Growing up in the Moriches, Mary Field noticed what most people didn’t. As old buildings were being torn down, she wondered who would remember what had gone before. What followed was a lifetime of interest in local history, culminating in books like The Illustrated History of the Moriches Bay Area and the 1881 Diary of Nettie Ketcham. In this interview she tells stories of old Moriches she learned from earlier generations and anecdotes from Nettie Ketcham’s experiences at the end of the 19th century. Mary also recounts the work of her husband Van, a ham radio operator, historian of Long Island shipwrecks, and participant in the LORAN Project from World War II.

The 1989  fire that nearly destroyed the Terry-Ketcham Inn brought Bert Seides to tears but it also set him on the road to saving the historic Moriches landmark.  Building from a small group of volunteers meeting around Mary and Van Field’s kitchen table, Bert marshaled support and learned to navigate a maze of regulations, paperwork, and government agencies to bring the 1693 Inn back to life. In this discussion he provides a road map for preservation projects and reveals the hard work involved, from painstaking research to outreach programs to, of course, book sales.

Further Research

• The Ketcham Inn Foundation
• Books by Van and Mary Field via WorldCat.org
• Moriches Bay Historical Society
• New York State Historic Preservation Office