125 Years Ago 1897
From The East Hampton Star, September 3
One East Hampton man says he is going to Alaska with a big flock of hens. He says there is more money in selling eggs at one dollar each than in wading the icy waters of the Yukon for gold.
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Prof. S.T. Ford’s entertainment in Clinton Hall on Monday evening proved highly enjoyable to those present. A number of persons from the audience greeted the professor at the close of the performance with a hearty hand-shake and assured him that should he come to East Hampton during the winter season he would have a full house.
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The Village Improvement Society has done good work this summer in keeping the grass and weeds cut on the village green. The green and the banks surrounding Town Pond have not looked so clean and tidy in several years.
100 Years Ago 1922
From The East Hampton Star, September 1
The Union of East and West is organizing a series of very interesting matinees of Hindu plays at the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, on September 8, 9 and 11, at 4 p.m.
The aim of the society is to bring the ideals of the East to the West, and vice versa, through art, literature, music, drama, science, and philosophy, with a view to promote a good fellowship and better understanding among all people. It was founded in London in 1912, with a membership of people of all ranks and nationalities, and has opened chapters in Calcutta, New York, and Washington.
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It’s pretty hard to convince a merchant that he had better drop his money down in the well than pass it over to a fly-by-night advertising solicitor, the smooth guy who drops in with a publicity scheme that isn’t worth a minute of time or a cent of money. It takes some people a good while to learn that the same money spent in a newspaper would bring infinitely better returns.
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What was considered to be one of the heaviest rainfalls, not only in the summer season but for any time of the year, was that which visited us last Saturday and Sunday. This statement has received the O.K. of several of East Hampton’s oldest residents. Several times in the winter, when the ground has been frozen and it has rained heavily, a quantity of water has been seen standing in the lowlands and marshes, but never has such a quantity of water been seen here on the streets and low places, in the middle of the summer.
75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, September 4
Already many clubs in the Water Mill, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk areas have given whole-hearted approval of the free chest X-ray programs which will be held in each community starting in Montauk and Springs on September 18. The East Hampton League and the Montauk Fire Department are sending out letters to their entire memberships urging each member and his family to have a chest X-ray.
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Fredric Vonn, pianist-composer and improvisation specialist who has been spending the summer in East Hampton teaching and writing, will give a program exploiting the six B’s — Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Barrel-House, Boogie-Woogie, and Blues — for Guild Hall members and their guests tomorrow evening at 8:45 in the Moran Gallery of Guild Hall. It will be followed by a reception.
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The Maidstone Club’s annual Costume Ball took place on Saturday night, ending the series of dinner dances there for the season. Six hundred people attended; 350 people dined there.
Prizes for costumes were given to Miss Jane Cole and her group of mountaineers for the Best Surprise; Mrs. Juan Trippe as Carmen Miranda for the Most Attractive costume; Mrs. R. Elliott Maxwell and John Cole, as an angel and a monk, for the Most Amusing; a special prize went to James A. Edward Jr. and his group, as Dr. Dafoe and the Quintuplets.
50 Years Ago 1972
From The East Hampton Star, August 31
“An Hour of Music” will be performed this Sunday, beginning at 6 p.m., on the lawn of the Miss Amelia Cottage, near the Montauk Highway and Windmill Lane in Amagansett. It will be sponsored by the Amagansett Historical Society and directed by Max Pollikoff, who also directs the “Gallery of Music in Our Time” in New York.
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By 1985 the population of Suffolk County will have more than doubled. Of the County’s 180,000 acres of farmland and woodland now vacant out of a total of 540,000, all but ten per cent will have been committed to speculators and developers. Two hundred acres of beach will have been lost by erosion.
The wetlands, valuable because they provide a breeding ground for fish and fowl and absorb additional water in storms, may have disappeared in large part: Since World War Two, Long Island has lost one-third of its salt marsh.
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“The Free Life,” a documentary film about the ill-fated balloon flight from Springs two years ago, will be given a premiere showing at Guild Hall Sunday, at 5 p.m.
The 75-minute color movie made by Ronnie Hersh, Richard Searls and Russel Schwartz, incorporated under the name of Trout Fishing in America films, traces the preparation, takeoff and aftermath of the Free Life balloon flight, which began at about 1:30 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 20, 1970, and ended 30 hours later with the deaths of the three-member crew in a rain squall in the Atlantic.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, September 4
A month ago it looked as if the battle to get a real estate transfer tax on the November ballot in East Hampton Town had been won. But by yesterday afternoon the fight for the legislation, which could raise $20 million for open space preservation over 10 years, seemed ready to continue to the bitter end.
If Gov. George E. Pataki does not sign the legislation by tomorrow, a proposal to pay for open space purchases with funds gathered from a 2-percent tax on higher priced real estate sales will not make it onto the East Hampton ballot this year.
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A lottery scam that local police say has victimized Latino communities throughout Long Island and in New York City struck the Village of East Hampton Friday afternoon, the second time this year.
At about 1:30 p.m. that day, Sgt. Gerard Larsen’s suspicions were aroused by the actions of four people in a white Chrysler Fifth Avenue with New Jersey plates. Sergeant Larsen said he first noticed the four driving slowly near Hook Mill, staring at a young man who was walking a bicycle on the opposite sidewalk, from Pantigo Road toward the village business center.
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Supporters of Capt. Milton L. Miller Sr., nominated by the East Hampton Independence Party to run for Town Supervisor, thought they had found a way to regain the spot on November’s ballot he lost last month.
Now it appears, however, that the plan, to renominate him as a write-in candidate in Tuesday’s primary, may have served only to pit Captain Miller against Councilman Thomas Knobel, two months too early.
