125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, May 25
Nicholas Hallock, director of the State Agricultural Experiment station, says that the dreaded San Jose scale is spreading rapidly all over the state and especially on Long Island. It readily attacks not only orchards, but shrubs, currant bushes, berry plants, and forest trees. It is fatal to all kinds of trees and shrubs. The only sure known cure for the pest is the deadly gas arising from the combustion of cyanides, and the affected trees or plants must be covered by a tent or other structure during the operation. The nurseries seem to be the great breeding places for the pest. Those nurserymen who are careful as to the reputation of their stock now have all their young trees and plants treated in this way before sending them out to customers.
—
Next Monday, the eclipse of the sun is due. As Long Island is out of the path of the totality it will be visible only as a partial eclipse. The southern limit of visibility will be approximately at the equator and the northern limit beyond the pole. The path of totality passes across the ocean from Virginia to Portugal and skirts our coast so that here only a narrow crescent on the north edge of the sun will be visible at the middle of the eclipse. The first contact will be at about ten minutes of 8 and the last contact at nearly half-past 10.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, May 22
John Berdinker, about thirty years of age, of South Jamesport, who had been missing from his home for three days, was found by his wife last Friday evening, drowned and tangled in his fishing net in Peconic Bay, near the North Sea bathing pavilion. Berdinker left South Jamesport last week on a fishing trip, and when he failed to return to his home by Thursday his wife became alarmed and instituted a search.
Fishermen on Friday told Mrs. Berdinker they had seen a boat anchored at North Sea. Accompanied by Bruce Jones and another man, she secured a row boat and approached the anchored ship, which they recognized as Berdinker’s, but he was not aboard. They saw the seine in the water, and when it was pulled up they found the body of the missing man.
—
A centennial address delivered in 1868 by W.H. Gleason of Sag Harbor indicated that Three-Mile Harbor was open to vessels of fairly good draught from 250 to 275 years ago. It is also known that Northwest was “the harbor of East Hampton” for nearly a hundred years before “deeper channels were sought at Sag Harbor,” in Shelter Island Sound.
The above leads one to conclude that these natural, land-locked harbors of East Hampton town were once navigable for vessels of much greater depth than can now enter them. Anyone at all informed of action of tide and winds and erosion of eastern Long Island shore and harbor localities can envision these harbors as they were in early years of the town’s settlement.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, May 25
On Saturday, in place of its customary cargo of gravel, heavy machinery, scrap metal, or bluestone, a Pennsylvania Railroad car was loaded with a 36’ gondola, once a part of poet Robert Browning’s Venetian idyll. After a 325 mile, five to six day jaunt over the tracks of the Long Island, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake, and Ohio railroads the long, narrow craft, which was brought to this country sixty years ago from Italy suspended from lifeboat davits, will find a new haven in the patio of the Mariners Museum at Newport News, Virginia.
Left to the East Hampton Free Library nearly two years ago by the will of the late Ruth Moran, who had inherited it from her father, the gondola has been loaned since then to the Ladies Village Improvement Society.
—
A special meeting of the Atlantic Coast Tuna Tournament Committee and the Montauk Committee was held last Sunday at the Yacht Club. Fishangri-la was designated the official weighing-in station, and Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk was named Chairman of the Montauk Tuna Tournament. The tournament, which will be held on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday after Labor Day, requires $10 a year in dues, $25 to enter a two boat team, and $50 to enter a three or four boat team.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, May 22
In a way, the recession has been kind to East Hampton. While the Federal government gloomily announces that the drop in the Gross National Product in the first quarter was more dramatic than expected and that inflation is still cantering, if not galloping, at eight and a half percent, East Hampton has a gallery of new shops, an only-slight fall-off in construction, a swarm of summer rentals, and a promising long-range outlook as a “rural population center.” And to boot, it’s spring. As one local merchant put it, saps are flowing again — out from the city.
—
If all goes according to plan, Sag Harbor should get construction of its badly-needed and much-delayed sewage treatment plant underway by this summer. And by next summer, the Village should be treating its business-district wastes instead of discharging them into Gardiner’s Bay.
William Cosulich, Sag Harbor’s consulting engineer for the project, recently told the Village Board that both the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency had approved of Sag Harbor’s sewage treatment plans. The plans call for a secondary sewage treatment plant on Bay Street fed by sewer pipes along Main and Division Streets and the waterfront.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, May 25
Edward T. Rush, former chairman of the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, was officially fired by the Southampton Town Board on May 16. The decision to remove him from his $9,544-a-year seat on the board came a week and a day after he admitted in Suffolk County Criminal Court to soliciting a $2,000 bribe.
Southampton Town Supervisor Vincent J. Cannuscio said he hoped the longtime zoning board member would have resigned of his own accord, noting that he had been given ample time to do so. But Mr. Rush refused, forcing the board to take direct action.
—
On Monday morning, two days after the Shagwong restaurant and two other popular Montauk establishments were raided by a squad of 12 uniformed state troopers, James McMahon, their superintendent, ordered an internal investigation into the behaviors of his officers in Montauk over the past three weeks.
On Tuesday morning, two internal affairs agents were flown from Albany to Long Island to begin questioning Montaukers. An exaggerated presence of state conservation police and state troopers began on May 2 after the tires of four state police vehicles were slashed. The vehicles were parked at the Montauk Yacht Club, where marine law enforcement officers were attending a series of workshops.
The night before, several conservation officers had been drinking at Liars’ Saloon, a watering hole popular with commercial fishermen. Witnesses said that at one point in the evening fishermen and fish police engaged in verbal jousting.
