125 Years Ago 1897
From The East Hampton Star, November 19
The following advertisement appeared in the Sunday Herald:
American widower, 38, with bright outlook for $25,000, would like to make acquaintance of lady with some means; agents ignored. No trifler need respond. Address post office Box 65, East Hampton, Long Island.
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The poor life savers are to be pitied. They have to get their own meals, and how many men there are in the world who would rather starve than cook their own meals. As an instance of how the poor fellows live, a citizen chanced to drop into the station the other day at supper time. Three of the crew were at the table upon which were three Pekin ducks piping hot, together with all the fixings.
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Thanksgiving services will be held at the Presbyterian church on Thursday, the 25th, at 10:45 a.m. The usual collection for the benefit of aged and disabled ministers will be taken at that service. Do not fail to go.
100 Years Ago 1922
From The East Hampton Star, November 17
If Norton Gordon, nineteen years old, keeps the promise he made to County Judge George H. Furman at Riverhead Monday afternoon, the Methodist church at East Quogue or Westhampton is to have a new member of his flock for a year to come, for in a measure Gordon was sentenced to go to church regularly for a year, and will report to the minister. Gordon pleaded guilty to burglary, and was sentenced as above.
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A radio distress call, the S.O.S., which thrills the heart of every seaman, was flashed at 8:30 last Saturday morning from the U.S.S. Destroyer Childs, “Aground on the Shagwong reef, leaking, send aid.”
When it was learned that the Childs was aground off Montauk it was feared that she would go to the bottom, as many other ships have done off that coast.
The Chelink from New London, Conn., and the Falcon from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, seagoing tugs equipped for rescue work, were immediately dispatched under a full head of steam for the scene of the disaster.
After they were well on their way, four hours later, another message came:
“Off the reef and am proceeding to Brooklyn Navy Yard under own steam. Pumps taking care of leakage. Recall aid.”
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The town budget, including state, county, and town items, amounts to $34,054.07 more in East Hampton this year than last, the total amount being $211,913.92. Taxpayers will have to pay $1.10 for each $100 assessment, which is the rate of assessment exclusive of the highway rate, which is .66. The total rate within the incorporated village of Sag Harbor is 1.04.
75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, November 20
Special Thanksgiving Day services are planned in the Protestant churches on Thursday morning, there being a Union service planned by the Methodist and Episcopal churches at ten o’clock in Saint Luke’s Church. The sermon will be preached by the Rev. Nat Griswold of the Methodist Church. A special Thanksgiving service will be held at the same hour in the Presbyterian church.
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Special honor will be given to Morton Pennypacker of East Hampton, Long Island’s most distinguished historian, in an Island-wide testimonial at the 21st annual meeting of the Long Island Association for luncheon at the Garden City Hotel on Thursday, December 4th.
The citation to Mr. Pennypacker will be delivered by Supreme Court Justice Charles Colden of Whitestone, and William F. Ploch of Mineola, President of the Association, will present the guest of honor with a specially designed scroll for his work in collecting and preserving more than 120,000 items of Long Island historical material and making it available to the public at the East Hampton Free Library, with the cooperation of the Library Trustees.
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The Hampton Choral Society is rehearsing every Tuesday night at Guild Hall for the Christmas concert which will be given December 19th. The chorus is made up of singers from East Hampton, Amagansett, Montauk and Bridgehampton, with 62 active members.
50 Years Ago 1972
From The East Hampton Star, November 16
The East Hampton Town Board, having considered the Town’s tentative 1973 budget of $2,490,307 at a public hearing on Nov. 3, adopted it, unchanged, on the following Wednesday afternoon. It is $252,681 higher than last year’s budget, and will raise taxes by 34 cents per $100 for those who live outside the Incorporated Villages (East Hampton and Sag Harbor), and by 22 cents per $100 for those who live within them.
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The officers of the South Fork Concert Association have proven themselves in one respect superior to a number of their counterparts in New York, where, during too many concerts, stragglers — tipsy gourmands and crones with clanking bracelets — are apt to totter in from all directions at critical moments.
Arriving one minute late, Tuesday evening, for a ballet performance by the Joffrey II Company, one was held at bay outside the auditorium of East Hampton High School, along with a dozen or so latecomers, by policemen. . . .
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After 28 winters of fishing, Captain Norman C. Edwards of Atlantic Avenue, Amagansett, claims he will sit this one out, although his wife, Elsie, says, “Oh, he’ll start in, don’t worry. He yearns for the sea.”
Captain Edwards certainly deserves to rest for a few months on his laurels: he captained from June 5 to Nov. 4 of this year on a 600-ton, 220-foot-long vessel for the Smith Meal Company that made record catches in the Atlantic of menhaden, or “bunkers,” as they are known colloquially.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, November 20
A State Supreme Court Justice in Riverhead has ordered Oxford Health Plans, the health insurance company, to continue providing in-home nursing care for an East Hampton infant who, doctors say, could die without it.
The company has threatened to cut off the coverage. Its attorneys are scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 1 to argue the case.
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When the Fortuna II miraculously righted herself, all that was left on deck was Rich Voorhees, the youngest and most recent addition to the crew. Everything and everybody else had gone overboard in the split second it took a freak wave to break and stand the 50-foot longline fishing vessel on its port beam more than 100 miles at sea on Friday.
At the Deep Water Seafood docks in Montauk on Monday the three-man crew of the Fortuna gathered again on deck before packing out the catch from their rudely interrupted trip. Capt. Richard Wright and Frank Guire, a deckhand, unabashedly indulged in hero worship before the third member of their crew, Mr. Voorhees, the hero himself.
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With $3 million in outstanding loans and mounting concerns in all corners about whether its long planned Accabonac Highway affordable housing project will ever be viable, the East Hampton Housing Authority is borrowing another $1.1 million to get the project past its latest roadblock.
The additional funds will go to pay off outstanding construction bills totaling close to half a million dollars and to pay interest on money already borrowed with the town’s backing.
