Saving African American History on Long Island: The Peter Crippen House
The Town of Huntington received a Technical Assistance Grant from the League in 2020 to fund an Engineering Structural Analysis of the Peter Crippen House (TAG is a regrant partnership program between the League and the New York State Council on the Arts). We reached out to the Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes to get an update on the project. The Crippen House, despite its poor condition, is an important piece of Long Island’s history. A rare surviving example of a 17th century Dutch industrial building, the house’s legacy is tied to its 19th century owner. Peter Crippen was an African American born free on a Virginia plantation in the early 1800s. He made his way to Long Island, settling in Huntington in the 1830s. He purchased the house in the 1860s, living there until his death in 1875. His family continued to own the property into the 21st century.
A view of the front facade of the Peter Crippen House, illustrating its state of disrepair. The roof has caved in, the walls are crumbling, and plants have begun growing over the structure. The Town of Huntington hopes to save and relocate the oldest section of the house to better preserve it — and hopefully incorporate it into a future African American history museum.
The Peter Crippen House is an important link to Huntington’s nineteenth century African American history. Unfortunately, the house, which has been vacant for 20 years, has fallen into a state of serious disrepair. The Town of Huntington purchased the property in late 2019 to use as a parking lot for the Town’s sewer plant, which is located next door.
Thanks to a Technical Assistance Grant from the Preservation League of New York State, the Town was able to hire a consultant to determine if and how the oldest section of the house could be relocated to a site more suitable to its long term preservation. We are currently awaiting the results of that study.
The Crippen House was originally constructed, circa 1658, as a grist mill. The mill remained in use through 1672, when it was closed due to concerns about the unhealthfulness of its mill pond. The mill building was sold, and around 1674 moved about 525 yards north to its current location close to the head of Huntington Harbor where it was converted to residential use. Preliminary analysis of the building confirms its construction as an industrial building rather than as a residence. Its heavy timber framing, dimensions, and sturdy proportions are reflective of industrial Dutch framing of the period. The building is a rare, early surviving example of this building type.
A photo showing the east side of the house, with the mill section on the right. The exterior is covered in vegetation.
Over the next two centuries, ownership of the mill building and the property on which it sits was transferred among various local residents, including members of the Scudder family, who appear to have built another mill on Creek Road, and later Zophar Platt who built a third mill further north in 1752. John Brush acquired the Platt mill and the property containing the first mill building in 1785. Some time before 1835, the first mill building was acquired by members of the Johnson family who sold it to Elbert Walters. In 1854, Walters sold a small parcel immediately to the south of the first mill building to an African American named Nelson Smith. Ten years later, Walters sold the converted mill building to Peter Crippen.
Crippen was born ca. 1809 on a Virginia plantation. Thomas Crippen, the Quaker owner of the plantation, manumitted all of his enslaved people, including Peter Crippen’s parents, privately in accordance with a 1782 Virginia law. As a result, Peter was born a free person. A lack of financial assistance, dangers related to travel, and legal challenges to the 1782 law prevented Peter’s family from immediately relocating. They remained on the plantation and in 1818, Sarah Crippen, who had inherited the plantation from her father, filed a new deed of manumission for Peter and his father.
By the 1830s, following the Nat Turner rebellion, life as a free black person in Virginia became increasingly difficult. Peter’s father had died in the late 1820s. Around the same time, the owner of a brickyard in Huntington began actively soliciting workers from Virginia. Peter Crippen arrived at the brickyard by 1836. Eventually, he lived in the Cold Spring Harbor section of town where he worked for a member of a wealthy family and later worked in the West Hills section. When he lived near Huntington Harbor, he supported his family by fishing, clamming, and gathering seaweed. He also worked for local farmers and tended his own small garden.
Crippen played an important role in the local African American community. In 1843, he was one of the seven founders of the African Methodist Ebenezer Church in Huntington (now Bethel AME Church, which was listed on the National Register in 1985). His neighbor to the south, Nelson Smith, was also a trustee in the AME church’s incorporation. Census records over the years list Crippen as a laborer or fisherman.
An aerial view of the area surrounding the Peter Crippen House. The house is identified with a red circle. A blue arrow points to the original location of the mill.
While this property was on marginal land near the head of Huntington Harbor, the purchase reflected an important achievement for Crippen. As a landowner, he could assure a measure of safety and security for his family and for himself as he lived out his final years. The house was about a half-mile from the AME church and located within a small African American community. Land ownership by African Americans remained rare during this period. In addition to Crippen and Smith, Town assessment records confirm one other Black man was a landowner at the time.
Peter died in 1875, at about 65 years of age. The Crippen family continued to own the house into the early twenty-first century.
While the house is in poor condition, it retains integrity and the ability to convey its historic significance. It is a remarkable and rare survivor illustrating two aspects of Huntington’s history, seventeenth century industry and early African American landownership.
In 1985, Town Historian Rufus Langhans inspected the house and recommended that the town acquire it and move it to another site that would be more suitable to its long-term preservation. The matter was dropped until 2006 when the Town allocated funding for an archaeological study of the grounds and an architectural study of the house. These studies were never completed because of questions about title to the property—the house had passed informally from generation to generation over the years since Peter Crippen had acquired it. By 2019, those questions were resolved and the Town’s sewer district acquired the property with plans to demolish the house to build a parking lot.
In June 2020, the Huntington Town Board approved a contract with a local demolition company to raze the house in order to construct a parking lot for the sewer plant. The Town proposed to try to save as many elements of the house as possible. Media coverage of the plans to demolish the building was met with protest from many quarters. In addition to emails pleading with the Town to reconsider the decision, an online petition garnered over a thousand signatures. Soon, a group of Town officials and community leaders was assembled to consider alternatives to demolition and the Town Board postponed its demolition plans indefinitely.
The house sits on marshy land prone to flooding and is surrounded on two sides by the Town’s sewer treatment plant. The committee agreed that the house should be relocated to a location that would be more suitable to its long term preservation and yet retain its historic context. A vacant Town-owned site on the other side of the sewer plant was selected. The site sits on the major north south artery in the area and thus is much more visible. At the same time, the selected site conveys the same context the house has on its current site. The long-term plan for the house would be to make it a part of a future African American history museum. Volunteers are being asked to help establish an independent not-for-profit organization to organize and operate such a museum.
In November 2020, the New York State Historic Preservation Office determined that the Crippen House is eligible for listing on the National Register under Criterion B in the area of Ethnic History: Black for its association with Peter Crippen and under Criterion C in the area of architecture as a rare remaining seventeenth-century mill building on Long Island.
A photo showing artifacts discovered during an archaeological dig on site at the Peter Crippen House. The artifacts pictured here are shards of ceramic of various sizes and designs.
In addition to widespread community support, the Town of Huntington’s African American Historic Designation Council as well as Bethel AME Church, and the NAACP, Huntington Branch support the Crippen House project. Preservation Long Island, the leading historic preservation organization in the region, has provided guidance and support for the project and has included the house on its 2021 list of Endangered Historic Places.
A generous donation from the Manes Peace Prize Foundation funded a Phase I archaeology study of the property that was completed in February 2021. The dig received extensive media attention on local news sites, radio stations, and all three New York City based television news programs. Based on the results of the Phase I study, archaeological standards call for further study of the site. Donations are being solicited for a Phase II study.
In February 2021, the Town Board voted to rename the street on which the house is located as Creek Road/Peter Crippen Way. A historical marker is also to be installed on the site. The contract with the demolition company has been canceled.
Robert C. Hughes is the Town Historian for Huntington, NY. This piece also appeared at HuntingtonHistory.com.