125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, February 11
The question is no longer shall the United States annex Hawaii, but shall Suffolk annex a part of Queens?
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The ice harvest will be completed this week and all the houses will be filled with the best ice that has been harvested in many years. So clear are the cakes that it is possible to read a newspaper through a cake two feet wide without any difficulty. The ice is about eight inches in thickness and is taken almost entirely from Marion lake, a short distance south of this village. It is estimated that between five and six thousand tons of ice have been harvested this year from this lake, which exceeds by nearly a thousand tons that were harvested from the lake in previous winters.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, February 9
The storm warning signal issued by the department at Washington proved to be no fake, Tuesday night, for when the residents of East Hampton went to bed a howling northeast snowstorm was at its full height. From all appearances it looked as though we were in for a good old-fashioned storm. The first snow to descend was rather damp but as the storm progressed the wind came more directly from the north, filling the air with dry, powdery flakes. In the morning the residents were surprised to learn that the storm was over and the ground covered with nearly two feet of fine, dry snow.
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On Wednesday we opened Volume K of the town records, dating back to the year 1855. In this record we found the following definition of a fence, that passed the censorship of the board:
“Resolved, That any fence equal to two rails with posts that are three feet, eight inches high in the clear, shall be considered a sufficient fence.”
In the early days many of the disputes that entered court were over proper fencing.
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Jonah Rogers of Water Mill had a thrilling experience in Mecox Bay last Thursday, and but for timely assistance would have drowned. He was out in a rowboat after oysters and a heavy wind caused his boat to rock badly. He missed his footing and fell in the water.
He had been in the icy water a long time, keeping his head above the surface by holding on to the boat’s edge. He failed repeatedly to get back into the boat, his long rubber boots and coat holding him down.
Just as he was about losing his strength he heard someone shouting and soon after was lifted into a boat by Joseph Stummie of Southampton, who was starting out in his sailboat for the oyster grounds when he saw Mr. Rogers, first sighting him in the water off the Cauchois cottage, about half a mile from shore.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, February 12
Mrs. Adeline Mulligan, as far as the Star knows the oldest person in the Township of East Hampton, celebrated her ninety-seventh birthday yesterday, at the home of her granddaughter by marriage, Mrs. Miller Cullum.
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Great progress in the fight against tuberculosis is evident upon comparing the TB situation in Suffolk County in 1948 with that of 1921, when an article about tuberculosis appeared in the East Hampton Star. Information contained in the latter has been used in the following for comparison purposes. The 1921 East Hampton Star article pointed out that every man and woman must learn the main facts about tuberculosis and the simple measures necessary for prevention of spread. This principle continues to be a fundamental one in the control of this disease.
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Home, Sweet Home has been closed temporarily because of frozen water pipes. If necessary, Mrs. Ruth S. Benjamin can be contacted by phoning East Hampton 729-J.
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Wild dog packs in Brookhaven Town and the Coram area have slaughtered at least 10 deer, and terrorized the inhabitants. State troopers have killed some of the dogs, and are continuing their efforts to eliminate the pack.
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Clam diggers in Suffolk took 734,085 bushels of hard clams last year, and 20,310 bushels of soft clams, as reported to the State Conservation Dept.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, February 8
Parking in East Hampton Village was pondered for an hour and 45 minutes Tuesday evening, in the basement of the Valley Bank, by about 35 local citizens, most of whom were businessmen and members of the Chamber of Commerce. They all seemed of the opinion that, if the Village did not acquire more parking space, its business district would decay.
“A fairly simple and equitable solution to our parking problem” was described at the start of the meeting by William P. McElroy, a Village Trustee. According to the solution, the Village would buy one and a half acres, adjacent to the Harriet Herrick Playground and the John Marshall Elementary School, from Lawrence Baker.
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Members of the Board of Cooperative Educational Services encountered about 90 citizens of Sag Harbor last Thursday night in the Pierson High School gymnasium to tell them about and to sell them on the BOCES building program, which, if the voters approve it in the spring, will cost $14,475,085.
Most of the citizens seemed, by the end of the meeting, to be warily agreeable to the proposal. Others shouted angrily about taxes.
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Eighteen junior honors students from East Hampton High School visited Craig Claiborne in Springs on the evening of Jan. 29. They were served a Mongolian dinner and taught various subtleties of Oriental cooking. The excursion was part of their social studies, one of whose subjects this year is Asia.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, February 12
At noon last Thursday, Denis and Carol Kelleher owned a beautiful house perched on the edge of a Sagaponack dune with sweeping views of the ocean. Twelve hours later, after a sea wall protecting it caved in and its foundation was undermined, the Kellehers’ pride was reduced to a pile of rubble on the beach.
“I’m still in shock and numb,” Mr. Kelleher said this week. “It’s something I feel very painful even talking about. We’re devastated.”
While the Kellehers’ Potato Road home was the only one to be lost in the storm, other houses in a line along the narrow stretch of beach just west of Town Line Road in Southampton Town also were in peril.
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The East Hampton Village Board has decided to arm itself with a new weapon against the popular summer pastime it calls “musical cars.”
The armaments — actually two arms — are mechanical barriers, known officially as “drop arms,” that will face drivers arriving at the Reutershan parking lot. The arms will rise after drivers extract tickets stamped with the time of entry from a dispenser.
Traffic control officers will be able to check the time on the tickets, which are to be placed inside the windshield. If cars are removed within two hours, parking will continue to be free. If drivers dally, they will be fined.
