What do you know about Taylor’s Island?

This is the first installment of a two-part history of Taylor’s Island. The second part will appear in the issue of August 4.  Tickets, at $100, are now available for the Taylor’s Island Kettlebake, a fundraiser scheduled for Saturday, August 13, from 2:30  to 5 p.m. Funds will be used for the restoration of the Taylor’s Island cabin. Call 749-1603 for reservations or further information.

A visit to the Taylor’s Island booth at the Shelter Island Craft Fair next month or the Taylor’s Island table at the Historical Society’s “One Day in History” event, also in August, promises an interesting discovery for the people here who don’t know where or what Taylor’s Island actually is. There seem to be many of them, despite the fact that it’s been written about, argued over by more than one Town Board and sailed past by many boaters.

For the uninformed as well as the many local fans of Taylor’s Island, free docent tours and round-trips by boat are easily arranged and it’s a great destination for a picnic or a day’s outing. This is especially true on a hot summer’s day, when breezes from all directions are more than welcome.

But to begin at the beginning…

Taylor’s Island, formerly Cedar Island, is about an acre and a half or roughly 7,000 square yards of land, a small spit of soil and sand, roughly a city block’s worth, that seems to have been dropped right smack into the easterly part of Coecles Harbor. You can’t see it from the western-most part of the harbor, not until you pass the second Ram Island causeway, when it comes into view. At low tide, there is a tombolo, a narrow spit of sand, that ties the island to the mainland.

Taylor’s Island is now owned by the town and the cabin there is about to undergo restoration. But many years ago, in the late 1600s, the Nicoll (pronounced as “Nickle”) family, the second white family to inhabit Shelter Island, owned it as part of Sachem’s Neck, which the Nicolls bought from Nathaniel Sylvester, who owned the entire Island. Now known as the Mashomack Preserve, Sachem’s Neck was so named because the sachem, or chief, of the Manhanset Indians was usually in residence there. And the Nicoll family, for many generations, coexisted comfortably with the Indians who remained in residence.

The next owner of Cedar Island was the family of Francis Marion Smith, who made a fortune mining and hauling borax from Death Valley by 20-mule teams, hence his brand-name, 20 Mule Team Borax. Borax had many commercial uses including its ability to both strengthen glass and give it luster. Its principal use was an all-purpose household cleaner.

Smith and his family arrived on Shelter Island in 1892. The family’s routine, during the lives of both his first and second wives, was to occupy a large and glorious villa, Arbor Villa, in Oakland, California and another large home here, looking over what is now called Smith Cove in South Ferry Hills. The house was named Presdeleau. The family had three little girls and one boy, myriad Chinese “house boys” (none of whom were actually “boys”), tennis courts and a stable of horses. They used Cedar Island as a day-excursion, a picnic spot for “Rhode Island clam bakes,” which were a family favorite.

According to “Mrs. Lincoln’s Cook Book,” first published in 1884, “At a genuine Rhode Island clam bake, blue-fish, lobsters, crabs, sweet potatoes, and ears of sweet corn in their gauzy husks are baked with clams. The clam steam gives them a delicious flavor. Brown bread is served with the clams, and watermelon for dessert completes the feast.”

The Suffolk Times frequently reported on the family’s events, noting, for example, the deliveries of ice to both the Smith family as well as to the Artemas Ward family of what we now know as Shorewood. In those times, ice was imported from Maine. The purchase of Smith’s various pleasure craft, which included a 90-foot yacht, the Haouli, built on City Island and delivered here in 1906, was also mentioned. Three United States presidents, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and Taft were, at one time or another, Smith family guests.

Smith acquired the 235 acres from the estate of Charlotte Nicoll on December 16, 1899. The property cut through Sachem’s Neck from what was then called Clark’s Cove to Coecles Harbor and included Cedar Island. By 1906, he had acquired enough land to claim an estate of 260 acres plus the 235 acres in Sachems Neck. On the east side of the state road, his land extended from what is now the entrance to the Mashomack Preserve to the holdings of the South Ferry Clark family.

On the west side of the road, he established a deer park — with deer shipped in from California — from what we now call Midway Road to the small circle on Route 114. Although current lore has it that Island deer came from North Haven, it would seem that the opposite is actually the case: the Island’s deer swam to North Haven. News items from Smith’s time report complaints from North Haven residents of deer escaping from Smith’s preserve and swimming across to forage freely.

Smith built a cabin on Cedar Island and added bath houses along the shore and a landing dock for the captain’s gig from the family’s steam yacht and a second dock for the landing of supplies.

For almost 40 years, through good times and business reverses, Smith maintained his property. By the time he died in Oakland in August 1931 at the age of 85, he had transferred the property to his wife, Evelyn.  On April 21, 1937, S. Gregory Taylor, 1888-1948, purchased Cedar Island from her. Mrs. Smith continued to own and use their home in what we now call South Ferry Hills until the hurricane of 1938, when the house was so badly damaged that she had it torn down. By 1944, all the rest of the Smith property east of the state road had been sold.

Ms. Galligan, a regular contributor to the Reporter, is a member of the town Taylor’s Island Preservation and Management Committee. The August 4 installment of her story will review Mr. Taylor’s life and career, his time on his island, his famous mid-August kettlebakes, his death and the years that followed.