Sag Harbor, New York

Sag Harbor is an incorporated village in Suffolk County, New York, United States, in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton on eastern Long Island. The village developed as a working port on Gardiners Bay. The population was 2,772 at the 2020 census.

The entire business district is listed as the historic Sag Harbor Village District on the National Register of Historic Places. A major whaling and shipping port in the 19th century, by the end of this period and in the 20th century, it became a destination for wealthy people who summered there.

Sag Harbor is about three-fifths in Southampton and two-fifths in East Hampton; the town boundary being Division Street. Its landmarks include structures associated with whaling and its early days when it was designated as the first port of entry to the new United States. It had the first United States custom house erected on Long Island.

Sag Harbor was settled by English colonists sometime between 1707 and 1730. Many probably migrated from New England by water, as did other settlers on eastern Long Island. The first bill of lading to use the name "Sag Harbor" was recorded in 1730.

While some accounts say the village was named for the neighboring settlement of Sagaponack, which at the time was called Sagg, historians say Sagaponack and Sag Harbor both were named after a tuber cultivated by the local Pequot people and used as a staple crop. In their Algonquian language, they called the vegetable sagabon. It was one of the first crops colonists sent to England. The tuber-producing vine is now known as the Apios americana.

During the American Revolutionary War, New York Patriots fled from the advancing British and Loyalist forces and departed from Sag Harbor by boat and ship for Connecticut. In 1777 American raiders under Return Jonathan Meigs attacked a British garrison at a fort on a hill in Sag Harbor, killing six and capturing 90 British soldiers in what was called Meigs Raid. The fort was dismantled after the war. The site has become known as the Old Burying Ground and is associated with the Old Whaler's Church.

Sag Harbor supplanted Northwest, another port about 5 miles (8 km) east of the village in the Town of East Hampton. International ships and the whaling industry had started in Northwest, but its port was too shallow for the developing traffic. The most valuable whale product was whale oil, which was used widely in lamps.

Sag Harbor became a major port for the whaling industry, and the processing and sale of this oil. By 1789 Sag Harbor had "had more tons of square-rigged vessels engaged in commerce than even New York City." It had become an international port.