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Photo of the Week

FROM THE SCHS LIBRARY ARCHIVES

“How shall we know it is us without our past?”
– John Steinbeck

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Miamogue Hotel, South Jamesport

by Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, Head Librarian

Miamogue Hotel, South Jamesport. (From the Henry W. Prince Collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society Library Archives. Image copyright © Suffolk County Historical Society. All rights reserved.)

Given its pleasant climate, good swimming, and excellent fishing, South Jamesport became a popular late nineteenth-century summer resort area with hotels, parties, dances, moonlit sailing, and the like. This was especially true after the railroad made it possible for people from the city to reach the area relatively easily. Vacationers who arrived by train were met at the station by stages that carried the visitors to one of the hotels that had sprung up near Peconic Bay. The first hotel in South Jamesport was James Tuthill’s Inn, which stood on First Street between Main and Center streets. It burned to the ground, as did the Miamogue Hotel in the same spot. Another Miamogue was constructed here; it also caught fire and was torn down.

The Miamogue Hotel was one of the most well-known resorts in South Jamesport. According to Frederic C. Prince, whose Southold family had a summer home at the hotel, I. Seymour and Josephine (Reeve) Corwin owned and ran the hotel. They raised Josephine’s nieces, Theresa and Florence Reeve, after their mother died. In 1900, Florence Reeve married Fred G. Prince, son of Henry W. Prince. After her marriage, Florence, with her two sons living at the hotel, continued to help run the hotel during the summer months. Fred and Florence Prince and the two boys had a second-floor front room in the main building. Single rooms for the chauffeurs and other people were on the second floor of the west wing. Dancing was also in the west wing, on the first floor.

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Don’t miss the October 12 Artists’ Reception for our Women Sharing Art Multimedia Exhibit: What’s Your Compass? Free admission on opening day, 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm. Refreshments will be served.