Villages

Last week parishioners of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton received text messages from an imposter claiming to be their pastor, the Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson. “They take advantage of people’s wanting to help and trust that we’ve built up,” she said.

The mighty storm that blew through East Hampton Thursday morning felled a large limb from a historic elm tree — one of a dwindling number of such trees that help give East Hampton Village its character.

Dressed in his Army uniform, Theodore Patrick Gould (1830-1862) posed for this photograph early in the Civil War. The photograph was taken at H. Terry’s Sag Harbor studio, between the war’s outbreak in April 1861 and Theodore’s death on Oct. 21, 1862.

Competing protests over the Israel-Hamas war on Sunday afternoon on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor were peaceful, if loud, when East End for Ceasefire encountered Long Island MAGA Patriots and the Setauket Patriots.

Last month a poem was discovered inside a children’s book in the East Hampton Library titled “Para mi hija Samantha.” With no other information to go on besides the name of the mother-daughter duo, Carmen and Samantha, the library turned to social media to get the word out and find them. On Sunday that search came to an end.

The local chapter of Whiskey Bravo, a nationwide youth organization that raises awareness of the kinds of support needed by veterans and active military personnel, took on the somber task this year of placing flags at the gravesites of East Hampton soldiers, and also walked a symbolic lap around the field at the American Legion to show their support.

Thanks to the efforts of Hamptons Pride volunteers and elected officials here, those attending the third annual Pride Parade in East Hampton on June 1 will have another way to travel here for the noontime step-off: the Long Island Rail Road has added a special train to East Hampton that day.

The Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, last expanded 15 years ago, is kicking off a $1.5 million capital campaign this weekend with the aim of refurbishing the children’s room, expanding the young-adult room, doubling the size of its literacy space, and undertaking a range of technology enhancements and building improvements to meet the needs of a growing population of patrons.

Hugh King, the East Hampton Town historian, is more at ease sharing interesting tidbits from, say, the 1829 town trustees minutes than he is with augmented reality or the notion of a digital avatar. But despite himself, he came face to face with both earlier this week at the Mulford Farm, where the East Hampton Historical Society is putting his likeness to work to tell the story of the role the farm’s owner, Col. David Mulford, played in the leadup to the 1776 Battle of Long Island, and of his fate during the region’s subsequent occupation by the British.

Alfred R. Waud sketched this depiction of the Gardiner’s Island manor house while on assignment for Harper’s Weekly.

One self-styled prophet predicted the wrath of God would be brought down on the Atheneum in Sag Harbor shortly before it burned to the ground. Read all about it, and much more ripped from The Star’s storied pages.

Steve Long, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, will be the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork on Sunday.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital has earned national recognition for overall patient safety and L.G.B.T.Q.+ health care equity, the hospital recently announced.

An ode to May on Long Island from 1899, among other charms (and outrages) from Ye Olde Star.

On April 22, an East Hampton Library patron discovered a poem, neatly handwritten in Spanish and tucked into the pages of a children’s picture book, and took it over to the children’s librarians. The poem piqued their attention. Who is this mysterious mother-daughter duo, known only by their first names, Carmen and Samantha?

In this photo from The Star’s archive, Sy Kaback hands over a trophy to Tom Wiggins, who was second in the East Hampton Yacht Club’s big race of 1989.

The man who created a fairy village in a Montauk nature preserve has removed the plastic figurines and tiny structures after a neighbor complained that the whimsical installation was junking up the preserve. “I didn’t know it would be such a polarizing thing,” he said.

The dawn chorus of birdsong is different depending on your habitat, your location, and the time of year. Songbird migration will peak by mid-May. As songbirds migrate overhead during the night, they blanket the sleeping country with sound, calling to each other to keep their flocks together and tight. When they land, they sing us awake.

Dock to Dish, a restaurant-supported fishery cooperative founded in Montauk in 2012, has new owners and a renewed focus on getting fresh-from-the-boat seafood directly into the kitchens of restaurants across the East End and the New York area. And the fact that most of the owners are also fishermen doesn’t hurt.

While not all the spaces in Jay Eastman’s newly renovated Park Place building have been leased, two anchors are in place: Amber Waves will move across the brick alleyway known as Eastman Way to occupy 64 Park Place, and a new burger and shake restaurant, Smokey Buns, will be next door at 68 Park Place.

This photo, taken in 1999 during a tour of the 1804 Gardiner Mill off James Lane, shows the smock-style windmill’s inner gears.

A female minke whale measuring 26 feet long and weighing nearly 8,000 pounds washed up dead on a Bridgehampton beach on Wednesday. "It had a thin blubber layer; we would consider it underweight. It was severely decomposed," said Rob DiGiovanni, chief scientist for the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society.

Way back in 1899, The Star had the good sense to call out the folly of changing old Long Island place names, singling out the late, lamented Good Ground, now pedestrian Hampton Bays.

Durell Godfrey, a photographer whose images have been a visual chronicle of life in East Hampton since her work was first published in The East Hampton Star more than 20 years ago, won third place in the Photographer of the Year category in the New York Press Association’s 2023 Better Newspaper Contest.

Revisiting Mayor Ronald Rioux and the semi-famous dog-leash debate and petitioning of 1974. Plus much more from The Star of yore.

A "fairy gnome village" in the Culloden Point Preserve, undoubtedly erected without a building permit, has become an amusing but also divisive issue for those living on Montauk's lesser-known point.

With a buzz of pride and anticipation in the air, and surrounded by friends, loved ones, and even former fellow students, 120 adults who spent the last eight months learning to speak and write English with Ruta 27 — Programa de Inglés showcased their newly honed skills at the East Hampton Library last week.

“Be it remembered” opens each case recorded in this book, which was kept by two Suffolk County justices of the peace, both Bridgehamptoners, over the course of 42 years, from 1774 through 1816.

With the election of Lisa Goree to the role of tribal chairperson on April 2, there’s a woman in charge of the Shinnecock Indian Nation — traditionally a matriarchal culture — for the first time in centuries.

Long Island’s South Fork, known for beaches, maritime history, and fancy people, is also known for its hedges. Hedge installation and maintenance are big business, and there could be a whole book about hedges, with different varieties popular during different eras. In the last decade, for example, the “green giant,” a now ubiquitous tree, has been placed along property lines throughout the Hamptons. It’s here to stay, and grow, and grow.