HYLAND
a Federal port of entry and appointed Henry Packer
Dering, a graduate of Yale, U.S. Customs Master. It
seems unbelievable now, but Sag Harbor in the late 18th
century was a port rivaling even than that of New York
City. For the next thirty years Dering met vessels entering
the harbor and levied duties on
their cargoes, which included
such staples as Jamaican rum,
coffee, tea, candles, cheese,
soap, snuff and shoes. Henry
Dering purchased what would
become the Customs House
when he married Anna Fosdick
in 1793. The couple would have
nine children, and Henry went
on, in 1806, to become Sag
Harbor's first postmaster, adding
at that time to their house.
The house itself, now a museum,
is untouched by the twenty-first
century—let alone the twentieth
century--with natural light
traversing the workaday objects there in subtle beams,
each item a solemnly beautiful example of the aged
patina the Japanese call wabi-sabi. Contemplative in
atmosphere, now empty of its original large family, two
centuries later it seems less the abode of an official than
