"He put me straight on where it was," said Solecki, who is now 83 and living in South
Orange, N.J. "I had been looking on the wrong side of the creek. I went to the western
side and found Goddard's old diggings. Then I traced the outline of the fort itself."
Solecki documented a rectangular, palisaded fort made of tall trees and likely used by
Indians for protection and by Dutch explorers and English settlers as a trading post.
It stood along the western edge of Downs Creek for perhaps 30 years, from the 1630s to
the 1660s, before its log sides collapsed and, over time, rotted into the ground, its
rough outline found by Goddard and his young protégé three centuries later.
 Click on photo to enlarge. |
The broad swath of thick woods, rich farmland and salt creeks young Solecki tromped
through is part of a 200-acre tract that was called Fort Neck by the settlers who formed
Southold Town. But the story of Fort Neck is more than one of an Indian culture long lost.
Since then, it has been home to generations of farmers named Horton and Downs, and, in the
20th century, Waraneski and Andruski. And now the middle of the neck is a vineyard planted
with Pinot Noir and merlot grapes.
In this way, the history of Fort Neck tracks key parts of the history of Long Island. For
if the fort is a powerful symbol of our Indian past, and the farmsteads a reminder of the
colonial era and, later, a potato farming culture that barely survives, then the vineyard
boldly symbolizes the agricultural future of the region.
And it's with an eye toward the future that the eastern side of the neck is now a preserve
owned by Southold Town, and the patch of thick woods where the log fort stood is designated
the Fort Corchaug National Historic Site. Development is severely limited on the vineyard
land, and a portion of the western edge of Fort Neck, where an early-19th century farmhouse
and barn remain, is owned by the Peconic Land Trust, which stitched together the deals in
the past few years that spared the neck from development.
The trust recently completed renovations on the farmhouse, bringing it back to a luster
not seen in generations. It will become the organization's North Fork Stewardship Center,
a place not only to showcase regional preservation efforts but also to explain how early
farmers in the region lived and worked.
"This is one of the most important pieces of preserved land on Long Island," said Timothy
Caulfield, the Land Trust's vice president. "It includes the only intact site on which once
stood a 17th century Indian fort, fertile farmland, and a farmhouse and barn that typify the
rich farming history of the region. It's beautiful, historic and is now all preserved."
 Click on photo to enlarge.
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***
Fort Neck's first language was Mohegan-Pequot, spoken by the Indians that the first European
settlers to the region called the Corchaugs, a mangling of an Indian word that today cannot
be translated. It also was the language of the Indians living on the South Fork and the
Connecticut coast. No speaker of Mohegan-Pequot has been transcribed since the 1790s, when
Thomas Jefferson and his Virginia neighbor James Madison met a small group of Indians in what
is today Mastic and took down the only known record. Nearly all of the Indian words they
recorded were in a trunk that was lost on its way back to Jefferson's Virginia plantation.
According to Southold history, when the English arrived on the North Fork in 1640, they built
a small community near where the hamlet's business district stands today. Within a generation,
they were spreading west, toward present day Cutchogue. And there, in the woods along the
western edge of what would come to be known as Downs Creek, was the fort.
| |  Click on photo to enlarge. |
Historians and experts like Solecki, who taught archaeology at Columbia and Texas A&M
universities, can imagine what it looked like: built of tall trees that rose vertically out
of a trench that formed a rough rectangle, 210 feet by 160, surrounding an area of
approximately three-quarters of an acre. An Indian village was arrayed around it, and the
inhabitants raised corn, beans and tobacco.
Almost nothing is known about the Corchaugs today. Only a few of their names exist on North
Fork land deeds, such as one recorded in March 1667. On that deed are 43 Indians names- such
as Poquassuck, Wegotaquak, Immonox, Webinaug, Luaksco, Winheytem and Quamaccusso-
and it is likely that many of them lived at one time on Fort Neck.
Although Indian forts in the region were not unusual, no other intact fort site has been
found on Long Island. To Solecki, the archaeology done at the site suggests that it was built
with the help of Dutch and English traders who, while providing the Corchaugs protection from
raiding parties of New England Indians like the Pequots, were also looking for a secure
facility from which to trade blankets, pipes and other goods for wampum - the shells that
served as the colony of New York's first currency. The Europeans then took the wampum upstate
to trade for furs.
By the late 17th century, Europeans were no longer trading for wampum, and the Indians on the
North Fork had traded away all their land for trinkets such as pots and pans. What was left of
the community of Corchaugs on the North Fork was, records show, living on a 120-acre
reservation in what is today Peconic, east of the fort location. The fort rotted away as
English farmers cleared areas around it and began to build homes and plant crops.
Today, the only readily visible sign of the fort's existence is a stone marker along Route 25,
north of the fort site, which was made a national historic site in the mid-1970s.
***
Land records show that starting in the late 17th century, Fort Neck was home to a succession
of members of the Horton family. That ended with Silas Horton, who sold it to a man named
Benjamin Goldsmith, who, in 1814, sold it to the Downs family. For reasons not known today,
they did not plow the area where the fort had stood, which is why Solecki could still find
the rough outline of the fort's walls.
In 1891, Henry Downs showed the fort site to a Sag Harbor businessman named William Wallace
Tooker, who was fascinated with Indian history and languages. In his writings, Tooker said he
found the spot where the fort stood "undisturbed for many years. The neighboring fields
bordering the creek show evidence of wigwam sites. Shells, pottery, shards, arrow points, etc.,
are met at every hand."
The last of the Downs family to live and farm the neck was John Downs, who sold milk from a
horse-drawn buggy and raised garden vegetables. In the 1920s, Downs-who old-timers say was
nicknamed Honest John- was elected to the State Assembly.
 Click on photo to enlarge. | |
The house the Downses last lived in is long gone; a bungalow used by the family's hired hand
is still standing in the eastern part of the neck and will be used by Southold Town as part of
its effort to showcase the Fort Corchaug National Historic Site to visitors. A portion of the
Downses' decaying barn is still visible in the woods nearby, a reminder of the family's long
occupancy.
In the early 20th century, Suffolk County was the largest and most productive farm county in
the state, and the North Fork was home to hundreds of potato and vegetable farms still owned
by the descendants of the first settlers. In the 1930s, as Polish-born immigrant farmers began
buying up some of the oldest farms, the western half of Fort Neck was bought by Peter
Waraneski, a recent immigrant, most likely from the Downses. With the land came the 19th
century farmhouse, a dilapidated sprout shed and a barn. (Having restored the farmhouse,
the Peconic Land Trust is seeking a grant to fix up the barn.) Like so many other farmers
on the East End, Waraneski planted potatoes.
The big farmhouse kitchen was the center of the home, just as the barn behind the house was
the center of farm life. Waraneski's three daughters, Anna, Rose and Lottie, grew up on the
farm- their pictures hang there today - and, after their father's death in 1936, they took it
over. They sold it to the Andruski family in the early 1950s.
"My mother was Anna," said Peter Jacobs, 51, whose memories of the house are warm, if fleeting.
"Oh, it was a beautiful farm. With a beautiful home. There was so much history on the land.
The Downs family was to the east. Georgie Alec was across the street; past him was Byron Horton
and old Bill Wickham's place. West of Georgie Alec were the Bagenskis, and they were potato
farmers, too."
"For some reason, I can clearly remember the big kitchen in that house," said Jim Jacobs, 55,
Anna Waraneski's other son. Both brothers still live in Cutchogue. "It was big and always
busy and warm. The stove was big and heated the entire house, and there was a hand pump in
the sink. You walked through the kitchen into the living room, where the piano was. Upstairs
were the bedrooms. The only bathroom was in an outhouse out back. With bad potato prices, the
three sisters had to sell it when they did. But we always thought it was very special. I've
tried to remember it as best as I can."
***
In the 1950s, the Downses' long history on Fort Neck ended with the sale of their remaining
land to a Connecticut businessman named William Baxter. In the late 1990s, with the threat
that Fort Neck would become a subdivision of large expensive homes with views of nearby Peconic
Bay, Russell McCall, an Atlanta businessman whose great grandfather once lived on the property,
began talking to Baxter.
Soon, the Peconic Land Trust stepped in and negotiated the sale of 51 acres in the eastern
half of the property, where the fort stood, to Southold Town for $1.2million for preservation.
It also arranged for McCall to buy 54 acres for $800,000. In 1999, McCall planted 20 acres of
Pinot Noir and merlot grapes on his new property.
 Click on photo to enlarge.
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As a cold winter gave way to a tentative spring last month, McCall's vineyard workers tied up
the vines and tightened the wires strung between poles. When his grapes are ready to be
harvested, this year or next, McCall said he will sell them to a local winemaker. For now,
he has no plans to bottle his own.
For McCall, planting his grapes on this land was a way of connecting with his own family's
past. "My great grandfather was Russell Walker," he said. "He bought the small house at
the south end of Downs Creek after the turn of the 20th century. It was a fishing cabin that
he bought from the Downs family. The house passed to my grandmother...and then my mother. As
a kid, I spent every summer in the old house and walked the woods and along the creek, all
over the area where the Indian fort stood. It was a magical place."
The last pieces in the preservation of Fort Neck came together in January of last year, when
the Land Trust struck up negotiations with members of the Victor Ginsberg family, who had
bought the western half from the Andruski family. The Ginsbergs sold 47 acres to McCall for
$490,000, and donated about four acres to the Land Trust, including the farmhouse and barn.
McCall plans to plant grapes on only the 20 acres now under cultivation and is forbidden from
non- agricultural development of any of his Fort Neck property.
Driving along Route 25 by the old farmhouse in years past, Peter Jacobs watched as it slowly
began to fall apart. He thought that one day he'd go by and a bulldozer would be pushing it
down.
"It was such a beautiful home," Jacobs said. "And the property was magnificent. But after
the three sisters sold the farm in the '50s, the place really got run down. For years no
one was living in the house. I thought it was only a matter of time before the house was
gone. Now, it looks beautiful again. It's been resurrected."
At Fort Neck, history is intact, now and in the future.
 Click on photo to enlarge.
Management Center/interpretive Center under construction. |
