Villages

“It’s the first in a very long time” to visit New York State, “if not the first ever,” said Shai Mitra, an assistant professor at the College of Staten Island, said of the American flamingo that visited Georgica Pond in East Hampton last week. The bird was last seen there Saturday at dusk.

The Rev. Samson Occom, one of the first Indigenous ministers to be ordained, was an educator and minister to the Montauketts and Shinnecocks and a proponent of land rights. 

If you’ve been to a high school basketball game, a tennis match, or a 5K on the South Fork any time in the last 45 years, you’ve probably seen The East Hampton Star’s sports editor, Jack Graves, on the sidelines, faithfully scribbling notes. But before Graves took over the sports desk back in 1979, he was The Star’s sole full-time reporter for about a decade and had begun his long-running column,“Point of View.”

The usually with-it Star was a little behind the curve with its 1924 comment on jazz music and musicians. And don’t miss the 1974 nudity-on-the-beach case.

A neighbor of Maidstone Park in Springs on Monday discovered an osprey hanging upside down from its nest, suspended by fishing line. Rescuers jumped into action.

The first ever American flamingo to visit New York State chose to touch down in East Hampton — Georgica Pond specifically — Friday afternoon. “As soon as the bird lifted its neck, I knew instantly it wasn’t a swan and realized it was a flamingo," said Cathy Blinken, who excitedly called The Star to report the sighting.

It’s mating season for the horseshoe crab, and last week, a group monitoring the crab for the Cornell Cooperative Extension dropped in on an all-night orgy repeated along bay beaches for 400 million to 500 million years.

Richard Sawyer, the man behind Treely Yours and the Salty Dog, once split a cord’s worth of hardwood in 32 minutes and 30 seconds.

The news came not by formal announcement, but rather in Guild Hall’s recent online publication of its 2024 seasonal program guide. Its historic John Drew Theater will reopen in July with a new name, the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater.

From a hair-raising double drowning in Plum Gut to a second-story deck collapsing under the weight of too many partyers in Sagaponack, The Star reported it all.

It may be losing its iconic Main Street storefront in September, but until then Canio's Books is open for business. There is a new groundswell of support for the shop, including a GoFundMe campaign launched on May 19 and dedicated to helping the business thrive in whatever location it ends up in next.

When Eric Butte ditched his car for months on end, it wasn’t one of those official car-free pledges or hyped-up social media challenges. It wasn’t because gas prices are kind of insane again. Rather, he was really just curious. “It turned into a seven-month project that highlighted how many problems there are for alternative transport on the East End,” he said.

As East Hamptoners gathered under gray skies to honor and celebrate Memorial Day, people were reminded to take time to recognize the meaning of the holiday.

Last month a poem was discovered inside a children’s book in the East Hampton Library titled “Para mi hija Samantha.” With no other information to go on besides the name of the mother-daughter duo, Carmen and Samantha, the library turned to social media to get the word out and find them. On Sunday that search came to an end.

Competing protests over the Israel-Hamas war on Sunday afternoon on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor were peaceful, if loud, when East End for Ceasefire encountered Long Island MAGA Patriots and the Setauket Patriots.

Dressed in his Army uniform, Theodore Patrick Gould (1830-1862) posed for this photograph early in the Civil War. The photograph was taken at H. Terry’s Sag Harbor studio, between the war’s outbreak in April 1861 and Theodore’s death on Oct. 21, 1862.

The mighty storm that blew through East Hampton Thursday morning felled a large limb from a historic elm tree — one of a dwindling number of such trees that help give East Hampton Village its character.

Last week parishioners of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton received text messages from an imposter claiming to be their pastor, the Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson. “They take advantage of people’s wanting to help and trust that we’ve built up,” she said.

The local chapter of Whiskey Bravo, a nationwide youth organization that raises awareness of the kinds of support needed by veterans and active military personnel, took on the somber task this year of placing flags at the gravesites of East Hampton soldiers, and also walked a symbolic lap around the field at the American Legion to show their support.

In the May 26, 1949, Star, it was recorded that rain and wind did some tree damage here, and broke off two arms of the Old Hook Mill. And much more.

Thanks to the efforts of Hamptons Pride volunteers and elected officials here, those attending the third annual Pride Parade in East Hampton on June 1 will have another way to travel here for the noontime step-off: the Long Island Rail Road has added a special train to East Hampton that day.

Hugh King, the East Hampton Town historian, is more at ease sharing interesting tidbits from, say, the 1829 town trustees minutes than he is with augmented reality or the notion of a digital avatar. But despite himself, he came face to face with both earlier this week at the Mulford Farm, where the East Hampton Historical Society is putting his likeness to work to tell the story of the role the farm’s owner, Col. David Mulford, played in the leadup to the 1776 Battle of Long Island, and of his fate during the region’s subsequent occupation by the British.

The Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, last expanded 15 years ago, is kicking off a $1.5 million capital campaign this weekend with the aim of refurbishing the children’s room, expanding the young-adult room, doubling the size of its literacy space, and undertaking a range of technology enhancements and building improvements to meet the needs of a growing population of patrons.

Alfred R. Waud sketched this depiction of the Gardiner’s Island manor house while on assignment for Harper’s Weekly.

Steve Long, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, will be the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork on Sunday.

One self-styled prophet predicted the wrath of God would be brought down on the Atheneum in Sag Harbor shortly before it burned to the ground. Read all about it, and much more ripped from The Star’s storied pages.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital has earned national recognition for overall patient safety and L.G.B.T.Q.+ health care equity, the hospital recently announced.

On April 22, an East Hampton Library patron discovered a poem, neatly handwritten in Spanish and tucked into the pages of a children’s picture book, and took it over to the children’s librarians. The poem piqued their attention. Who is this mysterious mother-daughter duo, known only by their first names, Carmen and Samantha?

In this photo from The Star’s archive, Sy Kaback hands over a trophy to Tom Wiggins, who was second in the East Hampton Yacht Club’s big race of 1989.

The man who created a fairy village in a Montauk nature preserve has removed the plastic figurines and tiny structures after a neighbor complained that the whimsical installation was junking up the preserve. “I didn’t know it would be such a polarizing thing,” he said.