SKUNK’S MISERY, STATEN ISLAND

WOODROW and Bloomingdale Roads in Rossville, Staten Island was once the center of a small settlement named Sandy Ground. Before the Civil War, the community was founded by New York City’s first  community of free Blacks, oystermen who moved north from the Maryland shore to work then-burgeoning oyster beds along the Staten Island shore. There are still a number of descendants of those settlers residing in Woodrow and Rossville today. After the water became too polluted in the 1910s, the oyster beds were condemned, and many residents moved away. Yet, the community’s unique identity was able to persist until the 1960s, when suburban sprawl, bringing the anonymity that is increasingly pervading Staten Island’s south shore, began to take over the area.

Little of the physical aspect of 1800s Sandy Ground is there today…there are a couple of frame dwellings along Bloomingdale Road, and there’s the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, mentioned by New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell’s 1956 story “Mr. Hunter’s Grave,” in which he interviewed the church’s board of trustees, who provided an indelible portrait of Sandy Ground in the early 20^th Century.

The Sandy Ground Historical Society, 1538 Woodrow Road at Bloomingdale, pictured here, exhibits letters, photographs, film, art, quilts and rare books, all collected from area homes over the past few decades, in its collection. Call (929) 314-4395 for hours.

The area, though, seems to have had another name: Skunk’s Misery, a name applied to other Staten Island locales according to “Staten Island Names,” a book by historians William Thompson Davis and Charles Leng, published in 1896.

The name seems to have been applied to a number of locales in the USA and Canada; the nearest one to the Staten Island “skunks miseries” was in Lattingtown, near Locust Valley, Nassau County, and a roadway still has the name. There are other Skunks Misery Roads in Templeton, MA; Millerton, NY; Franklin, VT; and a large area of wilderness in the Mossa Forest, MIddlesex County, Ontario.

Skunks Misery Road takes its name from a swamp that once upon a time was a natural formation in what is now the Locust Valley area. Early settlers used it as a dump that was a handy fast-food stop for large numbers of skunks that foraged in the refuse. The odor was said to be so bad that people wondered how even the skunks could tolerate it. [Newsday]

Regarding the Ontario location:

Skunk’s Misery is one of the largest and most significant forested blocks remaining in the Carolinian Region of southern Ontario.  Located 60 km southwest of London, ON, it has been identified as a Carolinian Canada site, Provincially Significant Wetland, an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest, an Important Bird Area, and a key biodiversity area within the Great Lakes.

Skunk’s Misery is one of the largest and most significant forested blocks remaining in the Carolinian Region of southern Ontario.  Located 60 km southwest of London, ON, it has been identified as a Carolinian Canada site, Provincially Significant Wetland, an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest, an Important Bird Area, and a key biodiversity area within the Great Lakes.

And in Massachusetts:

Neighborhood legend has it that way back when, the mosquitos were so bad in the area that even the skunks objected, ergo the street name. And that translates into a race name that’s sure attract attention, even if no such animals are there to do the same. 

Apparently “skunk’s misery” was a term applied to an outlying area so inhospitable that skunks would not enter it.

I think area residents are very happy to keep calling the Staten Island location “Sandy Ground.”

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3/26/24