This broadside poster promoted passage and freight to be hired on to "The Sloop Ruth T. Hicks" dated February 4th, 1852. The ship was captained by Roslyn resident Jacob M. Kirby and made the run from Roslyn, Long Island to New York City. Sight size is 11" x 16". Courtesy of Ian Zwerdling.
Jacob Mott Kirby (Adapted from the 1987 House Tour Guide page 487)
Starting about 1835-1840, a merchant, Jacob Mott Kirby, had been buying up land in this vicinity. Kirby was a "Captain" by virtue of his shipping activities, involving ownership of several coastwise schooners, which transported farm produce and lumber to New York City and brought back agricultural implements, dry goods, and fertilizers to Roslyn Village.
By around 1873, according to the Beers, Comstock & Cline Map, Captain Kirby's name was associated with many properties in the Village. A partial "tour" of Captain Kirby's real estate holdings, following the 1873 map, might begin at the north end of the triangle, close to the "Far Pond," on the lower half of East Broadway. From the south boundary of the Conklin property as it was in 1873, all the way down to the southern end of East Broadway, as delineated by its intersection with Main Street, the land is designated as the property of "J.M. Kirby," including, at the extreme southern end of the road, on the east side, the "J.M. Kirby Residence]." It is believed that this house may originally have been a late Federal-style dwelling, which Captain Kirby later enlarged and remodeled in the Greek Revival style. Locally referred to as "the Kirby Mansion," it featured a gable facade on East Broadway, with 4 two-storey classical columns supporting a second storey porch. It is no longer standing. Moving northward, now along the west side of Main Street, a structure standing close to the road, together with a tiny "Office" behind it to the west, are designated as the property of "J.M. Kirby." The former building, in the course of recent restoration as the Van Nostrand-Starkins House, ca. 1680, "lost" a wing, which had started out as a separate building and had later been added on to the Van Nostrand-Starkins House (TG 1965, 1975-76-77).
This "wing" has been preserved, on a nearby site, as the Captain Jacob M. Kirby Cottage, ca. 1850 (TG 1974-75). The Office was later moved but has been relocated as the Wallace Kirby Office, ca. 1860 on a spot close to its 1873 site (TG 1979-80). To the north of these is the building known today as the Jacob M. Kirby Tenant House, ca. 1790 and ca. 1850 (TG 1979-80). All these properties were part of what was collectively called "Kirby's Corners."
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Captain Jacob Kirby died at the age of 75 years in 1880. His properties at Kirby's Corners were inherited by his son, the Reverend William Wallace Kirby, who was the second minister of the Roslyn Presbyterian Church. The Reverend Kirby died in 1901, leaving the property to his wife and cousin Susan Eliza Kirby, who in 1918 deeded them over to her son, Ralph Kirby. Ralph Kirby made his home in the "Mansion" with his mother. His younger brother, New York University trained engineer Isaac Henry Kirby, lived with his wife Susan Ludlum in the Van Nostrand-Starkins House, as had the Reverend Wallace Kirby before his father's death. There is no record of who the Kirbys' tenants were in the two dwellings within Kirby's Corners.
The Kirby Mansion on East Broadway and Main Street.
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