This photograph shows members of Dayton Hedges’s (1884-1957) family attending a tea ceremony on Aug. 21, 1953, in the East Hampton Library’s courtyard as part of the dedication of the library’s Hedges Room.
Pictured from left to right: Hedges’s namesake grandson, Dayton Hedges (b. 1935), his son James Hedges (b. 1908), his wife, Mary Elizabeth McCormick Hedges (1888-1957), Dayton Hedges himself, and his grandsons James Hedges Jr. (b. 1942) and Michael Hedges (b. 1938).
Dayton Hedges was born in Wainscott and moved to Havana, Cuba, in 1919, where he found success as a textile entrepreneur and American industrialist. He and his wife maintained a summer home on Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton Village and supported many community projects here.
Hedges sponsored the publication of Jeannette Edwards Rattray’s “East Hampton History: Including Genealogies of Early Families,” which came out in 1953. Dayton hoped to honor his ancestors, among the first settlers of the town, but he also arranged for the proceeds from the book to fund construction of a new section of the library.
A room designed by the architect Aymar Embury II opened with a dedication ceremony in 1953. Featured speakers included Jean Dayton, the library board president, William A. Lockwood, who was advisory chairman, Dr. Theodore Rowland, Mrs. Rattray, and Dayton Hedges. The new room included portraits of Hedges and two of his ancestors, the historian Judge Henry P. Hedges (1817-1911) and whaling Capt. Jeremiah Hedges (1803-1880). Today, the portrait of Captain Hedges hangs above the fireplace near the circulation desk, and the Hedges Room houses the library’s circulating DVD collection.
This photograph is one of the first 500 images available through the East Hampton Star Photo Archive, created through an agreement between The Star and the library’s Long Island Collection to digitize thousands of the newspaper’s photos. The agreement allows use of the images for personal and nonprofit use.
Mayra Scanlon is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
