125 Years Ago 1896
From The East Hampton Star, December 11
The Star enters upon its twelfth year to-day.
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Tickets for the lecture to be given by Miss Vandelia Varnum at Clinton Hall on Monday evening next are selling well at Muchmore's drug store. If you intend to go, better not put off selecting your seats. Miss Varnum is acknowledged by those in her profession and by the press to be the best woman lecturer before the public to-day. It was only by chance that she was engaged to come to East Hampton, and she is worthy of a full house. "Who Pays the Freight" is sure to please all. As we go to press we received word that Miss Varnum will be promptly on hand next Monday evening.
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Two tramps have been lodged in the lockup for the past two or three nights.
100 Years Ago 1921
From The East Hampton Star, December 9
Invitations have been issued to all active firemen and their wives or lady friends to attend the firemen's game dinner which will be served tomorrow night at the fire house. We believe it safe to say that not another volunteer fire department in Long Island has had or will have the pleasure this year to sit down to a dinner such as will be served to the local department tomorrow night.
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Nearly eighty committeemen, of the Farm Bureau Association, gathered at Riverhead for their annual conference on November 28th. Representative farmers from Brentwood to Amagansett and from Greenlawn to East Marion expressed themselves unanimously in favor of an experimental farm on Long Island, and urged the committee, under the leader ship of H.R. Talmage, of Riverhead, which has this in charge, to see to it that the proper steps are taken to have such a farm. Potato growers, cauliflower growers, vegetable and fruit men, the soil improvement committee, all presented resolutions to show the need for scientific research to learn further truths as to the production of crops on Long Island.
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According to instructions from the post office department, Postmaster Gilmartin arranged for the reading this week of a Christmas message from Postmaster General Hayes to the school children, requesting them to urge their parents and friends to mail their Christmas parcels this week. The message also asks for care in wrapping of gifts, plain addressing and the exclusion of small envelopes.
75 Years Ago 1946
From The East Hampton Star, December 12
The East Hampton Town Board is meeting at 2 o'clock this afternoon with representatives of the Atlantic Seaboard Corporation, which is the organization likely to rent from the town the naval air base on the west side of Montauk, if the town should decide to take it over, and operate it as a seaplane landing. The Town Board has, so far, taken no action; it depends largely upon terms that may be offered.
A public hearing on the question whether or not the Town of East Hampton should acquire the wartime built Navy seaplane base at Rod's Valley, Montauk, was held on Nov. 15 in the Court room here, with a small attendance.
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The Hampton Choral Society's Christmas Concert at Guild Hall will take place at 8:30 tomorrow evening. Tickets may be bought this morning and tomorrow morning in the Osborne Trust Company on Main Street and both afternoons at Guild Hall.
John A. Craft directs the chorus; Mary Lois Clifford will accompany at the piano. Mary Gale Hafford, violinist, is guest artist. Solo parts will be sung by Pauline Craft, soprano, and Ray Whitaker, baritone. The audience will join in some of the numbers.
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Jacqueline Cochran (Mrs. Floyd B. Odlum) was the guest of honor Tuesday afternoon, at a reception given for her by leading airmen at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Bruno, 400 East 57th Street. Miss Cochran and her husband, Mr. Odlum, have visited Montauk frequently.
Several of the prominent persons at the reception flew from Washington to be present in honoring Miss Cochran, America's foremost woman pilot and former head of the Army Air Force WASPS.
50 Years Ago 1971
From The East Hampton Star, December 9
Nyctea, also known as Great White Owl, Snowy Owl, Ermine Owl, Harganc, Wapacuthu, and Arctic Owl, has spread his five-foot wingspan and glided down upon the East End from the Far North.
His arrival here in some numbers confirmed a surmise made last month by Christopher McKeever, an East Hampton attorney and Water Mill bird watcher. Mr. McKeever had suspected that this might be a relatively-rare snowy owl flight year, and so it has turned out to be.
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"Woe" to the poor Springs Santa who will find a pale pink message between the Christmas cards in his mailbox this week with the news that his tax burden for the coming year has increased, and "Ho" to his cousin who lives in East Hampton, outside the Village. The tax bills, which were expected to be mailed locally yesterday and which were mailed out-of-town last Thursday, carry a mixed story.
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Montauk Fish Notes
Boats still sailing include the Viking Star, which had a fine Saturday. Sunday was a bit too rough for good fishing, but it was fair all last week. The heaviest fish were a 41-pound pollack and a 47-pound cod, from Block Island waters.
25 Years Ago 1996
From The East Hampton Star, December 12
"After a lot of thought, almost two years, I'm here to speak in favor of the ordinance," said Larry Penny, the East Hampton Town natural resources director. He was the first of about a dozen who spoke at the Town Trustees' hearing Tuesday on amending the Zoning Code to give them authority over all applications for special permits on waterfront properties they own on behalf of the public.
Support also came from James Cavanagh, Mr. Penny's deputy, from Councilman Thomas Knobel, and from Perry B. Duryea 3d, the town Republican Party leader. Some 70 persons, including the actor Alec Baldwin, who is a part-time Amagansett resident, attended.
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From an engineering standpoint, there is nothing to prevent the town from condemning Montauk's Tuthill Road, a consultant told the East Hampton Town Board last week. This pronouncement came as legal arguments on a lawsuit challenging the closing of the road were postponed until the spring.
Vincent Gaudiello of L.K. McLean Associates of Brookhaven was hired by the town last summer to determine if Tuthill met the basic requirements for a road to be added to the town highway system. Local residents requested its inclusion after Perry B. Duryea Jr., claiming ownership, closed the road two years ago.
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If you were to paint the scene at the Water Mill auction marking the end of David Szczepankowski's career as a farmer, it would have been with a palette of earth tones.
Dull red barns. Threatening gray skies. Muddy brown tire tracks on the road to the farm. Scores of farmers in brown coveralls, denim, blue and green sweatshirts, green John Deere caps.
As development and the high price of land increase the odds against East End farmers, stories like Mr. Szczepankowski's have become more familiar.
