Hamptons Farmland: A Death and a Legacy

A significant but underappreciated aspect of the South Fork of Long Island land-preservation story is the role that old farming families have played. This is particularly true of the Polish clans that so prominently figured in the agricultural belt below the moraine that runs along the Water Mill to Bridgehampton stretch, some of the most picturesque and familiar to Hamptons visitors because it follows much of the “back road” that travelers take to avoid congestion on the main highway (County Road 39 and state route 27). In some cases these Poles emerged from early immigrant labor in the fields and mills to owning large blocks of rich soil that became even richer real estate as the 20th Century progressed. That saga was in view this week with the death of Joan B. Zaluski at age 93–she was matriarch to one significant brood and widow to locally prominent William Zaluski Jr. As several of these farm families sold their parcels from the 1960s on, to avoid inheritance taxes and to take advantage of the Hamptons land rush, the Zaluskis kept much of their holding–including a landmark farmhouse on Deerfield Road–and were key participants in efforts to maintain vestiges of the former character of the South Fork. This 1999 newsletter from the Peconic Land Trust, which has been instrumental in much of that preservation, noted their milestone in that effort.