The Clock Family

Status: VERIFIED (core) / MEDIUM (the generational link) / BLOCKED (genealogy — paywalled). This file resolves the cross-links in Research, Research, the Fire Island Lighthouse dossier, INDEX, and NARA RECORDS. It is the single connective thread across the west-end corpus: one surname founds a hamlet, develops a second, champions the island’s road, keeps its lighthouse a generation earlier, and sits on its inlet committee a century later.

Sources public and cited inline. Primary trail re-pulled live 2026-11-03 (Wikipedia + its cited Brooklyn Daily Eagle / NYT / Johnson 1983 sources; NARA Catalog API v2). Genealogy is the one hard wall — see the last section.

Capt. Selah T. Clock (c.1863–1934) — the founder

An ex–Tax Collector of Bay Shore who became the founding developer of Lonelyville (also mapped as “Fire Island Estates”) and a co-founder of Fair Harbor.

“Clock’s Castle” and the founding of Lonelyville (1908)

Lonelyville’s seed was three bungalows built c.1908 by three Bay Shore friends who went out there, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s words, to “spend their time in killing ducks … catching ‘suckers’ and other things out in the bay … and between intervals of sleep, dining at the expense of each other and swapping stories”:

• ex–Justice of the Peace Harry M. Brewster → “Brewster’s Bungalow”
• ex–South Side Bank cashier Harry S. Raven → “Raven’s Ranch”
• ex–Tax Collector of Bay Shore Selah T. Clock → “Clock’s Castle”

Brewster coined the name “Lonelyville” and “with due éclat and champagne, the resort was christened.” The three — the only voting members — adopted a satirical founding charter that is itself a primary-source gem, e.g.: “No person or persons not of good moral character shall be permitted to dwell within the city limits” (with the sitting settlers “hereby proclaimed exempt”), “No saloons, dives or gambling resorts … within a mile of any church or school house,” “The Sabbath day shall be strictly observed by every person in sound health taking a bath,” and the kicker — “The board of Aldermen … shall see that the tide rises and falls every day and that the surf continues to roll in.” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr 11 1908, p.17.) In 1909, Clock’s associate Capt. Ed Thompson of Northport/Brooklyn built a fourth bungalow. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jul 19 1909, p.5.)

The Fire Island Fishing Company & the 1,000-ft pier (June 1915)

Clock and Thompson launched the Fire Island Fishing Company and built a 1,000-foot pier straight into the ocean. The system: unload commercial boats and haul fish from nets strung ~1,600 ft offshore and reeled in daily, run the catch over a small cross-island railroad to a 500-foot bayside pier, then ship to the mainland — bypassing the treacherous Fire Island Inlet and saving countless hours. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jun 20 1915, p.57; Johnson, Fire Island 1650s–1980s, 1983, p.133.) A 1915 Hyde / E. Belcher Map Co. (Brooklyn) map labels the place “Fire Island Estates” and shows both the pier and the Fire Island Fishing Company railroad track already in place.

The pier’s long afterlife (a verified timeline):

• Stood as a Fire Island landmark long after the company folded.
• The 1938 “Long Island Express” hurricane demolished the ocean pier; the bayside portion of the dock survived until the 1950s.
• As recently as 2025, the pier’s footings still lie ~100 ft (30 m) offshore, submerged under ~20 ft (6 m) of water — a literal founding monument you could dive on. (Newsday, Rachel Weiss, Dec 17 2025.)

⚠ Conflict flagged: some community/real-estate sources date the Fishing Company to the late 1880s; the hard, dated primary citation is June 1915. Clock likely ran an earlier fishing operation and formalized it in 1915, but the 1880s date is not primary-sourced — MEDIUM.

Fair Harbor co-founder (1923) and “father of the Fire Island Boulevard”

In 1923, Clock and George Weeks bought Lot 6 from the Sammis estate “with a vision for enterprise” — a venture to make beach houses affordable for working people. Fair Harbor marked its centennial July 22, 2023, so Clock is a second-node developer tying Lonelyville and Fair Harbor into one hand. (Fire Island News centennial feature; Wikipedia/Fair Harbor.) His New York Times obituary (Jul 18, 1934) ran under the headline “SELAH T. CLOCK.; Dies as a Dream of a Fire Island Boulevard Comes True” — the source of his project nickname, “father of the Fire Island Boulevard.”

Warren F. Clock — Fire Island Lighthouse keeper (1871–72)

On the lighthousefriends head-keeper roster, Warren F. Clock kept the Fire Island Lighthouse in 1871–72 — a generation before Selah reached adulthood — placing a Clock in the barrier-beach maritime establishment by the 1870s (see Research).

• Link to Selah = MEDIUM, undocumented. Shared surname + tight geography (the tower is ~5 mi west of Lonelyville) make kinship plausible, but no record ties Warren F. to Selah T. A Find A Grave search for “Warren Clock” in New York returned no match (2026-11-03) — so there’s no indexed NY grave memorial to anchor him yet.
• Onomastic echo: keeper Selah Strong (1849–53) — “Selah” recurs as a Great South Bay baymen given-name, part of why the Clock/Strong maritime families keep surfacing together.

Pete Clock — the name into the present (2016–17)

Pete Clock served as the Lonelyville representative on the FIMI (Fire Island to Moriches Inlet) committee, 2016–2017 — the modern beach-stabilization process. The surname runs unbroken from an 1880s–1915 fishing camp to a 2010s inlet committee. VERIFIED. Per INDEX, the Clock children also overlapped with the Barbash, Cherveny, Fuchs, Whitney, and Federico kids in the Lonelyville/Fair Harbor sailing programs of the 1990s–2000s (the owner was a Lonelyville sailing instructor) — network standing not web-researchable.

NARA records — the maritime world Clock operated in

The Clocks aren’t personally name-indexed in NARA’s online catalog (full-text “Selah Clock” returns Revolutionary-War pension files for unrelated men). The federal hook is the station they worked beside:

Series 655634 — “Logs of Lifesaving Stations” · RG 26, Records of the U.S. Coast Guard · held at National Archives at Philadelphia · Unrestricted. Catalogued Fire Island station volumes (coverage dates verified live 2026-11-03):

• Correction to the earlier note: NARA RECORDS suggested a “pre-1900 Fire Island logs” pull — but the catalog’s earliest Fire Island volume is Dec 1902 (182770182). No pre-1900 Fire Island volume is online; pre-1902 logs, if they survive, are uncatalogued on-site holdings at NARA Philadelphia.
• The 1917–1919 volume (182770188) is the single best bet to name Clock, the Fire Island Fishing Company, the pier, or the cross-island railroad directly — the next document to request.
• 651350009 — Record of Life Saving Medals Awarded, Vols 1–3 (Dec 7 1875 – Oct 1944) (RG 26) — the ledger behind the Summer Club’s Blue Point-station gold-medal rescue (see Research).
• 78761302 — Suffolk County Postmaster Appointments (M841, Roll 90, RG 28) — check for a Clock-era Lonelyville/Fire Island postmaster appointment.

The genealogy wall (what’s BLOCKED, and exactly how to break it)

Selah T. Clock’s parents, spouse, children, and the Warren F. Clock kinship could not be pulled — the sources are gated:

• Find A Grave — the “Selah Clock” memorial search is KYC/robots-blocked to automated access (Bright Data residential returns bad_endpoint). Needs a logged-in browser session or the KYC form.
• Census (1900/1910/1920, Islip/Bay Shore) and Ancestry — paywalled/login-walled; no free programmatic read. FamilySearch has the images free but behind a free account/login.

Exact next pulls to finish the family tree:

1. FamilySearch (free account): 1900 census collection 1325221, 1920 1488411, + 1910 — search Selah Clock, Islip / Bay Shore, Suffolk NY; capture household (wife, children, ages, birthplaces).
2. Find A Grave via a logged-in session — Selah T. Clock + Warren F. Clock, Suffolk County cemeteries (likely Bay Shore / Oakwood).
3. Islip Public Library genealogy (isliplibrary.org/genealogy) — local census, city directories, wills/probates for the Clock family.
4. The 1917–1919 Fire Island station log (182770188, NARA Philadelphia) for the Fishing Company in the federal record.