Place:East Hampton, Suffolk, New York, United States

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The Village of East Hampton is a village in Suffolk County, New York, United States. It is located in the town of East Hampton on the South Fork of eastern Long Island. The population was 1,083 at the time of the 2010 census, 251 less than in the year 2000. It is a center of the summer resort and upscale locality at the East End of Long Island known as The Hamptons and is generally considered one of the area's two most prestigious communities.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

17th century

Founded in 1648 by Puritan farmers who worshiped as Presbyterians, the village of Easthampton was a farming community with some fishing and whaling. Whales that washed up on the beach were butchered and whales were hunted offshore with rowboats sometimes manned by Montauk Indians. Due to no good harbor in East Hampton; however, it was Sag Harbor which became a whaling center which sent ships to the Pacific.

The land had been purchased in 1648 by the governors of Connecticut Colony and New Haven Colony from the Montauk Indians, in large part for small drills to make wampum, their traditional industry; hunting and fishing rights were retained. It was then sold for about £30 to settlers, some from Lynn and Salem, Massachusetts, who had not found room for their herds in Massachusetts Bay Colony. The original name for the village was Maidstone, from a village in Kent where some of the settlers may have originated. Each original settler was allotted a village lot of several acres and rights in common to surrounding lands which were regulated by the town government. The area was transferred to the jurisdiction of New York in 1664.

In large part, early settlers in East Hampton were unacquainted with one another. A great deal of jockeying for position resulted, which took the form of legal proceedings conducted by the town government. Summaries of these proceedings were recorded by the town clerk and form the major resource for historians studying East Hampton during the 17th Century; there are few other written records such as diaries.^[1]

The witchcraft accusation against Elizabeth Garlick began in East Hampton.^[2]

19th century

In the late 19th century, after extension of the railway to Bridgehampton in 1870 by predecessors of the Long Island Rail Road, visitors began to summer, at first in boarding houses on Main Street, then in "cottages," which sometimes were substantial estates, built on former farms and pastures in the village. Shingle style architecture was popular from the 1880s. By the early 1890s the prices being commanded for cottage sites, as high as $10 thousand an acre, were the object of comment by the editors of The New York Times.^[3] The Montauk Branch of the railroad was extended through East Hampton to Montauk in 1895.^[4]

20th century

It was during the 1910s and 20s^[5] that most luxury estates were built by the very wealthy, mostly in the Eastern Plain, a previously undeveloped agricultural area.^[4] The privately circulated Blue Book of the Hamptons informed, and continues to inform, fashionable residents as to who is who.^[6] The Great Depression and World War II resulted in a lull, but full-scale building of cottages resumed in the 1950s and some of the large estates began to be broken up. By 1968 the exclusive character of the "Summer Colony" had become so diluted by the merely rich that the column of that name in The East Hampton Star was discontinued.^[7]

The quaint windmills and other sights were favored by artists and art students from the 1890s. It became an artists' colony in the mid-20th century, popularized by the Abstract Expressionists.

21st century

As of the 21st century the Hamptons are a fashionable, if crowded and expensive, weekend destination during the summer season. According to Sotheby's International Realty:

History and surviving historic sites are detailed in "Village of East Hampton Multiple Area", a New York State study.

Research Tips

External Links

• Outstanding guide to East Hampton family history and genealogy resources (FamilySearch Research Wiki). Birth, marriage, and death records, town histories, cemeteries, churches, newspapers, libraries, and genealogical societies.