125 Years Ago - 1897
From The East Hampton Star, April 30
Quite a large party of bicyclists from this place took a run to Shelter Island and Greenport on Saturday. Ferryman Tyndall was obliged to make two trips to transfer the party from shore to shore. He had his hands full, as it was low tide and he had to carry all the lady passengers from his boat to dry land in his arms.
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Tile pipes have arrived for a sluice way to be laid across Main street at the entrance of Buell’s lane to carry the surface water from that street into Town pond. This is one of the good acts of the Village Improvement Society.
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Wm. A. Hedges is having the graves in his family plot at the North End cemetery opened, and nine bodies removed to Cedar Lawn cemetery. The oldest body being removed is that of Stephen Hedges, great great grandfather of William Hedges, who was buried in the year 1801.
100 Years Ago - 1922
From The East Hampton Star, April 28
A special meeting of the town board was held at the town clerk’s office last Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock for the purpose of discussing and perhaps acting upon the question of whether or not cows that have not had the tuberculin test should be allowed to enter East Hampton town or be turned into public pasture in the town.
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A Federal Grand Jury is going to find out what happened to all the perfectly good Scotch and rye and Bacardi and champagne and what not in the way of emphatically beverage liquors which a pirate crew robbed from the former sunchaser No. 101, renamed the Fidus, on the high seas, off Montauk Point.
Customs inspectors Tuesday captured the vessel as it was proceeding up from Quarantine and were told the story of the robbery by the captain and crew. The captain at first gave his name as J.J. Kelly, but he turned out to be Matthias S. Clarke, formerly an ensign attached to submarine chaser No. 90.
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Mrs. Theodore H. Conklin, who has been enjoying herself this winter staying at the Stevenson, Atlantic City, will return to Montauk May 10th. Mrs. Conklin is proprietor of the well known Montauk Inn and she gives notice in another column of this issue that she will open the Inn on May 13 for the 1922 season. Automobile parties and transient guests, as well as her permanent guests, will be served in the usual first class style with shore dinners and afternoon teas.
75 Years Ago - 1947
From The East Hampton Star, May 1
The smallpox peril is now pretty much over with small likelihood that anybody in Suffolk will contract the disfiguring and highly dangerous disease, Dr. Arthur T. Davis, county Health Commissioner, assured the Board of Supervisors Monday. After Dr. Davis had pointed out that the 21-day incubation period has passed without a single new case being reported anywhere in the New York area, the board dropped plans for the mass immunization of all county employees.
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Suffolk County will take the unusual step of seeking to intervene in a proceeding before the Civil Aeronautics Board in support of the application of Island Air Ferries for a franchise permitting it to operate scheduled passenger, mail and express service between Long Island and New England.
A resolution adopted by the Board of Supervisors Monday at Riverhead empowers Islip Supervisor Charles H. Duryea, board chairman, to petition the Civil Aeronautics Board for the right to intervene in the case now pending. The board’s action is not exactly precedent-setting, as according to papers filed Monday, the State of Connecticut, through its State Development Commission, is also seconding the cause of the Air Ferries company at Washington.
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The New York Telephone Company announced yesterday afternoon that a wage offer of $4.00 per week was accepted by the Down State Unions. Acceptance of this offer ends the strike of the New York Telephone Co. employees effective today.
50 Years Ago - 1972
From The East Hampton Star, April 27
The Poet’s Repertory Theatre, an experimental group which tours Suffolk and Nassau Counties, will perform at Southampton College on Tuesday, May 2, at 8:30 p.m. in the Rathskeller, Wood Hall.
They will present “Land of Burning Children,” an adaptation of several scenes from Daniel Berrigan’s “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” interspersed with short plays by Lanford Wilson and Jean-Claude van Itallie. There will be no admission charge.
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“The storm is here; sit down; take it easy and everything will work out fine,” said Emil Reich. “Get yourself a slogan: ‘Best Fishing — Montauk.’ Something short and sweet.”
“Don’t worry, the sportsmen will be here in their waders, casting that plug, hoping to get the big one, and all this will be forgotten.”
Mr. Reich was one of 20 people who spoke at a meeting last Saturday night called by Montauk businessmen worried about the threat of a sport fishermen’s group to boycott Montauk if legislation declaring the striped bass a gamefish wasn’t passed in Albany.
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The Long Island Rail Road has been busy putting up automatic gates at grade crossings on King Street, Race Lane, Newtown Lane, and Osborne Lane in East Hampton Village, and on Napeague Meadow Road in Amagansett. Other gates are apparently planned, but the several LIRR officials who could be reached in Jamaica were unable to say where these would be.
25 Years Ago - 1997
From The East Hampton Star, May 1
A panel representing East End governments has come up with an “action strategy” for transportation that stresses that only by innovation will eastern Long Island escape the fate of highway traffic-clogged western Long Island. And time, says the East Hampton Transportation Council, is short.
The council, created last year by the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association and composed largely of planners and transportation experts from the East End, notes in the report, “With a substantial portion of its land still in an undeveloped state, the region has a window of opportunity within which to forestall the transportation ills that plague the rest of the Island.”
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The I.G.A. SuperSaver in Amagansett and the Post Office, its longtime neighbor, may both be in line for significant expansion. Plans now before the East Hampton Town Planning Board call for an addition and major facelift to the supermarket and indicate that the Postal Service may hope to expand as well.
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A new Federal law that places greater limits on legal immigration, makes penalties for illegal immigration more severe, and expedites the deportation process has many immigrants in the community worried, hungry for accurate information, and even rushing to the altar to marry United States citizens.
Immigrants on the South Fork, whose numbers have increased dramatically in recent years, are caught in the vortex of the nationwide debate over immigration policies. Last year Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which, among other things, sets a deadline for illegal immigrants to leave the country and makes legal immigrants deportable for minor crimes committed years ago.
