It's A Tricentquinquagenary

East Hampton Town will celebrate its tricentquinquagenary next year - that's the 350th anniversary of its founding in 1648 - with a yearlong schedule of events arranged by a committee of volunteers from every corner of town - some of them descendants of the earliest settler families.

A core committee has been formed to get the ball rolling, with Bruce Collins, a former Town Supervisor who retired this year as East Hampton Village Highway Superintendent, as chairman. Mr. Collins's family has been here for many generations.

Fred Yardley, the Town Clerk, is the core committee's vice chair. Keeper of the town records, Mr. Yardley saw the anniversary coming a year or two ago and has been rounding up help and ideas ever since.

Fithian And Dayton

His mother was a Fithian and descended from William Fithian, who lived here before 1650. His paternal great-grandfather was a whaling captain named Shaw who sailed out of Sag Harbor.

Averill Dayton Geus and Carolyn Preische are secretary and treasurer of the committee.

Mrs. Geus is the site manager of the Home, Sweet Home Museum on Main Street in East Hampton Village, and she traces her roots back to the first East Hampton Dayton, Ralph, who also is listed among the men who lived here in 1650.

Mrs. Preische is a former president of the Ladies Village Improvement Society, a member of its tree committee, and is the chairwoman of the Village Design Review Board.

The elected leaders of the town and the two villages - Supervisor Cathy Lester, East Hampton Village Mayor Paul Richenback, and Sag Harbor Mayor Pierce Hance - will serve as ex officio members.

More Sought

Seven representatives of other parts of town have volunteered, and an eighth, a descendant of the Montauketts, is still to be named. They will be charged with pulling together subcommittees to arrange festivities in their neighborhoods.

"We have such a huge job ahead of us. It just about scared everybody off, but the closer it gets the more exciting it gets," said Mrs. Geus, admitting she had told Mr. Yardley to shove off when he first approached her about the anniversary.

The idea for area representatives came from the program of the 300th anniversary celebration, held through out 1948. It included a Montauk Day, an Amagansett Day, and so forth, as well as events of townwide interest, said Mr. Yardley.

Focus Undecided

"It's all in the elementary stages at this point, and we know how things have changed in the last 50 years, but hopefully each hamlet will have functions of its own this time too," he said.

Kenneth Chorley, the president of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, gave the commemorative address in February of 1948. He told the crowd at Guild Hall that, in the aftermath of a war, the future seemed unsure, but the anniversary celebration would garner publicity for East Hampton and bring more people to live here. The consensus at the time seemed to be that this was important.

Ethnicity

Mrs. Geus, laughing loudly at the idea of repeating that message, said the 1998 anniversary would have a different focus. That focus is still undecided though she said she would like to see the spotlight on the last hundred years or so.

"My feeling is that previous celebrations have stressed the 17th and 18th century, but we've never really gone very far with the 19th and early 20th centuries," she said. "The immigrants that came here, the ethnicity in Sag Harbor from the whaling trade, the Irish coming to work in the mill, the Italians on the railroad, the Germans in the watch factory."

The events in 1948 included historical lectures and exhibits, the 125th anniversary of the singing of "Home, Sweet Home," related sermons in churches all over town, a parade followed the next day by a pageant, clambakes, house tours, tea socials, a horse show, afternoon concerts, and more.

"People do enjoy a celebration and everybody loves a parade, but how do you throw a clambake for 10,000 people? Wainscott doesn't grow enough strawberries for everyone here now," said Mrs. Geus.

Pageant Probable

She added that, while the schedule of events for 1998 could end up taking any sort of turn, she was fairly sure a pageant on the scale of the one performed on the village green in 1948 had been ruled out. Written and directed by Enez Whipple, who lives on Huntting Lane in the village, it was "just magnificent," she recalled.

Mrs. Whipple was "like De Mille moving in the cast of thousands. . .but we couldn't do anything like that now. We'd back up traffic to Massapequa."

The 1948 celebration marked the first in the town's history that recognized 1648 as the year it was founded. A typographical error had residents marking each milestone a year late, counting from 1649, but it was corrected 50 years ago by mutual consent of the Town and Village Boards.

That year, as they had 25 years before, town leaders went to all community organizations, schools, churches, and neighborhoods for ideas, volunteers, and money. Mr. Yardley said the committee, with Mr. Collins as its spokesman, would do the same this year.

Funds Needed

In the minutes of a 1947 committee meeting, Jeannette Edwards Rattray, at the time an editor of The Star who was the committee's secretary, wrote that mass meetings were held and, traveling salesmen were asked to help spread the word to descendants of the Osborn, Hand, Talmage, Stratton, Barnes, Mulford, Dayton, Hedges, Fithian, Parsons, Conklin, Miller, Lester, Baker, and other founding families.

Mr. Yardley said that this year the cost for advertising, printing, and possibly filming the major events would come from donations and fund-raising events. Other members said the town, which has put up $10,000 in seed money, and the villages would be asked to contribute as well.

"Well, we figure none of us is going to be around for the 400th anniversary, so we might as well do it up right," said Mrs. Geus.

Committee Members

The seven representatives of various areas of town named to the committee are:

Richard F. White Jr., chairman of the Montauk Historical Society and expediter of the society's takeover and renovation of the Montauk Lighthouse. His grandfather, W.F.E. White, owned a good part of Montauk and a chain of drugstores. His sons and grandson were also local shopkeepers.

Mary Louise Dodge, the founding president of the Springs Historical Society. She was born an Edwards, her mother was a Parsons, her maternal grandmother was a Schellinger who married a Parsons, and she had a great-grandmother who was a Dayton and married a Parsons. Of all those families, the Schellingers arrived here last, settling in Amagansett around 1690.

Kathy Tucker, a historian and founder of the Eastville Historical Society in Sag Harbor. A former New York City teacher, she retired here in 1984, and now researches the history of Native Americans, African Americans, and other ethnic groups on the East End.

Ken Schenck of East Hampton, whose great-grandfather came here from Germany in the 1870s reportedly to avoid being drafted into the Franco-Prussian War and started a family business, which exists today, that ran from hay and grain to coal and finally home heating fuel.

Carolyn Snyder of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton. She was born a Lester and is of the seventh generation to work the farm. Her sister and cousin have worked diligently for years on a family tree that stretches back in East Hampton to 1747, and are collecting the names of Lesters all over the country.

George Eichhorn, president of the Amagansett School Board and a retired Air Force officer whose father's family, many of them railroad workers, came here at the turn of the century. His mother was a Lester.

Doreen Niggles of Wainscott, a real estate broker whose great-grandfather, a Swiss immigrant, was the gatekeeper at the Georgica Association and whose mother is a member of the Struk family, farmers for generations in Amagansett and Bridgehampton.