Native American were the first to farm the land in our area. Because they took a slash-and-burn approach to preparing their fields, these early farmers substantially changed the natural landscape. Because they did not use fertilizers, the soil would be exhausted of nutrients after just a few years and they would have to move to a new field. This pre-colonial farming created a patchwork landscape of cleared fields and wooded lands with trees of varied degrees of maturity.

Colonists eventually cleared the fields more completely, and intensively cultivated them. They planted European grains and grasses using early plows. Because the colonists fertilized their fields, they could continue to use the same fields for years. As a result, they built fences around their fields to keep free-ranging livestock from damaging crops.

By the mid-18th century, colonialists were using improved plows and seed drills, continuous crop rotation between grasses or legumes and grains, and extensive fertilization. More than a century of farming by colonists significantly transformed the landscape in our area. Stones cleared from fields created an extensive network of stone walls, irrigation systems in fields ensured they didn’t become too dry or too wet, small ponds and lakes emerged when rivers were dammed for mills and waterways became polluted with the byproducts of mills (e.g. saw dust).

By the mid 18^th century, farmers along the Long Island Sound were becoming merchants and traders. “Progressive farmers, during the winter, built for themselves serviceable, sea-going boats such as sloops or two-masted schooners,’’ Islip historian N.R. Howell wrote in 1949.

Market sloops are a kind of sailing cargo vessel specifically designed for sailing on the Long Island Sound and the Hudson River. Derived from Dutch and British sloops, the single-masted market sloop dominated the transportation business in our area for decades.

Market sloops transported goods among the communities of the Long Island Sound and the Hudson River. They made regular trips back and forth to New York City and went as far away as the Caribbean.

They seemed to carry anything that could generate money: vegetables, wood, animals, dairy products, hay and grain (for horses in the city), horse manure (used to fertilize fields), and passengers.

In the year 1750, the prosperous Oyster Bay merchant Samuel Townsend sent out his sloop Solomon under Capt. John Jones on a voyage to the Virgin Islands. The single-masted ship was loaded with 76 barrels of flour, 26 barrels of pork, five quarter-barrels of butter, four casks of hams, beef and tongues, 4,250 barrel hoops, seven geese and 20 bushels of corn.

Townsend valued the cargo at 262 pounds sterling. This value in current dollars is $35,000.

As the table below shows, The Sawpits (aka Port Chester) was an integral part of the local economy. More sloops operated out of The Sawpits than out of any of our neighboring communities.

A saw pit is a pit that lumber is positioned over to be sawed with a long two-handled saw by two men, one standing above the timber and the other below. It was used for producing planks, which could then be turned into boards. Many towns, villages and country estates had their own saw pits. The greatest user of the output from these mills was the shipbuilding industry.

Sawing was a slow and exhausting process, requiring a lot of strength and stamina. The top "sawyer" had to be especially strong because the saw was pulled in turn by each man, and the lower had the advantage of gravity. Two men working a saw pit could produce about 12 boards in a day.

Early sawmills used a water wheel to power a whipsaw. The circular motion of the wheel was changed to back-and-forth motion of the saw blade by the pitman arm or rod. A pitman is similar to a crankshaft, but in reverse (a crankshaft converts back-and-forth motion to circular motion). A water-driven power sawing pit could produce up to 200 boards a day.