By Francesca Normile
In 1956, the hamlet of Bridgehampton celebrated its tricentennial, or 300 years of settlement. The natural next step, after artifacts, documents and photographs were donated for the celebration, was to found of a historical society. Bridgehampton native Ernestine Rose soon took the reigns of the project.
According to historian Ann Sanford, PhD, who is giving a presentation at the Hampton Library on Ernestine Rose on Thursday, August 12, Rose became the first president of the Bridgehampton Historical Society after founding the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library thirty years earlier in 1926.
“The society wasn’t as focused back then on programs and such. They mainly were building a collection, asking families who had lived in Bridgehampton for photographs, documents, deeds, diaries and furniture,” Sanford remarked, of Rose’s early work with the society.
The present-day Bridgehampton Historical Society’s archivist, Julie Greene, agreed with Sanford, saying, “At the beginning, it [the society] really consisted of people who had things available to them from the community and now it’s much more about preservation/conservation and working programs around what the society has. We are always collecting, but now it is more like they [the founders of the Society] collected, got this up and running, and now we are mainly focused on preserving what was collected.”
An example of the historical society’s work in the field of preservation in present day is the upcoming Ludlow-Grange Event, a cocktail fundraiser for the society to be held at the Ludlow-Grange House in Bridgehampton this Sunday, August 8.
Program Coordinator at the Bridgehampton Historical Society, Sally Spanburgh, calls the Ludlow-Grange house, originally a modest saltbox built in 1820, “an outstanding achievement of restoration.”
“It was in pretty bad shape when they got a hold of it,” Spanburgh explained, “despite the fact that it had last been owned by [Southampton] town historian Robert Keene. The current owners really breathed new life into it. When they moved in, you could see through the roof in the foyer and there was a pickup truck in the yard that you couldn’t see because the yard was so over-grown that it totally enveloped it.” From Ernestine Rose to Ludlow-Grange, the efforts to preserve Bridgehampton’s history are being showcased in the upcoming days.
The Ludlow-Grange Event, at 2782 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, is on Sunday, August 8 from 4 to 7 p.m. General admission costs $75 and includes music, wine and tea. All proceeds go to the general operational costs of the Historical Society. Call 537-1088 for more information.
Ann Sanford’s illustrated talk, “The Worldly and the Local in One Librarian’s Life— Bridgehampton’s Ernestine Rose (1880-1966),” is on Thursday, August 12 at 6 p.m. at the Hampton Library, 2478 Main Street, Bridgehampton. Call 537-0015 to register.
on Aug 7, 2010