DAN'S PAPERS, July 2, 2010 Page 63 www.danshamptons.com
Southampton’s Past, Online By T.J. Clemente Years ago New York Yankee/New York Mets manager Casey Stengel used to say, after making an obscure point, “You can look it up.” And now in Southampton, when it comes to the town’s long litany of historical documents and records, you can in fact go to the Town of Southampton website and look it up. So I decided to give it a try. First thing I did was navigate to town.southampton.ny.us. On the town’s homepage, was a search option, so I typed in “historical records” and was presented with a table of contents. It listed seven of the town’s eight historical books, reportedly meticulously electronically reproduced under the supervision of Southampton Town Clerk, Sundy Schemeyer. The point of the project is to allow anyone to access town history online. It took 18 months to accomplish the tasks and reports are that some of the documents were as fragile as, well, a 400-year document can be. Now they look just as ancient in their typeface, but are Steve Jobs/Bill Gates modern—right on your computer screen. (I wince when I think of someone scribbling down all the comments of a town meeting in the 1600s with a quill pen, home made ink, in the winter chill—long before central heating, great insulation and waterproof shoes.) Now with a mouse click here and a mouse click there, the voices of the past come through, in easily readable computer screen text. I decided to look up Shinnecock facts since they and their proposed casinos are in the news. I loved the presentation page Volume One, which gave me the feel I once had viewing documents at the Library of Congress, while interning for Congressman Mario Biaggi in the early ‘70s. In that book, I found this note, preparing me for my voyage through history via my laptop. It read, “To the memory of Henry Pierson, Town Clerk, (1653-1669) to whose faithful pen we are indebted for a large part or our knowledge of the early history of the town, but who, while giving us much information about other men, has left us very little concerning himself; and as no tombstone marks his last resting place, may this humble notice be his Memorial and Epitaph.” How could I leave that out of this article? The table of contents of book one was a treasure of phrases such as, “sachem’s house” and “Whaling squadron.” How about: “price of wheat”! I was in Town of Southampton Historical heaven. A while back, I had heard Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst mention to someone at a meeting I was covering that this historical project was being done, but I didn’t grasp the potential level of fun I might have skipping through history while researching this article. As for some Shinnecock trivia, how’s this? A chapter titled, “Confirmation of the sale of Indian Deed. November 24th, 1686.” This line sounds rather to the point, does it (continued on page 66)
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