The South Country area is rich with history.
Bellport.com wanted to create a place where we could showcase some of
the photos and artifacts that tell the story of the South Country area.
If you have items that you would like us to consider for display on Bellport.com, please contact us at
office@bellport.com.
| Pictures Of Old Bellport | |
| Dorothy Parker In Bellport | |
| Price Family History |
Pictures Of Old Bellport
from Charles
Marvin Finn
I grew up in Bellport.
During World War II, my Mother, Virginia Finn, and I lived with my
Grandmother, Lillian Marvin, at 4 Browns Lane. After the War, my Father Al
went to work at the Lab and we lived at 178 South Country Road. This house
was owned by the family until after my Fathers death in the late 1990's.
Last week, a friend from Bellport High, Richard Beyer, sent me six
pictures from your website, one of which is a painting by Jody Love
depicting craft sailing on a frozen Bay. I have a similar painting hanging
in my home here in California. The caption refers to the craft as
"iceboats."
When I was growing up, what we called iceboats were long narrow craft with
three runners hanging down, one in front and one on either side (you have
a picture of such iceboats also on the website).
What is shown in the picture Richard sent me are what we called scooters
-- short for South Bay scooters -- which were designed differently. Their
hull was oval and runners were attached to the hull's bottom.
The difference between these craft was important. After the Bay froze,
patches of open water sometimes appeared. If a true iceboat hit one of
these patches the front runner went down in the water and that was the end
of the sail. If a scooter hit such a patch, a skillful captain could sail
across it emerging unscathed at the far side. To the best of my knowledge
scooters were indigenous to Great South Bay.
Two unrelated notes:
During World War II citizens were encouraged to have what were called
Victory Gardens. The crops grown on them freed up vegetables to feed the
fighting soldiers and sailors. My grandmother rented land on the south
side of her property from the Catholic church for her Victory Garden. It
was lovingly tended by The Rev. Elliot Travalee, pastor of the AME church.
Jody Love's husband, Dr. Robert Love, and my Father often drove together
to the Medical Department at the Lab where Bob Love was in charge of
industrial medicine and my Dad was administrator. That connection is how I
got my painting of scooters on the Bay by Jody Love.
Our former home was sold some years ago, and due to a disability I am
unable to travel to Bellport again. But my memories are very fond. And I
write this when I'm sure there's ice on the Bay once again.
Sincerely,
Charles Marvin Finn
Clayton, CA
Dorothy Parker In
Bellport
by Richard Weissmann
We
recently received the below article from Bellport resident, Richard
Weissmann about Dorothy Parker and the Wyandotte Hotel.
Twenty-six years ago I bought a piece of vacant
property on Wyandotte Lane and built a house. Soon afterwards, I found out
that the property used to be part of the site of a summer resort which
existed in Bellport from the 19th to the mid-twentieth century. It was known
as the Wyandotte Hotel and included a rambling hotel building, several
cottages, tennis courts, a boat dock, and a sweeping lawn stretching down to
the bay at what is now the end of Brewster Lane. This interested me as a
lover of history. But as a writer, I was even more intrigued by some famous
names that were connected to the old hotel: most significantly, Dorothy
Parker.
The acerbic Ms. Parker, whose rapier (and sometimes meat cleaver) wit is one
of the most often quoted women of the 20th-century, even by people who may
not recognize the name of the long-time "New Yorker" writer and unofficial
leader of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table literary group. Dorothy lived from
1893 to 1962 and left us with such famous observations as:
"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses."
"You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think."
"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."
"She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."
"I don’t care what they say about me, as long as it isn’t true."
Besides being known for her wit and outrageous comments (she once said: “If
all the young ladies who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, no one
would be surprised,”) Dorothy was also known as a two-fisted drinker. This
fact led me to believe that she must have frequented the Wyandotte Hotel
during her flapper days when it was a speakeasy. So, I was surprised to find
out, as I recently read her biography, that she actually spent her childhood
summers here and even had her twelfth birthday out on the lawn with
15-friends in attendance. This would have been the summer of 1905 when girls
still dressed in white Victorian dresses and men wore straw boaters. Also,
that summer her older sister became engaged and later married a Bellporter
named George Droste. But I haven’t found any record of where the Droste
family lived.
Although she was an intellectual powerhouse, Dorothy Parker was never
educated beyond a few years in school. The woman who wrote drama and book
reviews for "Vanity Fair" and the "New Yorker", and who once said of a book
she was reviewing, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly, it
should be thrown with great force,” got her early education reading away the
summer days on the porch of the Wyandotte Hotel. I like to think that there
was something about the bucolic setting of the hotel on Bellport Bay that
inspired the nascent writer in young Dorothy.
Of course, she did comment to her father in letters written home to New York
that Bellport was “terribly hot” in the summer of 1906 and that the older
girls complained that there were “hardly any fellows here.” But there was
daily swimming and sailing on the bay and evening games of croquet on the
lawn. She even got to ride in one of the new “motorcars” that were just
beginning to be a novelty.
Later on, the young woman who “went to bed at 8:30 to the sound of lapping
waves,” would develop into the cynical wit who would write a poem many of us
remember from high school English:
Resume
Razors pain you; rivers are damp
Acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp
Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give
Gas smells awful; you might as well live.
Dorothy Parker will be forever linked to Manhattan, where she lived most of
her life in hotels so she never had to worry about such mundane things as
housekeeping or doing laundry. But, for at least a couple of innocent years,
she lived right here in my front yard.
Somehow, I don’t think that the comment she wanted inscribed on her
tombstone can ever be applied to Bellport:
“Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment”
*I would like to hear from any readers who have
additional information or comments about the Wyandotte Hotel.
"Dorothy Parker In Bellport" Comments...
3/4/2010, Robbie Bedell wrote...
Thank You for your story Rich. It brings back many
memories for me. I grew up in the house my father (William Bedell) built at
12 Pearl St. in 1955 (on the corner of Browns Lane). When I was young (late
50s, early 60s) I was told that Dorothy Parker also spent time in the house
across the street from us which was later to become the Unitarian Church.
The Wyandotte Hotel buildings were all still standing then, but vacant, and
my friends and I use to get in all sorts of trouble going into the old
structures. To us they were a bit scary, large and filled with ghosts. I
remember we went into one room and it was filled with Gideon bibles!
1/11/2010, Mary McCarthy-D'Angelis wrote...
Thanks Rich for that nice story. My parents Mary and Joe McCarthy (the
writer - not the Senator or baseball manager)
summered at the Wyandotte after the war. My older siblings remember
it well. Dorothy Parker is still one of my favorite writers - especially her
short stories.
12/8/2009, Chris Taylor wrote...
Thanks, Rich, for a well written summary on local
history, which I found both interesting and informative- hope you find out
more!
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We
received many amazing photos from Forrest and Corvus Meachen. Forrest
was the great grandson of Mayor Everett Price. We thank Forrest and Corvus very much for allowing us to display their photos. Here’s what
Forrest had to say:
“My name is Forrest Meachen and recently I came into possession of old
news articles and photos of my great grandfather, "Mayor Price," who was
the first Mayor of your beautiful town. I spent much of my childhood
there. My grandfather, "Forrest R Bumstead,” helped to build the
firehouse and he participated in a fireman competition. Every time I get
to NY, I always make the trip to Bellport, which is usually a wonderful
trip down memory lane. I have great memories of watching the parades on
Station Rd, and fireworks on the dock.”
Click here to see all of their photos in a slideshow.