In the late 20th century, the approximately 520 acres in the northeast corner of Riverhead Town and a small portion of adjacent Southold Town came to be known as the “KeySpan Property.” It included about 300 acres of farmland, 200 acres of woodland, and over 5,000 feet of shorefront on Long Island Sound.
In the first decade of the 21st century, this became the site of a remarkable preservation story that created Hallock State Park Preserve and permanently prevented development on the adjacent farmland. The area referred to in the 19th century as “Hallockville.”
The Hallockville Museum Farm’s 28 acres are located on allotments originally granted to John Sweasy (the Homestead farm) and Barnabas Wines (the Cichanowicz farm). Grants were distributed according to wealth, with the richer inhabitants getting more lots.
Richard Howell was the earliest person to settle on the KeySpan property itself. In 1675, his father-in-law, William Hallock, gave him a 20-rod wide strip on the far west edge of his two allotments, running from Sound to Bay. The Howell family gradually acquired more land to the west and continued to live on the farm, now part of the KeySpan property, for more than 250 years until the last family member living there died in 1951.
Five old farmhouses stand on the Sound Avenue frontage of the KeySpan property, flanking both east and west the historic house and barns owned by the Hallockville Museum. Along with the homestead, the museum’s “catalogue house” and its staff house and three more structures nearby, the eleven houses are referred to as “Hallockville” because all of them (or their predecessors) were built or inhabited by members of the Hallock family in the 19th century.
In 1975, a group of concerned local residents began meeting to devise a way to save the Hallock homestead, its deteriorating outbuildings and the other farmsteads along Sound Avenue. In 1977, LILCO leased the Caleb Hallock farmhouse and outbuildings to the fledging museum for 10 years, at $1 per year. At that time, plans were developed to save and restore fifteen historic structures along Sound Avenue on the LILCO property as a living farm museum and a center for traditional crafts. In 1981, LILCO donated the homestead, the surrounding farm structures and two-and-a-half acres of land to the museum. That same year, the fledging museum held its first Fall Festival and its first Christmas open house in the homestead. In 1984, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1997, the museum purchased five more acres from the company for $100,000, bringing the museum’s holdings to 8.5 acres. This new parcel included a small piece east of the Homestead and property extending to the west almost to Herricks Lane, including the 1930’s Cichanowicz house and the site of Isaiah Hallock’s barn. KeySpan later donated a large barn built by the Naugles family, which the museum then moved onto this new property and restored.
After several years of restoration work, the museum opened its Naugles Barn in June 2003.
During the winter of 2004 the museum moved the Trubisz Sprout House and Aunt Frances’s Washhouse) from the adjacent Trubisz farm and ultimately placed on new foundations behind the Hudson-Sydlowski House. Later that year, master decoy carver Jack Combs moved his decoy carving shop from Cutchogue and rebuilt it on a foundation just behind the Sprout and Wash Houses. In 2005 volunteers from the museum fenced in the front portion of the old Cichanowicz farm to make a proper pasture for its two cows.
In 2006, the Museum completed restoration of the 1930’s Cichanowicz Farmhouse and commenced furnishing the interior back to its Depression era appearance. In 2007, Hallockville dedicated a new interpretive kiosk, funded in part by the Trust for Public Land that told the story of the KeySpan property – from its early history through the stories of its exploitation and ultimate preservation.
Source:
“HISTORY.” Hallockville Museum Farm, 17 Nov. 2020, hallockville.org/about/history/
