FLOATS AND MARCHERS

About 70 school and civic groups, businesses, churches, arts and environmental organizations, and other pillars of the community are working on floats for October's big anniversary parade, with themes ranging in a timeline from the East Hampton Town Trustees' Dongan Patent pageant to the Calvary Baptist Church's depiction of present-day gospel singers.

In between, there will be everything from Trevor Kelsall dressed up as Fishhooks Mulford (accompanied by a few of the London pickpockets who got cut fingers instead of coins from his pocketful of fishhooks) to all 40 members of the Ramblers dressed as they would have in 1901, the year the women's discussion society was founded.

Schoolchildren from every hamlet will do their communities proud in the parade. Amagansett students are working on a Captain Kidd float, complete with evil pirates, while the Sag Harbor Middle School is portraying Meigs's Raid, the 1777 episode in which over 100 British were taken prisoner and a dozen enemy ships set on fire off Long Wharf. Springs Schoolers will recall the Free Life balloon, which took off in 1970 on its doomed round-the-world attempt from a meadow off Accabonac Harbor, while children from Wainscott will ride a float created by the Wainscott Sewing Society, replicating the Wainscott Common School as it appeared in the last century.

East Hampton Town's float will tell the story of Goody Garlicke, the only local resident, so far as is known, to be tried as a witch, and East Hampton Village's will be a replica of Hook Mill as it appeared in 1809, when it was built.

The Eastville Historical Society is doing an Amistad float, of the rock where the crew of the slave ship came ashore. The East Hampton Historical Society plans a decorated carriage and Revolutionary War re-enactors in full uniform. Marchers from the League of Women Voters will recreate the black-bombazine years of women's suffrage, and members of the Montaukett tribe will don tribal costume.

Jim Brooks, who heads the parade committee, plans to bring together all the participants this month to discuss the final arrangements. This page will continue to report on the parade as it develops.

I.S.