Instead of noodling around on the computer Monday morning, it occurred to me that I should do something different on such a bright fall day. After lacing up an old pair of sneakers, I turned left at the end of the driveway, toward a not-yet-up sun.
There was a surprising amount of litter along the way, mostly cans that had held booze seltzers or Red Bull; I made a mental note to go back soon and pick these up. The sun was over the horizon by the time I turned onto Napeague Meadow Road. With the sharp light reflecting off them, I could no longer make out what they had contained before being flung from the windows of passing cars and trucks.
Town records are full of references to meadow at Napeague. Like a lot of things put down on paper in the early centuries of English presence on Long Island, even if one happens to be deep into local history, land deeds are easy to skip over. Yet these tell an important story.
There is a lovely, mouse-eaten fragment of a transaction recorded in 1693 between the Rev. Thomas James and Jeremiah Miller for two pieces of meadow at Napeague. James was East Hampton’s first minister and near the end of his life when the transfer was written down.
Meadow like that at Napeague was valuable, critically important, in fact. As a source of pasturage for livestock. Salt hay could be cut and stored for the winter months to feed the cattle, sheep, and horses driven back to East Hampton after spending the summer getting fat on Montauk’s grasslands.
In all, Reverend James sold Miller about two and a half acres. The cost was not exactly clear; in a tight hand, whoever served as scribe that day wrote the words “viz: eight pound” then something unintelligible, to me, at least, above “valuable consideration.” James himself may have been the record-keeper at the time, owing to his education. He died in 1696, after serving nearly 50 years.
Figuring out where the land was could be a project for another day. Monday morning’s walk was just a fine time to enjoy the view and take in the steel-sharp air.