Suzanna A. Brunner was born in 1858 on Dodge’s Island (now Manhasset Isle) to German immigrants. They moved to 1 Sandy Hollow Road when Suzie was a little girl, and she died in the same house in 1933. As a young woman, she became Port Washington’s first post-mistress.
She carried the mail between Port Washington and Great Neck on unpaved roads come rain or shine, and sometimes in darkness through desolate stretches in a buggy drawn by her horse, William J. Tilden, whom she broke to harness herself. She had a gun and a whip to ward off thieves, animals, and individuals who didn’t approve of a woman doing a man’s job.
Bringing mail to town made her an integral part of the community and she was known to all. She has been described as “a Western lady pioneer,” “a sturdy country lass,” “a tough customer,” “a young German girl with well-developed arms,” and “a devil of a mail carrier.” She would horsewhip a would-be thief, and it was rumored that she had once killed a man.
That rumor has been a matter of controversy for local historians. Thanks to the digital age and Google search, we now have an article from an unlikely source, the Photographic Times, entitled, “The End of a Traveling Photographer” that sheds light on the question. The unlucky photographer came from Syracuse and was working in and around Flushing.
He had fallen on hard times and was last seen on the morning of October 26 leaving town in his wagon “the worse for liquor.” The next day he was found unconscious lying in Jamaica Road with an “unnatural blackness in his eyes and bruises on his body.” Two days later he died.
While Susie Brunner admitted to their reporter “that the day previous to his death she gave him a thrashing with the butt of her whip in the face and the eyes for bad conduct in a state of intoxication,” the story concludes that “the prevalent belief is that he died during an attack of delirium tremens.”
Her life settled down when she left the post office. She worked on the family farm and plowed fields with Mr. Tilden all over Port Washington. She became the janitor for the public school at the top of the hill above the Mill Pond and opened a store that catered to the children walking up and down the hill. Around that time, she got another nickname, “Aunt Suzie.”
She was frugal and invested in real estate. A 1908 map shows that she owned three properties around Sandy Hollow Road. When the Main Street School was built, she purchased the old school and moved it across the street to one of her properties where it still stands, converted into a residence, but still recognizable.
Her home, the Samuel Dodge House, is almost 300 years old and still stands on the corner of Harbor and Sandy Hollow Roads. It is a fine example of early vernacular residential architecture. The current owners recently installed a Historic Designation Plaque from the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society to honor our first Post-mistress.
Ross Lumpkin is a trustee at the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, www.cowneck.org