Southeast Centre
A primary-source study of Southeast Centre — also known as Sodom or Sodom Corners — the Putnam County neighborhood largely obliterated by New York City's late nineteenth-century East Branch Reservoir watershed acquisition. Documents the deed chains, family histories, and displacement of eleven surviving lots and numerous lost properties.
Deed-by-deed histories of individual buildings and the ground under them — farms, inns, homesteads, and shops of the Town of Southeast, each traced through the county record from its earliest instrument to the present.
Five connected stories from a single Brewster block — the parish at its heart, the immigrant family it grew from, the factory that stood at its south end, the house that was moved to make room for the school, and the Wells family’s “By Ways” at the head of the block. They share people, parcels, and one stretch of street; start with the parish and follow the cross-links.
The site’s reference shelves — catalogs and interactive views the research pieces draw on: the marker inventory, the map library, the school districts, and the 1870 panorama of the village.
Brewster History is the independent work of R. Griffin, a Brewster resident researching deed chains, period maps, and primary-source documentation of properties and people in the Town of Southeast and the surrounding area. The project is not affiliated with the Town of Southeast, the Village of Brewster, or any town, county, or municipal historian’s office.
Every claim is traced to a source read in full — a deed, a census, a period newspaper, a map, a federal record, or a verified secondary work. Where the record runs out, the site says so plainly. This is slow work, and it is meant to be read slowly.