Woodside Begins to Develop

Early settlements were near the site later chosen
for St. Sebastian's Church. Joseph Sackett built a farm-
house at Woodside Avenue and today's 58 Street, near
the Snake Woods. Thomas Cumberson owned a house
and tannery along 58 Street, near Rattlesnake Spring.
Not far away, Thomas Morrell owned property in the
Maspeth Kills. The Sackett farm was bought in 1826 by
John Andrew Kelly and his sister (or perhaps sister-in-
law), Mrs. Catharine Buddy. Kelly's son, John A.F.
Kelly, coined the term "Woodside" in the column he
wrote for the Independent Press, a Brooklyn newspaper.
The Sackett-Kelly home was the site of the current
school of St. Sebastian.

Transportation Causes Woodside to Grow

The crucial events in Woodside's growth per-
tained to transportation. In 1860, the road we know as
Northern Boulevard was opened to connect the town of
Flushing with the 34 Street ferry to Manhattan. In 1861,
the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) built a route from
Hunter's Point and opened a station at today's 60 Street

and Woodside Avenue. In 1867, Woodside was laid out
as a village. In 1869, a train station was built by the
Flushing and North Side Railroad at 58 Street and 38
Avenue. In 1868, a developer named Benjamin Hitch-
cock became interested enough to drain the swamps and
become one of the earliest real estate agents to promote
the sale of plots of land (972 of them, to be exact) on
the "installment plan." The first Woodside post office
came in 1864 and the first public school in 1872. The
first church was St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal in 1873.
By 1888, many old farms had disappeared, but some
continued into the twentieth century.

Business development came early to Woodside.
In 1864, Gabriel Marc purchased land for his plant nur-
series at Woodside Avenue and Northern Boulevard. In
1874, the Woodside Wine Company was founded to pro-
cess Long Island grapes. Around this time, Riker, Hud-
son and Company was founded for the canning of neigh-
borhood garden produce, soon turning out 8,000 cans of
tomatoes daily.

Of special note is the founding of the first fire
company in Woodside, the Hook and Ladder Company
tf3 in 1878, with William Cameron, a member of an old
local family, as its first foreman. The firehouse bell,
originally cast for an East River steamboat named the
Sylvan Dell, became the church bell of the original St.
Sebastian Church and now is proudly ensconced in front
of the rectory.