Forge River in Mastic was the setting for a great mansion known as Moss Lots, built in 1883 by William “Buck” Dana, husband of a great-granddaughter of William Floyd, the noted Patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence.
William’s grandfather, Nicoll Floyd, owned 4,400-acres on the Mastic Peninsula, purchasing it from Col. William Tangier Smith, another historic figure who controlled a large portion of what was to become Brookhaven Town in the early 1700s. It was Buck Dana who arranged for a survey and brokered an agreement to divide the part of the estate that was left to William Floyd, and it was upon the portion received by his wife, Katherine “Kitty” Floyd, that the impressive Moss Lots was built.
Another share of the estate, one containing the stately home of William Floyd, was donated to the federal government by Cornelia Floyd Nichols in 1976 and is managed through the National Parks Service as an heirloom of our country’s founding.
William Dana was an attorney and successful publisher of "Hunts Merchants Magazine," which he purchased during the Civil War and turned into one of the leading financial publications in America. His wife, Kitty, was an accomplished artist and poet who worked under the pseudonym “Olive A. Wadsworth,” which was a slight directed at the censors of her time since the initials stood for “Only A Woman.” She is famous for her nursery rhyme, “Over in the Meadow.”
According to Ken Spooner, whose incredible research on the area is compiled in his website, Spooner Central, Moss Lots took over a year to build with box cars full of material coming in by rail at the Mastic Station and transported by horse and wagon to the construction site. Kitty Dana considered it a benefit to the area, making it a point to hire dozens of local residents to help manage it.
Another inhabitant of the fabled Dana Estate was a woman known as “Mrs. Dana of Moss Lots.” Ella Marian Lindley Baker Dana’s mother died shortly after she was born and was raised by her grandparents, Nicoll Floyd III and Cornelia Augusta DuBois, donor of the William Floyd estate. After her first husband’s death, she married William Sheppard Dana, the adopted son of Kitty and Buck, who later inherited their estate.
Moss Lots received many visitors over the years, one of them being a close friend of the Dana’s, Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife. They were sometimes joined by journalist Lorena Hickok, Eleanor’s close confidant who was known as America's best-known female reporter in 1932.
Like many of the stately mansions that graced the shores of Forge River and surrounding waters, Moss Lots was destroyed by fire in 1966.
With information from "A Who's Who of Tri-Hamlet History," presented by the Mastic Peninsula Historical Society and made possible through a grant from Legislator James Mazzarella.