125 Years Ago - 1897
From The East Hampton Star, May 21
W.W. Burling of Southampton will locate in East Hampton for the coming summer and conduct a mail delivery service for the summer residents and cottagers of the place. He will begin his service about June 1st.
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The addition to G. Ruger Donoho’s house is about completed. The peculiar design of the house, with which this last addition is in keeping, reminds one of an old castle, and is pleasing to the eye. Mr. Donoho has had his grounds laid out in an artistic manner, embracing a pretty flower garden, and dotted here and there with shrubs and vines. Under Mr. Donoho’s artistic eye his place on old Egypt lane is destined to become one of the attractive features of East Hampton.
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The results of having a millinery store in East Hampton are particularly noticeable at all gatherings where any number of ladies are present. Old style bonnets are getting scarce.
100 Years Ago - 1922
From The East Hampton Star, May 19
Every spring there is a stir of uneasiness on the part of local baseball players and fans. A desire to be up and doing, out practicing on the local diamond, booking a schedule for the summer, and, in fact, everything to insure local baseball during the summer months.
This year Ferris Talmage, a real baseball fan, is endeavoring to get the boys to come out on the field in the evenings for practice.
Mr. Cullerton, a surveyor for the Good Roads Engineering Co., is an experienced player and is co-operating with Talmage.
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Potato planting is practically completed in Suffolk County; in fact in sections like Orient and Bridgehampton the planting was practically all completed several weeks ago. According to the Suffolk County Farm Bureau, potato planting, around Orient and Bridgehampton, began about two weeks in advance of most other sections of the county and practically three weeks in advance of some sections in the western part.
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Dr. Wm. H. Ross of Brentwood, President of the Suffolk County Tuberculosis Committee, announced this week that plans are being completed for the annual meeting of the Committee at Patchogue on June 6th. Sessions will be held both in the morning and afternoon at the Star Palace, which will be loaned to the Committee for the convention by Nathan Goldstein.
Delegates from all the towns of the county and for most of the villages will be in attendance. The sessions will also be open to the public.
75 Years Ago - 1947
From The East Hampton Star, May 22
The East Hampton Social Guide for 1947 will be published in June by the East Hampton Star Press. This directory, which lists heads of households in the summer colonies of all villages in East Hampton Township, together with their winter addresses, location here, and telephone numbers, indicating whether they own or rent houses, has been valuable for many years both for social and business purposes.
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Members of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars will participate in the Memorial Day parade on Friday, starting at 11 a.m. from the Village Green and continuing to the Memorial Green, where a memorial service will be held.
This year the American Legion will present citizenship medals to pupils of East Hampton, Amagansett, Springs and Montauk at the Memorial Green services. Rev. Francis Kinsler will speak.
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The Hamptons are prominently featured in a lengthy article in the June issue of Holiday.
“The Hamptons as playground are superimposed upon a simple and hard-working agricultural economy, upon an ancient way of life founded, and still stubbornly preserved year in and year out, by a tough fibred breed of folks who believe in God and good manners,” the article declares. “They put up with the summer crowd for three months of each year, and with good grace too, because that way lies a very pleasant sort of prosperity.”
50 Years Ago - 1972
From The East Hampton Star, May 18
Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, the food writer and the well-known chef, will be hosts on Sunday, May 28, at a fund-raising clambake to aid the “McGovern for President” campaign.
The clambake will be held on the beach in front of Mr. Claiborne’s King’s Point Road, Springs, home. The two men will prepare the food, which will include lobster, chicken, clams, sausage, and corn on the cob. Local youngsters will take part in gathering wood for two weeks before the event.
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Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis paid a quiet visit to East Hampton Tuesday to decorate the grave of her father, and then spent about an hour and a half at Grey Gardens, the home of her aunt and first cousin, Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and Miss Edith Beale. It was the first meeting of Mrs. Onassis and her relatives in 15 years.
Miss Beale said that the former First Lady was driven here from Remsenburg by another cousin, Michel Bouvier, with his wife and teenaged son. Arriving at mid-afternoon, they went with the Rev. Christopher Huntington of Most Holy Trinity Church to the Church Cemetery, where Mrs. Onassis’ father, John Vernou Bouvier III, was buried in August 1957.
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The Benson Art Gallery in Bridgehampton will begin its seventh summer season on Saturday, May 27, with an exhibition featuring 18th century Nepalese Tonkas and Indian miniatures from the collection of Karl Mann, early American graphic quilts from the Thea Goodman Quilt Gallery, sculpture by George Mittendorf, ceramic and wood sculpture by Alexandra Dain, and jewelry and small sculpture by Ann Gresser Sperry.
25 Years Ago - 1997
From The East Hampton Star, May 22
There’s been much talk of the real estate boom in the Northwest Woods section of East Hampton, but solid proof of it came this week when the East Hampton Post Office announced it was adding 66 streets in Northwest and the northern limits of East Hampton to its home-delivery routes.
Delivery, which is optional, will begin on June 2, said Carol Kroupa, the East Hampton postmaster. Depending on how many people take up the opportunity to have one less chore in their busy days, the change could affect more than 800 residences, Mrs. Kroupa said.
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One life was lost and five persons were rescued in three separate incidents on Gardiner’s Bay and Block Island Sound on Friday afternoon when unseasonably strong northwest winds turned the morning calm into a threatening maelstrom.
“Boat capsized, man in water,” was the call that came to John Tilly, an East Hampton harbormaster, from the Montauk Coast Guard at 12:40 p.m. He was under way in a 25-foot patrol boat minutes later with Frank Kennedy, a former harbormaster.
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This Memorial Day weekend, The Star takes a look back, to the heroes of wars and tragedy, and ahead, as a new season prepares to unfold.
Threads of remembrance weave through these pages: Memorial Day observances and observations, a Coast Guard chaplain who recalls the TWA disaster, the waning of a generation of a local family, a sad fictional twist to a traditional holiday beach party, a town celebrating its history as it prepares to mark its 350th anniversary.
