SCHS: Blue Point’s Great Oyster Fame | ‘Warp, Weft, Shuttle: Handweaving…’ Exhibit Opens 10.18th

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———— October 14, 2025 ————

BLUE POINT

Blue Point – Hunters and Shack, Feb. 1903, by Hal B. Fullerton. (Image from the Harry T. Tuthill Fullerton Collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society Library & Archive. © Suffolk County Historical Society. All rights reserved.) — view Fullerton photo, please visit SCHS website.

No one knows for sure how Blue Point got its name. Some speculate that seventeenth-century baymen named the area after the blue haze they often viewed over this point of land that juts out into the Great South Bay. Native Americans knew it as Manowtassquot, “land of the basket rush,” after years of harvesting the area’s marshes to make baskets and mats. Early Blue Point was controlled by the Winthrop family until the mid-1700s, when it was sold to Humphrey Avery. It also served as a strategic seaport held by the British during the Revolutionary War, a fact known to the rebels who frequently raided British ships docked in the harbor.

Blue Point became a summer resort destination in the 1880s after the Stillman family, members of the Baptist Church, began performing baptisms at their bayside home. So many people began showing up to be baptized that the Stillmans built additional changing rooms outside their home. These evolved into bathhouses where visitors could rent bathing suits for 25 cents each. Stillman’s bathing beach eventually grew to include 600 bathhouses, and other resort hotels followed.

Of course, the Blue Point Oyster, pulled by baymen from the hamlet’s rich oyster beds, became synonymous with the best oysters money could buy. Even Queen Victoria preferred them above any other variety. She only insisted that the rough shells be sanded before they were served to her in Buckingham Palace!

How many quaint hamlets can foister
World fame and renown as their boister?
But our Long Island venue
Adorns the best menu,
Thanks to this mollusk,
The Great Blue Point Oyster!
– From Gene Horton’s Blue Point Remembered (1982)

by Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, Head Librarian

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Opening Reception: Sat., Oct.18, 2025 1-3 PM

PAUMANOK WEAVERS GUILD EXPO! Warp, Weft, Shuttle: Celebrating Our 50 Years of Handweaving on Long Island. A new exhibition presented by the Paumanok Weavers Guild in Our Gish Gallery! OPENING RECEPTION: Sat., October 18, 2025. 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM. $5, members free. Includes light refreshments.

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