What's In A Name? The Origins of Ardsley and the 5-Hive
Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet, an educational staple and right of passage for ninth graders, is famous for numerous literary lines, including this couplet spoken by Juliet in Act II, Scene 2:
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet (lines 43-44) [1]
In the New York Times obituary for Royston Ellis, “a British Beat poet who rose to fame with spoken-word performances to rock ‘n’ roll accompaniment, including gigs with the Beatles and Jimmy Page before they were famous,” it was stated that Mr. Ellis made the grand claim that “he had persuaded the band to change the word “Beetles” (part of the “Silver Beetles,” one of the group’s original names ostensibly derived from the fictional character “Long John Silver,” the protagonist in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel “Treasure Island” likely used as John Lennon was the group’s founder and its titular leader), to Beatles, as a nod to beat poetry. [2]
Ellis is also credited with being the inspiration for Beatle songs “Paperback Writer” (1966) and “Polythene Pam” (1969). Use of the name “Beetles” was purportedly a play on words by John Lennon in honor of his favorite band, Buddy Holly and The Crickets. In a recent episode of the BBC radio show “Frontrow,” which featured a newly discovered sixty year old tape recording of a Beatles concert on the cusp of Beatlemania in England held at the all boys private Stowe School in Buckinghamshire on April 4, 1963, one of the student interviewees recalls wondering, “Who were these visiting insects?” [3] Other origin accounts for the group’s name change indicate that “beat” refers to “beat music,” a musical genre that emerged in the vicinity of Liverpool in northwest England, especially by groups like the Beatles, who honed their musicianship and performance skills (transitioning from “hobbyists to professionals”) in Hamburg, West Germany’s bars and music clubs in the city’s St. Pauli quarter. [4]
Significantly, The Silver Beetles engagement alongside Gerry & the Pace-Makers on June 6, 1960, at the Grosvenor Ballroom was advertised under the heading: 2 BIG BEAT BANDS. [5]
(Before 1971,Whit Monday was a bank holiday in the United Kingdom) [6]
After being assassinated on December 8, 1980, in front of his New York City residence at The Dakota on West 72nd Street, John Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery, which is situated within the Ardsley School District. Preternaturally, Ed Sullivan, the host of his eponymous 20th-century television variety program where the Beatles delivered their first live American performance on February 9, 1964 before an estimated audience of 73 million people, is buried in Ferncliff's Mausoleum.
One of the oddest songs in the Lennon-McCartney songbook , “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” features an alto saxophone played by Brian Jones who named the Rolling Stones. [7]
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How Ardsley got its name is conventionally answered by claiming the residents of what was then known as the Hamlet of Ashford wanted a post office, but Ashford, New York, already existed. So they enlisted the help of American businessman and financier Cyrus West Field (1819 -1892), who was responsible for laying the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858, to obtain a post office. At the time, Field owned an immense estate in what is now Irvington which he called Ardsley after his ancestral birthplace in Yorkshire, England. Later the Ardsley moniker was applied to the Ardsley Country Club (which straddles the present-day borders of Irvington and Dobbs Ferry), Ardsley Park (an exclusive suburban enclave adjacent to the Ardsley Country Club’s golf course) [8], and the Ardsley-on-Hudson train station. [9]
As discussed in “Next Stop Erdeslauue, Est. 1086,” [10] in response to the apparent effort by the developers of the Ardsley Casino, an opulent private club for Gilded Age “Robber Barons” and old New York society, that the Village of Ardsley (what in modern parlance would be considered “brand protection”) rename itself so as not to interfere with their desire to capitalize on the Ardsley name to promote their planned adjacent upscale suburban development on the vast acreage (extending to parts of present-day Ardsley) previously owned by Field but lost after his financial setbacks, Ardsleyan Elizabeth Hopkins Odell explained in a letter addressed to Amzi L. Barber (the Asphalt King (1843-1909) [11], who, along with J. Pierpont Morgan, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and John D. and William Rockefeller were the founders of the Ardsley Casino, that:
I understand you are ignorant of how the Village of Ardsley came to bear that name: It came through my family. I suggested the name of Ardsley, and my son, Mr. Arthur Livingston Odell, now deceased, went to see Mr. Cyrus W. Field in his office, presenting the case and asking for permission to use the name Ardsley. Mr. Field said he would be delighted to have the name used as his lately acquired property extended directly to the Northern Railroad (Now the Putnam Division).
According to Mrs. Odell’s letter:
He [Field] thereupon signed the petition to be sent to Washington, asking to have a post office granted by the name of Ardsley. [12]
Well, maybe not. As seen in the below 1883 petition for a new post office, Ardsley’s application was signed by Peter B. Lynt (b. 1845) as the Proposed Post Master. Curiously, or not, the handwritten name “Field” is faintly visible on the application’s top. However, a search of Field's family documents at the New York Public Library revealed no evidence of a possible letter of support.
As Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore has observed, "History is only written from what remains" by which she means the writing of history is affected by the limited and sometimes unreliable preservation of the past.
Expandable for greater legibility
But was it the efforts of the Odell family that gave Ardsley its name?
Margaret Travis Lane King, the great-granddaughter of local pickle merchant Capt. John King, for whom Ashford may have been named after his ancestral home in England, maintains in her family memoir, The Sloop Captain from Willow Point, that after the Putnam Railroad stopped at Ashford, the local Ashfordians clamored for a post office, "but their petitions were constantly ignored." [13] Travis Lane further asserted that “a group of determined residents led by her ancestor Capt. King (who headed King’s Pickle Factory) approached Cyrus W. Field (by then a prominent railroad developer) to use his influence. According to Travis Lane, “Capt. King “nobly” made a concession for the good of his neighbors by agreeing to let Field change the name of Ashford to Ardsley to secure the post office.” [14']
Missing from these accounts is the central reason why Ashfordians wanted their own post office - they had to travel to the Dobbs Ferry train depot to receive or post their mail. [15]
Eighty years later, on December 19, 1963, in a newspaper article about the demise of the post office in Chauncey (a rural area in the south of Ardsley and in the vicinity of the Rivertowns Square shopping mall in Dobbs Ferry), the headline asked:
Illustrating the pain to residents of the loss of their postal address and identity, the article explained:
Residents complained bitterly today that the small rural community on the threshold of New York City was being stripped of its name and quaintness by the Post Office Department. As a result of the closing 15 families put up roadside mailboxes for deliveries from the new post offices, but many of the family members declared they preferred the old way of sauntering down to the Chauncey “cracker barrel” post office to pick up mail and exchange gossip around the potbelly stove. [16]
Notwithstanding the disappearance of its post office six decades ago, the “old village” of Chauncey has been resurrected as a park:
Chauncey Park – Dobbs Ferry and Ardsley: This group formed in 2019 with the goal of promoting a new Dobbs Ferry village park for passive recreation use on a 14.8 acres site along the eastern part of the village between Southfield Avenue in the north and Danforth Avenue in the south where the old village of Chauncey once stood. [17]
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The extent of Field’s instrumentality in creating Ardsley (or that of the Odells or the Kings) or that of Royston Ellis in creating The Beatles with an “a”, will likely never be known. However, 140 years ago, on March 2, 1883, the postal address of Ardsley in New York State became a reality, and Peter B. Lynt became its first postmaster.
As reported in the July 20, 1883, Dobbs Ferry Register: [18]
Soon-to-be postmaster Peter B. Lynt was identified in the 1880 federal census as a grocer,
and as shown on the below map of Ardsley from circa 1900, he had a store (#50 on the map) just off “Village Square”. [19]
Lynt’s grandfather, also named Peter B. (1774-1855), is interred in the Little White Church Cemetery in Dobbs Ferry on Ashford Avenue with the following tombstone inscription: “Your friend and father, he is dead, this cold and lifeless clay. Has made in Christ his silent bed. And there it must decay." [20]
Lynt's 168-year-old headstone can be found towards the back of the cemetery's most easterly area appropriately near Ashford Avenue where he lived. A faded sign outside the cemetery from the Tri-Centennial celebration of Westchester County (1683-1983) erroneously claims that it houses the graves of Dobbs Ferry residents when in fact many of those buried there were, like Peter Lynt, from Ashford, the forerunner to Ardsley. While it was been long assumed that the Ardsley Historical Society was founded in 1982 in anticipation of the planned Tri-Centennial, it was recently discovered that an earlier incarnation of the Ardsley Historical Society existed nearly half a century earlier.
Irvington Gazette (August 21, 1936) [21]
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Peter B. Lynt Sr. married Lettie Willsea (who hailed from an old Ashford/Dobbs Ferry family), and they had a son also named Peter B. (1806(?) -1850). In 1832, Peter B. Lynt (the son) married Ann Maria (Breese), and they gave birth to five children including, the future first postmaster of Ardsley, arguably Peter the Third. Three years before Lynt Sr. passed away in 1855, he purchased a farm of approximately 72 acres in Ashford. In 1871, Lynt’s daughter-in-law Ann Maria (who likely inherited the Lynt farm in Ashford when her husband Peter died in 1850), leased a strip of the Lynt acreage to the New York and Boston Rail Road Company (later the New York and Northern Railway), a predecessor to the Putnam Division line of the New York Central Railroad which provided rail service initially to Ashford in 1881 then to Ardsley (as of 1883 when the post office was established) [22] for the next seventy-five years until May 29, 1958. Informally and in newspaper accounts and advertisements, Ardsley was often referred to as “Ardsley on Putnam.”
The years following the 1883 establishment of the Ardsley post office at the train station (where the mail arrived by rail and was picked up by residents) were some of the most transformational in Ardsley’s history, starting with the building of the New Croton Aqueduct in 1884 until 1896, when Ardsley became an incorporated village and Ardsley Hose Company No. 1 (the fire department) was established. Lynt himself worked as a laborer on the Aqueduct.
July 2, 1891 (The Evening World)
The below June 21, 1891 railway timetable for Ardsley, with trains running as late as ten o’clock in the evening back to New York City, hints at Ardsley’s vibrancy as the 20th century beckoned.
In 1907 Lynt sold his grocery store to the Brinkerhoffs. Two members of the Brinkerhoff family (sons William and Oliver) are named on the Roll of Honor in Pascone Park (formerly Ashford Park) in connection with their military service during World War II.
Lynt’s wife Laura passed away in 1915, and her funeral service was held at the family’s residence on Field Street in Dobbs Ferry (within the Ardsley School District).
Peter and Laura Lynt (and their two children, Landon Ulysses and Dora Lynt (Fones)) and their spouses are buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery (along the roadside just past the maintenance building), which is about a mile south of Ardsley along Saw Mill River Road in Greenburgh (but having a Hastings-on-Hudson postal address). Their graves are marked by somewhat forsaken footstones laid out in front of a more imposing headstone marking the burial site for members of the Lynt-Fones family.
Peter B. Lynt’s footstone in Mt. Hope Cemetery along the cemetery road immediately past the maintenance building
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Notably, the Lynt family property in Ashford was the location of the first school in Ardsley. As discussed in a 1912 Dobbs Ferry Register article (edited for clarity) concerning the laying of the cornerstone of the Ashford Avenue School (now a condominium at 520 Ashford Avenue):
The first school erected in the vicinity of Ardsley stood on or near the site now occupied by the residence of Peter B. Lynt at the southwest corner of Ashford and Field avenues. It was a stone structure probably erected shortly after the Revolutionary War. Subsequently, a school was located on what is now the George King property on Ashford Avenue, and afterward, what was known a generation ago as the "Red School House" stood on the Proudfoot place nearby. In those days, the boundaries of the district extended as far east as the Hudson River, including the Dobbs Ferry district, and was known as the Third Common School District of Greenburgh. In the latter 1850s or early 1860s, the territory was divided into two parts, the eastern portion becoming Union Free School District Number Five of Greenburgh.
The “Red School House” (shown on the upper left corner of the above 1900 map of Ardsley), is illustrated on the cover of Arthur W. Silliman’s Bicentennial Issue of his “A Short, Informal History of Ardsley, N.Y.” [23]
The portico of the former Ashford Avenue School’s entrance door is adorned with the number 5 in a center medallion.
In the mid-1960s, in an effort to derail the mandate by the New York State Department of Education that the Hartsdale School District (“District 7”) merge with Greenburgh’s school district (“District 8”), the Hartsdale Board of Education (at the urging of a petition by “Hartsdale Citizens Committee for an Educationally Sound Merger”) pushed its own consolidation plan to combine Ardsley (“District 5”) and Edgemont (“District 6”) with Hartsdale. As indicated in the below newspaper headline, the so-called “5-6-7” plan was rejected by Ardsley and Edgemont.
Dobbs Ferry Sentinel (March 24, 1966) [24]
As explained in a 2017 Manor Woods Blog post by Hartsdale resident and Civil War Historian Daniel Weinbeld discussing the demise of the Hartsdale School District, the merger of Districts 7 and 8 (now known as Greenburgh Central) was conducted by the “New York State’s Education Department (SED) under its new active, progressive Commissioner James E. Allen [who] promulgated [a] “Master Plan” promoting consolidation of school districts state-wide to encourage establishment of large high schools able to support diverse and modern programs. [25] According to Weinfeld, the “Master Plan” envisioned a merger of the Dobbs Ferry, Hastings, and Ardsley School Districts. In a March 2023 update, Weinfeld observed “From 2000 to 2023, Greenburgh Central School District (GC) K-12 enrollment declined 19%: from 1,893 students in 2000-01 to 1,527 in the current school year. During this same period, adjacent school districts had enrollment increases: Edgemont +15%; Elmsford +15%; Ardsley +7%; White Plains +6%. [26]
Ironically, in the mid-1950s, a proposed school district merger of Edgemont and Hartsdale was backed by both school boards but rejected by the voters of each school district.
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In the same mid-1960s era, there was a student-led initiative in Ardsley to create a community youth center in District No. 5 – the “5-Hive. ” The Hive’s logo was designed by renowned sports illustrator and Ardsley resident Don Moss:
(Herald Statesman, December 8, 1965)
Although Tony Bennett and The Four Seasons performed at the 5-Hive event at the Westchester County Center, which raised almost $10,000 (equal to roughly $100,000 in 2023), a permanent home for the center never materialized.
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The number one song on the Billboard chart during the last week of 1965 when the gala for the 5-Hive took place was “Over and Over,” a song performed by The Dave Clark Five, one of the early British Invasion groups. [27]
Earlier in 1964, The Dave Clark Five dethroned the Beatles’ song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” off the Number 1 position on the UK charts with their original song, “Glad All Over.” The song’s title came from a 1957 song with the same name by rockabilly artist Carl Perkins who recorded his version for Sun Records. [28] The Beatles would later perform two versions of Perkins' song for BBC Radio. [29] The Wikipedia entry for Perkins includes the following information: Paul McCartney said "if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles."
Although the historical evidence is far from conclusive, a similar assertion can reasonably be made that “if there were no Cyrus Field, there would be no Ardsley.”
New York Herald (September 3, 1890, p. 11)
April 10, 2023 (in memory of the original 5th Beatle, Stuart Sufcliffe, d. 4/10/62)
Endnotes:
[1] Although the quoted lines are two of Shakespeare’s most memorable, another version of the play’s script (and perhaps a more authentic one) reads differently: “What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet.” (emphasis added). Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2, 1599) https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Rom_Q2/complete/index.html
[2] Royston Ellis, Bridge Between the Beat Poets and the Beatles, is Dead at 82 (New York Times, April 2, 2023, p. 25).
[3] The Beatles at Stowe School
[4] The cultural impact of Hamburg particularly after World War II is explored in Sneeringer, Julia. “‘Assembly Line of Joys’: Touring Hamburg’s Red Light District, 1949-1966.” Central European History 42, no. 1 (2009): 65–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20457426.
[5] “The Liverpool Sound is characterized by its upbeat and catchy melodies, vocal harmonies, and the use of electric guitars and other rock instruments. The style was heavily influenced by American rock and roll and R&B music, but also drew on traditional British music forms such as skiffle.” Text generated by ChatGPT, April 7, 2023, OpenAI, https://chat.openai.com/chat. While the Beatles are considered the foremost pacemakers of the “British Invasion,” the ancestry of the Beatles (or the “Fab Four” as they were frequently described) other than Ringo is Irish. In the case of John Lennon, the paternal side of his family moved to Liverpool from Ireland to escape the Great Hunger in the mid-1840s. Saltney Street The Great Hunger (a period of mass starvation and disease occurring in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 due in part to the outbreak of potato blight) was the subject of a 2023 program presented at the Ardsley Fire House by the Ardsley Historical Society. Westchester County's Great Hunger Memorial is located in Ardsley.
[6] http://beatlesliverpoollocations.blogspot.com/2017/12/saturday-nights-alright-for-fighting.html (History of the Grosvenor Ballroom and Beetle related materials including the contract for their Whit Monday show).
[7] American musicologist Allan W. Pollack describes the song as one of the Beatles’ strangest curiosities. Notes on "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)"
[8] The Creation of Ardsley Park (a Zoom presentation by the Irvington Historical Society hosted by Ardsley Park resident Chet Kerr).
[9] The Ardsley-on-Hudson rail station was the subject of a 1973 lawsuit between Village of Ardsley commuters and the Village of Irvington. Non-resident autoists seek equal parking privileges
[10] https://www.ardsleyhistoricalsociety.org/the-timepiece/welcome-to-erdeslauue-est-1086
[11] By 1896, Barber had provided nearly 50% of all asphalt pavements laid in the United States. Washington's "King of Asphalt" Barber’s death in April 1909 was front page news in The New York Times.
[12] Kerr’s research on the creation of Ardsley Park suggests Barber was urging Ardsley to rename itself to preserve both the opulent image of the Ardsley Casino and to support his planned suburban residential development for the wealthy. Field, on the other hand, intended to use his holdings to construct suburban homes for persons of moderate means who, in his opinion, deserved the pleasure of having a piece of land to enjoy in comfort. However, as Kerr explained, the construction of the New Croton Aqueduct (and, later, Field's financial difficulties) delayed Field's development proposal for his extensive land holdings. In 1890, Field sold his property to Charles Henry Butler, a lawyer who had developed large tracts of land in Yonkers. According to a report in the New York Herald (August 18, 1890), “The property sold consists of about seven hundred acres extending for more than two miles along the New York and Northern Railway and the Saw Mill River Road. The stations at Ardsley, Woodlands, and Aqueduct [author’s note - later Worthington] are in the immediate vicinity of the property. There are several cottages and other buildings on the property ….. The price is not given, but is said to be in the neighborhood of $1,000,000. This is probably the largest sale of suburban property on record.” Butler’s maternal grandfather was the owner of the Black Ball Packet Line, the first transatlantic ship line (founded in 1817) which transported passengers (and mail and newspapers) between New York City and Liverpool on a regular schedule. The Sailing Packets Butler and his wife are buried in St. John’s Cemetery on Saw Mill River Road in Yonkers. “One of the oldest burial places in Yonkers, Saint John's Cemetery was established by Saint John's Episcopal Church in 1783 on land that had been bequeathed to the Church of England by Frederick Philipse II in 1751.“ Ardsley is located on land that was once part of the Philipsburg Manor and the site of the August 1781 Philipsburgh Encampment during the Revolutionary War. An example of Field’s cottage for the working man can still be seen in Ardsley at 990 Saw Mill River Road across from the Atria Woodlands Senior Living facility at this link: 990 SMRR - House with Porch
[13] The Sloop Captain from Willow Point
[14] Ibid.
[15] It wasn’t until a century ago in 1923 when it became mandatory for each household to have a mailbox or at least a letter slot. Household Mailboxes
[16] The objectors included Thomas Carvel, described as an ice cream products distributor and Percy Douglas, the President of Otis Elevator. Eugene Avallone, an associate professor at City College, remarked “Chauncey is an island of peaceful homes in the midst of congestion and we don’t want to become part of some other community.” Village Cut in Twain. “American country stores in the late 19th century stocked barrels of soda crackers, which customers would often gather around to chat and socialize (think of them as the water coolers of their day). The term "cracker-barrel"eventually came to refer to the simple, rustic informality and straightforwardness that was characteristic of these conversations and the country stores they took place in.” 12 Things You Didn't Know About Cracker Barrel
[17] Chauncey Park - Dobbs Ferry and Ardsley
[18] According to the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, the 1883 editions of The Dobbs Ferry Register newspaper are not available. This "news" was published on the first page of The Dobbs Ferry Register's edition of July 17, 1908, under the heading "twenty five years ago."
[19] Although Westchester County’s Bee-Line buses say “Ardsley Square,” as a destination, the correct name is Addyman Square, named for Ardsley Mayor Frank Addyman who died in 1934.
[20] Peter B. Lynt - Find a Grave Lynt’s mother appears to have been Frances Odell.
[21] The Lawrence Inn (sometimes known as Lawrence’s Inn) was a roadside restaurant on the Post Road in Mamaroneck established in 1887 and was known for hosting civic and fraternal organizations from all parts of Westchester.
[22] In 1946, the Ardsley Hose Company No. 1 became Ardsley Engine Co. No. 1. The centennial of the Ardsley Fire Department’s 1896 founding was commemorated by then Congressman Benjamin Gilman on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Ardsley Fire Dept. Centennial Celebration
[23] Red was the color of choice for schools not because of preference but because the materials needed to red paint were inexpensive and abundantly available. “For many decades the little red schoolhouse has occupied a coveted place in the affections of the American people.” Zimmerman, Jonathan. “The One-Room Schoolhouse as History.” In Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory, 15–52. Yale University Press, 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npmc4.6.
[24] The same edition of the Dobbs Ferry Sentinel carried an article entitled “Arguments Against Hastings-DF Merger Seem Emotionally Based” and further informed readers that the Hastings Board of Education urged voters to approve the proposed merger. Over the past half century, there have been several unsuccessful efforts to merge the Ardsley and Dobbs Ferry school districts.
[25] Hartsdale School District Part II: Decline and Fall
[26] Greenburgh Central School District Enrollment in the 21st Century: A School District in Transition
[27] The DC5 (as they were sometimes called) were the second group of the British Invasion to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show following the Beatles appearance three weeks earlier. Ultimately the DC5 would appear 18 times on the Sullivan show, more than any other English act. “Over and Over” was a cover song of the original 1958 song written by Robert James Byrd who went by the stage name Bobby Day. Day is best known for his hit version of Rockin Robin. Rockin Robin was later recorded by Michael Jackson in 1972 and like Day’s version, reached the number 2 position on Billboard’s “Hot 100” chart.
[28] Sun Records, in Memphis,Tennessee, was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash and is considered the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll.