People, places and memory
Sooy Place: the tavern named Pine
Will, licenses and historical maps
A family will makes a tavern part of an inheritance, while maps preserve the small settlement’s older name.
A tavern already in the family papers
Nicholas Sooy’s will describes a plantation and tavern purchased from Revel Elton and already conveyed by deed to his son Josephus. The bequest adds a cow. The wording records a working property transferred within a family; it does not say who first built its inn. Nicholas Sooy will excerpt.
The village of Pine
Franzen’s THS study identifies an 1810 purchase and later licenses in Josephus’s name. In the 1850s the locality appears on maps as Pine, with the Sooy hotel at its crossroads. A 1859 application includes local freeholders’ endorsement, showing that permission to sell liquor involved neighbors as well as the proprietor.
Sources and research limits
The study questions an earlier architectural attribution of the builder. The inspected will supports prior ownership, not a construction date or proof that Nicholas personally erected the building. Pine, Pine Tavern and Sooy Place need to be read as changing names attached to the same local record, rather than three independently founded villages.