This photograph from The East Hampton Star’s archive shows a two-horse-powered threshing machine at the farm of Charles E. Halsey on Deerfield Road in Water Mill in 1897. The horses appear in an inclined enclosure, where they would walk along a treadmill turning a belt that drives the threshing machine. This photo appeared in the “Historic Water Mill” exhibition from the summer of 1989 at the Water Mill Museum.
Charles Everett Halsey (1845-1930) married Mary Catherine Elliston (1842-1927) at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church in October 1879. The couple raised twins, Ellen Abigail Halsey (1880-1966) and Jesse Lemuel Halsey (1880-1959), on their farm, which was called Head O’ the Pond. Jesse remained on the farm, helping his father, and while Ellen married in 1903, she remained nearby in Water Mill.
The photograph captures a moment when farmers still relied on teams of horses but were starting to move toward mechanical farming equipment. A thresher was used to separate the grain from stalks, and this sort of horse-drawn threshing mill was developed in the mid-19th century, providing relief from a labor-intensive farm task. Around the time this photo was taken, farm machinery began to incorporate steam power and gasoline, rather than horse power. Despite evolutions in equipment, the Halsey family continues to farm on Deerfield Road in Water Mill.
Today’s farmers increasingly deal with another wave of change — computerized technology, including websites and social media. On Saturday at 3 p.m., Ian Calder-Piedmonte of Balsam Farms and Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow of Amber Waves will be featured in a panel discussion titled “Returning to Our Roots: East Hampton’s New Farms” as part of the East Hampton Library’s Tom Twomey series. To learn more and sign up, the website to visit is tomtwomeyseries.org.
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Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is the Long Island Collection’s head of collection.
