125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, March 17
T.A. Bronwer, Jr., will employ a machinist, during the coming summer, to do all kinds of mechanical work, including the repairing of bicycles, while T.A. Bronwer, Sr., will devote his time to the manufacture of his Middle Lane pottery.
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The bicycle path on the Bridgehampton road, from Frank Grimshaw’s house to the point where it enters the woods, has been completely ruined by persons driving upon it. It will cost quite a sum to repair the damage and put the path in rideable condition again.
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A.O. Jones, the builder, has a notice in another column calling for a number of carpenters to whom he is ready to give employment. It is a great many years since so many mechanics were employed in East Hampton as there are at the present time.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, March 14
The most severe storm of the winter swept the coast towns Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, causing unusually high tides and uprooting several trees. The telegraph lines from here to New York were reported down, although the telephone lines were not badly affected. The light and power service in East Hampton was cut off for several hours Wednesday morning because of ground trouble.
It is rather a coincidence that this week’s storm was in celebration of the thirty-sixth anniversary of the blizzard of 1888, from which all lesser storm storms seem to date.
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Senator Rabenold’s bill, which gave the conservation commission jurisdiction over the marine district and which was opposed by William H. Downs and other Long Islanders interested in commercial fishing, was defeated in the State Senate yesterday. The vote was forty-five to three.
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Two Packard limousines and one Chevrolet truck loaded with one hundred cases of King Edward and Sandy MacDonald, and bearing the stamps of Nassau, Bahama Islands, were seized a week ago Monday night near Sayville. The raid was conducted by revenue officers from the Canadian border assisted by two Sayville men who took active part in the chase.
The drivers, who gave their names as Joseph Stimpson of East Hampton, Peter Wells of Good Ground, and John Saunders of Brooklyn, were taken before Justice of the Peace Walter Willis of West Islip the next morning.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, March 17
At the Guild Hall Music Club meeting Monday night, March 21st, June Kelly (Mrs. Thomas A. Kelly) has kindly consented to sing for the group. Mrs. Kelly will present several groups of American songs. One group will be made up of songs that were written during the Revolutionary era and will include “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” by America’s first composer, Francis Hopkinson. A second group of songs contains folk songs from the Kentucky Hills and some of our own down-east songs.
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William G. Smythe, 49-year-old sea diver, who makes his home at Montauk, reported a gruesome find while working on a diving expedition in the Corinth Canal in Greece. Mr. Smythe arrived this week aboard the liner Excambion after seventeen months diving in Grecian waters and told ship news reporters that hundreds of boxcars containing the remains of thousands of political prisoners of the Germans had been dredged from the Corinth Canal.
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Joseph Hren’s place on the Montauk Highway was threatened by fire yesterday, when Roy Lester’s field next door was swept by a blaze which destroyed his dry cover crop of rye and started on the Hren fence. The fire was started by sparks from burning rubbish at the home of Russell McConnell, and a strong wind carried it fast. Mr. Lester lost thirty or forty dollars’ worth of cover crop, but fortunately the Hren place was saved from damage by prompt action on the part of Mr. Hren and employees armed with a garden hose.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, March 14
Eleven local gas station owners promised to take turns staying open on weekends this summer after repeated assurances, Tuesday night, that the season would be “dismal” if they didn’t. “We’re not going to survive,” Supervisor Judith Hope told them, “if we cannot find a way to provide gas on Sundays.” City people would rather not drive to East Hampton, everyone agreed, if they were uncertain of finding gas here to get them home again.
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The East Hampton Young Men’s Christian Association wants the Town either to donate, sell, or lease land to the organization so that it can go about raising money for a “comprehensive family center,” replete with swimming pool, gymnasium, steam baths, sauna, and classrooms.
The Springs School principal, William A. Lycke Jr., has proposed to the Town Board that the Town build three tennis courts, a couple of basketball areas, and a handball wall for community recreation on School District land.
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It started 12 years ago “as a gesture,” said Marshall Prado of Montauk this week, discussing the evolution of that village’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, sponsored by a non-profit group known as “Montauk Friends of Erin.”
Last year, said Mr. Prado, this year’s grand marshal, the parade attracted a crowd estimated at between 4,000 and 5,000 people. The energy crisis notwithstanding, he hopes that the event, to take place Sunday, March 17, will attract a big turnout.
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, March 18
Trees took the brunt of Monday’s storm. And, because electric wires run under and through tree branches, they fell as the trees broke under the weight of the heavy, wet snow. Strong winds added to the stress on the trees.
The good news for East End kids was the early-morning phone call that meant no school. The good news in East Hampton Village was that the storm did not claim any of its venerable elms. However, East Hampton officials were not pleased with the slow response of the Long Island Power Authority.
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The clock is ticking for Shadmoor, one of the last large unpreserved vacant oceanfront parcels on the South Fork.
It’s already been ticking for years, as a subdivision application for the 99-acre moorland property slowly made its way through the planning process, and advocates for the preservation of the environmentally sensitive and visually stunning parcel tried all the while to secure enough public funding to strike a deal with the owners.
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As the Baltimore Orioles wrangled over arrangements with the Cuban government and the United States State Department for an exhibition game against the Cuban National League in Havana, scheduled now for March 28, a group of East Hampton ballplayers was in Cuba for some grassroots diplomacy of its own.
Thirty members of the Maidstoners softball team, which gathers on seasonable Sundays at Maidstone Park in East Hampton for a game or two, some laughs, and a couple of beers, returned last week from Havana, where they played eight games over four days with Cuban teams, on neighborhood ball fields and at the Havana University stadium.
