The improvements in transportation that initially benefited agriculture eventually produced its decline. As it became quicker and more convenient for residents to travel from their homes to other parts of Queens, to Brooklyn, and to Manhattan, the area came to be seen as both desirable and affordable for the construction of housing for city-dwellers and increases in land values enticed farm owners to sell out. John Sackett came of a family of religious dissenters that had settled in Queens late in the 17th century. In 1802 he inherited a farm of 115 acres including much of what is now Woodside and in 1826 his heirs sold much of the property to John A. Kelly, the son of a German immigrant, and his sister-in-law (also of German descent), Catherine B. (Friedle) Buddy. As other well-to-do merchants had done in other areas of Queens, Kelly and Buddy bought farm property for use as a rural estate where they planned to live in the warmer months of the year. Not long after, a friend of Kelly's, William Schroeder, bought another parcel of the Sackett property for the same purpose. Like Kelly, he came of a family that had emigrated from Germany and, like Kelly, he had achieved wealth as a merchant in Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike Kelly, however, he did not move North, but kept the estate for use during summer vacations.