Historian Richard Wines’ new book, A Farm Family on Long Island’s North Fork: The Lost World of the Hallocks and Their Sound Avenue Community brings a familiar local name front and center.
The 320-page tome documents the history of the Hallock family, who have lived on the North Fork —from Doctor’s Path in Riverhead to the Southold Town Line along Sound Avenue — for generations.
A companion exhibit at Hallockville Museum Farm opened on May 10 and will be up through the summer, featuring original drawings, a Hallock family tree and original photographs taken by Bessie Hallock, who acquired a Kodak Brownie camera around 1918 and documented life on the farm through her photographs.
The book is full of engaging stories about the Hallocks, whose ancestors, Wines notes, “came to America as part of the great Puritan migration…between 1629 and 1640 to escape religious persecution at home.” While Wines considers the family legend of Peter Hallock as the first Hallock to settle on these shores to be “likely entirely myth, the presence of his son William is well-documented.”
The community, called by different names at different times—Northville, Hallockville, the Village of Sound Avenue — was often at odds through the years over many different issues. Conflicts arose over the Revolution and the Civil War, a schism in the Aquebogue church (resulting in the expulsion of rebellious parishioners, who built a new church in Northville), vandalism, repeated attempts to burn the Northville church down and several lawsuits.
Wines notes that the Hallock family was forced to adapt to major changes in their way of life over generations; they witnessed such events as the arrival of the railroad on Long Island, the “wave of Polish immigrants that began arriving in the late 19th century,” prohibition and rum-running, and plans for the ill-fated Jamesport Nuclear Power Plant, proposed in 1973 to build up to four reactors on the north end of the Hallock farm.
Wines is a past president of Hallockville Museum Farm, chair of the Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission and a member of the Riverhead Farmland Preservation and Transfer of Development Rights committees. He also grew up on Sound Avenue and wrote the first history of Northville in 1958 at just 12 years old. His mother, Virginia Wines, who spent years collecting documents, transcribing family diaries and interviewing members of the Hallock family, was a great-niece of Halsey and Emilie Hallock.
There is more than meets the eye in this exhaustively referenced volume on the Hallocks; get your copy of A Farm Family on Long Island’s North Fork: The Lost World of the Hallocks and Their Sound Avenue Community at Hallockville Museum Farm’s gift shop.
