A Living Landmark: Stephen Searl To Share Story of Sylvester Manor’s Ongoing Transformation

For millennia, the Shelter Island lands of Sylvester Manor were home to Indigenous Manhansett people. But over the past 370 years, it has been a provisioning plantation, an Enlightenment-era farm and a pioneering food industrialist’s summer estate.

It is still evolving.

Stephen Searl, the executive director of Sylvester Manor, will give the talk “From Provisioning Plantation to Nonprofit: The Transformation of Sylvester Manor” on Sunday, December 14, at 2 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Community House, hosted by the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons.

He will discuss the history of the 236-acre site, which is the most intact remnant of a former slaveholding plantation north of Virginia. It was home to 11 generations of Sylvester descendants, from 1652 until 2014, when it was gifted to the nonprofit organization Sylvester Manor Educational Farm.

Today, Sylvester Manor includes the 1737 Manor House, a restored 19th-century windmill, an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground, a working farm, and educational and cultural arts programs open to all. Sylvester Manor was designated a Historic District of national significance on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

Searl has sat at the organization’s helm for eight years and has nearly 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, board governance, fundraising, historic preservation, land and natural resource conservation, program development, and community outreach.

A native of the North Fork, he grew up working in his family’s business, Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue, before graduating from Cornell University’s School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and receiving a Master of Science degree from the University of Vermont in Natural Resource Planning.

He has held positions at various conservation organizations on Long Island over the years, including Peconic Land Trust and the North Shore Land Alliance. While at Peconic Land Trust, he worked closely with Eben Ostby and Bennett Konesni, family descendants of Sylvester Manor, to form the existing nonprofit, start the farm, and preserve the property. He also has a private consulting business where he works with numerous landowners on conservation, land-use planning, agriculture, and real estate throughout the East End.

Admission is $10, or free for Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons members. For more information, visit hahgarden.org.