The Smithtown News – July 10, 2003

BULL RIDER'S DESCENDANTS CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE DAY

by Jennifer Smith Huntley

The annual Fourth of July picnic on the lawn of Ebenezer Smith’s house looked like many family gatherings to celebrate America’s Independence. But for the descendants of the ‘Bull Rider’, as the family likes to call Richard Smith, the founder of Smithtown, it is a time to reconnect a particularly large family with particularly deep roots. As a young girl I remember following a path through swampy woods to the beach on Long Island Sound for the fourth of July picnic with Aunts with funny names, like Aunt Moo and Aunt Jo, and Cousin Gabby or Uncle E.T. (Edmond Thomas, not Extra-Terrestrial).

It is easy to imagine that a Fourth of July picnic was held somewhere in Smithtown by Smiths since that first Independence Day in 1776. Richard Smith came to America in 1640 from England and founded Smithtown in 1664.

Interest in the picnic waned in the1960’s as children left home, or became interested in worldlier things. But in 1979, Richard Bull Smith, 17th grandson of the patentee, moved back to Smithtown and revived the party on a hill above the same beach on the Sound.

Today, Cousin Richard is the Mayor of Nissequogue. His six brothers and sisters, including one named E.T., were at the picnic along with cousins from Chicago, Washington, and New Hampshire. “This is so great,” said Richard, looking out at forty or so relatives of all ages under the shade of a giant Copper Beech tree. He clearly loves the land and family.

The surviving matriarch and patriarch of the clan, Richard’s mother, Cathy Dugan Smith and my father, Malcolm E. Smith, posed for a photograph surrounded by descendants. I think the Bull Rider would have been proud.

FAMILY TRADITION CONTINUES
Decendants of Smithtown founder Richard Smith, including Malcolm E. Smith, age 8 (seated right) gather at the 1923 Fourth of July picnic, and 80 years later with Malcolm E. Smith, now 86, seated front next to Cathy Dugan Smith.

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