125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, August 31
Summer visitors, before returning to their homes, should not fail to get a copy of “Historic East Hampton” to take with them as an interesting souvenir of the place. Aside from the historic matter which it contains, the many fine East Hampton pictures found therein make it a valued reminder of pleasant days spent in East Hampton.
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Southampton
Southampton has been having an exciting crusade against the automobile. It has been ruled out of the Meadow Club grounds, and an attempt was made to influence the town council to forbid it around the station during train time, to make drivers of automobiles stop when horses in harness were encountered and to run at almost a snail’s speed through the village. The ordinance passed did not take up all these questions, but simply forbade the automobilists to drive through the village at a pace faster than seven miles an hour. The cause of the agitation is that automobiles at present are rare machines in Southampton; in fact, there are only three in the entire community.
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Mrs. George Harrison and family, of Brooklyn, who have been visiting Mrs. Harrison’s brothers, Henry, DeWitt and Daniel Talmage, have gone to Southampton to visit a sister, Mrs. F.B. Phillips.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, August 28
Time and the coming of dirty weather are defeating the Coast Guard’s dry navy blockade off Rum Row, it was learned Wednesday from officers in that service. The Government armada that since last May has been frightening off rum smugglers — more or less — in the waters about New York and Long Island is breaking up in preparation of meeting that other grisly enemy, winter.
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The two lifeguards, “Dr.” Sam John and Wilmot Baker, at the Maidstone bathing beach, added another notch to the seventeen they have carved in their watchman’s seat, representing seventeen persons to whom they have given assistance, and perhaps saved their lives, this season.
The eighteenth notch represents the life of Fred Lake, who is summering in East Hampton, at the Remington cottage.
The call for help was made about 12:30 Tuesday, when the beach was thronged with bathers. The two guardsmen at once saw someone in trouble, out by the first line of buoys.
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Plans for the Horse Show to be held on the grounds of the Riding Club, Friday, September 4, at 1:30, for the benefit of the East Hampton Settlement House and the East Hampton Gun Club, are growing rapidly. Many entries have been received and the committee wishes to announce that entries should be forwarded to Mrs. James McMann, Terbell lane, at once, in order that a full program may be printed.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, August 31
One of the outstanding events of the Guild Hall summer season will be the outdoor Clothesline Art Exhibition which will take place in front of the building Saturday, Sept. 2, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., as a benefit for Guild Hall, with artists contributing 50 percent of all sales made that day.
Mrs. E. Hollingsworth Siter, chairman of the exhibition, reports that many paintings have already been received for the exhibition from both professional and amateur artists living in this area.
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The New York papers carried in their list of casualties in Korea on Monday the name of Corporal Wilbur H. Miller of the Springs Road, East Hampton. Corporal Miller was wounded. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur T. Miller, received word that he had been knocked out of a foxhole on July 29 and received injuries which made an operation necessary. He had the operation in a Tokyo Army hospital Aug. 12, and wrote home on Aug. 23 that he was getting on fine and expected to leave the hospital shortly, but did not know his destination.
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Nineteen healthy and happy girls and boys have returned to their homes in New York City after spending two months here recovering from the effects of rheumatic fever, childhood’s deadliest foe.
The Hampton Project, of the Pediatric Foundation started in 1940, is unique in giving foster homes supervised care which helps to make strong again hearts that are frequently damaged by this dreaded heart disease.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, August 28
There are fresh-water wetlands and there are salt-water wetlands, and while the twain often meet, until lately the State Department of Environmental Conservation was narrowly empowered to protect only salt-water wetlands — much to the chagrin of environmentalists, including the Group for America’s South Fork.
Now Governor Carey has signed a bill that extends State protection to fresh-water as well as salt-water wetlands. Neither Group nor East Hampton Town officials were sure how many acres the bill would apply to in the Town, but they agreed it would be several.
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President Gerald Ford’s appointments staff could hardly have missed the prominently featured story in the New York Times this week about the East End’s newfound popularity as a politician’s money Mecca, and it is probably busy right now booking the chief executive for his appearance here in the election-year summer of 1976.
It had better hurry, or all the best swimming pool settings will be taken.
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Herbie, the pride of the Springs School’s science department, is lost. The excitement of the Fisherman’s Fair was too much for him.
Has anybody here seen Herbie? He is a very large land tortoise, about seven inches high, 13 inches long, and weighing about 13 pounds. He disappeared from the schoolyard sometime during the weekend of the Fair, presumably in search of peace and quiet, and has not been seen since.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, August 31
If State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has his way, a law providing alternatives to the ubiquitous automobile could be in force on the South Fork as early as 2002.
Calling traffic congestion “unprecedented” as more visitors and workers flock to the area, Mr. Thiele introduced legislation last week directing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the State Department of Transportation not only to create alternatives, but to provide money to implement them.
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The parties this summer celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sag Harbor Hills, an African-American resort neighborhood just east of the village, are like family reunions. Partygoers know not only one another but one another’s children and grandchildren.
And with good reason. Many of the people who have houses in the Hills have been coming to the resort for decades and knew one another from Brooklyn or New Jersey or Mount Vernon even before building there. They’ve shared summer vacations with the same families, watched children grow up and get married and return with children of their own.
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If Banana Republic or Ralph Lauren’s Polo Country Store had waited until now to stake out a storefront in East Hampton Village, they may have been sorely disappointed.
That’s because the village board may soon pass a law barring any more retail chains from opening up shop here.
