125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, November 11
Mrs. Helen Stratton, of this village, celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday on October 29. This month three more of East Hampton’s octogenarians pass their birthdays. On Sunday last Mr. Henry Mulford was eighty-eight years old, on Nov. 24 Mr. Hiram Sherrill will be eighty-eight years old and on Nov. 19 Mrs. Lavina Bennett will have attained to the age of eighty-eight years.
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The election in Sag Harbor passed off without an incident worthy of mention. The voting commenced strong as soon as the polls were opened, and before ten o’clock fully 50 per cent of the ballots had been cast. Each party made a determined effort to get its full vote out, and voters needed little urging to go to the polls. The vote was the largest known in years, even surpassing that of the fall of 1896, when a total of 686 votes were cast, with a Republican plurality of 298 for McKinley. This year, with a registry list of 836, the total vote was 714, resulting in a complete victory for the Republican party. The village gave Roosevelt a 150 vote majority.
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Union School News
The Thanksgiving exercises of Miss Lusell’s and Miss Strong’s rooms will be held on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Nov. 23, instead of on the 18th as was stated last week.
The pupils of Miss Lusell’s room have purchased a new silk flag. Miss Beaman and her pupils also have a very pretty new clock of which they are very proud.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, November 9
The results of Tuesday’s election were strongly in favor of the Republican candidates; only two Democrats managed to get on the bandwagon, namely L.B. Ketcham and W.T. Vaughn. Supervisor Kenneth E. Davis was re-elected by the overwhelming majority of 661 votes over his Democratic opponent, Elmer E. Smith, a former overseer of the poor of East Hampton Town. Mr. Davis polled the largest vote of any candidate, receiving 1,130 votes to Smith’s 469.
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President Coolidge’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation issued Tuesday from the White House calls to mind that the year has brought to the American people two tragic experiences, the death of President Harding and the Japanese earthquake, but says that such experiences serve to test and refine men and nations.
During the year also, the proclamation says, the nation has been blessed with much material prosperity. The president asked that the people gather in their homes and places of worship on Thursday, November 29, to give expression to their gratitude and “seek the guidance of Almighty God that they may deserve a continuance of His favor.”
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During the time between November 11 and November 29 some of the interested women will call at your homes giving you an opportunity of joining the Red Cross for the coming year. If, for any reason, your home should be skipped, you may send your membership dues to Mrs. Oliver Loper on Main street, the chairman of the roll call.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, November 11
Today, Armistice Day, a bronze Memorial plaque placed on a boulder by the American Women’s Voluntary Services, Montauk Unit, is being unveiled at the circle adjacent to Montauk Highway at the business village of Montauk. The plot of land donated by the Montauk Beach Company is being accepted by Supervisor Herbert L. Mulford on behalf of the Township of East Hampton. The Suffolk County Highway Department, since the plot fronts on a County highway, has aided with landscaping the plot.
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At a meeting of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce on Monday evening a contract was given E.K. Collum, of East Hampton, to construct nineteen candlesticks to be spaced throughout the business district for the Christmas Season.
Prize money was also voted for the three best decorated storefronts, judging to be done on December 23.
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The Guild Hall Camera Club was officially organized at a meeting at Guild Hall Thursday evening, Nov. 4. Fifteen people attended and from their suggestions a program for the year will be planned.
The club will meet every Thursday evening at 8 p.m. in the Moran Gallery under the leadership of Dave Edwardes. It will operate in the same manner as the Guild Hall Music Club and Art Class in that it will be open to members of Guild Hall.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, November 8
The voters of East Hampton Village decided Tuesday not to buy the controversial 37-acre tract known as “Pondview.” It would have cost them, according to the Village Board’s “conservative estimate,” $1,445,580 over a 30-year period. The vote was 287 in favor of buying it, 444 against.
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Tuesday evening at Republican headquarters here began in expectation of festivity and ended with sorrowful allusions to Watergate, while the Democrats on the other side of Main Street passed into incredulous jubilation. “You gotta believe!” a Democratic committeeman exclaimed repeatedly, and the Republicans vowed to begin the 1975 campaign on the following morning.
Of 8,750 persons registered to vote in East Hampton this year, only 5,943, according to unofficial returns prepared by the County Board of Elections, did vote in the Supervisory race: 2,762 for the Republican incumbent, Supervisor Eugene E. Lester Jr., and 3,181 for his Democratic opponent, Judith Hope.
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Observers of the ocean beach at Wainscott, Sagaponack, and Bridgehampton are predicting severe erosion in those areas this winter, based on damage done by the storm at the end of last month.
That storm had less effect on the stretch from Wainscott to Montauk, but erosion there is not expected to abate by any means.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, November 12
Absentee ballots, which have in recent years been heavily Democratic, turned the tide in favor of Lisa Stewart in Monday’s election recount, pushing her 73 votes ahead of her Republican opponent, Joe Holmes of East Hampton, to become an East Hampton Town Trustee. She will be the fifth Democrat on the nine-member panel, which has not had a Democratic majority since 1985.
When the polls closed on Election Night, the Republican candidate, Mr. Holmes, appeared to have won by 252 votes, not counting absentee ballots.
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The Montauk Friends of Olmsted Parks, led by Robert Ficalora and established in 1994, has sent a mailing to 3,850 Montauk taxpayers urging them to unite and form a trustee corporation in Montauk.
Its purpose would be to reclaim and protect land that Mr. Ficalora claims is rightfully the property of Montauk residents. He said the land was bequeathed to them by Arthur Benson at the turn of the century and that that claim was upheld by the State Supreme Court in a 1997 lawsuit.
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Ringed by houses and the Maidstone golf course, and receiving the runoff from miles of roads, Hook Pond in East Hampton would be the last body of water where one would expect to find a healthy ecosystem.
Yet after studying the 86-acre pond for nearly two years, that is just what Larry Penny, the director of the Town Natural Resources Department, concluded, albeit with several sources of concern.
