125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, April 22
The “cannonball” express will make the run, this summer, from Long Island City to East Hampton in two hours and thirty-eight minutes, or in seven minutes less time than last summer. The train will leave Long Island City thirty-three minutes later and arrive in East Hampton twenty-six minutes later than last year.
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The Village Improvement Society will hold an apron and necktie social in Clinton Hall, Monday evening, April 25. A literary and musical programme will be included in the entertainment, which alone will be worth the price of admission, ten cents. The supper, however, will probably be the drawing card, as the public well knows how to respond to the supper bell when rung by the ladies of the Village Improvement Society.
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Postmaster Dayton has been at work this week with a large force of men and teams rounding up the Main street at the south end. Clinton Cycle Club put a force of men on one day and laid out the gutter line on the east side of the street. When the street is properly rounded up it will be in better shape for the easy drainage of its surface than it ever has been in the past.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, April 20
The day of days for the Suffolk County athletes and their scores of female admirers, the annual field day of the Suffolk County Interscholastic League — a day of days ever since the league was started years ago by Surrogate Leone D. Howell, now of Nassau County — will be held on the track in Riverhead this year on Saturday, May 19.
This was decided by the delegates at a meeting at Riverhead, Saturday.
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At the regular monthly meeting of the town board at Clerk Ketcham’s office last Saturday afternoon a resolution was passed authorizing the clerk to advertise the board of health regulation affecting cattle in the town of East Hampton. The substance of the regulation is that it is unlawful for any person or persons to take cattle to a public pasturage unless such cattle have been tuberculin tested within three months prior.
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Rum runners beware! Not even the waters of Long Island will be safe from now on, for the Federal Government has directed a fleet of torpedo boats to patrol the waters.
The order is practically an admission that the small craft that have successfully plied from the large ships moored beyond the three-mile limit to the shores of Brooklyn and Long Island have become so fearless that they are probably well nigh beyond control.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, April 22
The United States Coast Guard will participate in a special program to be held in Amagansett on July 24 as one of the feature events planned to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of East Hampton Township. This was announced in a letter from Rear Admiral Merlin O’Neill, Assistant Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard in Washington, to Herbert L. Mulford Jr., Supervisor of East Hampton.
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Amagansett
The spring exhibition and entertainment was given in the Amagansett Grade School Friday night. Members of each grade contributed to a program which included songs, pieces and plays. The seventh grade social studies class showed some fine slides they had made on transportation. The Girls’ Glee Club sang several pleasing selections. A large audience was delighted with the entire program.
Following the entertainment classrooms were open to exhibit accomplishments of the pupils in their classroom work.
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Major General Norman Thomas Kirk of Montauk was made an Honorary Commander of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, yesterday, in Washington, D.C. — one of seventy-five members and former members of the United States armed forces who were decorated in recognition of their services in World War II, by Lord Inverchapel, the British Ambassador acting in behalf of King George VI. Three foreign officers were also decorated. The ceremony was at the British Embassy and among those present were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, April 19
Two public hearings to consider amendments to the rules and regulations of the East Hampton Town Planning Board filled the Town Hall court room to capacity last Wednesday, April 11. The one which provoked fear and indignation, strangely enough, was no more than a normalization of the “scenic roads” policy which has been practiced by the Planning Board for close to a year with hardly a nay from the developers who stand to lose the most.
At this public meeting, however, it sparked a continuous barrage of criticism and abusive comment, from the reading of the statement opening the first hearing at 8:30 p.m. to the closing of the second hearing and adjournment of the meeting at about 11:15 p.m.
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The Custom House in Sag Harbor will open in May for its first full season, after several years of research, restoration, and refurnishing by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities.
The Custom House, at Main and Garden Streets, will be open the weekend of May 19 and 20 and then for the season, beginning on Friday, May 25.
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Georgica Pond was “let out” on Saturday. According to Carl F. Dordelman Sr. who heads the Town Trustees’ Georgica committee, the Trustees had decided to let it out because “practically everyone around there” had been phoning them to complain of flooding.
William P. Butler, the Trustees’ chairman, had said four days earlier, “No one’s been calling me any more because I’ve always been telling them we won’t be letting it out.”
“He didn’t know it was that bad, I guess,” Mr. Dordelman commented yesterday. “I’ve never seen it quite so full. . . . He figured it was pretty bad when all these people were calling him.”
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, April 23
The same day that the Energy Department announced “significant progress” in forming a community advisory council at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, an East Hampton-based activist group weighed in with its own advice: to pay closer attention to the radioactive contamination leaking from the lab into the groundwater.
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The invasion began on Friday afternoon — thousands of black blobs of oil, either crude or the heavy Number 6 burned in ships’ engines. They measured from dime to dinner-plate size, and stretched from the beaches in downtown Montauk to Wainscott, with heavy concentrations in front of Montauk’s Gurney’s Inn. While not dramatic — the oil was only visible interspersed in the high-tide line — the spill affected over 10 miles of ocean beach.
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The East Hampton Town Board has issued its unanimous opposition to the reopening of the Millstone nuclear reactors in Waterford, Conn.
The Millstone reactors, just 15 miles across the Long Island Sound from East Hampton’s shores, have been plagued by safety violations and management problems. All three reactors have been shut down for failing to comply with Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.
