This is a strange little land, this island. It rests between the north and south forks of the far eastern part of Long Island and connected only by ferry. At certain times during the late night you are there and better like it because there is no getting off of it except to swim. Perlman, the violinist, has his music camp just across the way. Homes perched high on the heights, a few hundred feet up probably have a few souls looking back at me as on mornings like this there is very little else to do except to look for early morning fireplaces coming alive and coffee brewing here and there.
A while back it was part of the original Plymouth Land Grant (1620 or so if memory serves and eventually found its way to some sugar merchants - one in particular, a fellow named Sylvester, settled there. Signs dot the roadside all over the place and his original home or what remains still exists. I remember him a bit (not in person but from the historical markers) because he married a young lady (16) named Grissel Brinley - what a name!
About 15 years ago I went to a yard sale just up the street from the original Sylvester home. It was a farmhouse that due to a recent death was being emptied and was under contract for sale. The 1,600 pounds of sugar (about $5,000 at the local IGA store now) would buy about 1/100th of one of the 6 acres remaining. Shelter Island isn't for the faint of pocketbook. Anyway, in one of the out buildings that was used as a canning shed, was a wall full of canning jars (seemed to make sense). Hundreds of jars. Some were very rare and dated back 120 years..1870s actually. On investigation this was one of the original "farms" on the island, blocked off into a substantial parcel from the nearly 12,000 acres. The original farmhouse was rebuilt after the War of 1812 when the British invaded and burned a lot of the buildings. If walls could talk.
I keep the jar I found in the kitchen where it stores brown sugar and generally decorates the counter top. I keep Shelter Island in sight out of my windows. Sometimes I think that Shakespeare died about 4 years before this Island was the target of settlers and think of the opening of Twelfth Night and Viola and her not bound for Virginia but to Plymouth (and not all lost at sea save one) and finding her way to Shelter Island and her great great great great grand kids owning a farm and having a canning shed.....and of course owning my jar.