125 Years Ago - 1897
From The East Hampton Star, June 4
We would like to see East Hampton village incorporated, if for no other reason that a good, big license fee could be charged the Brooklyn concerns which keep their wagons running through the village selling goods in competition with the home merchants. The dollar spent with them goes out of town never to return.
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We have found a curious man in this town. He unblushingly states that he does not know whether his wife has cleaned house or not. That man occupies a unique and enviable position.
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The Clinton Cycle Club will hold a meeting at the Star office on Monday evening next, when it will perfect its organization, adopt a constitution and by-laws and receive new members. All members of the L.A.W. and those who desire to become such are invited to be present.
100 Years Ago - 1922
From The East Hampton Star, June 2
Mrs. Goodhue Livingston, one of the most prominent members of the Southampton summer colony, reported the robbery on Tuesday of jewels valued at nearly $20,000 from her country home.
Mr. and Mrs. Livingston and their daughter, Miss Cornelia Livingston, arrived for the season about a week ago. Mr. and Mrs. Livingston had several guests Monday night. At 11 o’clock Miss Cornelia went upstairs and discovered that a pocket book she had left on her dresser was gone. She searched for it several minutes and then thinking perhaps she had mislaid it, returned to the party downstairs.
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The fifth annual field tour and inspection trip, which is being arranged through the efforts of the potato improvement committee of the Suffolk County Farm Bureau Association, will take place this year on Thursday, June 29 and Friday, June 30. The purpose of this annual event, which is bringing to Suffolk County in increasing numbers potato men from many parts of the United States and Canada, is to bring about a better understanding between the farmer who produces seed potatoes, the dealer who handles them and the Suffolk County grower who uses the seed to produce potatoes for the market.
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In the future the custodians of voting machines will receive pay at the rate of six dollars per day, the same as any other election official. This was decided at the special meeting of the Town Board held last Saturday afternoon at Clerk Ketcham’s office. The custodians in charge at last fall’s election turned in bills at the rate of $10 per day and when the members of the board audited the bills they changed the pay from $6 to $3 per day.
75 Years Ago - 1947
From The East Hampton Star, June 5
Edmund Virgil Conway of Montauk, valedictorian of the class of 1947, East Hampton High School, has been awarded an Alumni War Memorial Scholarship by Colgate University for his undergraduate work there. A letter to principal Leon Q. Brooks from W.F. Griffith, Director of Student Aid, Colgate University, says in part: “This award is the highest honor which Colgate can give an entering freshman and we are happy that a student from your school has qualified for such recognition.”
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The Memorial Day ceremonies at the Springs Green on Friday were largely attended and very impressive. They were held under the auspices of the Springs Young People’s Community Association, and the Bronze Memorial plaque sponsored by this group of young people in honor of the veterans of World War II was unveiled at this time.
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The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society met on Monday afternoon at the home of Mrs. Samuel Davis, Mrs. Russell Hopkinson presiding.
Mrs. Juan Trippe, Chairman for the 1947 Fair on the Village Green on July 25, reported on plans and committee chairmen, thus far. The Fair will be preceded by a country dance. On Thursday evening, July 24, there will be square dancing to suitable music on the street beside the Green, from the George Scott house toward James Lane. James M. Strong Jr. is chairman for the dance, which will be held indoors if it rains.
50 Years Ago - 1972
From The East Hampton Star, June 1
The customary Veterans of Foreign Wars, Legionnaires, dignitaries, baton girls, musicians, Boy and Girl Scouts, firemen, guardsmen, horses, dogs, and a variety of others marched slowly from the Village Green to Memorial Green in East Hampton late Monday morning, and hundreds of spectators appeared to be pleased, and a few delighted, by the prismatic array.
“It was ten minutes shorter this year,” complained the single exception, who confessed to a preference for last year’s parade, but other opinion may attribute the alleged difference to greater speed on the part of the marchers.
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Montauk
The cake and food sale held along Main Street and at Saint Therese’s Church as well as the Garden Club sale on the Green were reported to have done very well over the holiday weekend as gorgeous weather brought a crowd of visitors and part-time residents to this end of Long Island.
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Elaine Benson has a way of guessing how many people come to her Benson Gallery openings in Bridgehampton. “We can tell by the number of used plastic cups from the bad punch we serve,” she said last Friday. The Gallery’s summer opening was the next day. “We expect three or four hundred.”
There are weaknesses in her cup-counting system. X number of people might not touch a single cup. Y number might drink two cups. Or three. Or four. Or. . . .
25 Years Ago - 1997
From The East Hampton Star, June 5
Helen Hull Jacobs, a Mill Hill Lane, East Hampton, resident who ranked among the top 10 world tennis champions from 1928 to 1936 and was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1962, died at Southampton Hospital on Monday night. She was 88, and had been in failing health for some time.
Miss Jacobs, whose longtime rivalry with another tennis great, Helen Wills Moody, was the talk of international tennis circles in the 1930s, won nine major championships, including four United States national titles.
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“If people want farmland to stay here, to remain healthy and preserved, they’ve got to take a look at how they can contribute,” said Johanna Halsey of the Green Thumb Organic Farm in Water Mill. The Green Thumb is one of a handful of organic farms on the South Fork whose owners are trying their hands at “community supported agriculture.”
The concept, called simply C.S.A. in the field of sustainable agriculture, only arrived in the United States about 11 years ago, but already there are more than 600 such farms in the country.
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The rural experience: a walk in the woods, a meander through the meadow, a stroll on the sand. Even these are not without controversy on the South Fork, where residents want both privacy and access to unspoiled preserved areas.
East Hampton Town’s trail system, when devised in the early ‘80s, caused a furor among owners of properties adjacent to the new paths, who feared the trails would bring a loss of privacy, decreased property values, and criminal trespassers to their doors.
