiah Smith’s back ground. That is the Mulford document previously referenced.

Since we have discussed these documents in our earlier narrative about eye witness accounts we are not going to do so again.

While the 2008 book ended with a full throated endorsement of the idea that Smith was a pirate the 2011 book does not.
                                                                                                                                              Whitehouse now takes a more cautious view suggesting that the entire Jeremiah Smith narrative may be flawed and not credible. It represents the first critical revisionist view of Jeremiah Smith authored by anyone before.

The only other item to note is that he seems to locate the Smith house, if there was one on Raccoon Beach (Great South Beach) somewhere in the modern day Kismet area of western Fire Island but without comment as to why.
.
This chapter is online to see in full: The Truth About Fire Island Pirate Jeremiah Smith:
https://books.google.com/books?id=4_l-CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=jack+white+house+fire+island&source=bl&ots=325N2gWd-F&sig=ACfU3U2CX6ZRIKqDrWPU2_h-XGpw9FzfRw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinsrK5pfLoAhV9lnIEHRb4Bpc4ChDoATAAegQIChAo#v=onepage&q=jack%20white%20house%20fire%20island&f=false
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2019 Carl Luss

In 2019 Carl Luss authored an article for the FI News that year entitled, and right on point, “Jeremiah Smith: A Cherry Grove Pirate Story”. We have referenced it already in our discussion of what Hawes wrote about Jeremiah Smith.

Much like this narrative he surveys various accounts made about Jeremiah Smith referencing the same authors that this writer has done more or less.  Like the 2011 Whitehouse narrative it too is a revisionist document. It concludes among other things that the association of piracy with Jeremiah Smith is more fiction than fact.

It provides a needed analysis of what Hawes wrote about Jeremiah Smith it’s a very sharp, well thought out and well researched investigation.

You can find a link to it to be read in full: http://fireisland-news.com/jeremiah-smith-a-cherry-grove-pirate-story/?fbclid=IwAR17aCunUdQhlb8Wi1owIXILFX_-rI44tUtuL_ngDsRPEZDoSDY7IT0kQm4

On reflection the Luss analysis can now be seen in a different light as a much more revisionist version of the Jeremiah Smith saga than perhaps its author intended or foresaw himself. Whether he intended to do or not Luss, one might argue, opened the door to revising authors Jack Whitehouse, Harry H. Havermeyer upon who Whitehouse depended in part, and revealed yet again just how much Charles Dickerson’s “history” served more as distraction than factual reporting. Luss did this by doing something that Whitehouse did not: he looked at the Mulford document and saw it in a different light. Because he did we have too and as a result have gone further through the door of history that Luss first opened.
Discussed earlier it was pointed out that Jack Whitehouse discovered the Mulford document that apologist biographical narrative authored by Edward Mulford Jeremiah Smith’s grandson. He also assessed it searching for what was reliable about its content and what wasn’t. One of the points for doing that hinged on deconstructing these sentences from the Mulford statement, this one about Jeremiah Smith’s early years: “Jeremiah Smith, was born in Suffolk County L.I. New York Sept. 15, 177 3. His occupation in early life was a farmer in Dix Hills and Clay Pits, Huntington, from thence went to Islip as a “Club house” Keeper and thence to Fire Island opposite and south of east Island, as Public House Keeper and watering place, and from thence to Patchogue L.I. where he died Aug. 8, 1860.”
Whitehouse zeroed in on Mulford’s assertion that Jeremiah Smith served for some time as a “public house keeper” by assessing that based on the historical account of Fire Island during this period provided best by Harry Havermeyer in his book “Fire Island’s Surf Hotel”. From that source
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Whitehouse could find no documentation that could substantiate such a claim. Whitehouse concluded that the only business that would have qualified as having the kind of “public house keeper” as described by Mulford would have been at the Fire Island lighthouse or the Dominy House and their histories were well documented excluding Jeremiah Smith from them. He concluded that while the Mulford claim was flawed it still might have some credibility not for place of employment but for the kind of employment that Jeremiah Smith might have been engaged in: private guest house management operating on a minimal basis for visitors to Fire Island sufficient for those not looking beyond bare essentials: a place to sleep on a floor out of the rain close to premium fishing and hunting otherwise.
When Carl Luss looked at the Jeremiah Smith history he did not reject Whitehouse’s view that Smith could not have been working at the Fire Island lighthouse or Dominy house. Instead, he introduced an entirely different person into the historical mix of the early decades of Fire Island: the history of the Oakes House.
 
It’s important to note that the Oakes House gets no mention in Havermeyer’s history of the Surf Hotel which includes some history of the Dominy House too. In fact, it is Havermeyer who nominates the Dominy House as the first hostelry on Fire Island under the management of Felix Dominy and his wife Phoebe. Time periods are important to note because the ones of relevance must be periods that would potentially include Jeremiah Smith in them.
Felix Dominy became the Fire Island Lighthouse keeper in 1835. As per Whitehouse’s reprise of Havermeyer’s history, Felix and his wife took in boarders at their quarters almost immediately running a very informal place for food and sleep over accommodations. Since Felix was actually a civil servant during this period of time what he and his wife were doing with government space was pushing the envelope of the permissible. But by 1844 he had built a new structure nearby the lighthouse and this building would become the Dominy House that he and his wife would run opening it as a place to eat, drink and stay for tourists to visit in their name with his employment at the Lighthouse done with.
It's Havermeyer who nominates the Dominy House as the first hotel on Fire Island and Whitehouse agrees with that view too. It’s Luss however who introduces the fact that alongside perhaps even in advance of the Dominy House there was another “public house” on Fire Island nearby in fact and that would be the Oakes House.
 
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However further research, begun by Carl Luss, now offers the possibility that Havermeyer’s claim is not factually accurate and dependence on it has obscured the role of the Oakes house as the first tavern on Fire Island and also a second previously hidden purpose: it’s not Jeremiah Smith’s house that served as the pirate headquarters for early Fire Island it’s the Oakes house that did.
This is what Luss had to say about the Oakes connection to the history of Jeremiah Smith:
If Hawes did, in fact, sail to the Fire Island Lighthouse and visited the real lighthouse keeper, Felix Dominy (recounted in “Fire Island-Ana”), between 1826 and 1842 (Hawes’ death), then it could be there he learned about a man named Smith Oak[e]s. A very real land pirate and scurrilous character. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Jan 1848) identifies Oakes who, with his wife, owned of a “sort of public house” a mile or so from the lighthouse at Fire Island beach as of 1843. In other news the house is described as built from ships’ salvage. The “S. Oaks” (sic) domicile was still in existence in 1858, depicted at the “East Beach” fork of Fire Island inlet on a map of Islip and Brookhaven townships drawn by J. [John] Chace, Jr.
 The Oakes family was suspected of preying upon the shipwrecked for many years. They were at the scene of the wrecked “Louisa” (1843). Three years later Mrs. Oakes wife is discovered selling property stolen from that ship’s captain in Brooklyn and New York City. The captain had taken shelter at the Oakes home at the time of the shipwreck. Newspaper accounts associate the Oakes with several other Fire Island shipwrecks of the era.
 It appears that Hawes developed in “Wrecker” a means to warn potential shipwreck victims, wreck masters and mainland police of land piracy occurring near the Fire Island inlet. As a lawyer he knew to protect his sources, avoid charges of libel and the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence in a court of law. To get his cautionary tale into print, circumventing these obstacles, he wrote a “Roman á Clef.” The literal translation is “novel with a key.”
 Real people are disguised as fictional characters in such stories. The fictional land pirate “Jeremiah Smith” substitutes for the actual Smith Oakes, also for the lighthouse keeper (and local informant?) Felix Dominy.
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Factual events – the pillaging of shipwrecks and murder of witnesses, take place in a fictional setting, “Raccoon Beach.” The author/narrator (Hawes) adopts a pseudonym “J. Cypress Jr.” to further transmute fact into fiction. Hawes’ principal characters with slightly altered names and occupations, and actual topographical locales, were well known to mainlanders at the time of his writings. These details, and more, are “keys” in the Wrecker narrative signifying the real land pirate (Oakes) and his factual location.
 In a note to the editors who would publish his short stories, Hawes offers “part of the andro [man]-andgeo- graphy [area]” as requested to identify the person and his location. The editors claimed “scandal is afloat, and the wrong men are pointed at.” Perhaps one wronged man being the innocent raconteur, Uncle Jerry Smith. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle eventually exposed the brigand, Smith Oakes, and his accomplice wife. They ran a “sort of public house” (nearby today’s Saltaire) that certainly served “spurrets and things accorden.” Succeeding events would seem to validate any rumors or gossip circulating about this villainous couple during on-site research by Hawes for his Fire Island fables. Taken together with the manuscript by Samuel Adams Smith this seems to vindicate the unfounded piratical “notoriety and fame” of Jeremiah Kirkland (“Uncle Jerry”) Smith of Fire Island. A fiction accepted as fact for over two centuries.
Carl Luss opened this door. On the other side is quite a more complex tale that first imagined. It all begins with Hannah Oakes and her story now along with her husband and those of many others now about to be told.
HANNAH OAKES 1843-1850 IN THE EYE OF THE PRESS

Hannah Oakes’ history is a bit complicated. Along with her husband she is among the first to found a hospitality business on Fire Island and the first woman to do so. In the disaster scene that accompanied the wreck of the Elizabeth she was caring figure who cared for the living and the dead. Yet she also does appear to be one of Fire Island’s first land pirates just as Karl Luss has previously alluded to. Which if true is somewhat ironic because it’s Jeremiah Smith to whom history has assigned the major credit for that role in the early history of Fire Island. That would make her of course another example of the pattern in the earlier historical reporting of Fire Island to assign to
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men the acts of women.

But this is getting ahead of the story.

Hannah Oakes’ history is going to be outlined in this form: first the newspaper trail for the years 1847-1850. Then everything else that has been discovered.

While her actual Fire Island history begins in 1839 it’s newspaper coverage that begins about her and her husband in 1847 and continues on to 1850 that provides a lot detail about her history and that of the Smith Oakes public house as well. That newspaper history is good to know for another reason. It will help provide some context for the information in the Thoreau account that will be related later on.

That period is book ended by two historical events. The wreck of the Louisa in 1843 which the newspaper accounts of 1847-48 reference, and the wreck of the Elizabeth in 1850. Their stories are bound up with Smith Oakes and his wife and are worth telling in their own right. They open doors onto other important parts of the early history of Fire Island. That is the history of the perils of the sea off Fire Island, and the perils of the sands of Fire Island.

Both Smith Oakes and Hannah are bound up in that history. They are at times scorned as villains, and later renowned as heroes. Hannah Oakes in the end finds some redemption for her prior suspected bad acts. She will then at the moment of her good reputation restored find herself standing next to her husband just as at the same moment he returns to infamy.

Not long afterwards they both then disappear from history.

Ahead are tales of pioneering hopes, avarice and the foolishness it sometimes breeds, the terror of the ocean seas, heart break, broken ambitions and courage theirs and others bound up in the destinies of both Smith Oakes and Hannah whom fate will equally bind to the destinies of others.

It’s a true tale of Fire Island from its earliest time. 


1847 THE LOUISA AFFAIR BEGINS TO SURFACE

This part of this history begins with a review of a multitude of newspaper articles that have been unearthed relating in one way or another to Hannah and her husband.

The first newspaper account appears in 1847. It seemingly appears out of nowhere but as other news accounts follow it just how it relates to them will become quickly apparent.

On 11-30-1847 Smith Oakes takes an ad in the New York Tribune. He posts a reward of fifty dollars for anyone who will identify for purposes of prosecution for the charge of defamation any person who has defamed his business on Fire Island. He is concerned that his personal reputation and that of his business will be harmed by false claims of a robbery occurring at the business “said to have
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taken place some time ago”. He denies any such event occurred.

If the purpose of the ad was to prevent the worst from occurring it failed to ward off such a perceived calamity on the horizon. Worse was on the way.

​1848 A STORM OF A DIFFERENT KIND BREAKS OVER FIRE ISLAND

On January 8, 1848, just a few days after Smith Oakes’ reward notice for information about anyone defaming his reputation, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle publishes in its pages a news report titled “Curious Developments”. It’s a seminal account about the history of both Hannah and Smith Oakes. From its words the first public picture of both them is drawn. It is the first public acknowledgement of their business the Smith Oakes public house on Fire Island. It also reaches into the public’s fears about crime on Fire Island by telling a tale of the errant chest of the brig Louisa and its captain searching for his lost gold and jewels once within it.

Because it is so important, setting the stage for years to come, in ways evident when first read and in other ways future foretelling, it’s reprinted here in full.

“Curious Developments:

Wreckers have from time immemorial sustained a most unenviable character; but the facilities which they almost uniformly enjoy of gratifying their piratical propensity for plunder, enable them in most cases, to perpetrate their outrages with tolerable impunity, so that very few reliable developments have directly come to light. Very few convictions have ensued for the inhuman offence of preying upon those who have had the misfortune to be shipwrecked. Revelations in this connection have recently transpired, which very conclusively affix the guilt of a nefarious robbery at the scene of a wreck, upon an individual who has hitherto been suspected thereof.

It seems that the brig Louisa, Capt. Michael Baker, from Harve, was wrecked in 1843 upon Fire Island beach, and while the wreckers were getting out the cargo, which was mostly saved from the elements, a chest belonging to the captain, was taken from the tent on the beach, to a sort of public house on Fire Island kept by one Smith Oakes. This chest contained some very valuable articles among which were eight rich shawls, four gold watches, diamond broaches, and finger rings.

When Capt. Baker returned from New York whither he had been to transact the necessary business with the underwriters in relation to the wreck, the chest and contents were missing. He accordingly circulated a handbill offering a handsome reward for the recovery thereof; and caused a search warrant to be issued directed against the premises of the Oakes, but all to no purpose, and he accordingly gave up all hope of ever finding the valuables.

When three years had elapsed to which the finding of an indictment for criminal offence is limited, the stolen property began by degrees to emerge from the place where it had “long laid hid”, and proofs as strong as holy writ were obtained about the mode in which it had appeared. About a year ago, the mate of the Louisa alleges that he accidentally encountered the wife of Smith Oakes on board one of the ferry boats at Brooklyn, wearing an elegant and costly shawl, not usually worn by
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the ladies of Fire Island, which bore no distant resemblance to those deposited in the chest above alluded to.

Quite recently she sold an elegant diamond finger ring worth from thirty to forty dollars to an acquaintance in this city for the paltry sum of five dollars; and within a month she has likewise, bartered away at a jeweler’s shop in Fulton street, for a gold chain two more costly diamond rings.
These transactions having come to the knowledge of Captain Baker, he conferred with the holders of the rings, which he identified as part of his missing property, and the purchasers readily delivered them up on his representations. In addition to the above circumstances, we are told it can be proved that Oakes himself has occasionally exhibited gold watches; and worn common a diamond broach, of about $100 value.

These facts, which can be amply proved make out a tolerably strong case of guilt, and as by the operation of law the participants therein is now not amenable to criminal prosecution it is no more than strict justice requires that he should be held answerable at the bar of public opinion; and we should not do our duty as journalists were we to suppress anything that may tend to lessen the disgraceful scenes which there is too much reason to believe are enacted at wrecks along our sea coast”.

On 1-11-1848 the Jamaica Farmer reprised the Brooklyn Eagle report in its pages giving further life to the Eagle post.

On 1-27-1848 an article titled the “The Wreck Plunder Affair” appeared in both the Brooklyn Eagle and the Kings County Democrat. The story referred to an article related to the affair that had appeared in yet another period newspaper the Star earlier in the month.

This is the account from that date as printed:

“The Wreck Plunder Affair: In a communication of Mr. Wise to the Star, very properly denying the imputation of having purchased two rings from Mrs. Smith Oakes far below their real value, said rings having been purloined from Capt. Baker of the bark Louisa, which was wrecked on Fire Island beach, we regret to see the name of Mrs. Ann Oakes as prominently displayed. The circumstances might mislead some who are unacquainted with the high character she bears for integrity. We have the most reliable assurances that her presence on the occasion of Mr. Wise’s establishment was entirely accidental, and that she had not the least information that the rings were not honestly in the possession of Mrs. Smith Oakes. It is only necessary for us to make these remarks to those who do not know Mrs. Ann Oakes.”

Not supplied in the news account is any accounting for Ann Oakes. Research into her has led to this provisional opinion about her. She appears to be the wife of Andrew Oakes, brother of Smith Oakes, and therefore Hannah’s sister-in-law. Andrew Oakes had died several years earlier after suffering from a sudden illness, inflammation of the lungs, after swimming in the waters off Fire Island. Ann Oakes was therefore his widow.
While Ann Oakes gets a pass for any inadvertent involvement in buying stolen goods the person duping her is Hannah Oakes who does not get any kind words for her alleged acts thus cementing
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further an image of duplicity attributed to her by the earlier newspaper accounts in January 1848.

In any case the fire that Smith Oaks had sought to damp out in late December 1847, before it began to burn, did appear to snuff out soon enough as there are no other newspaper accounts that have been found taking up the subject of the so-called Wreck Plunder Affair after the end of January 1848.

As per the Eagle account the statute of limitations on any theft had passed therefore those who might have been otherwise charged due to a “tolerably strong case of guilt” never faced any criminal penalties. Capt. Baker got back some of his missing goods.

For Smith Oakes and Hannah though they were left with a legacy of having been tried in the press for being land pirates. Whether true or not what the newspaper articles did establish was the existence of a public house on Fire Island dating back to at least 1843, one year before the historically recognized Dominy House opened in 1844. The use of the term public house also conveyed that the business served food, drink and had overnight sleeping accommodations. And it established two owners for it who in addition to their hotel duties might or might not be involved in trafficking goods from the beach, stolen, to the city and elsewhere for sale.

This propels both Smith and Hannah Oakes into the historical position of being the first persons to run a business on Fire Island, and Hannah as the first woman to claim that title for her gender a rare role for women in the history of Fire Island with that status.

Smith Oakes is at this time 38 years old and his wife is 36 years old.

The articles also exposed the strong public concern and anger towards “wreckers” those who preyed on stranded ships, their cargoes, their crews and passengers washed up on the Fire Island beach. In 1848 Hannah and her husband Smith were the leading targets of that anger and scorn. They did survive though and kept to their business on Fire Island however chastened by the events of 1848.

However, this was to change. Two years later the eyes of the nation would be upon them and others who crowded into their small part of Fire Island: the Elizabeth had arrived born by wind, water and Fate.

1850: THE WRECK OF THE ELIZABETH AND THE DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER

On July 17th 1850 the bark Elizabeth that left port in Leghorn Italy about seven weeks earlier, off course, and buffeted by a sudden July gale, crashed into a sandbar off Point of Woods Fire Island. It carried a cargo of fine marble, rags, a seven-foot marble statue of John C. Calhoun, various sundry other articles of freight, and three special passengers. One of them Margaret Fuller who was at the peak of her career as a writer.


 
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In Italy on assignment as a news reporter, the first woman war correspondent in American history, she met Giovani Angelo Ossili, had a child by him, Angelo, and became entangled in Italian Revolutionary politics. By late 1849 fortunes had turned against the Italian revolutionaries her husband included and by early 1850 Margaret Fuller now Margaret Fuller Ossili decided to return to America with her husband and their two-year-old child for a fresh start.

There are many accounts of the tragedy that befell her and her family who all perished. For the purposes of this short history of Hannah Oakes the importance of this event is that it led to a coincidence of historical factors that exposed both her and her husband to national attention in different forms.

If after the scandal of 1848 both she and her husband had retreated to the isolation of their home on Fire Island by July 1850 this strategy was about to become upended. The world was coming to them.

In the first instance the wreck of the Elizabeth drew the curious and plunderers. One newspaper account reported that a thousand people had come to the wreck site. Some of them were drawn by the lure of plunder: Margaret Ossili was said to have a 3,000-dollar ring on her finger and her body was not yet found (it never was). There was clothing to be found. Almonds and fruits thrown up on the beach sand. And whatever other possessions the crew and passengers had were also fair game for thievery.

The seven-ton statue was beyond any means of being hauled away. It was buried deeply in the sand beneath shallow waters. The real treasure of the ship was its cargo of 150 tons of fine marble that too beyond removal by simple carts safe beneath the waves of the Atlantic. But everything else washed up onto the beach was day and night the target of many people looking for anything that they could find and take for themselves before the authorities arrived to safeguard what remained.

The tragedy also brought another class of visitors. Margaret Fuller had worked as a reporter for Horace Greely’s New York City’s Tribune. He knew her and immediately dispatched a reporter to the scene of the ship wreck to help find her body and to report on the events of the disaster.

Elsewhere Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s finest poets, also had a personal relationship with Margaret Fuller. It was Emerson who would send Henry David Thoreau, another one of America’s great writers, on a double mission to the disaster scene. He was to help find Margaret Fuller’s body. And the treasure he was seeking among others was the last manuscript she was working on. It was her history of the Second Republic of Italy the very same movement both she and her husband had been caught up in before having to flee its end.

The newspaper accounts in July and the Thoreau account both establish that due to proximity to the wreck site the Smith Oakes house became the central location for the rescue and recovery effort. They were both present on Fire Island when the ship crashed against the unseen sandbar. Newspaper accounts related Smith Oakes’ own efforts to help rescue crew members and passengers from the water. Hannah was pictured as caring for victims of the storm. She also had a role in trying to save papers from the ship that at one point were thought to be pages from the Fuller transcript
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being so urgently sought by Thoreau. They turned out be papers of hers but not the manuscript being sought which ultimately disappeared into the sea never found.

Thoreau’s field notes from his visit, in the form of a contemporaneous diary, have been known for some time. They have been valued in particular for documenting a number of things. They show the failed efforts to rescue the passengers and crew that might have gone another way but didn’t. The notes also document the predatory behavior of “pirates” who looted the cargo of the ship indifferent to the fate of crew and passengers while doing so.

For the purposes of this narrative however the Thoreau diary is important for another reason that seemingly has escaped earlier analysis by prior writers. It captures Fire Island life at a particular time period 1850 and in particular Smith Oakes and Hannah emerge from his accounts too with more detail than has been discovered before.

Smith Oakes turned out to be something of a Virgil for Thoreau accompanying him almost everywhere and providing details about his life in the process. Hannah too was an assistant to him and she too seemed agreeable to talk to him about her life. Thoreau as well was a sharp observer and one thing he did observe was the Smith Oakes house. Although it turned out as honest as Smith Oakes appeared to be in sharing details of his life with Thoreau it later turned out he was keeping a secret not discovered until Thoreau was gone. He too was a pirate and was robbing cargo even as he otherwise appeared to be a benevolent agent.

THOREAU’S FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF FIRE ISLAND: AMONG THE PIRATES 

Thoreau described the area of western Fire Island where he was visiting:
“The western end near Fire Is. inlet is called Fire Is. Beach from near some half sunken islands of that name in the Bay opposite”.

That would place the Smith Oakes house off the Great South Bay just south of what was then called the “Fire Islands” today’s East and West Islands.

The Oakes told him that their house was “isolated”. “There are but 4 houses worth naming on the whole beach. Selah Strong’s at the Lighthouse one mile from the Western extremity. Felix Dominy’s public house a mile further east. Smith Oakes’ another low public house 3 miles farther, and Homans 10 miles farther E. still. There are 2 or 3 temporary fishermen’s bunks beside.”

The house had a fire place and a small kitchen.

​The house appears to have been at least two stories tall as Hannah Oakes told Thoreau she had been aware of the ship’s distress because she could see the vessel and passengers plainly from the windows. That means that the house had an upstairs view of the ocean at a minimum.

The area was apparently hilly as there are frequent references to sand hills both near the beach and near the Smith Oakes public house. Indeed, Hannah Oakes was instrumental in the burial of Fuller’s two-year-old son whose body did wash up on the beach. Angelo was given temporary burial
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between some sand knolls near the Smith Oakes house.

More specifically he had this to say about the Smith Oakes public house:

“Oakes’ is a perfect pirate’s house, and his men good specimens of that nearly extinct class.
There were the stern ornaments of wrecked vessels over the door, and the fragments of wrecks cluttered the yard.”

Smith Oakes also told Thoreau that in the past his house had been searched by the police.

He also told him that in the past his wife had been arrested.

Thoreau also said that he had been told that Smith Oakes “has concealed himself on the beach and been troubled in many ways on account of his dealings with wrecks.”

Lastly and most importantly the Oakes provided a time line for their presence on Fire Island: eleven years prior to their interview meaning that they had first opened their public house in 1839. 

Thoreau would later journey to Patchogue New York on the south shore of Long Island east of the wreck site on Fire Island. His search for the Fuller manuscript there was in vain. He later returned to the wreck site and after more futile searching for the body of Margaret and her husband and her manuscript left for home.

REDEMPTION GAINED

On 8-6-1850 Henry Bangs, who had been the acting captain of the Elizabeth and who has survived the shipwreck being rescued from the waters by Smith Oakes, took an ad in the New York Herald on his behalf and the crew thanking both Smith Oakes and his wife for their life saving efforts.

He referred to their “kindness” and “humanity”.

It was quite a turnaround from the gloomy dates of January 1848 when both Smith and Hannah Oakes were the subjects of far less generous news accounts. It marked a redemption point for the both of them restoring their good name in the eyes of the public.

But it would be short lived.
 
REDEMPTION LOST

In addition to wreckers searching for goods to be looted, and reporters searching for a story and Thoreau looking for a manuscript and a body, there was another set of searchers at work too. John Law was on the beach too.

The news accounts of the Elizabeth wreck were sensational. Margaret Fuller was a celebrity. The tale of terrible ocean conditions, the heartbreaking loss of her, her husband and their son and others
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resonated with the public. In addition, tales of indifferent crowds on the beach who appeared not to lift a finger to help rescue the victims but were instead more interested in robbing their possessions inflamed not just the public but public authorities too.

This time there was a determination to find some of those responsible and make an example of them.

City and local law enforcement fanned out and began to press their investigation into the plundering. One early news account mentioned that 40 suspects had been found but none were named.

On 8-8-50 the New York Herald reported the arrest of 7 men for possessing stolen goods from the wreck of the Elizabeth. One of them was Smith Oakes. The stolen goods: highly prized castile soap from the cargo of the Elizabeth the value of the stolen goods being 150 dollars a significant sum in this time period.

In the space of just two days Smith Oakes had gone from being a hero to a villain. His arrest confirming the suspicions about him first raised in 1848 too.

Hannah Oakes was not arrested nor was she ever implicated by press accounts in the activities of her husband.

STORM AFTERMATH


The Fuller manuscript about the history of the Second Republic of Italy was never recovered and was lost to history.

The seven-foot marble statue of John Calhoun some months later was hauled off the Atlantic shore from underneath shallow waters.  It was mostly intact and shipped to South Carolina its original destination where it was later displayed. It was later destroyed by the Union army when General Sherman arrives. The statue had at that point been moved from Charleston to Columbia for safe keeping. But the building housing it, along with the rest of the city of Columbia, burned down during the attack on the city by union forces. No remnants of the statue were ever found.

On 9-13-1850 the New York Evening Post reported that a marble statue, not that of John Calhoun, but a much smaller one depicting a youth, had been found on the Fire Island beach after a recent storm. It was returned to authorities by its finder shortly after being discovered. It is thought to have been part of the cargo of the Elizabeth. A news account the next day reports it was returned to its owner in New York city immediately thereafter.

By coincidence the finder of the small statue is John Homan, brother of Daniel Homan, one of the seven men arrested along with Smith Oakes for plundering the Elizabeth’s cargo.

It’s perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the history of Fire Island that so many people over so long
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a period of time have searched in vain for various alleged treasure chests said to have been left by pirates buried within its ocean facing dunes. No one has ever found any such treasure. The irony being that the only documented treasure off Fire Island is the cargo of the Elizabeth that no one has apparently ever tried to salvage.

The Elizabeth was not a passenger ship. It was a freighter. It’s manifest probably not an item easy to find perhaps impossible to find now. But newspaper reports consistently indicated it held a cargo of one hundred and fifty tons of Carrara marble.

This was then, and still is today, a valuable mineral. Mined from the Carrara region of Italy for centuries pure white Carrera marble was prized by sculptors. The “David” by Michelangelo was sculpted from this stone.

Since the end of the 19th century this particular color, pure white, has essentially been mined out. Consequently, it’s a rare mineral today.


It’s not known today whether the marble in the hold of the Elizabeth was pure white but even at today’s prices, whether pure white or not, a conservative value for one hundred and fifty tons of this brand of marble is one million dollars.

One hundred and seventy-one years later, in the sand, one quarter mile from shore, under the salty Atlantic the marble remains buried. It could have all turned to chalk by now. Or those very same sands might have preserved all or some of that bulk.

Its raw value could be inflated as well by its historical pedigree: salvaged from the wreck of the Elizabeth.

No newspaper accounts have been found confirming that the marble was salvaged from the sea. The one account of part of the cargo being salvaged from the sea relates to the one-ton Calhoun statue. That was reported. It took three months to effect and an engineering effort that the newspaper account describes as a "miracle". The statue was found buried in three feet of sand but getting it out turned out to a feat that amazed even those involved. That of course raises a question about whether 150 tons of stone would not have represented an even greater challenge. 

This is the account about that statue recovery detailing the issues found and overcome. It's from the Brooklyn Eagle, 11-8-1850 edition: https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031151/1850-11-08/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=07%2F02%2F1850&index=0&date2=12%2F31%2F1850&words=Fire+Island&to_year2=1850&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&from_year2=1850&proxdistance=5&page=1&county=Kings&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=fire+island&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&SearchType2=prox5

In any case “there be treasure buried” maybe.

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In 1901 American poet Julia Ward Howe dedicated a memorial to Margaret Fuller and the victims of the loss of the Elizabeth at Point of Woods Fire Island. In 1913 it was washed away by yet another Atlantic storm.

Previously in 1883 Julia Ward Howe published her biography of Margaret Fuller. In Chapter 16 there appears her account of the last days of Margaret Fuller: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32511/32511-h/32511-h.htm

​LAST SIGHTINGS

​Following the newspaper accounts of the arrest of Smith Oakes historical investigation has developed only two more newspaper references to the Smith Oakes house.

On 8-28-1851 an article appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle about a visit to Sayville and Fire Island. It’s notable for two reasons. The writer describes a visit to the Smith Oakes house and he reports seeing Smith Oakes at the business. While he had been arrested in the summer of 1850, one summer later he was a free man back on the sands of Fire Island although his actual legal status at the time remains unknown.

He had robbed the cargo of the Elizabeth. But he had also acted in an exceptional manner. He was one of the few present on the beach who braved the stormy waters of the Atlantic and went out and actually saved lives. It may have mitigated his punishment.

The news account author also makes a point of saying that one of the reasons he had visited was to meet women. That comment reveals an unusual aspect of the Smith Oakes house that is that it was a place for visitation not only by unaccompanied men but women too in a time when women on trips were generally chaperoned by their husbands or family members.

The last discovered news account about the Smith Oakes house is from an 11-17-1908 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle. An article about Fire Island includes a memory from an “old bay man” about the Smith Oakes house circa 1850. It’s described as sitting on top of a knoll “beside the bay”. He further reported from his own memory: “In those days the wooden sloops and schooners harbored opposite Oakes house while awaiting a fair wind”.

EXIT INTO THE UNKNOWN

​Smith Oakes died in 1856. Hannah’s life after the death of her husband and when Hannah passed away is presently unknown.

The Smith Oakes house is mapped as part of the 1858 Chase map. It is not mapped again in subsequent maps particularly the 1878 Sammis map that did map every known structure on Fire Island at that time.

The circumstantial evidence that does exist is that sometime after 1851 the business ended perhaps
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with the death of Smith Oakes in 1856.

HANNAH AND SMITH OAKES: PIONEERS AND PIRATES

As indicated earlier the Hannah Oakes history is a complicated one. If for the moment the issue of piracy is removed from her history what remains is that along with her husband she helped found the first hospitality business on Fire Island in 1839. She would be the first woman holding that status in the early history of Fire Island.

What remains about her history is the issue of criminal behavior. Although press accounts in 1848 accused her of theft she was never convicted of that charge or any other criminal charge as well. In 1850 when her husband was in fact arrested for theft she was not formally implicated in his actions nor did any press account in public appear suggesting that she was part of her husband’s alleged misdeeds.

There is however more than enough to cause some wonder about just what she did know about her husband had been doing while living alongside her and whether she was his accomplice.

If for the moment we do not give her the benefit of the doubt and judge her culpable of the same intentions of her husband this does however raise a dubious but interesting point about her and her husband.

That is whether they, not Jeremiah Smith, were Fire Island’s “premier” land pirates.

Fire Island’ geography has helped give rise to the view that piracy is linked to its early past. It’s a remote location. For most of its history it’s been underpopulated and underdeveloped. It’s a wilderness. The ocean is on one side allowing for access to the shore from anywhere in the world. Its storm swept ocean coast regularly deposited ships that wrecked upon its sands burst open with valuable goods just for the taking for those prepared to do so. Within its boundaries life on the margins could occur shrouded by its isolation from law enforcement when it appeared if it did at all.

CORE ELEMENTS OF THE JEREMIAH SMITH MYTH

Out of this mix of permissible factors the Jeremiah Smith legend arose. It almost did not matter if it was true or not. It was a great tale.

Wrecks upon the ocean coast waiting to be plundered.
One man directing a group of confederates to help him in an organized criminal conspiracy.
A house on the beach that provided a store house for stolen goods some kept on the property, most shipped off island for sale on the black market.
The house tall enough to have a second floor with a window to allow for candle light to beckon wayward ships to a false landing upon the sandbars near it.
When rich enough, exit and departure to points unknown, safe from consequences for all the acts that contributed to the wealth amassed every pirate’s dream.

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The issue with actually proving that Jeremiah Smith is the model for this myth is that no evidence really exists for doing so.

No house every attributed to him has ever been found or mapped.
Accounts about his time on Fire Island are inconsistent. There are some accounts that say he was a pirate. There are others who swear he was an honest man.
Legal records document he was a land holder on Fire Island and not a trespasser on someone else’s beach land.

And this brings this narrative back to close to its beginning. It’s time to bring Karl Luss back in focus, his analysis that is about the Jeremiah Smith legend. It’s his view that Hawes, the first author who promoted the Jeremiah Smith tale, was really using him to distract from a hidden description of persons he really knew to be the land pirate he otherwise created a fable about.

Luss names that person as Smith Oakes. This author would include Hannah Oakes too.  If that is too extreme a characterization it would certainly seem fair to say he strongly inferred it.
He appears to have been righter than perhaps he himself realized.

Hawkes, as Luss suggested, could have met the Oakes on one of his visits to Fire Island. There is a time line in the existence of the Smith Oakes house and Hawes for that to have occurred.

Now we know this is what he would have seen.

ONE AND THE SAME: OAKES REAL WORLD COMPARED TO SMITH FABLE WORLD

As per Thoreau’s eye witness account “Oakes’ is a perfect pirate’s house, and his men good specimens of that nearly extinct class.


There were the stern ornaments of wrecked vessels over the door, and the fragments of wrecks cluttered the yard.”

This is a pretty good comparison to the house allegedly occupied by Jeremiah Smith with one important qualification. It’s a description of a real house while the Jeremiah Smith account belongs to an account that includes mermaids a far less credible one.

We know as well that the Smith Oakes house was built atop a sand hill. We know as well from Hannah Oakes' own mouth that she could see the ocean from the top windows of the house she lived in on Fire Island.

This is real information not fable.

It also provides for the possibility that for someone so inclined the legend of a candle put in a
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window that could be seen from the ocean sea beckoning a false light of safe landing to those in peril could have occurred. If Hannah could see the ocean from her window then a light could have been seen from ships at sea too.

It’s Thoreau who confirms that the Oakes had a crew of confederates in their company. If you are going to move goods from the ocean to the bay for disposal to do so quickly and competently the more hands the better.

Smith Oakes did have the means to do so as well. The Thoreau account confirms that Smith Oakes had a beach cart to move goods a process in plain view at the sinking of the Elizabeth.

Smith Oakes had a boat. He told Thoreau he did. With a boat you can move goods across the bay to any point to the south for disposal.

The Smith Oakes house was isolated. It was sited among tall sand dunes. It was south of half-submerged islands that would have blocked prying eyes from ships on the Great South Bay. This is a near perfect clandestine environment within which much could be hidden. Smith Oakes in fact told Thoreau that due to his association with being a wrecker he often “concealed” himself on the beach to avoid “troubles”.

And it’s clear that both Hannah and Smith Oakes did have a history and a long one of suspicious activity at the very least, criminal activity confirmed in the end for Smith Oakes when he was arrested for that theft of stolen goods from the wrecked Elizabeth.

Even if not directly involved in her husband’s acts it’s hard to believe in the small world they both inhabited for many years his actions escaped her notice or knowledge. The possibility of being an accessory to his acts either by implication through silence or other passive and active acts has got to be seen as high.

It certainly does look based on the facts presently known it’s the life of Smith and Hannah Oakes that provide the actual foundation of the piracy tales that are embedded in the history of Fire Island.
Before the Oakes are bid good bye one last bit of intriguing speculation exists to be explored: did Jeremiah Smith know the Oakes?
Luss speculates that Hawes the author and adventurer might have come to have known Smith Oakes from contact with Felix Dominy. But it’s clear now that Hawes was still alive during the same period that the Oakes public house was in existence so he could have had direct contact.
 
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The next question is whether all these years since the Mulford document was written if Mulford when he said that Jeremiah Smith began work on Fire Island at a “public house” whether it was the Smith Oakes public house he was referring to all along.
The issue with dating the Smith Oakes house isn’t clear cut. Just when the Oakes family began their stay on Fire Island is not definitely known. In 1850 Hannah Oakes dated her stay and that of her husband on Fire Island beginning in 1839. But she wasn’t under oath when asked that question nor pressed for her best memory either. But that year certainly does place the Oakes public house within the time period that would have included Jeremiah Smith. And within a time period where Hannah Oakes identified a number of homes in that area. She did not mention a Jeremiah Smith home but she did acknowledge that there were several fisherman huts in the same area as the Oakes house a structure that could conform with the Mulford description of the Jeremiah Smith house as one of “simple construction”.
Pushing back the possible date of when the Oakes arrived and lived on Fire Island are three maps which taken together suggest that the Oakes family may have had a public house as early as 1823 and if so that would certainly place their business within the likely time span that includes Jeremiah Smith too. So, exact a fit actually as to allow for the possibility that among the various forms of self-employment that Mulford said that Jeremiah Smith took up i.e., was “keeping” the Oakes public house not the Fire Island Lighthouse as Jack Whitehouse has surmised instead. That would have been possible because it was in existence after all at the same time Jeremiah Smith was present on Fire Island.
The first map to be considered is the Blunt map of 1840 which was published in that year but is based, so its legend declares, on an 1823 survey. It’s called “The Harbour of New York with the Coasts of Long Island and New Jersey From Fire Islands to Barnigat Inlet”. Upon magnification there is a Fire Island section for this map. In the area of modern day Saltaire western end of Fire Island in the vicinity of the Fire Island Inlet just south of the Fire Islands (consistent place name associations with the Mulford and Hawes sailing directions for where they said Jeremiah Smith had his Fire Island beach house) there is a notation for a house. It says “Smiths”.
That certainly is not definitive for anything but it has to be taken into context with the 1858 Chase map of Suffolk County that included a survey of Fire Island too. Within the bounds of that map exactly in the same place within the bounds of modern day Saltaire once again a building icon appears. This time there is a more exact identification of the building as “S. Oaks”. That certainly appears to be an identification of the building as Smith Oakes.
Lining up the two maps a safe conclusion that can be reached is that the Smith Oaks building history can be documented through maps as beginning in at least 1823 and existing until the mapping period of the 1858 Chase map (circa 1854 “LI Maps and their Makers” David Allen).
 
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A common-sense conclusion to be reached is that the Hannah Oakes memory not withstanding maps documents an Oakes building in Fire Island standing there from at least 1823. There is some documentation that Jeremiah Smith was seen on Fire Island in 1821. Their building and his presence are in the same time period. It’s to the Oakes and not the Dominy family that more documentation exists creating a link between Jeremiah Smith and the other persons also impacting Fire Island in the same time span as Jeremiah Smith. The implication from that association that could be drawn then would be from the Oakes Jeremiah Smith would tend more towards land piracy as a partner, or confederate on call providing services as needed. Maybe a rival in time too.
Readers are invited to do their own analysis. Find the Blunt map at the link that follows. Once inside the page type in “Long Island”, “any map”, “New York” and just the year 1840 and that should produce one result. The map content can be expanded for better viewing and that will be needed to be done: https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/
The 1858 Chase map can be found at this link: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3803s.la000565/?r=0.15,0.114,0.7,0.43,0
2019 Warren McDowell

We are including Warren McDowell’s book “Fire Island Saga: How Fire Island Got its Name” for this reason: a recent example of how the Jeremiah Smith and the connected house in the Grove tale keeps chugging along.

McDowell references Smith several times of note his version of the Smith history that McDowell attributes to “locals”. In this latest version he says “legend has it that he (meaning Jeremiah Smith) was the first to sell the property now known as the Grove to Archer and Elizabeth Perkinson” (page 50).
 
                                                                                                                                              This might however be a variant of the 1969 Dickerson newspaper article quoted by Newton ““The nucleus of Cherry Grove, the oldest continually resort on Fire Island, was created in 1869 when Archie Perkinson bought pirate Jeremiah Smith house for 1,250 dollars …”. One could read that as a direct hand to hand transaction.

Later McDowell discounts this theory by saying that “history has shown it was not Jeremiah Smith” (selling Grove property).

 JEREMIAH SMITH: AUTHORS CHRONOLOGICAL RECAP

This time line combines all the accounts already presented and places them in a chronological order to keep readers on the same page going forward.
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1835-1842:

In 1835 Herbert publishes a future chapter by Hawes from the 1842 Hawes collection of Long Island stories that he will edit that will contain two chapters fleshing out the Jeremiah Smith tale and his house on FI.  1835 is the actual origin point for Jeremiah Smith being first introduced to the public.

Smith is described inconsistently in the 1842 stories about him.  He is at one time a quasi-public servant maintaining the FI Lighthouse on the western end of LI. In another characterization he is cast, among other things, as a land pirate at some unidentified location on Raccoon Beach (Great South Beach). The Smith house is located on the ocean beach in both accounts.

1958

Douglas Toumey writes an essay on Jeremiah Smith, land pirate, not linking his home on FI to Cherry Grove but to Point of Woods instead providing more speculative information about his house on the beach.

1961

Toumey publishes another article about Fire Island’s early history that references Jeremiah Smith. Unaccountably the essay misrepresents the Samuel Wheeler map of 1798 by including an alleged statement from Islip Town historian Weeks that an icon appears on it attributing a house on FI to Jeremiah Smith. The map actually references a home attributed to James Smith. Toumey does not correct that error in his essay.
 

1969


Charles Dickerson, Sayville historian writes a newspaper article for the FI News looking back on an alleged 100-year history of Cherry Grove. He ties the land pirate Jeremiah Smith for the first time as having a home in Cherry Grove that two of its founders discover abandoned and take over in 1869. Their actions a beginning point for the formation of the future Cherry Grove community.

1975

Charles Dickerson expands on his earlier 1969 account of Smith when he publishes a history of Sayville. Smith is again identified as a land pirate. Elizabeth and Archer Perkinson, two of the founders of Cherry Grove, are identified as taking over the house owned by Jeremiah Smith creating
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a beginning point for the formation of the Cherry Grove Community in 1869.

1983

Johnson writes a history of Fire Island. She reformulates the contributions of Hawes, Toumey and Dickerson into a full boned pirate tale that weaves elements of his story provided by the prior listed authors into one narrative. She allows for a Cherry Grove location for the Jeremiah Smith house but also references Point of Woods as an alternate location too.

1993

Newton writes a history of Cherry Grove. She adopts Dickerson’s 1969 narrative and places Jeremiah Smith’s home in Cherry Grove. It is renovated by the Perkinsons marking a beginning point for the formation of the Cherry Grove community.

2008

Whitehouse reports a discovery of a long lost diary from the early 1800s that describes Smith as a land pirate and confirms a house he possessed somewhere on FI.

2011

Whitehouse reports a second discovery this time a memory of a Smith relative written in the late 1800s describing a visit to Jeremiah Smith’s home in the early 1800s. Location of home is said to be on the beach but location not otherwise specified on Fire Island.
 
2019

Cark Luss surveys the evolution of the Smith narrative. He offers a cautionary view on acceptance of prior claims made by various authors particularly Hawes as not being totally reliable becoming the second author to print a revisionist view of the Smith narrative (Whitehouse being the first).
                                                                                                                                                                                              
McDowell refers to what appears to be a distorted version of Dickerson’s 1969 article that implies Jeremiah Smith directly sold his house and property to the Perkinsons with a conclusion that the claim was not reliable.


JEREMIAH SMITH LIVED IN SALTAIRE NOT CHERRY GROVE

The survey of authors who have written about Jeremiah Smith let us remember was included for a
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larger purpose. If Smith had a house and it was located in Cherry Grove then the old history of Cherry Grove as we summarized earlier in this narrative is true and reliable. Conversely if he has no connection to Cherry Grove and did not have a house in Cherry Grove then the old history of Cherry Grove is subject to question and not reliable.

Looking back at all the authors that have been surveyed one general conclusion that can be opinioned about what they had to offer is that there is some evidence, particularly two direct eye witness accounts from the early 1800s that he did have a house somewhere on FI.

But the great gap in all those accounts is the lack of anyone specifically identifying where it was exactly. Kismet, Saltaire, Point of Woods, the sunken forest area (Sailor’s Haven), and Cherry Grove all make the list of possible locations. And complicating nailing down that location has been the fact that no one has ever found an actual house owned by him that can be authenticated as his beyond hearsay.

It’s now that this writer is happy to announce, like Jack Whitehouse who found that anonymous diary and the Mulford document, that a new document has been unearthed that helps to locate where Jeremiah Smith frequented and may have built a house on western Fire Island. That new document is a deed in his name and the name of his wife Rebecca from the period of 1814 that we will make a case documents that he and his wife for a period of time were land owners at a minimum in the modern day area of Saltaire.

For the old history of Cherry Grove the impact of such a conclusion would be to dismiss any early history of Cherry Grove that begins with an assertion that the Perkinsons found his house in Cherry Grove from which then the earliest history of Cherry Grove begins. It’s the removal of the key stone of the majority of all accepted histories of Cherry Grove in that case.

The 1814 Deed Discovered

Later in this narrative there will be a more in-depth discussion of land ownership on Fire Island. To understand how the Smiths 1814 deed was discovered it has to be mentioned that the early history of Fire Island begins with an arrangement dividing land in western Fire Island between 20 landowners collectively referred to by the term 20 Yeomen of Brookhaven. This land arrangement was reached in 1789. Their land rights would dominate land arrangements until 1871 at which time a lawsuit Green v. Sammis began and that was ended in 1878 with a new land arrangement for western Fire Island.

That 1878 new arrangement defined ownership not in common but instead with defined land parcels attributed to specific owners.
                                                                                                                                              From the days of twenty owners now 78 land parcels were recognized (and in some cases more
46
 
than one owner still sharing ownership in common with others but now within defined property lines). The concept of communal privileges that each shareholder held otherwise is abolished in this process. If you owned cattle off Long Cove you could not let them graze to the FI Inlet anymore, nor could you enter any place but your own to harvest salt hay for example. Those days were now gone. The colonial land practices of the late 1700s now faded history in the last quarter of the 1800s.

But great changes are often never completely tidy. Loose ends can exist and that brings us to the Valentine case of 1921.

The Valentine case

Valentine et.al. versus the FI Beach Development Company is a complicated case regarding land issues in Saltaire argued in court in the early 1900s. What it was about, and how it’s related to Cherry Grove’s early history we are going to do our best to concisely report.

Before the Valentin Case there is the Green v. Sammis case about to be concisely described. While decided in 1878 its results were not completely accepted in the decades to follow by some.

In 1878 the “Great Partition” of FI occurred when the case Green v. Sammis was effectively ended. That case determined land ownership on the western part of FI resolving disputes about land ownership that had arisen before the case determination. In the decades following the 1878 decision heirs of those excluded from the fruits of the 1878 decision began to appear in court pressing claims that their parents just claims had been unlawfully adjudicated and that the present-day heirs now had legitimate land claims to be awarded them.

An unexpected discovery

As persons from the period of 1878 died, as might be expected, their heirs inherited papers held by their parents to review to get their estates into order. In one such case, Platt Conklin came into the possession of a suit case his father had owned. He left it unexamined for years thinking nothing about it until, as per his court testimony in the Valentine case; he took a closer look at its contents.

He told the court the case was old and needed repair and when he went to look it over for that purpose he found a “secret” door in the case. Inside that drawer a sheave of deeds to land on FI never recorded.

All of those found deeds will be discussed but for this narrative the most important one was a deed ceding a share of FI land from Jeremiah Smith and his wife Rebecca as a deed selling off those rights in 1814.  More than a hundred years after it was signed that deed was then formally recorded
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with the Suffolk County Clerk.
                                                                                                                                             
In short order, all these purported deeds became the basis for new legal claims e.g., the Valentin case, asking the court system to award land to various heirs. That case focused on land claims arising out of Lot 5 (modern day Saltaire) as designated in the Jonathan Sammis survey part of the 1878 Green v. Sammis case decision.

For the court in the Valentine case the Smiths deed was just one of many deeds it had to assess and its historical importance otherwise never discussed. But it is certainly now relevant to the early history of Cherry Grove and the Jeremiah Smith history.


As far as this writer knows this is the first evidence that Jeremiah Smith and his wife were landowners on FI fixing a "home base" for him (and let’s not forget his wife too it now turns out).

The Smiths deed

We have referred to this as the Smiths deed in the plural sense because it is not just the Jeremiah Smith deed. It also contains the name of Rebecca Smith. And her role in history, as humble as it might be, ought not to be erased.   

The deed is to Nathaniel Conklin and it's dated 11-28-1814 with the signatures of both Jeremiah and Rebecca acknowledged by a notary who met them both at the time of the recording of the deed.

The deed was not recorded until 7-25-1916 (Liber 933 p. 307).

It conveys to Nathaniel Conklin for 300 dollars an interest consistent with the terms of the communal land rights of the arrangement of the Twenty Yeoman of Brookhaven specifically an interest “being the equal half of said Beach which John Smith sold to Reeves”.

Let’s recall that all deeds for the twenty proprietors begin with Henry Smith and his wife Elizabeth granting twenty equal shares of communal land rights. At the beginning of this process each of the twenty have a one twentieth share in the whole that they are free to sell in any form that they can if they do wish.  They can retain their full share and buy other shares in whatever fraction that might be offered from others to increase their overall share amount.

This is exampled in the Smiths deed. What is sold to Conklin is what was acquired by the Smiths: “the equal half of the right of said beach which John Smith sold to Reeves”.

This is the exact language of the deed: To find the deed use this link and it will take a reader into
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Goggle books, toggle over to page 295 to see the deed language:

https://books.google.com/books?id=9F83DK6I-aoC&pg=PA277&lpg=PA277&dq=meadows+of+long+cove+fire+island+ny&source=bl&ots=1v4Dk6-NW-&sig=ACfU3U1ni7NRZXQ-uIlY_ownaqbqE42vWw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8wP7pl5_pAhXjlnIEHTS8ApUQ6AEwCHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=meadows%20of%20long%20cove%20fire%20island%20ny&f=false
                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                              “All that certain tract, parcel or piece of land and meadow on the south beach in the county aforesaid the land (exclusive of the meadow) being the equal half of the right of said beach which John Smith sold to Reeves”. (Note successive owners are then listed).

“That Jeremiah Smith derives his title to the premises hereby conveyed or intended to be conveyed and also all the meadow belonging to the said lot of land at a place and on the west end of said beach and distinguished by the name of Fire Island”….

The full deed can be found at this link: https://books.google.com/books…

Where was the land that was conveyed?

The above question is an all-important one because if we can trace where this land that was conveyed was actually located it will help to track down just where Jeremiah Smith might have had a house as well and that of course is related to the early history of Cherry Grove too.

The deed is silent as to an exact location of the property but there are many clues to pursue.

We can start by looking at the deed more closely by examining its history, language and land references that do exist within it.

It’s known when the Smiths sold off their half share but it’s not known when they acquired it. That’s because while the deed lists all prior deeds (except that from Henry Smith to John Smith) dates for all those deeds are not indicated.

Complicating finding a time line is this issue too. This writer has searched existing land records to see if any of the deeds cited as preceding Jeremiah and Rebecca Smith’s purchase are of record. The result: this writer could find none recorded. Like the Smiths deed they too may have gone unrecorded at the time now disappeared from history unless someone finds another suitcase with a hidden drawer revealing an unexpected trove of unfiled deeds which can then be filed at long last. 
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But this is known that from 1789 to 1814; the half share changed hands multiple times.
As per the deed this is the chain of ownership of it that we referred earlier but did not specify:

John Smith to Reeves
Reeves to Zebulon Smith
Zebulon Smith to Nathan Smith
Nathan Smith to James Smith
James Smith to Isaac Dennis
Isaac Dennis to Jarvis Dennis
                                                                                                                                          
Jarvis Dennis to Jeremiah Smith

In the space of 25 years the share interest was transferred nine times before being sold to Conklin. However, while this research can provide a time point for when Jeremiah Smith gave up his land on FI, an exact date for when he acquired his share interest can’t be exactly drawn from the chain of deeds preceding his. But that end point can help locate the property area because it does narrow down a period of time to look at and in that time band there are some other people who can be tracked that help provide a beginning point for when Jeremiah Smith became a land owner.

The Twenty Yeomen in 1789 were these men:  Daniel Roe, Stephen Reeve; Thomas Avery; David Smith; Ezra Tuthill; Lewis Jones; Isaac Overton, Jr.; William Arthur; Phinihas Robinson; Humphrey Avery, Jr.; Isaac Cory; Warden Tobey; Joseph Terry; John Smith Taylor; William Risley; Benjamin Benjamin; John Smith; Roger Avery; Justice Overton; and William Sell, all of the Township of Brookhaven.

By comparing that list with the list of prior holders of the 1814 half share these names cross check: John Smith and Stephen Reeve are two of the original proprietors who also have at one time or another possible connection to the one half share that is part of the 1814 deed.

Outside of that list of proprietors this additional name pops up of note: Zebulon Smith whom this writer believes was the father of Jeremiah Smith.

And the deed chain does reference to a James Smith. Is this perhaps the same James Smith whose connection to the Wheeler map of FI of 1789 has already been discussed? This is an intriguing possible connection as that map documents the first house known to have existed on FI belonged to James Smith.  (See 1959 and 1961 Toumey and Lewis page 22 of this document).

Of these four men it is possible to reconstruct some history for two of them: James Smith and Zebulon Smith a history that turns out places them in the late 1700s and early 1800s on western
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Fire Island in the vicinity of the Fire Island Inlet and close by now modern-day communities such as Kismet and Saltaire.

Tracing their histories such as they are known can give us some clues about just where the 1814 land deed was located. And as a second good end also an idea of what the world of Jeremiah Smith outside of any beach scavenging activities might have looked like too.

James Smith

James Smith’s name appears in history several times between 1778 and some still unknown date in the Smiths deed history.

And this aside: are all the accounts this writer is publishing all about the same person i.e. James Smith? It’s good question that cannot really be completely answered at this time. But let’s remember at this point in history western FI is a vastly underpopulated area. It’s a wilderness.
                                                                                                                                              Until the rise of the FI lighthouse in 1826, and certainly with the arrival of the Surf Hotel beginning midcentury there really were not a lot of James Smiths' wandering about nor Zebulon Smiths’ either for the simple reason there were not a lot of people around.

That said this is what history has to be say about the name James Smith in this period and in this location.

1778

In May 1778 James Smith is listed as the master of the small ship Jacob among five other British ships captured by two American revolutionary privateers. All five ships were captured in the Fire Island Inlet. His ship, a small one was good for trans-shipment of goods for larger ones from ship to shore and vice versa.   It may also have served as ship to harvest oysters.  Prisoners were taken. A short list of prisoners only identifies a British sergeant taken into custody but the report does not exclude that James Smith was a prisoner too. Goods seized by the privateers:  lumber, oysters, furniture and dry goods.

James Smith’s small boat was sunk by the privateers before they sailed off with their prisoners and larger captured ships.

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=dWXGN1p3lewC&pg=PA358&lpg=PA358&dq=james+smith+and+fire+island&source=bl&ots=Zlypzj4pMO&sig=ACfU3U3C6f4Ua20PMibsdv6jTVEpBNxM9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_np2wu6LhAhUQON8KHUVWDNY4FBDoATAFegQIBxAB#v=onepage&q=james%20smith%20and%20fire%20island&f=false

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1798

Samuel Wheeler undertakes the mapping of Islip Town and other areas and also maps part of Fire Island. He notes in his map, located on western FI, the existence of the home of a James Smith.

While many historical narratives credit Jeremiah Smith with building a home in Fire Island  and often specifically in present day Cherry Grove in 1795 this fact, the Wheeler map has been consistently overlooked by them all including most importantly Charles Dickerson who has been at the heart of this claim.

The Wheeler map is the key documentary fact that establishes beyond all doubt that James Smith is the first resident of Fire Island and lived in its first house not Jeremiah Smith.

There is an online copy of the relevant portion of the Wheeler map for reference. To find it go to the Facebook page of the Fire Island Star. There is a search bar at the top of the page. Type in the words Good Bye Jeremiah Smith. That should take a reader to the 1-30-2020 edition of the Fire Island Star and an article entitled "Good Bye Jeremiah Smith". A copy of the Fire Island portion of the Wheeler map is posted as part of that article. Link: https://www.facebook.com/FireIslandStar

                                                                                                                                                                                               
1814

James Smith appears in the Jeremiah and Rebecca Smith deed of the same year as a prior owner of the land that they conveyed in that year to Conklin.

The privateer incident and the Wheeler map tend to powerfully support that James Smith’s life in part took place on the extreme end of western FI suggesting his land interests were there too somewhere in the vicinity of modern day Saltaire.

Zebulon Smith

1802

Jeremiah Smith’s father’s name was Zebulon Smith (1744–1807). The already mentioned Mulford document has this to say about Jeremiah’s father.  "His father’s name was Zebulon Smith a farmer in Huntington Township on the north side of L.I. and English descent”.

There is not much known about Zebulon Smith except his name comes up rather significantly in a
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court case decided in 1814 entitled “Nichol, an infant, by his guardians, etc., against the Trustees, etc., of the Town of Huntington”.

In Nicholl v. Trustees of the Town of Huntington a Chancery court in 1806 was asked to determine the rights of the Nichol family to possession of Captree, Oak and Grass islands.

The islands are described as “incapable of being inhabited or enclosed” but they did “produce large quantities of grass and herbiage and have lately become valuable”. The area is further described as “meadow land”.
https://books.google.com/books?id=gdMzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=zebulon+smith+huntington&source=bl&ots=qI5ZJPg_Ff&sig=69bHsCOi2jkLeHV3YhdGZ4OVwUU&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwimw_Ps7cjfAhUHYVAKHXmpDooQ6AEwA3oECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=zebulon%20smith%20huntington&f=false

“There is a cluster of low islands or small isles, which are separated by water, when the tide is full, but not so when the tide if down, and which are called…fire islands…all these islands of sandy land, and marsh, or meadow land…”.
 
The issue for the plaintiffs was that while in the past they had exercised control over the land by leasing it or granting permission for harvesting some had come onto the property to harvest salt hay and in their view were trespassers whom they had in some cases dealt with in court successfully and at other times not successfully. The plaintiffs were back in court to settle their rights once and for all.

Cited as one of such trespassers is Zebulon Smith whom in 1802 they claimed had entered Captree Island and “cut and carried away the grass.” In 1806 that particular case was decided with mixed results. The plaintiffs had one judgement against one of the trespassers but not all. The court commentary does not specify who was found guilty of trespass.

This lawsuit was eventually decided in 1814 with control of the islands not being granted to the Nichol heirs extinguishing their trespasser claims against all made over the course of the lawsuit. It would not have been much comfort to Zebulon Smith to learn of this. He had died in 1807.

The importance of this case can be found in two forms. It illustrates the valuable nature of what to some might appear to be waste lands of grass. It documents that Zebulon Smith was in this area at least around 1802 and if he was, as it mostly likely appears; to be Jeremiah Smith’s father it also suggests that where father was his son was not far behind. Also, possible Jeremiah had been handed down the skills of the father (i.e., hay harvesting) and among the many other activities he might have been involved in Jeremiah Smith might have been helping his now elderly father with the hard work of salt hay harvesting.
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Jeremiah Smith helping out his father is speculation but referring again to the Mulford document its first description of Jeremiah Smith strongly supports that. Mulford says about Jeremiah Smith:  "His occupation in early life was a farmer in Dix Hills and Clay Pits, Huntington”

However although the Smiths deed history does not show when Zebulon Smith acquired land it does show that he did transfer land to Nathan Smith. Since he died in 1807 the case that he sold his land to Nathan Smith before then is pretty well made out. That places any purchase of land in that chain by Jeremiah Smith post 1807.

Let’s look at that deed history one more time for context:

Zebulon Smith to Nathan Smith
Nathan Smith to James Smith
James Smith to Isaac Dennis
Isaac Dennis to Jarvis Dennis
Jarvis Dennis to Jeremiah Smith


TRACKING THE LAND THAT JEREMIAH SMITH DID OWN

The history of James Smith including the Wheeler mapping of his house location, and the history of Zebulon Smith do not conclusively establish the location of the land that Jeremiah Smith and his wife Rebecca sold in 1814. They are indicators but not conclusive facts.
                                                                                                                                                                                               
But there is one conclusive fact that when added into these suggestive facts does help establish what land was sold off in 1814.

That takes us back to the Valentine lawsuit. It was about a land dispute about land in Saltaire. The 1814 Smiths deed was used by the plaintiffs in that case to buttress their claim for land in a very specific place that is in modern day Saltaire.

Enter Mr. Goggins

That brings us to Frank Goggins. In 1953 Saltaire Historian Ruth Bryan Doble published a “History of the Incorporated Village of Saltaire”. In a section of the book there appears an essay from Frank Goggins “The Great South Beach before 1910, The Tangier Smiths". Goggins, an attorney wrote about land history issues on Fire Island and included a reference to land disputes involving Saltaire that referenced the Valentine case. He provides a location for the land in dispute in that lawsuit as follows: “two hundred and forty feet of land measured east to west and from Ocean to Bay…it lies
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between the easterly end of Lighthouse Promenade and Fair Harbor”.

A Google Earth search reveals this is a strip of land in modern day Saltaire. (Search under the modern-day name for Lighthouse Promenade which is now Lighthouse Road). Interestingly the Goggins location does conform to some other reliable information about where any Jeremiah Smith house might have been located that have previously been described in this narrative.

It’s a strip of land south of modern-day West and East Islands that were formerly known with the place name Fire Islands. That’s important to note because that is a land mark that appears twice in past accounts locating the Smith home by eye witnesses.

In the first case the Mulford document that reference appears in this form:

“The writer has some pleasant memories of Jeremiah Smith and his home for sojourners on the Beach. When he was a boy about sixty-five years ago, his father sent him, in charge of a friendly attendant, to the house of Jeremiah Smith at Fire Islands.”

From the Hawkes authored chapter note firstly it refers to Fire islands: “Fire Island-Ana”; or a “Week at the Fire Islands”.


The account then relates this additional direction:
 
“We have crossed the Bay, skirting by the Fire islands…”.

Both authors refer to the Smith home being on the beach; Hawes more directly identifies that beach as Raccoon Beach. The strip of land that Goggins identifies at stake in the Valentine lawsuit is a strip of land from bay to ocean and the ocean beach so identified in 1814 that beach would have been Raccoon Beach.

And just as a last aside about this strip a Google map search indicates that from bay to ocean it’s not a far hike to walk meaning that it’s an ideal location for traveling from other bay locations on Long Island’s south shore to this particular Fire Island location. And it would be an equally ideal location for taking items from the ocean beach for shipment by boat moored off the bay front to locations anywhere on the Great South Bay.  For example, shipment of savaged goods from wrecks.

The bay waters off this location are part of today’s Clam Pond. An alternate place name is Clam Pond Cove. This location is unique as it is one of the only two sheltered coves on the western Fire Island Bay littoral. The other cove of this size is located far to the east in Long Cove. Maps from the early 1800s show that the mouth of the cove was more closed before erosion removed sand bars. Originally a much more sheltered near private natural harbor in fact again an excellent location for
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clandestine activity.

And on the subject of clandestine locations let’s throw this into the mix to offer a thin fact that still lacks some independent proof but nevertheless might be relevant.

In the Hawes/Cypress book “Legends of Long Island No. 1 The Wrecker of Raccoon Beach or the daughter of the Sea” very few exact directions as to the location of Jeremiah Smith’s house on Raccoon beach can be found. Not that they are not there. One of them is this entry.

In the above referred to chapter of the book the author has Jeremiah Smith address some of the “scandals” attached to his name. He denies them but one of those scandals addressed by Jeremiah Smith is this one and it is one of the more enduring stories about him. Namely that ship wrecked sailors would wash upon the ocean shore that Jeremiah Smith would then find, assist for a while then murder for their possessions. Proof of that claim was inferred by the alleged existence of such boats bringing distressed sailors to Jeremiah’s house on the beach where their boat met this fate: “the boat was afterwards found drawn up in Poor Man’s Harbor, half burned up”.

This writer has searched in vain for any independent source of that place name. What can still be gleaned out it in the context of the Hawes/Cypress text, where it is found, is that at the time it was a recognized place name, now ancient and lost perhaps, that did serve to refer to a harbor near Raccoon Beach on Fire Island.


The best candidate for that kind of topographical location would be present day Clam Cove also known at Saltaire Harbor at times as much as a harbor that is going to be found which also has one other interesting feature. Its southernmost beach touches the strip of land that this narrative has borrowed from the Goggins account to identify Jeremiah Smiths 1814 land holding on Fire Island.

The strip goes from harbor to beach. It would be from the beach, over the dunes, to Poor Man’s Harbor hidden from all but close view from the Great South Bay, at night the perfect clandestine location to move wreckage from the beach to be picked up by boat bound for New York city gray markets for sale or as a site, out of sight, to burn evidence in the form of a charred boat

Poor Man’s Harbor may simply be a legend inside a larger one. But it’s an interesting possibility and for what it’s worth it’s been added in as one more circumstance to consider.

Summary of findings
 
So, after all is said and done what really can be said?
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A lot actually, and less than desired at the same time.
What we know about Jeremiah Smith is that he was born of humble beginnings and poor during the first part of his life.
The claim by historian Charles Dickerson that Jeremiah Smith built a home on the beach in the vicinity of Cherry Grove in 1796 is totally unsubstantiated and not credible.
No exact date at present exists for when Jeremiah Smith arrived on Fire Island but initially he may have done so to support his father who in the first decade of 1800s Fire Island was cutting salt hay in the Fire Islands area and owned land elsewhere on Fire Island as well.
There is good evidence that Jeremiah Smith for some years was a Fire Island land holder along with his wife until both sold off their land interests in 1814. There is some good evidence that he did have a residence of some kind on the beach of Fire Island most likely on the bay side rather than ocean. His status as a beach resident was recognized by the local press of the day (1834). His home may have been of very simple construction not amounting to more than a “fisherman’s hut” style of the time namely a place to sleep and stay out of the elements.
 
There is some testimony that Jeremiah Smith was engaged in land piracy and was the leader of a gang that regularly moved illegally obtained wrecked items from the ocean beach of Fire Island for sale elsewhere including the port of New York City. The same testimony testifies to his capacity to defend himself with murderous violence if attacked.
There is also testimony that he was additionally engaged in more peaceful pursuits while on Fire Island as a legal scavenger of wrecked goods for example and as a rescuer of those needing safety from the ocean storm.  (1821).
Jeremiah Smith’s tenure on Fire Island appears to have ended by around 1850 when at old age he is living with family in Patchogue and will do so until his death in 1860.
In the end if there is a summary it would appear to fall into these lines.
To make sense of the inconsistent reports of whether Jeremiah Smith was or was not a land pirate one way of resolving that inconsistent view would be to allow for a personality evolution. As a young man perhaps a man more engaged in risk taking actions including criminal acts. He was at the same time a father of a large family with a responsibility to care for them. He could have justified all on their behalf. He lived a long life and it’s also allowable that as he matured he began to choose form of self employment that were less risky and less strenuous for example becoming operating a bare bones sportsman hut and guide. There is no evidence of a grand structure being owned by him but there are more than enough clues from different unrelated sources spread over decades actually that he did have some kind of residence in and around the Fire Island Inlet. He was a man of legend
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in his own time. There did have to be something about him that would allow writers to find in his life story a vehicle for telling a much broader story not only about people and the times of early Fire Island and to tell its tales too. After all Jeremiah Smith was married to a mermaid who lured ships to their destruction onto the ocean shore for her loved one to plunder and store away their treasures in their castle on the ocean sea. So maybe in the end it’s the Ocean that can take credit for Jeremiah Smith. He is a child born from its inspirational powers. 
So it was once and so it remains.
 




 
 
 
 





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 






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HANNAH OAKES AND THE SMITH OAKS HOUSE: AN UNINTENDED HISTORY
By John Bogack

As the title states this is an unintended history. Its origins begin with another person’s history. It’s in 2019 that Cherry Grove’s historian Karl Luss writes a short history for the readers of the Fire Island News. It was titled “Jeremiah Smith A Cherry Grove Pirate’s Story”. In it he assesses a number of historical sources that he thinks may have created the mix of legends and facts that contributed to the origins of the history of Jeremiah Smith, Fire Island’s most notorious land pirate.

One part of it caught my attention. It related to the Smith Oakes family thought to have run a public house on Fire Island in the early 1800s. He had this to say about Smith Oakes and his wife:

“A very real land pirate and scurrilous character. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Jan 1848) identifies Oakes who, with his wife, owned of a “sort of public house” a mile or so from the lighthouse at Fire Island beach as of 1843. In other news the house is described as built from ships’ salvage. The “S. Oaks” (sic) domicile was still in existence in 1858, depicted at the “East Beach” fork of Fire Island inlet on a map of Islip and Brookhaven townships drawn by J. [John] Chace, Jr.

The Oakes family was suspected of preying upon the shipwrecked for many years. They were at the scene of the wrecked “Louisa” (1843). Three years later Mrs. Oakes wife is discovered selling property stolen from that ship’s captain in Brooklyn and New York City. The captain had taken shelter at the Oakes home at the time of the shipwreck. Newspaper accounts associate the Oakes with several other Fire Island shipwrecks of the era.”

You can see his full history at this link: https://fireislandnews.com/jeremiah-smith-a-cherry-grove-pirate-story/

It was an intriguing story. It pointed to either a poorly researched part of early Fire Island’s history or to original research revealing an entirely new chapter of early Fire Island history. However, I didn’t have the time then to follow up on the trail that Karl Luss had cut to see where else it led.  Over the next year and half time was needed instead to be devoted to the writing of other histories about Fire Island.
 
When that was done I had some time to go back and look a bit more at historical trails that in the past looked worthwhile to explore and report about. It was then that I began to compile a list of candidates for a new history of early Fire Island provisionally called “Women of Fire Island”. During the course of writing the three earlier histories I had discovered that the role of women in the development of early Fire Island has in the past been greatly unreported.

Their contributions to the development of Cherry Grove, Water Island, modern day Saltaire, Watch Hill, Old Inlet, modern day Davis Park, and other locales in western Fire Island generally were subsumed by their husbands getting the credit for their work. The result was an historical inaccuracy. The disproportionate credit to male decision makers had resulted in hiding the roles of nearly a dozen women who were also significant pioneers.

So, I drew up a list of candidates for an historical piece about these first women of early Fire Island.  After looking at a first draft I realized I had one name left out. This led me back to the already cited Karl Luss article. Smith Oakes wasn’t alone on Fire Island in its early days. His wife was with him too. And that meant her history could be among the earliest for women on Fire Island.

Initially I didn’t even have a first name for her, or any other basic biographical information about her. Although she had appeared in a number of newspaper accounts for some years she had consistently and exclusively been reported always as Mrs. Smith Oakes.

With some digging some minimal information was gleamed from census reports. And then as sometimes happens while doing research an unexpected treasure chest was stumbled upon. It came in the form of a diary of sorts, written by Henry David Thoreau in 1850. A leading historical literary figure in his right, he had visited Fire Island in 1850. He was there searching for a lost manuscript of another American writer Margaret Fuller.

In July of 1850 Margaret Fuller, her husband and child and others perished when their ship sank off Point of Woods in a sudden unexpected storm. In reviewing his notes, a wonderful surprise was discovered. The Elizabeth had sunk within the vicinity of the Smith Oakes public house and Thoreau had written about his encounters with both Smith Oakes and and his wife. It was a trove of new information about them both and their business.

So, from the sources I had found this starting point of information could be gleamed.

Mrs. Smith Oakes is Hannah Oakes born in 1807 who lived in Islip with her husband Smith Oakes.
She is also the first woman to run a business along with her husband on Fire Island and that would be the Smith Oakes public house origin date 1839.

Her Fire Island history is very much bound together with the barely explored history of the Smith Oakes public house of which it turns out there is a considerable about of information to be reported. I realized then that this unexplored history would overwhelm any history of a larger collection of women pioneers.

So sadly the “Women of Fire Island” will have to wait some more for their just historical recognition. Although this time they will be stepping aside for one of their sisters to take the stage of history. She is after all one of the first on line in any event. So, my apologies to Phoebe Dominy, the Avery sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah Perkinson and others. In time there will be other acts to follow and the curtain will come up on all these women.

HANNAH OAKES 1843-1850 IN THE EYE OF THE PRESS

Hannah Oakes’ history is a bit complicated. Along with her husband she is among the first to found a hospitality business on Fire Island and the first woman to do so. In the disaster scene that accompanied the wreck of the Elizabeth she was caring figure who cared for the living and the dead. Yet she also does appear to be one of Fire Island’s first land pirates just as Karl Luss has previously alluded to. Which if true is somewhat ironic because it’s Jeremiah Smith to whom history has assigned the major credit for that role in the early history of Fire Island. That would make her of course another example of the pattern in the earlier historical reporting of Fire Island to assign to men the acts of women.

But this is getting ahead of the story.

Hannah Oakes’ history is going to be outlined in this form: first the newspaper trail for the years 1847-1850. Then everything else that has been discovered.

While her actual Fire Island history begins in 1839 it’s newspaper coverage that begins about her and her husband in 1847 and continues on to 1850 that provides a lot detail about her history and that of the Smith Oakes public house as well. That newspaper history is good to know for another reason. It will help provide some context for the information in the Thoreau account.

That period is book ended by two historical events. The wreck of the Louisa in 1843 which the newspaper accounts of 1847-48 reference, and the wreck of the Elizabeth in 1850. Their stories are bound up with Smith Oakes and his wife and are worth telling in their own right. They open doors onto other important parts of the early history of Fire Island. That is the history of the perils of the sea off Fire Island, and the perils of the sands of Fire Island.

Both Smith Oakes and Hannah are bound up in that history. They are at times scorned as villains, and later renowned as heroes. Hannah Oakes in the end finds some redemption for her prior suspected bad acts. She will then at the moment of her good reputation restored find herself standing next to her husband just as at the same moment he returns to infamy.

Not long afterwards they both then disappear from history.

Ahead are tales of pioneering hopes, avarice and the foolishness it sometimes breeds, the terror of the ocean seas, heart break, broken ambitions and courage theirs and others bound up in the destinies of both Smith Oakes and Hannah whom fate will equally bind to the destinies of others.

It’s a true tale of Fire Island from its earliest time. 


1847 THE LOUISA AFFAIR BEGINS TO SURFACE

This part of this history begins with a review of a multitude of newspaper articles that have been unearthed relating in one way or another to Hannah and her husband.

The first newspaper account appears in 1847. It seemingly appears out of no where but as other news accounts follow it just how it relates to them will become quickly apparent.

On 11-30-1847 Smith Oakes takes an ad in the New York Tribune. He posts a reward of fifty dollars for anyone who will identify for purposes of prosecution for the charge of defamation any person who has defamed his business on Fire Island. He is concerned that his personal reputation and that of his business will be harmed by false claims of a robbery occurring at the business “said to have taken place some time ago”. He denies any such event occurred.

If the purpose of the ad was to prevent the worst from occurring it failed to ward off such a perceived calamity on the horizon. Worse was on the way.

​1848 A STORM OF A DIFFERENT KIND BREAKS OVER FIRE ISLAND

On January 8, 1848, just a few days after Smith Oakes’ reward notice for information about anyone defaming his reputation, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle publishes in its pages a news report titled “Curious Developments”. It’s a seminal account about the history of both Hannah and Smith Oakes. From its words the first public picture of both them is drawn. It is the first public acknowledgement of their business the Smith Oakes public house on Fire Island. It also reaches into the public’s fears about crime on Fire Island by telling a tale of the errant chest of the brig Louisa and its captain searching for his lost gold and jewels once within it.

Because it is so important, setting the stage for years to come, in ways evident when first read and in other ways future foretelling, it’s reprinted here in full.

“Curious Developments:

Wreckers have from time immemorial sustained a most unenviable character; but the facilities which they almost uniformly enjoy of gratifying their piratical propensity for plunder, enable them in most cases, to perpetrate their outrages with tolerable impunity, so that very few reliable developments have directly come to light. Very few convictions have ensued for the inhuman offence of preying upon those who have had the misfortune to be shipwrecked. Revelations in this connection have recently transpired, which very conclusively affix the guilt of a nefarious robbery at the scene of a wreck, upon an individual who has hitherto been suspected thereof.

It seems that the brig Louisa, Capt. Michael Baker, from Harve, was wrecked in 1843 upon Fire Island beach, and while the wreckers were getting out the cargo, which was mostly saved from the elements, a chest belonging to the captain, was taken from the tent on the beach, to a sort of public house on Fire Island kept by one Smith Oakes. This chest contained some very valuable articles among which were eight rich shawls, four gold watches, diamond broaches, and finger rings.

When Capt. Baker returned from New York whither he had been to transact the necessary business with the underwriters in relation to the wreck, the chest and contents were missing. He accordingly circulated a handbill offering a handsome reward for the recovery thereof; and caused a search warrant to be issued directed against the premises of the Oakes, but all to no purpose, and he accordingly gave up all hope of ever finding the valuables.

When three years had elapsed to which the finding of an indictment for criminal offence is limited, the stolen property began by degrees to emerge from the place where it had “long laid hid”, and proofs as strong as holy writ were obtained about the mode in which it had appeared. About a year ago, the mate of the Louisa alleges that he accidentally encountered the wife of Smith Oakes on board one of the ferry boats at Brooklyn, wearing an elegant and costly shawl, not usually worn by the ladies of Fire Island, which bore no distant resemblance to those deposited in the chest above alluded to.

Quite recently she sold an elegant diamond finger ring worth from thirty to forty dollars to an acquaintance in this city for the paltry sum of five dollars; and within a month she has likewise, bartered away at a jeweler’s shop in Fulton street, for a gold chain two more costly diamond rings.
These transactions having come to the knowledge of Captain Baker, he conferred with the holders of the rings, which he identified as part of his missing property, and the purchasers readily delivered them up on his representations. In addition to the above circumstances, we are told it can be proved that Oakes himself has occasionally exhibited gold watches; and worn common a diamond broach, of about $100 value.

These facts, which can be amply proved make out a tolerably strong case of guilt, and as by the operation of law the participants therein is now not amenable to criminal prosecution it is no more than strict justice requires that he should be held answerable at the bar of public opinion; and we should not do our duty as journalists were we to suppress anything that may tend to lessen the disgraceful scenes which there is too much reason to believe are enacted at wrecks along our sea coast”.

On 1-11-1848 the Jamaica Farmer reprised the Brooklyn Eagle report in its pages giving further life to the Eagle post.

On 1-27-1848 an article titled the “The Wreck Plunder Affair” appeared in both the Brooklyn Eagle and the Kings County Democrat. The story referred to an article related to the affair that had appeared in yet another period newspaper the Star earlier in the month.

This is the account from that date as printed:

“The Wreck Plunder Affair: In a communication of Mr. Wise to the Star, very properly denying the imputation of having purchased two rings from Mrs. Smith Oakes far below their real value, said rings having been purloined from Capt. Baker of the bark Louisa, which was wrecked on Fire Island beach, we regret to see the name of Mrs. Ann Oakes as prominently displayed. The circumstances might mislead some who are unacquainted with the high character she bears for integrity. We have the most reliable assurances that her presence on the occasion of Mr. Wise’s establishment was entirely accidental, and that she had not the least information that the rings were not honestly in the possession of Mrs. Smith Oakes. It is only necessary for us to make these remarks to those who do not know Mrs. Ann Oakes.”

Not supplied in the news account is any accounting for Ann Oakes. Research into her has led to this provisional opinion about her. She appears to be the wife of Andrew Oakes, brother of Smith Oakes, and therefore Hannah’s sister-in-law. Andrew Oakes had died several years earlier after suffering from a sudden illness, inflammation of the lungs, after swimming in the waters off Fire Island. Ann Oakes was therefore his widow.
While Ann Oakes gets a pass for any inadvertent involvement in buying stolen goods the person duping her is Hannah Oakes who does not get any kind words for her alleged acts thus cementing further an image of duplicity attributed to her by the earlier newspaper accounts in January 1848.

In any case the fire that Smith Oaks had sought to damp out in late December 1847, before it began to burn, did appear to snuff out soon enough as there are no other newspaper accounts that have been found taking up the subject of the so-called Wreck Plunder Affair after the end of January 1848.

As per the Eagle account the statue of limitations on any theft had passed therefore those who might have been otherwise charged due to a “tolerably strong case of guilt” never faced any criminal penalties. Capt. Baker got back some of his missing goods.

For Smith Oakes and Hannah though they were left with a legacy of having been tried in the press for being land pirates. Whether true or not what the newspaper articles did establish was the existence of a public house on Fire Island dating back to at least 1843, one year before the historically recognized Dominy House opened in 1844. The use of the term public house also conveyed that the business served food, drink and had overnight sleeping accommodations. And it established two owners for it who in addition to their hotel duties might or might not be involved in trafficking goods from the beach, stolen, to the city and elsewhere for sale.

This propels both Smith and Hannah Oakes into the historical position of being the first persons to run a business on Fire Island, and Hannah as the first woman to claim that title for her gender a rare role for women in the history of Fire Island with that status.

Smith Oakes is at this time 38 years old and his wife is 36 years old.

The articles also exposed the strong public concern and anger towards “wreckers” those who preyed on stranded ships, their cargoes, their crews and passengers washed up on the Fire Island beach. In 1848 Hannah and her husband Smith were the leading targets of that anger and scorn. They did survive though and kept to their business on Fire Island however chastened by the events of 1848.

However, this was to change. Two years later the eyes of the nation would be upon them and others who crowded into their small part of Fire Island: the Elizabeth had arrived born by wind, water and Fate.

1850: THE WRECK OF THE ELIZABETH AND THE DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER

On July 17th 1850 the bark Elizabeth that left port in Leghorn Italy about seven weeks earlier, off course, and buffeted by a sudden July gale,  crashed into a sandbar off Point of Woods Fire Island. It carried a cargo of fine marble, rags, a seven-foot marble statue of John C. Calhoun, various sundry other articles of freight, and three special passengers. One of them Margaret Fuller who was at the peak of her career as a writer.
In Italy on assignment as a news reporter, the first woman war correspondent in American history, she met Giovani Angelo Ossili, had a child by him, Angelo, and became entangled in Italian Revolutionary politics. By late 1849 fortunes had turned against the Italian revolutionaries her husband included and by early 1850 Margaret Fuller now Margaret Fuller Ossili decided to return to America with her husband and their two-year-old child for a fresh start.

There are many accounts of the tragedy that befell her and her family who all perished. For the purposes of this short history of Hannah Oakes the importance of this event is that it led to a coincidence of historical factors that exposed both her and her husband to national attention in different forms.

If after the scandal of 1848 both she and her husband had retreated to the isolation of their home on Fire Island by July 1850 this strategy was about to become upended. The world was coming to them.

In the first instance the wreck of the Elizabeth drew the curious and plunderers. One newspaper account reported that a thousand people had come to the wreck site. Some of them were drawn by the lure of plunder: Margaret Ossili was said to have a 3,000-dollar ring on her finger and her body was not yet found (it never was). There was clothing to be found. Almonds and fruits thrown up on the beach sand. And whatever other possessions the crew and passengers had were also fair game for thievery.

The seven-ton statue was beyond any means of being hauled away. It was buried deeply in the sand beneath shallow waters. The real treasure of the ship was its cargo of 150 tons of fine marble that too beyond removal by simple carts safe beneath the waves of the Atlantic. But everything else washed up onto the beach was day and night the target of many people looking for anything that could find and take for themselves before the authorities arrived to safeguard what remained.

The tragedy also brought another class of visitors. Margaret Fuller had worked as a reporter for Horace Greely’s New York City’s Tribune. He knew her and immediately dispatched a reporter to the scene of the ship wreck to help find her body and to report on the events of the disaster.

Elsewhere Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s finest poets, also had a personal relationship with Margaret Fuller. It was Emerson who would send Henry David Thoreau, another one of America’s great writers, on a double mission to the disaster scene. He was to help find Margaret Fuller’s body. And the treasure he was seeking among others was the last manuscript she was working on. It was her history of the Second Republic of Italy the very same movement both she and her husband had been caught up in before having to flee its end.

The newspaper accounts in July and the Thoreau account both establish that due to proximity to the wreck site the Smith Oakes house became the central location for the rescue and recovery effort. They were both present on Fire Island when the ship crashed against the unseen sandbar. Newspaper accounts related Smith Oakes’ own efforts to help rescue crew members and passengers from the water. Hannah was pictured as caring for victims of the storm. She also had a role in trying to save papers from the ship that at one point were thought to be pages from the Fuller transcript being so urgently sought by Thoreau. They turned out be papers of hers but not the manuscript being sought which ultimately disappeared into the sea never found.

Thoreau’s field notes from his visit, in the form of a contemporaneous diary, have been known for some time. They have been valued in particular for documenting a number of things. They show the failed efforts to rescue the passengers and crew that might have gone another way but didn’t. The notes also document the predatory behavior of “pirates” who looted the cargo of the ship indifferent to the fate of crew and passengers while doing so.

For the purposes of this narrative however the Thoreau diary is important for another reason that seemingly has escaped earlier analysis by prior writers. It captures Fire Island life at a particular time period 1850 and in particular Smith Oakes and Hannah emerge from his accounts too with more detail than has been discovered before.

Smith Oakes turned out to be something of a Virgil for Thoreau accompanying him almost everywhere and providing details about his life in the process. Hannah too was an assistant to him and she too seemed agreeable to talk to him about her life. Thoreau as well was a sharp observer and one thing he did observe was the Smith Oakes house. Although it turned out as honest as Smith Oakes appeared to be in sharing details of his life with Thoreau it later turned out he was keeping a secret not discovered until Thoreau was gone. He too was a pirate and was robbing cargo even as he otherwise appeared to be a benevolent agent.

THOREAU’S FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF FIRE ISLAND: AMONG THE PIRATES 

Thoreau described the area of western Fire Island where he was visiting:
“The western end near Fire Is. inlet is called Fire Is. Beach from near some half sunken islands of that name in the Bay opposite”.

That would place the Smith Oakes house off the Great South Bay just south of what was then called the “Fire Islands” today’s East and West Islands.

The Oakes told him that their house was “isolated”. “There are but 4 houses worth naming on the whole beach. Selah Strong’s at the Lighthouse one mile from the Western extremity. Felix Dominy’s public house a mile further east. Smith Oakes’ another low public house 3 miles farther, and Homans 10 miles farther E. still. There are 2 or 3 temporary fishermen’s bunks beside.”

The house had a fire place and a small kitchen.

​The house appears to have been at least two stories tall as Hannah Oakes told Thoreau she had been aware of the ship’s distress because she could see the vessel and passengers plainly from the windows. That means that the house had an upstairs view of the ocean at a minimum.

The area was apparently hilly as there are frequent references to sand hills both near the beach and near the Smith Oakes public house. Indeed, Hannah Oakes was instrumental in the burial of Fuller’s two-year-old son whose body did wash up on the beach. Angelo was given temporary burial between some sand knolls near the Smith Oakes house.

More specifically he had this to say about the Smith Oakes public house:

“Oakes’ is a perfect pirate’s house, and his men good specimens of that nearly extinct class.
There were the stern ornaments of wrecked vessels over the door, and the fragments of wrecks cluttered the yard.”

Smith Oakes also told Thoreau that in the past his house had been searched by the police.

He also told him that in the past his wife had been arrested.

Thoreau also said that he had been told that Smith Oakes “has concealed himself on the beach and been troubled in many ways on account of his dealings with wrecks.”

Lastly and most importantly the Oakes provided a time line for their presence on Fire Island: eleven years prior to their interview meaning that they had first opened their public house in 1839. 

Thoreau would later journey to Patchogue New York on the south shore of Long Island east of the wreck site on Fire Island. His search for the Fuller manuscript there was in vain. He later returned to the wreck site and after more futile searching for the body of Margaret and her husband and her manuscript left for home.

REDEMPTION GAINED

On 8-6-1850 Henry Bangs, who had been the acting captain of the Elizabeth and who has survived the shipwreck being rescued from the waters by Smith Oakes, took an ad in the New York Herald on his behalf and the crew thanking both Smith Oakes and his wife for their life saving efforts.

He referred to their “kindness” and “humanity”.

It was quite a turn around from the gloomy dates of January 1848 when both Smith and Hannah Oakes were the subjects of far less generous news accounts. It marked a redemption point for the both of them restoring their good name in the eyes of the public.

But it would be short lived.
 
REDEMPTION LOST

In addition to wreckers searching for goods to be looted, and reporters searching for a story and Thoreau looking for a manuscript and a body, there was another set of searchers at work too. John Law was on the beach too.

The news accounts of the Elizabeth wreck were sensational. Margaret Fuller was a celebrity. The tale of terrible ocean conditions, the heartbreaking loss of her, her husband and their son and others resonated with the public. In addition, tales of indifferent crowds on the beach who appeared not to lift a finger to help rescue the victims but were instead more interested in robbing their possessions inflamed not just the public but public authorities too.

This time there was a determination to find some of those responsible and make an example of them.

City and local law enforcement fanned out and began to press their investigation into the plundering. One early news account mentioned that 40 suspects had been found but none were named.

On 8-8-50 the New York Herald reported the arrest of 7 men for possessing stolen goods from the wreck of the Elizabeth. One of them was Smith Oakes. The stolen goods: highly prized castile soap from the cargo of the Elizabeth the value of the stolen goods being 150 dollars a significant sum in this time period.

In the space of just two days Smith Oakes had gone from being a hero to a villain. His arrest confirming the suspicions about him first raised in 1848 too.

Hannah Oakes was not arrested nor was she ever implicated by press accounts in the activities of her husband.

STORM AFTERMATH

Margaret Fuller’s body was never found, nor that of her husband. Their child was disinterred from his lonely grave on Fire Island and buried anew at another time.

The Fuller manuscript about the history of the Second Republic of Italy was never recovered and was lost to history.

The seven-foot marble statue of John Calhoun some months later was hauled off the Atlantic shore from underneath shallow waters.  It was mostly intact and shipped to South Carolina its original destination where it was later displayed. It was later destroyed by the Union army when General Sherman arrives. The statue had at that point been moved from Charleston to Columbia for safe keeping. But the building housing it, along with the rest of the city of Columbia, burned down during the attack on the city by union forces. No remnants of the statue were ever found.

On 9-13-1850 the New York Evening Post reported that a marble statue, not that of John Calhoun, but a much smaller one depicting a youth, had been found on the Fire Island beach after a recent storm. It was returned to authorities by its finder shortly after being discovered. It is thought to have been part of the cargo of the Elizabeth. A news account the next day reports it was returned to its owner in New York city immediately thereafter.

By coincidence the finder of the small statue is John Homan, brother of Daniel Homan, one of the seven men arrested along with Smith Oakes for plundering the Elizabeth’s cargo.

It’s perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the history of Fire Island that so many people over so long a period of time have searched in vain for various alleged treasure chests said to have been left by pirates buried within its ocean facing dunes. No one has ever found any such treasure. The irony being that the only documented treasure off Fire Island is the cargo of the Elizabeth that no one has apparently ever tried to salvage.

The Elizabeth was not a passenger ship. It was a freighter. It’s manifest probably not an item easy to find perhaps impossible to find now. But newspaper reports consistently indicated it held a cargo of one hundred and fifty tons of Carrara marble.

This was then, and still is today, a valuable mineral. Mined from the Carrara region of Italy for centuries pure white Carrera marble was prized by sculptors. The “David” by Michelangelo was sculpted from this stone.

Since the end of the 19th century this particular color, pure white, has essentially been mined out. Consequently, it’s a rare mineral today.
It’s not known today whether the marble in the hold of the Elizabeth was pure white but even at today’s prices, whether pure white or not, a conservative value for one hundred and fifty tons of this brand of marble is one million dollars.

One hundred and seventy-one years later, in the sand, one quarter mile from shore, under the salty Atlantic the marble remains buried. It could have all turned to chalk by now. Or those very same sands might have preserved all or some of that bulk.

Its raw value could be inflated as well by its historical pedigree: salvaged from the wreck of the Elizabeth.

No newspaper accounts have been found confirming that the marble was salvaged from the sea. The one account of part of the cargo being salvaged from the sea relates to the one-ton Calhoun statue. That was reported. It took three months to effect and an engineering effort that the newspaper account describes as a "miracle". The statue was found buried in three feet of sand but getting it out turned out to a feat that amazed even those involved. That of course raises a question about whether 150 tons of stone would not have represented an even greater challenge. 

This is the account about that statue recovery detailing the issues found and overcome. It's from the Brooklyn Eagle, 11-8-1850 edition: https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031151/1850-11-08/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=07%2F02%2F1850&index=0&date2=12%2F31%2F1850&words=Fire+Island&to_year2=1850&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&from_year2=1850&proxdistance=5&page=1&county=Kings&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=fire+island&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&SearchType2=prox5

In any case “there be treasure buried” maybe.

In 1901 American poet Julia Ward Howe dedicated a memorial to Margaret Fuller and the victims of the loss of the Elizabeth at Point of Woods Fire Island. In 1913 it was washed away by yet another Atlantic storm.

Previously in 1883 Julia Ward Howe published her biography of Margaret Fuller. In Chapter 16 there appears her account of the last days of Margaret Fuller: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32511/32511-h/32511-h.htm

​LAST SIGHTINGS

​Following the newspaper accounts of the arrest of Smith Oakes historical investigation has developed only two more newspaper references to the Smith Oakes house.

On 8-28-1851 an article appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle about a visit to Sayville and Fire Island. It’s notable for two reasons. The writer describes a visit to the Smith Oakes house and he reports seeing Smith Oakes at the business. While he had been arrested in the summer of 1850, one summer later he was a free man back on the sands of Fire Island although his actual legal status at the time remains unknown.

He had robbed the cargo of the Elizabeth. But he had also acted in an exceptional manner. He was one of the few present on the beach who braved the stormy waters of the Atlantic and went out and actually saved lives. It may have mitigated his punishment.

The news account author also makes a point of saying that one of the reasons he had visited was to meet women. That comment reveals an unusual aspect of the Smith Oakes house that is that it was a place for visitation not only by unaccompanied men but women too in a time when women on trips were generally chaperoned by their husbands or family members.

The last discovered news account about the Smith Oakes house is from an 11-17-1908 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle. An article about Fire Island includes a memory from an “old bay man” about the Smith Oakes house circa 1850. It’s described as sitting on top of a knoll “beside the bay”. He further reported from his own memory: “In those days the wooden sloops and schooners harbored opposite Oakes house while awaiting a fair wind”.

EXIT INTO THE UNKNOWN

​Smith Oakes died in 1856. Hannah’s life after the death of her husband and when Hannah passed away is presently unknown.

The Smith Oakes house is mapped as part of the 1858 Chase map. It is not mapped again in subsequent maps particularly the 1878 Sammis map that did map every known structure on Fire Island at that time.

The circumstantial evidence that does exist is that sometime after 1851 the business ended perhaps with the death of Smith Oakes in 1856.

HANNAH OAKES: PIONEER AND PIRATE

As indicated earlier the Hannah Oakes history is a complicated one. If for the moment the issue of piracy is removed from her history what remains is that along with her husband she helped found the first hospitality business on Fire Island in 1839. She would be the first woman holding that status in the early history of Fire Island.

What remains about her history is the issue of criminal behavior. Although press accounts in 1848 accused her of theft she was never convicted of that charge or any other criminal charge as well. In 1850 when her husband was in fact arrested for theft she was not formally implicated in his actions nor did any press account in public appear suggesting that she was part of her husband’s alleged misdeeds.

There is however more than enough to cause some wonder about just what she did know about her husband had been doing while living alongside her and whether she was his accomplice.

If for the moment we do not give her the benefit of the doubt and judge her culpable of the same intentions of her husband this does however raise a dubious but interesting point about her and her husband.

That is whether they, not Jeremiah Smith, were Fire Island’s “premier” land pirates.

Fire Island’ geography has helped give rise to the view that piracy is linked to its early past. It’s a remote location. For most of its history it’s been underpopulated and underdeveloped. It’s a wilderness. The ocean is on one side allowing for access to the shore from anywhere in the world. Its storm swept ocean coast regularly deposited ships that wrecked upon its sands burst open with valuable goods just for the taking for those prepared to do so. Within its boundaries life on the margins could occur shrouded by its isolation from law enforcement when it appeared if it did at all.

CORE ELEMENTS OF THE JEREMIAH SMITH MYTH

Out of this mix of permissible factors the Jeremiah Smith legend arose. It almost did not matter if it was true or not. It was a great tale.

Wrecks upon the ocean coast waiting to be plundered.
One man directing a group of confederates to help him in an organized criminal conspiracy.
A house on the beach that provided a store house for stolen goods some kept on the property, most shipped off island for sale on the black market.
The house tall enough to have a second floor with a window to allow for candle light to beckon wayward ships to a false landing upon the sandbars near it.
When rich enough, exit and departure to points unknown, safe from consequences for all the acts that contributed to the wealth amassed every pirate’s dream.

The issue with actually proving that Jeremiah Smith is the model for this myth is that no evidence really exists for doing so.

No house every attributed to him has ever been found or mapped.
Accounts about his time on Fire Island are inconsistent. There are some accounts that say he was a pirate. There are others who swear he was an honest man.
Legal records document he was a land holder on Fire Island and not a trespasser on someone else’s beach land.

And this brings this narrative back to close to its beginning. It’s time to bring Karl Luss back in focus, his analysis that is about the Jeremiah Smith legend. It’s his view that Hawes, the first author who promoted the Jeremiah Smith tale, was really using him to distract from a hidden description of persons he really knew to be the land pirate he otherwise created a fable about.

Luss names those persons as the Smith Oakes. If that is too extreme a characterization it would certainly seem fair to say he strongly inferred it.
He appears to have been righter than perhaps he himself realized.

Hawkes, as Luss suggested, could have met the Oakes on one of his visits to Fire Island. There is a time line in the existence of the Smith Oakes house and Hawes for that to have occurred.

Now we know this is what he would have seen.

ONE AND THE SAME: OAKES REAL WORLD COMPARED TO SMITH FABLE WORLD

As per Thoreau’s eye witness account “Oakes’ is a perfect pirate’s house, and his men good specimens of that nearly extinct class.
There were the stern ornaments of wrecked vessels over the door, and the fragments of wrecks cluttered the yard.”

This is a pretty good comparison to the house allegedly occupied by Jeremiah Smith with one important qualification. It’s a description of a real house while the Jeremiah Smith account belongs to an account that includes mermaids a far less credible one.

We know as well that the Smith Oakes house was built atop a sand hill. We know as well from Hannah Oakes' own mouth that she could see the ocean from the top windows of the house she lived in on Fire Island.

This is real information not fable.

It also provides for the possibility that for some one so inclined the legend of a candle put in a window that could be seen from the ocean sea beckoning a false light of safe landing to those in peril could have occurred. If Hannah could see the ocean from her window then a light could have been seen from ships at sea too.

It’s Thoreau who confirms that the Oakes had a crew of confederates in their company. If you are going to move goods from the ocean to the bay for disposal to do so quickly and competently the more hands the better.

Smith Oakes did have the means to do so as well. The Thoreau account confirms that Smith Oakes had a beach cart to move goods a process in plain view at the sinking of the Elizabeth.

Smith Oakes had a boat. He told Thoreau he did. With a boat you can move goods across the bay to any point to the south for disposal.

The Smith Oakes house was isolated. It was sited among tall sand dunes. It was south of half-submerged islands that would have blocked prying eyes from ships on the Great South Bay. This is a near perfect clandestine environment within which much could be hidden. Smith Oakes in fact told Thoreau that due to his association with being a wrecker he often “concealed” himself on the beach to avoid “troubles”.

And it’s clear that both Hannah and Smith Oakes did have a history and a long one of suspicious activity at the very least, criminal activity confirmed in the end for Smith Oakes when he was arrested for that theft of stolen goods from the wrecked Elizabeth.

Even if not directly involved in her husband’s acts it’s hard to believe in the small world they both inhabited for many years his actions escaped her notice or knowledge. The possibility of being an accessory to his acts either by implication through silence or other passive and active acts has got to be seen as high.

That said, Hannah Oakes is not present to explain herself. It’s possible that some other explanation for her behavior may yet emerge.

However, until that does occur it’s a dubious “honor” now attributed to Hannah Oakes. It’s not pretty and it may not be fair since much is still unknown.  But it certainly does look based on the facts presently known that along with her husband her life and his provide the actual foundation of the piracy tales that are embedded in the history of Fire Island.

That gives them both but Hannah certainly a unique status.

The reality of her life has become the stuff of legends passed down from her time to these days.

​5/21/21