While Walter managed the insurance business in Manhattan, John tended the whaling company, a general store, a gristmill and woolen mills in Cold Spring Harbor. The whaling company sank in 1851, but the brothers continued to invest in whaling. Both died in the 1850s. The last whaling ship, the Alice, returned from a four-year voyage in 1862 and the whaling era in Cold Spring Harbor came to an end, said Sam Scott, curator of the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum. The last of the Massapequa Joneses, George Stanton Floyd-Jones, died without an heir in 1941 at age 92.
Today there is little material evidence left by the family.
Tryon Hall was demolished in the 1930s, and all that remains of the Old Brick House is a sketch by 19thCentury artist William Sidney Mount. The sprawling Jones Beach State Park, opened in 1929, attracts 8 million visitors, none of whom give a thought to Maj.