page_title: Sag Harbor, New York
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sag Harbor, New York / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Greek revival home of Benjamin Huntting II owned by Sag Harbor Whaling &amp; Historical museum with Masonic temple on second floor.
context_page_description: Sag Harbor is an incorporated village in Suffolk County, New York, United States, in the towns of East Hampton and Southampton on eastern Long Island. The village developed as a working port on Gardiner's Bay. The population was 2,169 at the 2010 census.
  The entire business district is listed as the historic Sag Harbor Village District on the National Register of Historic Places. A major whaling and shipping port in the 19th century, by the end of this period and in the 20th century, it became a destination for wealthy people who summered there. Some writers and artists also settled there.
  Sag Harbor is about three fifths in Southampton and two fifths in East Hampton. Its landmarks include structures associated with whaling and its early days when it was designated as the first port of entry to the new United States. It had the first United States custom house erected on Long Island.
context_section_description: Sag Harbor was settled by English colonists sometime between 1707 and 1730. Many likely migrated from New England by water, as did other settlers on eastern Long Island. The first bill of lading to use the name "Sag Harbor" was recorded in 1730.
  While some accounts say the village was named for the neighboring settlement of Sagaponack, which at the time was called "Sagg", historians say Sagaponack and Sag Harbor both were named after a tuber cultivated by the local Pequot people and used as a staple crop. In their Algonquian language, they called the vegetable sagabon. It was one of the first crops colonists sent to England. The tuber-producing vine is now known as the Apios americana.
  During the American Revolutionary War, New York Patriots fled from the advancing British and Loyalist forces and departed from Sag Harbor by boat and ship for Connecticut. In 1777 American raiders under Return Jonathan Meigs attacked a British garrison at a fort on a hill in Sag Harbor, killing six and capturing 90 British soldiers in what was called Meigs Raid. The fort was dismantled after the war. The site has become known as the Old Burying Ground and is associated with the Old Whaler's Church.
  Sag Harbor supplanted Northwest, another port about 5 miles (8 km) east of the village in the Town of East Hampton. International ships and the whaling industry had started in Northwest, but its port was too shallow for the developing traffic. The most valuable whale product was whale oil, which was used widely in lamps.
  Sag Harbor became a major port for the whaling industry, and the processing and sale of this oil. By 1789 Sag Harbor had "had more tons of square-rigged vessels engaged in commerce than even New York City."  It had become an international port.
  After the Second Session of Congress on July 31, 1789, Sag Harbor was declared as the first official port of entry to the United States. Its streets were filled with sailors, artisans, merchants - representatives of the many different cultures working in shipping and whaling. As the first stop for ships entering United States territory, Sag Harbor received ships bound for New York City. The United States government placed a customs house in the town - the first on Long Island - to collect duties and other fees.
  During the War of 1812, a British squadron dominated and controlled most of Long Island Sound. Several open British boats entered the harbor at night, without any advance planning; the young commanding midshipman, C. Claxton R.N., was curious about the village. He later wrote about his youthful misadventures years when serving as editor of The Naval Monitor. They landed at the wharf, but an alarm gun was fired before they could set fire to the coasting vessel docked there and they quickly retreated. Claxton and his men made it safely back to HMS Ramillies, anchored off Gardiners Island.
  The village of Sag Harbor is in the Towns of both Southampton and East Hampton. The dividing line is Division Street, known as Town Line Road just south of the village. Most of the defining 19th-century landmarks of the village — including its Main Street, Old Whaler's Church, John Jermain Memorial Library, Whaling Museum, Custom House, the Old Burying Ground, Oakland Cemetery, Mashashimuet Park, and Otter Pond are in Southampton. However, almost all of the Bay Street marina complex, including Sag Harbor Yacht Club and Breakwater Yacht Club, at the foot of Main Street, is in East Hampton. Also there are the village's high school, the Sag Harbor State Golf Course, and the historic freedmen's community of Eastville, first developed in the early 1800s.
  The whaling industry in Sag Harbor peaked in the 1840s, but its importance had been widely recognized. Writer Herman Melville mentioned Sag Harbor in his novel Moby Dick, in chapters 12, 13, 57 and 83. 
  Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll d
caption: Whalers museum
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