What's In A Name?

PHOEBE SCOY HIGHWAY

The sign at either end of the road that connects Northwest Landing and Mile Hill Roads in Northwest says "Phoebe Scoy Highway," which, depending on where you look, may also be found as Highway to Phebe Scoy's, Road to Phoebe Van Scoy's, or Phoebe Scoy Road.

More likely than not, Phebe spelled her name without the O. Phebe was a popular name in earlier centuries.

The Van Scoys were descended from three Dutch brothers, the Van Schaicks or Van Scoyacks, who were among the first settlers in the New Netherlands. The family that eventually settled in Northwest, one of only a few that did, always spelled their name Van Scoy.

Phebe Van Scoy was a daughter of Isaac Van Scoy and Temperance Payne. She inherited the family's expansive 180-acre farm, where hay, wheat, and oats were grown, cattle and sheep raised, and where orchards bloomed, before dying without children on Nov. 4, 1868, at the age of 81. Her husband was Jesse Foster.

Their house, later known as the John Monks property and more recently as Camp St. Regis, is shown on an 1873 map of the area. It originally belonged to Isaac Van Scoy, Phebe's father.

"For many years, Miss Van Scoy lived here all alone in this old long roof house, which must have been built in the early history of the town," wrote Thomas M. Edwards in 1929 in "Reminiscences of Old East Hampton by the Sea."

"I can't help thinking of her even now, as the bravest woman I ever knew, for we must admit that this was about as lonely a place as could have been found anywhere."

There are six unmarked graves in the Van Scoy burial ground; it's hard to say whether one might be Phebe's. Much of the old Van Scoy farm is the soon-to-be-developed Northwest Estates subdivision.

M.N.