• From 1870 to 1971, this workman’s cottage built by Captain Kirby was attached to the Van Nostrand-Starkins House.
• Kirby’s 17-room Greek revival mansion fronted East Broadway and was moved to the Whitney estate in Old Westbury in 1941. It is currently part of the main building of the Old Westbury Golf and Country Club.
• The cottage was detached from the Van Nostrand-Starkins House in 1970 and moved to its current location.
• The house is owned by the Village of Roslyn and maintained by the Roslyn Landmark Society.

Adapted from the 1988 House Tour Guide (Page 34)

Prior to the end of the 18th century the history of the Van Nostrand-Starkins House is only conjecture. By the 1790 Federal Census, William Van Nostrand was the head of the household there, his neighbor to the south was William Valentine. Van Nostrand and his wife Sarah sold their house and land to Joseph Starkins, a blacksmith, in 1795. There is no deed recording William Van Nostrand's acquisition of the land; no early Town record of a Van Nostrand land grant at Hempstead Harbour. Two early clues, though not clear in their references may someday lead to new knowledge.

First, in 1755 a William Van Nostrand, blacksmith, and his wife Phebe, conveyed an 18-acre parcel of land in Hempstead's "south woods" to Frederick Van Nostrand, Sr., and Frederick Van Nostrand, Jr.. Whether or not William Van Nostrand was the same person who later lived in Hempstead Harbour is not known. Second, an Aaron Van Nostrand, turner, who was neighbor to Ephraim Valentine in 1747 along a road running north and south somewhere in this vicinity, died in Jamaica in 1764, leaving his estate to two of his sons, Aaron and Isaac. He could have had additional sons who had been given their portions during his lifetime. One of these sons could have been named William Van Nostrand. Amos Denton was the executor. Aaron Van Nostrand had formerly lived in what is now North Hempstead, as he was assigned an earmark for his livestock in 1714. In 1700 Abraham Denton bought a three-acre parcel of land with a house on it from Richard Valentine, to whom it had been given, house and all, in 1686 as his wife's dower portion from her father Timothy Halstead.

It was adjacent to land on which Valentine lived. Richard Valentine, in his own turn, was a member of a group of "planters" who joined together in 1668 to "take up land" on "the north side of the town." Timothy Halstead, too, was a member of that group. This collection of facts may be only coincidentally related. But if Richard Valentine's land was the same, or in part the same, as Ephraim Valentine's and later William Valentine's, and if Amos Denton inherited from Abraham Denton, then it would be fairly logical to guess that Aaron Van Nostrand, having moved on to Jamaica later in his life, drew on a neighbor's friendship in making Denton his executor. If these relationships are valid, which we do not know, then they tell us something about the earliest settlement here at Hempstead Harbour. (Historical Notes: Rosalie Fellows Bailey) After 1790, though, the Van Nostrand-Starkins House history is clear and easy to follow. On March 21, 1795, Van Nostrand conveyed his four-acre plot to blacksmith Joseph Starkins and Ann Elizabeth, his wife, for £120. (Queens County, Liber 65 of Deeds, Pg. 291). In 1801 Starkins bought more land, south and north, adjoining the house lot, from William Valentine. Starkins' own house and his blacksmith shop are both mentioned in 1824 highway records. (North and South Hempstead Records, Vol. 7 Pg. 43). Joseph Starkins was born around 1769 and he died in the Town of North Hempstead in 1814. Francis Skillman states "the next house south was Joseph Starkins, the blacksmith, at the fork in the road.... South of this (going up the hill) and near the stone (R.R.) bridge stands the old house given by Richard Valentine to his son, William (ancestor of the present Valentine's in Roslyn)."

Skillman implies there were no houses between the Valentine (Railroad Avenue) and the Starkins (Van Nostrand) houses. Yet the first census shows Lt. Col. Richard Manet (Maney), the senior Revolutionary War officer in Hempstead Harbour, as living in between them. He may have rented the separate east wing in the Van Nostrand House. The Walling Map (1859) shows a Kirby House between the two but this probably was not standing at the time of the 1790 census. In 1847 Joseph Starkins, presumably the blacksmith's son , mortgaged the fouracre property, and in 1850 he and his wife, whose name was Ann Elizabeth, sold it to William Verity. (Queens County,Liber 85 of deeds, Pg. 486). Two years later Verity sold it to merchant Jacob M. Kirby (Queens County, Liber 101, Pg. 142) who was acquiring the land all around the Main Street - East Broadway intersection, forming the locality then known, and still today, as "Kirby's Corner's." Kirby owned a fleet of ships - early in his career he sailed them - market sloops that ran between Roslyn and New York, trading farm produce and lumber for fertilizer, dry goods and agricultural implements, which he sold in his Main Street store, still standing near the Corner. (TG 1986-87).

Jacob Kirby died in 1880, leaving his property (his temple-front house on the eastern side of the road south of the Corners; the store, houses (TG 1986-87) and barn within the Corners triangle; the Van Nostrand house and its neighbor to the north (TG 1979-80), with his little office in the back (TG 1978-79) to his wife Elizabeth, who conveyed it all the next year to her son, the Reverend William Wallace Kirby. William Wallace Kirby served as pastor for the Roslyn Presbyterian Church (TG 1973-74) for a year (1870-71), and later was Justice of the Peace for the Town of North Hempstead. As an attorney he was a younger contemporary of Henry W. Eastman, and many of his legal papers survive in the collections of the Nassau County Museum and the Roslyn Landmark Society. W.W. Kirby transferred title to Ernest and Henrietta Schuman on the first of November, 1887 (Liber 771 Pg. 186) but two days later the Schumans transferred it to Susan Eliza Kirby, William Wallace's wife (Queens County Liber 771 Pg. 189). From Susan Kirby the house passed to her son Ralph in 1918, who retained it until his death in 1935. His brother Issac Henry Kirby, who was resident in the Van Nostrand - Starkins House, had probably been living there even before title passed to Ralph from his mother. He willed it, with other family property, to his cousin Virginia Applegate who, after his death, lived in the Kirby-Sammis House (TG 1986-87) within the Kirby's Corners triangle.

In 1937 Mrs. Applegate sold the Van Nostrand-Starkins House to Mr. and Mrs. George J. G. Nicholson, who lived there until 1945, when they sold it to Mr. and Mrs. John G. Tarrant. In 1966 the Incorporated Village of Roslyn acquired the property from a holding company which had owned it for three years. Through about three centuries, from the early days of Hempstead Harbour until about 1970, the house was continuously in use as a residence. During 1973-1977 the Roslyn Landmark Society, with funds partially matched by a grant from New York State, restored the house to its appearance at the time it was the home of Joseph Starkins and