Now, Riverhead’s oldest farming family faces the challenge of rebuilding after last week’s fire caused more than $2 million in damage.

The farm traces its roots back 364 years to Nov. 20, 1661, a year after 13 Puritan families from the New Haven Colony in Connecticut came across the Long Island Sound to live among the native Shinnecock tribe.

The Puritans formed Southold Town, whose elders established Aquebogue with 40 lots the following year. Three of those were allotted to William Wells for his family to farm near Phillips Lane on Sound Avenue, now part of Northville on the Riverhead border.

“The original deed went from the Sound to the bay, and over the generations, quite a bit of it got sold off, and then different family members got different portions,” said Eric Wells Sr. of Wells Farm, located at 4976 Sound Ave. “We’re lucky enough to have this section [on Sound Avenue] still, and some cousins of ours have another section. We’re still able to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Wells Farm, which has grown to about 300 acres over the centuries, is the only property to keep its original name from its inception, according to a 1937 article in the County Review, an earlier version of this publication.

Mr. Wells is a 12th-generation farmer and operates one portion with his parents, Todd and Laura Wells, and his wife, Darlyn. They sell livestock to the public, and sell grain and potatoes wholesale. 

The other portion is run by Matt Wells, one of the sons of the late Lyle Wells, who died in an equipment accident in January 2018. His Wells Homestead Acres at 4549 Sound Ave. is Long Island’s largest asparagus producer and also grows squash, zucchini and cut flowers.

To ensure the land was preserved as farmland, as their father would have wanted, the siblings sold the development rights to 11.16 acres of the Wells farmland along Phillips Lane in 2021.

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This is the first in a series on the history of train services on the East End, and the numerous changes the industry brought to Riverhead and the North Fork.

“It took them 10 years to go from the foot of the East River in Brooklyn to Greenport,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead.

The Manorville Station stop was originally called St. George’s Manor and opened in 1844. Local history holds that the first station agent, Seth Raynor, was a patriot from the revolutionary war. The story goes that he painted over the “St. George’s” because it reminded him of the king, leaving just “Manor.”

The stop was little more than a refueling station, since there was no town to speak of at that time. Woodcutters would cut timber and stock it next to the tracks, as these trains ran on wood and not coal. There was also a water tower to replenish the steam engine’s supply.

“It was important stop for them to pick up water and wood on their way to make steam to propel trains out to Greenport. Though it was a fueling depot … it also became an important station,” said Mr. Fisher. “Manorville was really just a clearing in the woods where the train would stop, take on water. The local people would sell them firewood.”

In 1869, Manorville station became the western end of the Sag Harbor branch, a line that was extended through Eastport to the south shore. This was to outmaneuver the South Side Railroad, which ran from Brooklyn to Patchogue and had planned to extend out the South Fork. 

“The Long Island Rail Road said, ‘Hey, we got to make a right hand turn here. We’ve got to get in front of the South Side Railroad so that they can’t proceed from Patchogue out to Sag Harbor.’ And that’s what they did,” said Mr. Fisher. The track ran through the South Fork towns and ended in Sag Harbor.

Manorville also featured a special feature of railroad engineering called a wye. It consists of a triangle of tracks with a switch at each corner, where an engineer can navigate around the triangle to reverse direction. 

“You can imagine a train coming along, going up the right-side angle to the top point,”said Mr. Fisher. “He stops his train, he backs on down to the left-hand point, which is going Greenport. Now the train is facing New York City. And you can go across the base of the triangle with your train and go all the way back to Ronkonkoma … [to] get back into the city. If you’ve got the acreages, the land, that’s very inexpensive to make those three tracks and build a wye.”

This feature allowed the railroad to operate what was known as the “Greenport Scoot,” a train that ran from Greenport to Manorville and then all the way to Sag Harbor.

“Manorville, at this point, was very important as a communications loop for people to go from the shipping and the whale industry out of Greenport to the shipping and whale industry down in Sag Harbor. You [could] go back and forth and you didn’t have to take a boat,” said Mr. Fisher. “That opened up all kinds of opportunities for families to move back and forth.”

The mail was carried by horse or stagecoach until 1908, when the Manorville Post Office opened near the train stop. Around this time, the station name officially changed to Manorville. 

The station building was torn down and replaced with a shelter in 1941, and by 1949 the branch was abandoned. In 1968 the stop was officially discontinued.

“It was very lightly used by the 1940s. Railroading is a business, and any place that they can save money and pare off maintenance costs, they’re gonna do it.” Mr. Fisher said. “I think today, in hindsight, they wish they had it.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

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