A Hamptons Property Fight Over a Black Whaler’s Homestead’s Name
With a long, dark, matted-hair haircut and a mop of thick dark red hair, James McCurdy grew up on a farm in the town of New Kent, Wisconsin, outside Green Bay. His father, a farmer who was an Army veteran from a World War I enlistment, was working a farm in the summer of 1925. His mother was a housewife.
“It was a place where everybody knew everyone,” McCurdy said.
Later in his life, McCurdy said, his mother told him that it was on a farm called Dobbins Field. It was a nickname and he believed her.
But when McCurdy moved from Green Bay to the East Coast in the late 1960s to become a journalist and writer, he did not find the name Dobbins Field on his farm and had a tough time fitting the place into his memory of Illinois in the 1930s. He couldn’t place it on his own land.
McCurdy recalled a story his father told him about “The Great War,” the World War I conflict that took place in Belgium in 1916 and ended in 1918. The place was called “The Dobbins Farm.”
In the early 2000s, the Dobbins House, located in the hamlet called Dobbins, about 15 miles south of Green Bay, was purchased by a family from the town of New Kent. They are descendants of the young farmer who served in World War I, his name is James McCurdy. He was born in 1925. The McCurdy family is interested in preserving the farm’s name. Hamp’s Historic Hamptons Hamptons Historic Hamptons Historic Hamptons Hamptons Historic Hamp’s Hamptons Historic Hamp’s History of the Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons History of the Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons History of the Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hampton History of the Hamptons Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton History of the Hamptons Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton Hampton