125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, July 15
An East Hampton man who, last June, was very enthusiastic about his garden has had his ardor dampened by the rapid growth of weeds, which threaten to overcome his vegetables. He now says he is going to do as the navy officers did at Santiago when they went up in a balloon to locate the defenses of the city. He is going to ascend in a balloon directly over his garden to see if he can locate his potato patch.
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If you think the street lamps are an improvement to the village, go to the Village Improvement fair, July 20 and 21, and help the ladies to keep them burning.
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C.E.C. Homan is the representative in East Hampton of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. All cases of cruelty coming to the notice of any of our readers should be immediately reported to Special Agent Homan, who will promptly investigate and take such steps as the exigencies of the case may demand.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, July 13
Seven years ago a group of summer residents of East Hampton, consisting of W.D. Judson, D.C. Adams and A. Van Brunt, held several meetings to devise some means of providing an outlet for the energies of their boys. The outcome of these meetings was the organization of a boys’ club composed of the sons of the members of the summer colony. The boys are under the supervision of competent athletic and swimming masters and do all the things that boys are taught to do in a high class summer camp.
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Plans have been made by the county poultry committee of the Farm Bureau to make available the services of a trained paid culler who will personally come to poultry farms in the county and cull out poor producing birds. The culler will be a man who has been recommended by the poultry department at Cornell University and has been trained at the judging school at Cornell.
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Interest in boating at Three Mile Harbor is greatly on the increase judging by the number of boats at this popular anchorage. There are now more boats in the harbor than has been the case for several years past, many of them new ones to this harbor.
Bert Miller is working overtime installing new engines in boats and making general repairs and launching. The past winter he had ten of the Montauk fishing boats at his shipyard and in time this harbor will probably prove the winter home of most of the Montauk fleet.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, July 15
In presenting this Tercentenary Edition, the East Hampton Star has prepared the largest edition in the history of this paper, which was established December 26, 1885. Publishing 60 pages in a plant equipped to print a small weekly paper, of 8 to 16 pages, is a problem which few people outside of the printing business understand. The job, however, is one in which all members of the Star staff take pride. This edition has been carefully prepared and produced under difficult mechanical conditions and during the busiest months of the year.
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Members of the East Hampton Town Unit 419 Legion Auxiliary held a beach party at Fresh Pond Monday evening. After swimming and eating, a huge driftwood fire was made and for an hour or more there was singing and storytelling. One member took pictures of the party.
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The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society held its July meeting in the garden at the home of Mrs. R.G.D. Douglas on Monday afternoon, Mrs. Russell Hopkinson presiding. In a long and full meeting, the most exciting topic was the announcement that the 17th century Mulford farm will be saved.
The proposition to buy the place was put before voters of the incorporated Village of East Hampton on June 15, and turned down. Forty individuals interested in its preservation have now given the $25,000 needed to buy the place from Harrison Mulford, who will in turn reimburse the Brooklyn Museum what it paid for the privilege of removing what are considered to be the two oldest rooms in the house.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, July 12
Rambling disputes were heard Tuesday evening by about 50 of the East Hampton School District’s voters, gathered in the High School for the district’s annual meeting. Whether Guild Hall, accused by one voter of spreading “Communist Chinese doctrine,” deserved a grant of $25,000 from the District was the subject of the most lengthy argument; who should have been allowed to register as a voter, and who could have known how to do so, excited another.
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A multi-State search for evidence in connection with the murder last January of a 55-year-old magazine distributor from Mount Vernon, N.Y., culminated in an East Hampton Town sanitary landfill.
The discovery of the alleged murder weapon, a Sturm Ruger .357 magnum revolver, buried under piles of garbage and refuse, was made on March 9, but key facts in the case were not made public until this week by the Bronx District Attorney’s office, which is handling the prosecution.
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Breaks in its tracks, coming at widely separated points on the East End, added up to a massive headache and congestion for the Long Island Rail Road last Sunday night.
Thousands of weekend travelers were stranded at station platforms from Montauk to Westhampton by the breaks, and the last of them did not arrive in New York until after 4 a.m.
The 5 p.m. train out of Montauk made the trip without incident, but it was all downhill from there.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, July 16
“Jewelry is back,” said Hollis Reh, a Southampton estate jeweler.
Everett McCarver put it this way: “The jewelry business is exploding here.”
Yes, agreed other South Fork merchants in the burgeoning trade, growing numbers of second-home owners have been spending their Wall Street profits and bonuses on high-end gems this season.
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Citing the sensitive nature of Sammy’s Beach, an isthmus of beach, wetlands, and some houses that juts out between Gardiner’s Bay and Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, the Town Zoning Board of Appeals recently turned down a request for another house there.
Sammy’s Beach Road projects have received intense scrutiny from the board, with a number of requests rejected on environmental grounds, approved with extreme reluctance, or challenged in the courts.
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Acknowledging criticism of the United States for practicing a form of diplomacy that rides on the personalities of the key players, Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy to Kosovo and chief negotiator of the 1995 Dayton Accord that brought an uneasy peace to Bosnia, said to do otherwise would be to ignore reality.
“If Milosevic was not the leader of Yugoslavia, you’d have a different situation. . . . If Yeltsin was not the leader of Russia, you’d have a different situation. It matters who you’re dealing with,” Ambassador Holbrooke told a packed crowd at Guild Hall last Thursday night.
