The cove on paper

Old Maps of Widow’s Hole

Surveyors, atlas publishers and the government’s chartmakers have been drawing this little cove for a century and a half. Two documents from the collection, and where to find the rest.

Detail of an 1887 bottom-land grant map of Greenport showing the pond and the parcel of Margaret M. Leverich — 1887 — A bottom-land grant map of the Greenport shore. At the center, the brackish *pond* behind the point; at right, the parcel marked **Margaret M. Leverich** — the widow of the cove’s name, still on the map fifty years after her captain sailed. Brown, Clark and Fourth Streets are all drawn, already running down to the water.

Nineteenth-century atlas map of Greenport village with property owners' names along the harbor — late 1800s — A village atlas sheet of Greenport, the harbor sweeping along the bottom, with the property holders of the shore written name by name — the world the postcards would soon photograph.

Keep digging

Where else to find Widow’s Hole on paper

For readers who want to go further, the cove appears — named or unmistakable — in each of these archives:

Beers’ 1873 Atlas of Long Island — the Southold/Shelter Island plate carries a Greenport village inset; the New York Public Library has digitized it.
Sanborn fire-insurance maps of Greenport (1890 onward) — block-by-block detail of the waterfront, at the Library of Congress.
NOAA Chart 12358 (Shelter Island Sound & Peconic Bays) — the modern chart of these waters; historical editions are in NOAA’s chart archive.
USGS Greenport quadrangles — successive topographic surveys of the village shoreline across the twentieth century.
Village of Greenport Harbor Management Plan — the modern document that names “the basin known as Widows Hole” and its stake moorings.

Have a map we’re missing? Old surveys, deeds and charts of this shore are exactly what this project collects. We’d be glad to add yours.