125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, September 29
The sloop Ellen came into Napeague harbor on Wednesday during the thunder shower that day. The crew left the boat and had barely reached shore when it was struck by lightning and sunk. Later in the day Ellen was raised and the water pumped out of her hold. Two large holes were found on both sides of the boat abreast the mast, which was splintered. Lightning had struck the mast near the top, and followed the wire rigging down to the deck had passed out of the boat on either side. The escape of the crew is regarded as singularly fortunate, as all hands would have been in the cabin, which is directly under the mast. Had they been on board it seems certain that they would have been killed.
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A large force of workmen and teams are engaged in digging the pit for the foundations of the new addition to the Fahys watchcase factory in Sag Harbor. It will be built on to the office building, extending out to the street, and estimated cost of the improvement is $10,000. The old main entrance has been torn down, and dirt is carted on to the lots of the Fahys company adjoining Long Wharf. This property and the nearby property of the Maidstone Dock and Milling Company has been improved by filling in and grading the past month.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, September 26
A petition is being circulated in Riverhead and other villages in that section requesting the assignment of a Federal Judge in Riverhead to try persons arrested for violations of the Volstead Act and also for the establishment of a customs house at Orient, East Marion or Greenport. It is also requested that the force of prohibition enforcement agents be augmented so that rum-running can be abolished in “Sunrise County.” The petition has been signed by nearly all persons approached.
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Vice President of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association Mrs. Frank Day Tuttle will speak at the library next Monday evening on “International Relations, What I Found at Geneva.” Mrs. Tuttle, also president of the Cintas Club of Brooklyn, after a visit to the League of Nations in 1921, was made chairman of the Women’s Pro-League Council. Mrs. Tuttle is also the author of “The Awakening of Women,” “Women and World Federation” with an introduction by the Hon. William Howard Taft, and a volume of short stories.
When the Republicans and Democrats united under Judge John H. Clark and the Hon. Geo. W. Wickersham to form the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association, Mrs. Tuttle was made one of the vice presidents. In 1923 she spent a month at Geneva, representing the organization at the Fourth Assembly of the League.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, September 29
A joint project approved Monday by the County Board of Supervisors will improve navigation in Lake Montauk. The board agreed to put up $13,000 in county funds for the dredging of a channel to connect the existing federal channel with the public dock area to be constructed under a prior resolution. A $5,000 chargeback is to be made against the town in the 1949-50 tax levy.
Plans call for an eight-foot channel 320 feet long which will give fishing boats and other craft access to a 150-foot pile and timber pier. The pier will be backed up by a steel sheet bulkhead, 70 feet in length.
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South Ferry, Inc., operators of the Sag Harbor-Shelter Island ferry, proposes to build a steel sheet pile breakwater 115 feet long east of the present ferry terminal on the south side of the island. The outer 85 feet would be a solid, sand-filled structure 10 feet wide. An area about 20 by 85 feet adjacent to the west side of the breakwater would be dredged to a depth of eight feet at mean low water.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, September 19
East Hampton Town Highway Superintendent John Bistrian threatened Tuesday to “reduce” the Highway Department by laying off all but five men if the Town Board did not grant him $36,000 to buy road oil. Without the oil, he said in a letter read at the Board’s executive meeting that day, his men would have no work to do, and without work there would be “no point in maintaining a full Highway Department.”
With the oil that he lacked the money to buy he had planned to resurface another 14 miles of road before cold weather sets in around Oct. 14. He might have to “lay off,” temporarily, 34 of the Department’s 39 employees, he said: “it’s silly to keep the men if you can’t use them.” He lacked the money, he said, because the price of oil had risen by 85 per cent since the Department’s budget was written a year ago.
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Despite elements of controversy on the agenda of the meeting of East Hampton Town Planning Board last Wednesday night in Town Hall, the meeting progressed with a minimum of rancor and a touch of humor to boot. The three items that touched off audience reaction included a public hearing to consider final approval of a subdivision for the second time, approval of a site plan following a surprise action by the Town Board, and a statement from the Town planner calling for greater public participation in shaping its own environment.
Last February, the Planning Board granted final approval to a small subdivision to be known as “Principi Park.” As a result of court action brought against the planners by David and Joan Seeler, owners and developers of adjacent property, that final approval was deemed invalid by Supreme Court Justice George F.X. McInerney.
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, September 30
More than 1,000 birds, mostly but not exclusively crows, have been found dead in Suffolk County since Friday — many from what health officials suspect is a “West Nile-like” virus. It is the same virus thought to have caused the human encephalitis that killed six people in the New York metropolitan area in recent weeks.
Yesterday, officials at the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta announced “laboratory-positive” results for six more cases of the virus — all in New York City, bringing the total there to 43. The C.D.C. also identified the virus in 13 additional birds, including several from Suffolk County, according to Kristine Smith, a New York State Health Department spokeswoman.
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State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and a number of environmental and health organizations have proposed the designation of towns and villages on the East End as “nuclear-free communities.”
Each town and village on the East End will be asked to pass a nuclear-free community law that would oppose the operation of any nuclear power plant within 50 miles of the East End without “local approval” of an evacuation plan and prohibit the construction of any new nuclear power plants here.
The law also sets forth policy on the manufacture, research, storage disposal, and transportation of radioactive materials and calls for “nuclear-free” purchasing.
