125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, July 20
Strange as it may seem, it is a fact that the Sunday afternoon mail to New York, instituted at this post office this summer, is not well patronized. The postmaster tells us that the bundle of letters to go out on that mail, which closes at 4:10 p.m., is quite small, while three hours later, when the morning mail is being made up, there is an accumulation of several hundred letters.
—
The Long Island Railroad is now operating 1,100 trains daily to accommodate the summer traffic on the island.
—
As usual the mid-summer fair of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society at Clinton Hall, yesterday, was a great success.
The fine weather was an essential and customary feature of the affair.
From the time the doors opened at two o’clock until six the hall was crowded with the wealth and fashion of the place.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, July 17
A swordfish weighing 1,000 pounds and a shark weighing 800 were killed by Lester Walcott and W.H. Bennett hailing from Belmar, N.J., after a fight lasting a half hour, twenty miles from shore, recently.
The huge fish were caught in a sea net and had been fighting each other. The shark had been wounded and was getting the worst of the fight when the fishermen drew up. Armed with picks and axes, Wolcott and Bennett flayed at the churning fish.
During the melee the fishing boat was nearly overturned when the sea monsters rammed the craft’s sides. Both the shark and the swordfish, the latter the largest of its kind ever caught in these waters, were more than twelve feet in length.
—
The dancing instructor will hold a class on Saturday evening, July 25, at 8:30, at the parish house. This is for the boys and girls of the village and Mrs. D.M. Bell hopes there will be a large attendance.
—
Included in the great rush of real estate transactions that are daily taking place in Suffolk County is the filing of a deed showing the absolute sale of a tract of land to the people of the State for State Park purposes. This deed was filed Monday by E.J. McGrath. It conveys from Helen Cooper Brown, wife of former Congressman Lathrop Brown, to the State about twenty-two and one-half acres in the tract known as Wompenanit at Montauk, specifically covering lots 123 and 124.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, July 20
In Bridgehampton on Saturday, an event took place which will without question be publicized in newspapers and magazines from Harlem to the Pacific Coast. The wedding of Anne Mather, of Boston, white, descendant of the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, to a prominent Negro social worker was held in the home of friends of Miss Mather’s.
Miss Mather, who is 30 years old, became the bride of Frank C. Montero, 40, director of the Urban League Fund, in a formal wedding at the summer home of Charles F. Brush Jr.
—
Miss Margaret Truman, daughter of the President, arrived in Southampton on Friday afternoon to spend the week-end with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Murray at their home on Gin Lane. Mr. Murray has recently been appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission by President Truman. Mr. and Mrs. Murray gave a dinner for fifty for Miss Truman at their home on Friday night. The guest of honor sang two opera selections at the party.
—
Forrest C. Haring, managing director of the John Drew Theatre, East Hampton, presents for the week of July 17 Cole Porter’s sparkling musical comedy “The Gay Divorcee,” a lively and delightful show which he managed during its run on Broadway.
Jack Whiting, Carol Stone and Lenore Lonergan head the cast, which will provide eastern Suffolk County with its third successive week of Broadway at its best in “America’s most beautiful summer theatre.”
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, July 17
On the eve of the Bicentennial, a Massachusetts transportation company has shown an interest in reviving a never-quite-forgotten element of Sag Harbor’s history that could have a big impact on its economic future: a regular, year-round ferry service to New London from the Grumman Aerospace dock at the foot of Main Street.
“If things go smoothly, it could be in operation before Labor Day,” said David Lee of Sag Harbor’s Commerce and Industry Commission Wednesday.
—
A long day’s rain put no damper on the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, who pondered the future of Indian Field Park Saturday night. One Town and two County officials, plus an archaeologist, were on hand to absorb criticism and to reassure the Citizens, who had championed the recent 1,000-acre County acquisition, that it would not go the way of neighboring lands.
—
The fourth annual “Shark Tag Tournament,” this year emphasizing the tagging and releasing of the catch as opposed to a 100 percent kill contest, will be held from the Montauk Marine Basin, West Lake Drive, this Saturday and Sunday.
John G. Casey, biologist and director of the shark research program of the National Marine Fisheries Service Laboratory in Narragansett, R.I., and research technicians of the New York Ocean Science Laboratory in Montauk will collect specimens.
A clambake, barbecue and calypso dance will be held Saturday evening. The public is invited.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, July 20
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband have been known to show up on the South Fork almost exclusively to tap its deep pockets.
That was not the case on Friday afternoon, though, when for a couple of hours Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for United States Senate took a decidedly grass-roots, even intimate, turn as she visited with some of East Hampton’s eldest and youngest.
Sometime after the Clintons’ less-than-two-day visit last summer, which was almost entirely devoted to enhancing Democratic Party coffers, Christopher Kelley, who heads East Hampton’s Democratic Party, said he told Hillary 2000 campaign managers that a non-fund-raising jaunt here might be in order.
—
In a surprise move Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Board seemed ready to abolish a town law that had the chairman of the East Hampton Republican Committee under investigation since January.
The idea of getting rid of the law followed a ruling by the Town Board of Ethics that the chairman, Thomas E. Knobel, did not violate the provisions of the town code. The ruling was sent to the town board in a letter this week.
—
Brian Warwicker stood at the Montauk Marine Basin last week looking up at the Grey Lady. She was out of the water, on a cradle, and under inspection by a marine surveyor.
Captain Warwicker had not seen his sailboat in over a month, since May 30. His last view of her, from a Coast Guard helicopter 112 miles off Cape Hatteras, must have triggered a torrent of conflicting emotions.
Only minutes before, he and his two crewmen had abandoned ship — jumped off the boat one at a time into 20-foot waves to be lifted to safety.
