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Bob Little is a long-time resident of the Northport area who greatly enjoys delving into the community’s fascinating history and writing his column for the Northport Historical Society.
Northport History - Bob Little
Frank Yamaki lived in Northport for less than twenty years, but he left the community an invaluable legacy and an unsolvable mystery. After emigrating from Japan in the 1880s, Yamaki came to Northport to work as a cook. He prospered, became a popular member of the community, and in 1895 bought Benedict Warner’s photo studio on Woodbine Avenue.
His work as a photographer created his legacy to the community. He was successful commercially doing numerous portraits and wedding photos, but he also produced about 300 photographic plates that visually documented much of Northport Village at the turn of the Twentieth Century. In 1979, Stephen Cavagnaro donated these prints to the Northport Historical society. The Society then published a selection of the prints in a volume entitled Photographs of Old Northport. This slim volume provides a detailed glimpse into the life of the Village over a hundred years ago.
In contrast to the clarity of this legacy, stands the dark mystery of Yamaki’s marriage and death within five months. On October 1, 1905, Yamaki and Belle Pauline Brown revealed to her parents that they had been secretly married on July 16, three days after they had met and twelve days before they had announced their engagement. Following a brief honeymoon, they moved into the Browns’ Northport home. Then, on November 6, Yamaki went missing. Later that week, the Long Islander reported that he “had closed his place of business…telling his wife he was going to King’s Park, and has not been seen since.” On November 20, his wife and her family moved back to their Brooklyn residence. On Thanksgiving Day, a hunter came across Yamaki’s body in the woods in East Northport. The coroner later ruled his death a suicide by poisoning.
The cause of Frank Yamaki’s mysterious death has never been determined. Bankruptcy has been suggested, but by most accounts the photography business was successful, and according to an interview with his mother-in-law that appeared in The New York Times on the day of his funeral, he received a monthly check from Japan for $1500. Mrs. Brown further suggested that it was a threat of assassination for having disgraced the emperor by not returning to Japan at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War that drove him to take his own life.
A note addressed to his wife found on Yamaki’s body further confounded the issue. It read:
My Dear Belle: Forgive me for doing this. I can’t stand it no longer. This will end all. Good bye. Please forgive me. Belle, I can not and will not tell.
With this final message, the man who provided a definitive look into the life of his times in Northport also bequeathed to later generations an intriguing, enduring mystery.
A Northport Mystery
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