What's In A Name?

KING'S POINT

King's Point, on the shore of Gardiner's Bay, takes its name from one of Springs's earliest settlers.

Kings, Parsons, Millers, and Talmages were the first families to live in the area. Originally from Dorsetshire in England, the Kings may in fact have been the very first.

The patriarch of the line is sometimes said to have been Jonathan King, though there is no way to confirm it. According to Jeannette E. Rattray, "There is a tradition that the first settler in the Springs was a King, who lived at King's Point . . . The exact date or given name of that King is hard to tell. Three King families were settled here before the Revolution; but a Joseph King died in East Hampton in 1732; another Joseph (1730-1818) helped drive a herd of cattle across the ice from Fireplace to Gardiner's Island as a boy in the winter of 1740-41."

George Sid Miller told the historian about "a legend that the first King once ran out of fire." (In the days before matches, the fire at Fireplace was never allowed to die out except by accident.) "He walked all the way to East Hampton to borrow some; and on the way back kept the coals going in his fire-pot by picking up dead sticks along the way and putting them in it."

Jonathan King was born on April 10, 1699, of the fourth generation of his family in the United States, and died on Aug. 29, 1753. He was "the forerunner of the barterers and traders at Fire Place," according to the Springs Improvement Society.

David Gardiner, the sixth proprietor of Gardiner's Island, records in a ledger of 1737 that Jonathan King owes him for wheat, wool, hogs, corn, and butter, while Gardiner in turn owes King for " 'bringing me to ye island,' for 'riding your horse to town twise,' for 'bringing me home,' etc." The trade and services with the Gardiners across the bay was to continue for many generations.

Many Springs Kings have worked on the water over the years, some sailing to far seas on whaling ships. A number served in the Civil War, two of whom died in battle. Three Kings - Daniel, John, and Richard - signed the Articles of Association in East Hampton on May 5, 1775.

It was at King's Point that Springs residents gathered in 1948 to celebrate their hamlet's part in East Hampton Town's 300th anniversary. The community "treated itself to a clambake, on a field now occupied by houses off King's Point Road," Everett T. Rattray wrote some 25 years later. "There was lobster and chicken and roast potato in addition to the clams, and we ate at long tables borrowed from the church, and thought about youth and antiquity."

M.N.