Gayety at Southampton | 1895

June 23, 1895 | The New York Times

Summer Life at Long Island’s Great Resort

SOUTHAMPTON, L.I. June 22—As the season advances, this popular east end cottage resort resumes its old-time gayety. All the houses are now occupied. Many plans are being perfected for driving parties, teas, dances, and other social pastimes, and the present season promised to be a lively and jolly one among the cottage contingent. There is probably not another Summer place on Long Island that has such a large number of costly and fashionable drags, tally-hos, and other equipages as are to be seen upon the shady thoroughfares of this village. The many pretty drive in the north woods are much sought by merry driving parties, as are also the breezy and picturesque roads on Shinnecock Hills, leading to the golf links.

The bathing pavilions at the ocean shore opened for the season today. The facilities are better than ever this season, and especial attention has been paid to the safety and convenience of the bathers. Two bathing masters will be in constant attendance during the day to help anyone who may be in danger. The bathing at this pint is admitted to be the finest along the coast, owing to the peculiar form of the shore and the absence of the gravel bottom.

***

The Meadow Club courts present a gala appearance each morning. It is customary to play tennis until noon, when, after the season opens a grand rush is made to the beach and to Agawam Lake, a short distance away, where bathing suits are donned and bathing is indulged in. Among the most enthusiastic bathers are the Misses Barney (nieces of William C. Whitney), the Misses Moeran, The Misses Walton of Brooklyn, the Misses Russell, Mrs. T. G. Thomas, Mrs. Metcalfe Thomas, Messrs. Edward Bell, Roderick Terry, Dr. Thomas, Dr. George A. Dixon, the Rev. William S. Rainsford, and William Walton.

William Walton and family of Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn, have arrived at their handsome Summer village at Hampton Park.

Walter E. Parfitt and family of Brooklyn are at their Summer place at Bridgehampton.

P. G. Bartlett, the lawyer, of New York has rented a cottage at Bridgehampton for the season.

***

The Art School at Shinnecock Hills has opened, and whole umbrellas can be seen in all directions about the hills. William M. Chase, who has charge of the school, has arrived at his cottage on the hills. The large dormitory, which has been built since last season, near the studio, is proving a great convenience to the students, who, in past Summers, have been obliged to put up at neighboring farmhouses, and who did not receive in a great many instances good entertainment.

***

The Southampton Village Trustees have decided to change the name of Windmill Lane to Agawam Avenue, and to apply this designation also to the continuation of the same street past Salem H. Wales’s house to Elihu Root’s corner. As this street is of generous width, the Trustees have violated all precedents in our village. Hitherto the name “avenue” has been applied only to narrow alleys and by-roads, while streets of this width have been designated largely as “lanes” as, for example, First Neck Lane, Gin Lane, Halsey’s Neck Lane, &c, all wide roadways.

***

The Shinnecock Indians, who have not been very friendly in past seasons with the art students, have buried the hatchet and signed a treaty of peace with Art Village, as the little settlement of studios on the eastern slope of the hills is called. Last Summer some of the Indians demanded tribute from the artists for the privilege of sketching on their reservation, which is situated on a neck of land about a mile away from the Art Village. The artists refused to reimburse the redmen, and on several occasions the students were attached by the Indians, and were obliged to withdraw from the field minus their sketching paraphernalia.

***

It is proposed to erect a six-thousand dollar addition to the Union School Building in this village. A meeting will soon be held to vote on the matter.

***

The car containing material for the new chapel and addition to the Presbyterian Church was burned at Middleport, this State, one day the past week.

***

A number of students from the art department of Pratt Institute of Brooklyn will spend their vacation at Art Village, Shinnecock Hills. The art students of the Brooklyn Institute will also attend the art school this season.

Salem H. Wales of New York, who has a handsome Summer place adjoining his son-in-law’s, Elihu Root, on the west shore of Lake Agawam, has been receiving the first congratulations of his numerous cottage friends for his appointment by Mayor Strong as a member of the new East River Bridge Commission. Mr. Wales is one of Southampton’s pioneer cottage residents, and takes a deep interest in the welfare of the village. He is a Director of the Southampton Bank, an officer of the Rogers Memorial Library Association, and a member of the Village Improvement Association.

Secretary Root and Family to be Guests of Mrs. S.H. Wales | 1907

August 16, 1907

"From the Archives: Zella de Milhau Was Conventionality's Enemy"

Zella de Milhau: Dispatches from the Archives, by Mary Cummings

Southampton Patch | June 1, 2011

 

Making art, making life merry and facing danger when it mattered made for a life full of adventure and fun. 

 

Feminine fussbudgets and finicky old gents may have dominated the social scene in Southampton at the turn of the last century but not without plenty of competition from the irrepressible Zella de Milhau, who came to Shinnecock Hills to study at William Merritt Chase’s Summer Art School and stayed to stir things up.

Here is fellow art student Marietta Minnigerode Andrews’ description of the friend she called Della:
“[She] came to Shinnecock to be with friends and to make life merry for others in her own absurd and lovable way …”

Short in stature and favoring short-cropped hair and plus-fours, de Milhau called the Art Village cottage she shared with Molly Lawton “Laffalot.” When she was adopted by the Shinnecocks in a blood ceremony she took the name Chiola (she who laughs) and when she gave a party, she pulled out all the stops. Heads turned and hearts stopped when she drove her Tally-ho (four-in-hand coach) through the village at a hair-raising clip, a frequent occurrence that inspired this bit of verse:
“When Miss Zella Milhau
Drives her Tally-hau
She takes her whip
And hits ‘em a clip
And makes the horses gau”

“Laffalot” was thought so original that Charles Jagger devoted an admiring article to its charms in the autumn 1912 issue of his Southampton Magazine. Purchased from Mrs. William S. Hoyt, the structure was but a “bare little hut,” he wrote, until it was transformed by de Milhau’s magical hand (with help from her friend, architect Katherine Budd). De Milhau filled it with exotica — “Barbaric rugs and draperies … thousands of Indian relics and trophies of the chase or other sports or adventures in France, in Egypt, on Shinnecock Bay on the Western plains, in the Rocky Mountains, in the woods of Maine or elsewhere all over the world.”

She got around.

With her student days behind her — she also studied printmaking with Mary Moran in East Hampton — she went on to experiment with etching, aquatint and mezzotint, rather successfully it seems: the Library of Congress owns 15 of her prints. She and Ms. Budd were driving forces in the much publicized Street Greenery Movement in Brooklyn Heights where she lived off-season, and she continued to leap into action whenever she thought she could help.

During World War I de Milhau raised the money for an ambulance and shipped it to France where she took the wheel. Writing from France in a letter reprinted in the November 21, 1918, edition of The Southampton Press, she described her service “evacuating ‘old uns’ under shell fire and carrying wounded, too, under the same conditions.” For this act of generosity and heroism the French awarded her the Croix de Guerre.

Twenty years later she was again in rescue mode when the 1938 Hurricane struck while she was spending time at her Montauk hideaway, “Pirate’s Cove.” With Napeague awash, she rallied three men to help her gather supplies of food and medicine for the cut-off community. For this, she was cited by the Red Cross for her courage.

Recalling an impression of childhood, when de Milhau was a family friend, Barbara Lord spoke in a 2007 interview of de Milhau’s unique sense of style. She remembered picnics at “Pirate’s Cove,” where her family was entertained by de Milhau, and Fourth of July parades in which de Milhau could always be spotted marching proudly through town.

“She was an eccentric,” Ms. Lord said. “She was a live wire.”

Sources from the Southampton Historical Museum archives: “Memoirs of a Poor Relation” by Marietta Minnigerode Andrews; “Laffalot,” Southampton Magazine, Autumn 1912; Southampton Press 21 November 1918; “The Students of William Merritt Chase,” The Parrish Art Museum exhibition catalog, 1973; Interview with Barbara Lord, March 2007.

About this column: Lessons on local history from the manager of the Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center