After riding ten miles thro’ woods and marshes, in which we were pestered with mosquitoes, we arrived at eight o’clock at night at one Brewster’s, where we put up for all night, and in this house we could get nothing either to eat or drink, and so were obliged to go to bed fasting or supperless. I was conducted upstairs to a large chamber. The people in this house seemed to be quite savage and rude.
Dr. Alexander Hamilton (not related to his famous namesake) mentioned this in his Itinerarium.
In 1744, Hamilton, a Scottish doctor, who moved to America in 1739, took a 2600 km long tour around the New England colonies. His journal, covering a four month period of travel, is one of the most important primary sources about the everyday life in the American colonies in the mid-18th century.
Hamilton arrived on Long Island on 10th July. He mentions several places in his trwvel journal, like Hamptead or Huntington. Also Brookhaven, known otherwise as “Setoquet”, a.k.a, the famous Setauket, where some members of the Culper-ring (one of Washington’s spy circles during the Revolutionary War) were from.
Brookhaven is a small scattered village, standing upon barren rocky land near the sea. In this town is a small windmill for sawing of plank, and a wooden church with a small steeple.
For all those readers, who knows the story of the Culper-ring (either from non-fictional books, or from the tv series Turn: Washington’s Spies) the name Brewster might sound very familiar.