01/03/2025
The Purdys
North Salem
How one family founded—and protected—the hamlet that bears their name.
On a cold winter’s day in 1955, Thomas L. Purdy Jr. drove from his home in North Salem to the Woolworth Building offices of the Public Service Commission in lower Manhattan. Determined to streamline the railway, the Commission wanted to reduce passenger service and completely cut freight service to tiny Purdys Station. But in his pocket, Thomas Purdy had his trump card: a document, dated 1847, signed by his grandfather, Isaac Hart Purdy, and Isaac’s wife, Mary. They had granted The New York and Harlem Rail Road Company right of way through Purdy land for one dollar, with the agreement that Isaac “establish a Depot and stopping place” and that freight and passenger trains “regularly stop” at Purdys Station.
That small parcel represented a fraction of the thousand acres that Isaac’s great-grandfather Daniel had bought from the vast Van Cortlandt Manor in the mid 1700s. But Isaac knew that a village would sprout up around the railroad, and he was right. (He promptly opened a post office and appointed himself the postmaster.)
The hamlet needed Purdys Station to attract commuters and maintain property values. Now, in 1955, the State was looking to back out of the deal, claiming that, after 108 years, the covenant was moot.
Thomas Purdy III, who goes by “Tim,” remembers his father’s description of what happened at the hearing.
“He sat in the back and waited until the very end of the meeting. He put up his hand and asked if he could approach the bench. He said, ‘Your honor, I think you should look at this document before you make a decision.’ The judge looked at it and dismissed the hearing right then and there.”
At 74, Tim Purdy is a rarity, a sixth-generation descendant who’s stayed on his ancestral lands. Only 20 acres of that original 1,000 remain in the family; the rest has been sold over the years. The old Purdy homestead, at the intersection of Routes 22 and 116, is now Purdy’s Farmer & the Fish, the latest restaurant to occupy the 225-year-old structure that had been home to six generations of Purdys. Tim’s grandmother, Anne Beeson Purdy, was the last Purdy to live there. Tim remembers holiday meals in the parlor (now the main dining room), and the Irish cook named Katy who made such delicious desserts: chocolate cake for him, custard for his sister. Today, diners dig into produce grown on terraced plots behind the restaurant, all that’s left of the Purdys’ rich farming history. “When I was a boy, there were five working dairies in North Salem,” Tim recalls. “Now, the milk bottles are at the historical society. The cow barns are horse facilities.”
While Tim may be the last Purdy in Purdys—his daughter Sophie Purdy Meili and her family live in Dutchess County, where she raises livestock—there’s no dearth of people in Westchester who bear that name. The first Purdys, Tim explains, were French Huguenots, their name pronounced Per Dieu, “for God.” They fled France for England and, in the 1600s, Francis Purdy sailed for Massachusetts. The father of all Purdys in this region, Francis, settled in Fairfield, Connecticut. His progeny drifted like dandelion seeds in the wind, landing throughout Westchester, from Rye to Croton-on-Hudson. (Craig Purdy, co-owner of Croton’s Ümami and Tagine Restaurant & Wine Bar, is also a descendent.) His five sons were among the first settlers in Rye, and their progeny helped found White Plains. “My branch of the family had a farm in Harrison, where the Westchester Country Club is now,” explains Tim. “They kept moving north. They bought this land because it was the confluence of the Titicus and Croton Rivers, and they needed the river to float logs to the Hudson.”
The Purdy homestead has survived since 1776, though the “hanging tree,” where Tory loyalists were strung up, has not; Tim Purdy, in 1942, with his parents Ellen and Tom Purdy Jr. and his sister Ellen.
The American Revolution divided all those Purdys into two camps: for England, and against. No fewer than 28 Purdys signed a declaration in White Plains supporting King George III. The North Salem Purdys were fierce patriots. Daniel’s son Joshua disowned his own son, a Loyalist, and left the land to his grandson Joseph, who built the homestead in 1775. During the Revolution, Joseph and some compatriots captured a Tory cattle thief and strung him on a giant oak in front of the homestead, once, twice, three times, trying to extract information. The tree is long gone, but the legend lives on. After the war, in 1782, Westchester’s Loyalist Purdys boarded boats for Canada. “That’s why there’s a Purdy’s Wharf in Nova Scotia,” Tim quips.
Tim’s grandfather, Thomas Purdy Sr., and his son, Thomas Jr., were gentlemen farmers, overseeing their land while holding prominent positions in the village: bank president, councilman, chamber of commerce president. The family has farmland in Iowa as well. “My maternal grandfather was a circuit court judge who traveled through Iowa before it was a state,” Tim explains. “He bought up tax liens. We’ve had the land for 150 years, growing corn and soybeans.”
He runs the Iowa farms from his offices 100 yards from the homestead, sitting behind the same desk where his father spent his last morning, balancing his checkbook before passing later that day at the age of 93. Old family photos hang on the walls, and Tim can dig up the old deed that his father relied on to secure Purdys Station. While he clearly values his inheritance, he downplays being one of the Purdys who founded Purdys: “What I tell people is I found a town with the same name as mine and moved here. That way I wouldn’t get lost.”
https://westchestermagazine.com/life-style/the-first-families-of-westchester/
