After months of planning and one postponement due to inclement weather, East Hampton Town will celebrate its 375th anniversary on Saturday, weather permitting.
On Tuesday, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said that rain was once again in Saturday’s forecast, “and it’s very troubling. I think if we have to cancel it for rain we probably won’t be able to reschedule that parade for this year.”
If the weather cooperates, the parade will start at 10 a.m. in front of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church on Main Street in East Hampton Village and travel up Newtown Lane to Railroad Avenue. Hugh King, the town historian, will serve as master of ceremonies, stationed at a reviewing stand at Herrick Park. A range of community groups will participate in the parade, and Chief Robert Pharaoh of the Montauketts will be the grand marshal.
The parade will pause, and the Montaukett Women’s Circle Dancers will perform on the East Hampton Middle School grounds, across Newtown Lane from the reviewing stand, when it reaches that point.
“The members of the Montauk Indian Nation were the original Indigenous inhabitants of the area that in 1648 was incorporated into the Town of East Hampton,” states a proclamation that the supervisor presented to Chief Pharaoh last month. While the tribe continues to exist, “even after losing its original homelands, including areas of Montauk such as Indian Field, to the developer Arthur Benson and to others in the late 1800s and the turn of the century,” it is “struggling to have New York State reinstate their formal recognition as a tribe after being stripped of that status by a court in 1910.”
“What a wonderful, wonderful gesture,” Mr. King said last month of honoring Mr. Pharaoh. “How fitting, especially as the Montauketts are attempting to get state recognition. It certainly could help. I thought it was absolutely the perfect thing to do. It should have been done, and it was.”
Mr. King said last month, prior to the parade’s original Sept. 23 date, that the anniversary celebration will “underscore what we have here.” It is important to acknowledge and celebrate history, he said, “for the same reason we need to preserve all our historic buildings: so we can get rid of that terrible moniker, ‘the Hamptons.’ We don’t have to be the upscale, fashionable, trendy, and unaffordable Hamptons.”
He described turning on to Main Street from Woods Lane in the village. “You make a left and you have Town Pond, the Thomas Moran House, the South End Cemetery, the windmills, Mulford Farm, Guild Hall, the library, then you get to the Hook Mill, then Amagansett and Miss Amelia’s Cottage.” Every hamlet has links to the past, he said. “And of course, it’s always good to remember how things used to be done because we may not want to do it again, or, maybe we could learn from the way people did things in the past.”
The town trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, originally scheduled for Sept. 24, was postponed once due to rain and then canceled outright when heavy rain preceding its Oct. 8 rain date closed local water bodies to shellfishing.
A decision on the 375th anniversary parade would be made later in the week, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “Everybody, pray for clear skies for the morning of the 14th.
