The First LDS-owned Meetinghouse was in Oceanside?
In our area, the claim for the first LDS-owned meetinghouse is often remembered to be the original Brooklyn chapel at 273 Gates Avenue, at the corner of Franklin Street. That building was on land that the Church purchased in 1916. The building itself was completed in 1918 and dedicated in February 1919. It was later sold, and still stands, housing another church.
However, the Brooklyn building was constructed more than 80 years after the first missionary work began in the New York City area, and for much of that time there was an older LDS-“owned” building—in Oceanside on Long Island.
The Parsonage was built in 1724 and stood about where Brower Avenue and Harold Street meet in what is now Oceanside, New York. In 1826 the building and the surrounding “Parsonage Farm” was purchased by James S. Pettit, who purchased surrounding land to make his farm one of the principal farms on Long Island. The Pettit family met LDS missionaries and joined the Church in 1843, and within a few years offered the “Parsonage” as the meetinghouse for the fledgling LDS branch at Christian Hook (as Oceanside was then known). While many in the family emigrated to join the rest of the Saints, James’s son Ira stayed on the family farm, but also remained a faithful member of the Church. While he sometimes visited family members in Utah, he only finally moved there permanently in 1892, just a few years before his death in 1896.
The farm remained in the family, and either the Parsonage or another building on the farm was the LDS meetinghouse, and a swimming hole in Parsonage creek was known as Mormon Hole, perhaps because LDS baptisms were performed there.
The final member of the family to own the farm (reduced in size over the years) was Percy Peace, and his estate sold the remaining land in 1972, leading to the demolition of the Parsonage in 1973. The Oceanside Branch, and later Ward, had long before moved on to a newer, larger building more suited to its needs.
