125 Years Ago 1901
From The East Hampton Star, April 5
Three car loads of iron pipe have arrived for the Clinton Gas Co., and it is being carted on Buell’s lane. The largest size is eight inches and weighs five hundred pounds to the length. C.M. Clark of the Springfield Gas Machine Co. was in town Tuesday and says the gas machine will be finished in about two weeks. Ground was broken for the gas house last Thursday. The contract for digging the trenches was given to Nat Miller.
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If troubled by a weak digestion, loss of appetite, or constipation, try a few doses of Chamberlain’s Stomach and Liver Tablets. Every box warranted. For sale by Van Scoy & Dayton, and Rackett & Co., Amagansett.
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The new drug store of E.J. Edwards promises to be an ornament to our village, both the exterior and the fixtures and fittings of the interior being very handsome and entirely different from anything ever before seen here. The store will probably open May 1. W.M. Kerr, of New York, a pharmacist of high reputation and long experience, will have charge of the prescription department and, with his family, occupy the living rooms over the store.
100 Years Ago 1926
From The East Hampton Star, April 2
The boys of the East Hampton fire department were hosts last Friday night. Those who attended were loud in their praise not only of the entertainment provided but for the good old-fashioned spirit that prevailed. Everyone enjoyed themselves and went home well pleased with the Firemen’s Annual Night.
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The fund for the advertising of East Hampton is continuing to swell. Each day brings new subscribers to the campaign, and many pleasant surprises have occurred to date. This week a check from A.O. Jones, who is in Florida, came to N.N. Tiffany, who is treasurer of the advertising fund. Mr. Jones had read in the Star of the campaign to be put across for East Hampton, and felt that as a citizen of East Hampton he wanted to help the cause along. The check, for seventy-five dollars, has been acknowledged with thanks by the treasurer, and it is hoped that others will follow the example set by Mr. Jones, one of our old merchants.
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Mrs. Percy Schenck and children and Mrs. Kenneth Hedges and children will motor into New York next week and spend a day or two. While there they will take their children to see the circus, at the new Madison Square Garden.
75 Years Ago 1951
From The East Hampton Star, April 5
The April “At Home” for Guild Hall members was held on Sunday afternoon, with about 140 present. Ralph C. Frood, Winter Committee Chairman, welcomed the guests on behalf of Guild Hall, and introduced Mrs. William Strong, president of the Ramblers literary society, which put on a program and entertained at tea in celebration of their 50th anniversary. Mrs. Strong spoke briefly, explaining that Mrs. Courtland Mulford and Mrs. Arnold Rattray had arranged the program.
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The Village Improvement Societies of Amagansett, Sag Harbor and Southampton were represented, on Monday, April 2, at the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society meeting held in Guild Hall. Mrs. Hamilton King presided.
Mrs. H. Allen Wardle spoke, representing the Tree Committee of which she and Mrs. George Roberts are chairman and co-chairman, on the Dutch Elm Disease which only became a serious problem on eastern Long Island last summer. One theory is that beetles carrying the fungus were brought from Connecticut in cars ferrying across the Sound, for the first cases were discovered in Greenport and Sag Harbor.
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Montauk
Fishangri-La opened on Saturday, March 31st, with eight boats sailing on the week-end. Capt. John Kresse piloted the “Jigger” after bringing her out from a Staten Island dry dock through three days of stormy, heavy seas, arriving at the Fishangri-La dock Saturday noon. Other boats sailing were Capt. Glass’s “Helen,” Capt. Moore’s “Anona,” Capt. Bruin’s “Ranger,” Capt. Plumacher’s “Francis Ann,” and a boat from Shelter Island, the “Sea Queen.” While boats were not crowded, all had some passengers and reported a fair catch of real nice Cod.
50 Years Ago 1976
From The East Hampton Star, April 1
The Army Corps of Engineers has issued, almost a generation later, a draft environmental impact statement on its 1958 “Cooperative Beach Erosion Control and Interim Hurricane Study.” In 1958, when environmental impact statements on proposed public works were not required, the plan had a $37 million price tag.
The project’s cost today would be well over $108 million. It would, by the Army’s latest calculations, give major protection in the area between Fire Island Inlet and Montauk Point against a storm which could do up to $672,600,000 in damage.
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Montauk
Gail Hannaford Walsh, Hudson Road, has a painting entered in the Benedictine Liqueurs “art awards” national competition.
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East Hampton Town’s registered Democrats, 1,956 of them at last count, will have a choice Tuesday of four slates of would-be delegates to represent the First Congressional District at their Party’s national convention in July. The slates are pledged to Henry Jackson, Morris Udall, Jimmy Carter, and no one. Under a recently enacted State law, they will for the first time be identified on the ballot by preference. There will be nothing else on the ballot in East Hampton; there are no contests for any Party committee positions here.
The primary will be a purely Democratic affair; the Town’s 4,626 Republicans, 108 Conservatives, and 69 Liberals will have nothing to vote about.
25 Years Ago 2001
From The East Hampton Star, April 5
Seeking solutions to the affordable housing problem in East Hampton, the town board might pair up with the private nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity, which wants to provide a house for an East Hampton family.
A 1.7-acre lot off Springs-Fireplace Road near Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton that the town hopes to acquire from Suffolk County is being eyed for three affordable houses for families with limited incomes.
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Friday’s coastal storm dropped the most rain the East End has seen in any one day since 1982, and it fell on cold ground already saturated by 12 previous days of rain in March as well as melted snow.
So intense was Friday’s deluge in Montauk — nearly four inches in 24 hours — and so oblivious to roads and houses were the resultant floods, that it seemed to many that the hamlet’s rolling topography was demanding overdue recognition.
By Saturday morning a number of roads were impassable and whole neighborhoods looked more like the Thousand Islands of northern New York than the East End.
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David Swickard, a social studies teacher at East Hampton High School and a music reviewer for The Star, has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities as one of 15 participants in a seminar for teachers in Italy.
Dr. Swickard will spend six weeks in Assisi, Siena, and Rome studying the life of St. Francis of Assisi in history and art with William R. Cook, distinguished teaching professor of history at the State University at Geneseo and author of three books about the saint.
