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| Lizbeth May Halsey White & Edward Pearson White c1929 | 34 Post Crossing |
By Portia Flanagan
Long Island Traveler-Watchman
23 May 1985
SOUTHAMPTON—The Contents of the Southampton Historical
Museum were designated officially as the Lizbeth White Memorial by members of
the Southampton Colonial Society at their annual meeting held in the museum’s
spacious drawing room Friday night, May 17.
The members’ unanimous action was taken to honor the late
Mrs. White who, as Town Historian in the 1920s, uncovered numbers of
long-hidden treasures and urged the community to preserve its rich heritage for
future generations.
Society Trustee Roy L. Wines Jr. told the 100 persons
present that it was “a privilege to offer the motion” to designate the museum’s
contents in Mrs. White’s memory. His motion also provided for the creation of
“an appropriate bronze plague” to be mounted in the museum building, known as
The Captain Rogers Homestead, at Meeting House Lane.
Preceding the establishment of the memorial, Society
president Robert Keene, who is the current town historian, described Mrs. White
as “one of my heroines.” It was in his own search of town records that revealed
her accomplishments and foresight, along with her remarkable grasp and concept
of local history, that endeared her to me, three Town Historians and some 50
years later,” Mr. Keen said.
Reading from a prepared statement, Mr. Keene said that in
1915, when Southampton celebrated its 275th anniversary, the local
paper, the Sea-Side Times, published a piece written by Mrs. White that he
said, “proved to me that she had the understanding and inspiration that, over
35 years later, resulted in the founding of the Southampton Historical Museum.
In it Mrs. White noted that “Many of our town’s most precious memorials have vanished
forever. Our fathers were too busy planting and colonizing, to think much about
leaving behind them personal souvenirs . . . The golden opportunities for
constructing the infant history of our colony have for the most part passed
away. Those which remain ought to be seized with the greatest avidity.”
She would like to see, she wrote 70 years ago, “The fairest
lot of land to be found between Long Springs and the beach devoted to a
memorial use. Spare an acre or two from your generous farms, upon it to be
erected a modest but dignified structure of stone, or brick, fireproof, which
shall contain primarily a library. Then into this repository let every native
and every citizen take a pride in gathering whatever shall preserve the memory
of the past or throw light upon its life. The place and time to begin are here
and now.
“Begin with today and work backward as fast and as far as
possible,” she wrote, continuing: “Gradually the past will be restored, the
lost will be found. Long hidden treasures will leap from their hiding places
and find their companions and congenial associations.”
She noted in the article that the Colonial Society,
established in 1898, had sponsored two loan exhibitions of “a rare and
beautiful collection of articles and relics of earlier days . . . These exhibitions have proved our
locality rich in treasures of the past and the Society has long looked forward
to making permanent an exhibit of the kind of thing which historical societies
everywhere are doing, with a background of incidents far less picturesque than
that Southampton possesses.”
It was not until 1951, however, 19 years after Mrs. White’s
death in October, 1932, that the Colonial Society was able to open the doors of
the Historical Museum, its first permanent home, which Mr. Keene said on Friday
is “this truly magnificent museum complex which has become a fitting memorial
for all that Lizbeth White ever dreamed of. And furthermore, he said, “it is a
tribute to Lizbeth White, the first woman historian of the Town and the
meticulous recorder of our history and heritage.”
It was Mrs. White, Mr. Keene said, who was instrumental in
bringing to the attention of the Town Board in 1928 the design of the town
flag; it was her “small typewritten note” that he found among the papers of the
late Town Historian William K. Dunwell that led to the adoption of the first
Southampton Town Flag in 1982, Mr. Keene added.
And it was Mrs. White, he said, who discovered that the
first woman to step ashore at what is now Conscience Point in North Sea in 1640
was Eleanor Howell, the wife of the leader of the first white settlers, Edward
Howell. It was she who identified the small boy in the boat as the Howell’s
eight-year-old son, Arthur, he said.
Mrs. White, who was born Lizbeth Halsey, live din what is
today the Post House at North Main Street, and raised her family there. She was
the founding Regent of the Southampton Colony Chapter of the Daughters of the
American Revolution, and it was, appropriately, the chapter that presented the
flag to the town.
