125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, October 28
Wednesday gave us another southeasterly rain storm with high tide and some wind. October has been a stormy month, although many bright sunny days have been sprinkled in between the storms. The month will close with another storm of considerable energy, striking here about Sunday and Monday, and November 1st will probably usher in a few cold days.
—
Frank R. Worthington has continued his contract with the Long Island Express Co., and will have charge of the delivery of express matter from the East Hampton station during the winter. He has employed John Bell to act as deliveryman. The free delivery of express will be continued through the winter.
—
The unusual amount of building already contracted for and the prospective work in view has created a demand for carpenters exceeding the supply. On Tuesday F.S. Edwards went up the island looking up men to come here to work for George A. Eldredge. He stopped at Moriches, Patchogue, Bellport and other places, and succeeded in hiring some fourteen mechanics.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, October 26
Potato growers of Long Island who have been devoting their attention this season to the production of certified seed may find a precedent in Maine in the planting of seed practically free of disease and weak plants, according to a statement received here this week from the Maine Potato Growers Exchange of Caribou, Me. The exchange, which is a non-profit, co-operative association of 3,100 Maine potato men growing 60,000 acres of tubers this year, is now tabulating the results on yields from carefully selected and ordinary seed stock.
—
Members of the King’s Daughters’ Circle who have not paid their one dollar a year for the Home for Aged Couples and King’s Daughters and Sons are requested when they read this notice to respond at once and send their dollar by mail or otherwise to Mrs. C.S. Parsons.
—
The Speonk-Brooklyn express of the Long Island Railroad jumped the tracks at Center Moriches Monday morning, ditching the engine and narrowly missing a catastrophe to the crowded twelve-car commuting train.
Two hours later the same train, equipped with a new engine, struck a five-ton motor truck, instantly killing its driver at the Oceanside road crossing in Rockville Center. The express was traveling at its maximum speed in an attempt to make up part of its lost time.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, October 28
Who said women aren’t a force in politics? A glance at Suffolk County’s record registration tells a story that should make mere man shiver in his boots. Mom and the girls are taking over in actual numbers, make no mistake about it. Of 154,077 names on the register, the preponderance, if that is the word, of male over female voters is less than 2 percent.
—
The 40-foot Moran gondola, once owned by Robert Browning, last week was trundled through East Hampton’s Main Street and around the Village Green to its new resting place by the saltbox barn on the Mulford Farm by Edward Baker and a crew of Village workmen.
The gondola, said once to have belonged to a noble Venetian family, was used by the famous English poet and his wife during their stay in Venice. Upon his return to England, Browning gave it to his Italian gondolier, and when Mr. and Mrs. Moran visited Venice in 1890 they were so impressed with its graceful lines and beautifully carved fels, or housing, they decided to purchase it — for about $2,000, unaware, until after they had made the purchase, of its previous ownership.
—
An exhibition of paintings by Ray Prohaska, who for several years has made his home in Amagansett, opened at the Society of Illustrators at 128 East 63rd Street in New York on October 18 and will continue until November 5.
Mr. Prohaska is considered to be one of the most versatile and virile painters on the contemporary American scene. More than half of the paintings in the exhibit have as their setting or inspiration the backdrop of eastern Suffolk, many of them at Amagansett and Montauk.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, October 25
The tempo, tension, and tempers in the local political campaign were building this week. At East Hampton Republican headquarters workers were angry about Democratic radio advertising concerning the Board of Cooperative Educational Services’ lease of a building at the East Hampton Town Airport, an issue over which a taxpayers’ suit is pending against the Town, and claiming the Democrats were naive and uninformed about the facts.
—
East Hampton Town’s professional planner, Thomas M. Thorsen, was praised by civic group members last Friday after presenting portions of an Open Space Plan he expects to complete next spring, but, at the same time, there were openly aired suspicions that the all-Republican Town Board was playing politics with the presentation, coming as it did two and a half weeks before Election Day.
The Board was blasted by Mrs. Judith Hope, Democratic candidate for Supervisor, for its “timing” in introducing that morning a tentative proposal to provide housing for the Town’s young and retired people.
—
Montauk
Students from grades three through eight from the Public School and Little Flower School will participate in a Halloween parade on Wednesday, Oct. 31, at 4 p.m. The students will march in costume from Wilson’s Garden Center on Main Street to Edison Street, turning left at the Dolphin Restaurant.
The parade will end in the post office parking lot. Following the parade, prizes will be awarded for the best costumes in each grade in a ceremony on the Village Green.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, October 29
Francisco Sainz, an East Hampton painter and mask maker who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, died at his house on Huntting Road on Oct. 20 after a heart attack. He was 76.
Mr. Sainz was born in Santander, Spain, on May 8, 1922, the third of four children born to a railway worker and his wife. Mr. Sainz loved art and poetry from a young age and liked to say he had a joyful and adventurous childhood, though he was deeply affected by the death, at age 16, of his older sister Magdalena.
—
Despite a drop in the number of registered Republicans and a comprehensive Democratic telephone campaign, East Hampton Town Republicans are upbeat as Election Day approaches.
Local Democrats have merged computer databases of telephone and voter registration records, helping 10 volunteers to run a get-out-the-vote telephone bank every night this week from a Main Street law office.
—
By a vote of 3-to-2 Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals denied an application for a 247-foot rock revetment designed to protect Dieter Hach’s Louse Point Road house in Springs from erosion.
Revetments are permanent structures, usually made of stone, wood, or steel, designed to protect upland property from coastal erosion. Experts are generally in agreement that revetments “harden” dune lines, preventing the natural landward migration of most beaches.
