The Names

The origins of the names attributed to many of Long Island decoys and how they came into being the person most responsible for setting the stage for today’s “antique” decoy market would be a legendary collector, trader, dealer, and author William J Mackey Jr., a very familer name to most decoy collectors. Some stories of his exploits can be found in the September-October 1991 Decoy Magazine.

For decoy collecting, Mackey has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, he single-handedly saved a huge percentage of the decoys in today’s collections and on the market. At a time when most people gave little or no value to the old wildfowl hunting decoys that Mackey sought out, he was able to acquire a huge amount of decoys in his travels at little real cost. Among collectors in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, it was common to trade decoys with each other or sell them for just a few dollars in most cases. Thousands of birds passed through Mackey’s hands and were retained in his collection at his death on July 2, 1972. He had energetically championed the decoy in many different forums, including a 1965 traveling exhibit. One of the exhibits stops was at The Long Island Museums at Stony Brook, where he was introduced to the Herrick brothers, setting the stage for the famed “discovery” and the subsequent launch of the “Bowman” story in 1965, later printed in “The Decoy Collectors Guide” in the Winter 1966/1967 issue.

However, the other side of the Mackey sword was the fact that he apparently did little or no research into the true makers of the decoys. It seems he would accept whatever someone told him without any verification or follow up research (as it is still done today by so called decoy researchers). Granted it was a different time, the decoys didn’t enjoy the respect they do today, now seen as great American folk art, with some commanding high monetary value. Over the years, Mackey and others would practice this form of so called “research,” giving a pedigree’s to decoys formerly credited to an “unknown maker,” or another non- researched “name,” as in the example of the Osborn decoys becoming Obadiah Verity decoys, without showing any proof or published research as to why the maker's name changed. That is the way it has been done for decades and it continues today, including some outright fabrication for some of the names used as the supposed maker, as in the case of the "Cuffee" decoys.

I have been a long time decoy carver, collector, dealer, appraiser, auction catalog description writer, decoy gallery/shop owner, and writer for Decoy Magazine. As with many collectors, I saw discrepancies in many of the decoy maker stories presented in print and if you looked closely at the evidence used for the claims of makership, you found holes you could drive a truck through. But I never openly disputed much of it. In fact, I used it like most collectors do in place of real knowledge. That was until the year 2000, when I was prodded into doing some real research by friend and collector David Bennett of East Hampton on a group of the decoys made on Long Island’s East End that had wrongly been attributed to Shinnecock Indian Eugene Cuffee (1866-1941), which as stated turned out to have been a fabrication. Dave’s research proved beyond any doubt that the carvings had really been carved by William Henry Bennett (1867-1954) from Springs in East Hampton, not Cuffee in Southampton. Dave did 99% of the original research. I mainly reviewed and analyzed the research that he was finding on William Henry (Uncle Henry) Bennett. This led to my research into trying to discover what were the decoys Cuffee had carved, as some had claimed, which led me not to Cuffee, but to his first cousin and the rediscovery of Charles Sumner Bunn, Shinnecock/Montauk, the maker of the decoys that had wrongly been attrubited to "Bill Bowman" by the Herricks and Mackey. This led to the three articles in Decoy Magazine on William Henry Bennett and Charles Sumner Bunn. Early on in our research, we were joined by fellow Long Island decoy collectors Joseph Jannsen and Steve Mikle, and the research began to expand.

I for one became very interested in what was the true history behind the names said to be the carvers of many well-known decoys from Long Island. It did not take long for it to become apparent how very little true research had actually been done on identifying many of the decoy makers from the past. What you find for the most part are stories completely void of any real documentation. Unraveling the history of the names associated with many of these well-known decoys found in today's collections, auctions, museums, and featured in books and magazines, inevitably lead to faux histories, dead ends, hearsay and spontaneous “history,” which is usually a mixture of a small fact connected to lots of fiction, passed on and added to over time, evolving from one publication to the next like a snowball rolling downhill, which under the scrutiny of any real research will also melt just like a snowball. The simple fact is it is far easier to prove the names used for the makers of these decoys could not really be the makers than it is to find the true makers of the decoys, which is undoubtedly why it’s done. A name linked to a decoy adds instant monetary value to any decoy left wanting for a maker’s name. And any name will do no matter how tenuous, ridiculous, or outright silly the “evidence” presented for the so- called “research” might be. And most people don’t look too close. They just accept what they're told. Most humans are followers, wanting to fit in and not rock the preverbal boat. They defer to those who are deemed “experts” in their field of interest. This was never more so than in decoy collecting, a true case of the blind, deaf and stupid following the blind, deaf and stupid.

Long Island has many famous “names” that are said to be the carvers of decoys known today as Verity's, Southard's, Dilley’s, Bowman’s, Cuffee’s Watts', and many more, with one of the latest is the fabricated decoy carver “Lafayette Seabury".

The first two names to be dissected will be that of William J. Southard of Bellmore L .I. and Obediah Verity of Seaford. These names were linked together in the mid 1970’s as the makers of the birds formerly attributed to H.F. Osborn of Bellport L. I. and Osborn Style, and also Captain Ben Verity Gilgo Beach, Captain Dan Havens of Moriches and others.

Obadiah Verity and William Southard (William J. Southard)