2010 Long Island Fair Dates:

Thursday, September 30th thru Sunday, October 3rd.

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IN MEMORIAM

Samuel Underhill Mitchell

1931 - 2010

President of the Agricultural Society of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties - 1999-2010

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Farmer, banker and a part of the Long Island Fair for 70 years, Sam Mitchell died on July 12th. Sam was born on August 27, 1931, the only child of Myron Colyer Mitchell and Alice Jackson Underhill, two of Long Island’s early settler families. He was a long-time director of the Agricultural Society and its president since 1999. A 1953 graduate of the Cornell University, School of Agriculture, he started by working for Arthur V. Youngs of Youngs Farm in Old Brookville. Arthur’s son John Youngs was later to become President of the Society and recruited Sam as a director. Upon John Youngs death in 1999 Sam took over as president of the Society and the Fair.

After spending two years in the Army Signal Corps, Sam became a banker, retiring from Fleet Bank in 1994. In addition to his prize winning vegetables from the age of eight, he was responsible for numerous improvements to the fairgrounds at Old Bethpage Village. The most visible of which is the Howard Campbell Livestock building at the south end of the fairgrounds.

In addition to his lifelong connection to the Long Island Fair, Sam was a director and past president of the Nassau County Historical Society, a trustee of the Underhill Society (he was a descendent of Captain John Underhill who came to America in1630 aboard the Winthrop Fleet), and the Underhill Burying Ground, a trustee of the Jericho Friends Meeting, President of the Brookville Cemetery, a trustee and treasurer of the Morgan Memorial Park, and past president of the Glen Cove Rotary Club. He also served on the Nassau Cornell Cooperative Board for 25 Years, was a member of the East Williston Planning Board and a member of the Historical Committee of East Williston.

Sam spent much of his childhood on the Underhill farm in Jericho where his great grandfather grew potatoes and raised cattle. He put his memories of growing up on Long Island in the 1930s and 40s to good use in lectures to young and old on what it was like when Nassau County was mostly farm land, the bicycle was the mode of transportation and of selling fresh eggs from his chickens door to door in East Williston from a little red wagon.

Sam was buried in the Brookville Cemetery among the Underhills, Mitchells, Youngs and many other old Long Island families on July 17th

He is survived by four first cousins – Janet Bogart Wolbrink, William Townsend Bailey, Morley L. Smith and Phebe Alice Smith Apgar

A man with an infectious smile, who knew no strangers; he will be missed by us all.