This prizewinning barnyard-themed float was part of East Hampton’s Fourth of July parade in 1915, adorned with hay, vegetation, live geese, a calf, and a scarecrow. Riding atop it were Judy Hamlin (1909-1991), dressed as a farmer, and her older sister, Dorothy Hamlin (1890-1919), costumed as a milkmaid. Mary Paxton Hamlin (1875-1957) designed the float. Her husband, Harry L. Hamlin (1861-1934), owned Stony Hill Farm in Amagansett.
The Hamlin family was originally from Chicago. After the untimely death of his first wife, Katherine Dimon Hamlin (1868-1892), Harry moved to New York with Dorothy in 1900. In 1902, he married Mary Elkin Paxton, and in 1906 he bought Stony Hill Farm. He improved the property and throughout the years employed numerous local residents, provided boarding rooms for visitors, and offered horseback-riding lessons.
Dorothy and Judy (his daughter with his second wife) were active in the East Hampton social scene. Dorothy, an alumna of the Ogontz School in Philadelphia, volunteered at the Ladies Village Improvement Society Fair and worked as a census taker. Judy, known for her parties, hosted many friends from New York at her maternal grandfather’s house on Lily Pond Lane.
Dorothy also volunteered for the Red Cross, and she was in one of the last groups from New York to leave for France in 1918 before the end of World War I. She helped in a Red Cross recreation hut and worked in a Paris canteen, where she contracted Spanish influenza. Ill for a week, she died on Jan. 13, 1919.
In 1920, Dorothy’s remains were removed from Paris and reburied in the South End Cemetery. Two years later, the Women’s Overseas Service League named her one of 161 Gold Star women, an honor given to those who died in service abroad during World War I.
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Megan Bardis is a librarian and archivist in the Long Island Collection.
