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Blydenburgh Farm and New Mill in Blydenburgh County Park

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

Within Blydenburgh Park, a Suffolk County-operated park, is an historic district with a mill, miller's house, farmhouses and farm outbuildings. "New Mill" is pretty old, and dates to 1798. The miller's house was built in 1802. The Blydenburgh Farmhouse dates to about 1820, while the Farm Cottage was constructed in 1860 or so. The entrance to the historic trust area of the park is at the south end of New Mill Road.... The LI Greenbelt Trail Conference conducts guided tours of the historic district on Saturdays at 1pm. Blydenburgh Park contains Long Island's second largest lake; you can take a five-mile long hike around the lake.

Images

Plan map of Blydenburgh Park NRHP historic district (O'Brien 1983)

Map, World, Slope, Font

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

The Blydenburgh Park Historic District covers ten acres on both sides of New Mill Road within a nineteenth-century settlement called Bushy Neck, established by the Blydenburgh family around 1800. Isaac Blydenburgh (1775-1858) was the great-grandson of Joseph Blydenburgh, one of the first settlers of Smithtown. In 1798, Isaac Blydenburgh and two other men - Joshua Smith, Jr. and Caleb Smith II (the son of Caleb Smith I of the nearby Caleb Smith park and Clio entry) - agreed to dam the Nissequoque River as it passed their respective farms and build a grist mill and a saw mill.

A lot near the mills was leased to Isaac Smith, who built the Miller's Cottage between 1801 and 1803. Joshua Smith sold his share of the enterprise to his two partners in 1811. Isaac Blydenburgh built the Blydenburgh Farmhouse around 1821. Caleb Smith II's share of the business went to two sons of Isaac Blydenburgh - Richard and Isaac W. Blyenburgh - by 1844. Richard Blydenburgh resided in the Gothic Revival style Farm Cottage, built around 1860. The brothers manufactured woolen cloth for uniforms during the Civil War. Richard owned his brother, Isaac's share of New Mill in the latter years of his life. After Richard died in 1873, the mills were run by Richard's son, Benjamin Blydenburgh, and Richard's grandson, Morgan, until 1924.

Sources

O'Brien, Austin. NRHP Nomination of Blydenburgh Park Historic District, Smithtown, N.Y.. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1983.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

NYS Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS) database: https://cris.parks.ny.gov

Additional Information