Anyone who knows more than just a bit about Shelter Island knows that a person born on the Island is called a ‘Harelegger.’ And, living here for decades doesn’t earn you the moniker, you have to be born here.
No one, however, knows for certain where the term came from. Common speculation is that it has to do with Islanders ‘legging it like hares’ to catch the ferry.
But a new theory — or, at least one long forgotten — has emerged that claims the heron, not the hare, as the spirit animal of Island natives.
A precious find
Recently, Shelter Island Library Director Terry Lucas was going through boxes cleared from storage. Among boxes of old bills and other obsolete paper records, she found one that contained some much older documents.
In that box was a marvelous handmade booklet with a cardboard cover bearing the handwritten title “The Rev. Daniel M. Lord of Shelter Island, N.Y.”
Inside, was a typed onionskin page with a long subtitle:
“Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Daniel M. Lord pastor of the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church in the years of 1832 – 34 and from 1847- 1861 by his son.”
The booklet contains an excerpt of two dozen or so pages from a much longer book on the geneaology of the Lord family. This particular section had to do with the branch of the family that came to Shelter Island and established the Lord Shipyard. It was written sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s by Daniel Miner Lord VIII, son of the Reverend, also known as Daniel Miner Lord VII.
It was included in a book, “Genealogy of the Descendants of Thomas Lord” that was published in 1946 by descendant Kenneth Lord.
An addendum
But at the back of the booklet that Lucas found was pasted another onionskin sheet, apparently typed up by Kenneth Lord. On this sheet the author shares three points, set off by hand-inked swooshes, not covered in his ancestor’s excerpt. Here they are as typed:
- Other Lord’s papers indicated that at the time of Mr. Lord’s ministry on Shelter Island, the bays and inlets were not only overgrown with seagrass, but that there were swarms of mosquitos everywhere on the Island. After sunset it was not pleasant to stay in the open.
- Not only were there mosquitos, but also herons habitated the many swamps. The nickname “Heron-legged” is traced to the time when these birds were on the Island. Since the herons left “Heron-legger” became “hair-legger”. (Old High German: Heigir-legger.) And so, for about 100 years the natives of Shelter Island are called heron-leggers, or rather in the modern version “hair-leggers”. The Heron is a noble bird, which stares and stares and waits and waits — until “things” come to him.
- The town fathers of Shelter Island have honored the memory of the Rev. Daniel Lord by naming a street after him. He is the only minister who was thus honored. The Daniel Lord’s street is the shortest on the Island — and leads from a swamp to the town dump.
We LOVE that note about the road name.
What’s more, the book excerpt contained some interesting insights into life on the Island as a member of a quirky well-to-do family that included an aunt who had 40 cats she herded with a whip and a sea captain who hid gold in the hull of a ship. Thus proving that Shelter Island has always been a refuge for the odd and clever.
If you want to weigh in on the harelegger/heron-legger debate, send us an email at editor@shelterislandgazette.com.
