125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, February 25
If this country wishes to lick Spain on general principles, all right; she deserves it; but if we are to lick her for the destruction of the Maine, let us fix the guilt upon her before starting.
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A movement is on foot among the farmers of East Hampton toward adopting the use of wide tires on all their heavy vehicles. The farmers realize the importance of wide tires in keeping up the roads and will make extra efforts among their number to spread the use of wide tires in the future.
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Nobody desires to impede the march of science; but there is not a housewife in the land who will not clamor for an injunction against the professor of biology in New York who has succeeded in producing two-headed moths by grafting. A man who makes two of these insects grow where one grew before can only be regarded as an enemy to society. — Kansas City Star
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, February 23
The delegation of Montauk Indians which started for Washington Saturday are hopeful of appearing before President Harding to convince “the big White Chief” that, contrary to court decision, they really do exist, and are so much interested in affairs of the living that they want hunting privileges enjoyed for centuries by their ancestors restored.
In 1895 the Montauks commenced action to start a suit, claiming they had been illegally ousted from hunting lands at Montauk. After fourteen years, a special enabling act passed by the legislature gave them tribal rights to bring a legal suit. With a great array of counsel on each side, the action was tried in 1909-10 before Justice Abel E. Blackmar. The widow of King David, Mrs. Banks, mother of Chief Wyandank Pharoah, who was titular chief, brought the suit to oust descendants of Benson from the Montauk lands, and testified that she had never signed away any rights. Chief Wyandank, who died in March 1921, testified that he and other Indians had been illegally put off the Montauk hunting grounds where the Indians had always lived, and that they now lived at Freetown. It was stated for the defense that Arthur M. Benson, who now owns the land, although under no obligation to do so, paid for moving the Indians, and also paid certain members of the tribe pensions of $240 a year. Justice Blackmar found “that the tribe had disintegrated and had been absorbed into the mass of citizens.”
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, February 26
Long Island is a famed resort for wintering waterfowl, but the ducks that decided to winter in the North this year, while their companions continued their flight to warmer regions, may well regret it; for never have these birds had to face a more difficult Winter.
With the prolonged cold weather, when ponds and streams are frozen over and snowstorm succeeds snowstorm, the ducks have been cut off from their food. The shallow waters are frozen where they secure most of their food in the small animal life of the waters and the roots on the bottom, while the grasses and seeds on the shore are covered with ice and snow. So, starvation has faced the ducks and geese. And as the waterfowl have been constantly diminishing in numbers for a period of years, the further loss from the hardship of Winter causes much concern.
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Comparing hamburgers and telephones may not sound logical but the Detroit Board of Commerce has noticed an interesting contrast in prices.
“Many years ago,” according to The Detroiter, the Board’s publication, “John Palmer started a lunchroom next to our building. He sold hamburgers for a nickel. On his wall was a telephone you could use for another nickel.”
“We have watched the price of hamburgers go up to 8 cents, then 11 cents, 15 cents, 18 cents and now to two bits, while the same telephone is doing business on the same wall for the same nickel.”
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, February 22
Indian Field — the hills, hollows, and windswept moors between Lake Montauk and Block Island Sound — was for more than 200 years, from the time the English settlers first came to the East End of Long Island, the last home of the once-powerful Montauk Indians. Little has been heard of the Montauks in the off-again, on-again news of the County’s proposal to make Indian Field a park, but their memory lingers on almost in spite of the politicians, public-spirited citizens, and land speculators whose interests have become entangled in the process.
This week, after news had been broadly and erroneously circulated that the County had “dropped” its plans to acquire land at Indian Field, County officials agreed in contradicting that news.
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The East Hampton Town Board, meeting on Friday, scheduled a public hearing of a proposal to up-zone part of Montauk and was urged by various citizens to impose a moratorium on “development” of large tracts, to consider funding the East Hampton Year-Round Head Start program, and to increase its efforts to clean the beaches.
The zoning proposal, described by Councilman Henry A. Mund Jr. with the aid of a large map, would affect most of the existing commercial-industrial zone on the south and east shores of Fort Pond Bay.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, February 26
It took about seven hours Sunday night for East Hampton Village police to count and double-count $750,000 in cash allegedly stolen from the house of an elderly East Hampton man while he lay seriously ill in a New York City hospital. . . . The money taken . . . was in bills of denominations from $1 to $100. The bills were in stacks of $1,000, each stack neatly wrapped in tinfoil and placed in a locked metal box. There were 10 boxes altogether, police said. A single key opened all of them.
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Litigants in the East Hampton Airport controversy expressed hope Tuesday that an agreement will be worked out in the next few days allowing the main runway repaving project to proceed, in return for a change in town law guaranteeing public scrutiny of any airport projects from now on.
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It took the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals chairman a full 20 minutes Friday to read aloud the reasons why the board had decided to grant the East Hampton Youth Alliance a permit to build a youth center.
The RECenter, in the planning for five years, will rise on the corner of Gingerbread Lane Extension and Lumber Lane.
