What's In A Name?

PROMISED LAND

Several explanations of the origin of the name Promised Land can be found at the East Hampton Library. In the glory days of the menhaden, or bunker, fishery, there were a number of fish factories at Promised Land, the area on Gardiner's Bay just west of Lazy Point.

In 1979 Fannie Gardiner explained that the name arose when "an act of Congress 'promised' that [a] fish factory could be located at Napeague and never moved due to odor from fish."

Frank P. Smith, The Star once reported, "says that the name was given . . . when there were so many factories. The roads were very bad. One man with a horse and wagon ran errands and carried the mail from Amagansett to East Hampton Village to the factories. He was a deeply religious man, Mr. Smith says, but not too bright - not 'overburdened,' our elders would say."

"One day he heard several of the owners talking together saying they ought to agree on a name for the area. He took off his hat, stood there with a silly grin on his face, and finally mustered up courage to suggest that it was so hard to reach that he thought it should be called 'The Promised Land.' And so it was, forever after."

Another version was offered by Jeffrey Kassner in his article "Long Island and the Menhaden," published in Long Island Forum in 1984: "It is said that the area was given its name by black menhaden fishermen from Virginia and North Carolina because there were so many fish in that 'promised land' up north."

And Everett T. Rattray, in his book "The South Fork," suggested that the area "may have been named by the rustic humorist who gave Egypt Lane in East Hampton Village its title. . . . Promised Land smelled to high heaven and was the destination of bands of seasonal pilgrims, itinerant laborers looking for work, foreigners to boot."

The trying of the herring-like fish to produce oil and fertilizer did produce an unbelievable odor, so Promised Land was a good location for the industry, with no neighbors on Napeague to complain. The Smith Meal Company was the largest and most long-lived.

In the late 1940s, according to "The South Fork," there was a "ramshackle oyster house called City Hall" at Promised Land. "Fishermen idled by winter gathered" around the big stove there, Mr. Rattray wrote.

M.N.