Ranger Territory

The dumbers-down are at it again, this time in far Northwest. The Roosevelt Land Corporation, developer of the old Van Scoy farm, has proposed giving the streets of its new subdivision there such lackluster names as Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter Lanes, names that would be irrelevant at best anywhere in the nation, but are downright witless in a region so steeped in history.

The Van Scoy farm was surrounded for centuries by houses belonging to members of the Ranger family, the first of whom, Samuel Ranger, is thought to have arrived from Stonington, Conn., in 1777. The farmhouse owned by his son Dering, who married a neighboring Van Scoy, still stands, near an old cemetery that is the Ranger family burying ground, in an area off Northwest Road known as Grassy Hollow.

In the years after the Revolutionary War there was a one-room school on the land, populated mainly by Ranger children. Ranger men were school and Town Trustees throughout the 19th century, as well as farmers and whalers. Some were Civil War veterans.

Although the name of Ranger appears on the family trees of many present-day East Hamptoners, the Parsons, Talmage, and Lester families among them, there seems to be no one left of that name either in the town or, indeed, in Suffolk County. All the more reason to try to keep it alive.

Charles E. Squires, an East Hampton native with roots in Northwest, wrote recently to the East Hampton Town Planning Board asking it to urge the Van Scoy farm developers to consider more meaningful street names. The board has encouraged pertinent names in the past, though not always with lasting results. The residents of Pennypacker Lane, named for a local historian, for example, decided some two years ago that they would rather live on Country Lane and got the town to comply with their wishes.

Nevertheless, we hope the planners will try again. Ranger Road. Van Scoy Drive. Grassy Hollow Lane. Dering Street. Names with meaning, and a sense of place.