They Did What?

May 1, 1941 East Hampton Star

Sometimes you look back at events in the past and say to yourself “What in the world where they thinking?” Such was the case when I learned about Tom Thumb Weddings.

Popular P. T. Barnum Circus performer Charles Sherwood, known as “General Thom Thumb” was married in 1863 to Lavinia Warren. Thom Thumb, a dwarf, was 3.25 feet tall, his bride Lavinia, a diminutive 2.66 feet tall. A wonderful diversion to the Civil War, the wedding was attended by thousands and covered in newspapers around the world. “Tom Thumb weddings” staged for entertainment, and acted out by young children began appearing shortly afterwards.

At least two were held here at the First Presbyterian Church, one in May 1941, and one in June 1956. In both cases, the performances were fundraisers for the Women’s Association. A Tom Thumb wedding at Clinton Academy sponsored by the Ladies Village Improvement Society (LVIS) in 1909 was most likely the first held in East Hampton. Scattered Tom Thumb weddings still crop up here and there across the country to this day.

The 1941 affair was held on a Friday night at 7:30 pm, essentially a play, performed by the youngest members of the Sunday school. The wedding party consisted of: bride Peggy Nugent, groom Tyler Huntting, five bridesmaids, six flower girls, a “minister” and four “parents” of the couple, one best man, four ushers, and twenty-three “guests”. Ann Roarick starred as one of the guests. The event began with a young soloist performing two songs, backed up by the boys of the junior choir. A boy’s quartet, including Jane Talmage’s late husband Dave, who was 14 at the time, also performed. Advanced ticket purchases were encouraged. The night was declared a success bringing in $121.00. Daffodils and forsythia, from church member’s gardens, decorated the hall. Vetault’s Flower Shop donated the bridal party bouquets and loaned palm plants.

The Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton held a Tom Thumb wedding in 1955, in that case the 5 year old groom ran to his mother, refusing to “marry” the bride. The best man stepped in, saved the day, and “married” the bride. The East Hampton Star reported the event in a front page article titled” “The Bride was Jilted”. Motivated by that cute story, I assume, the ladies of the Women’s Association couldn’t help but stage another Tom Thumb Wedding the following year.

The June 1956 Tom Thumb wedding was held on a Saturday afternoon at 3:30 in the Session House. The public was invited. The bride, kindergartener Naimy Hackett, age 5, and groom, Robert Suchy, age 8, were supported by one “minister” seven bridesmaids, three flower girls, one train bearer, one ring bearer and four “parents” of the couple. Guests were: “the minister and his wife”, “President and Mrs. Eisenhower”, East Hampton’s “Mayor and his wife” (played by Steve Talmage, age 4, and Linda Talmage, age 5), and “Princess Grace and Prince Rainer”. A silver tea followed the event. Ah, the good ole days…..

June 28, 1956 East Hampton Star

-Hilary Osborn Malecki

"George Washington Slept Here"

“George Washington Slept here”…. is a popular phrase appearing on plaques of establishments that were lucky enough to have hosted our first president. While I am unaware of any tales of George Washington spending the night in East Hampton, I did come across a grand story in an old East Hamptons Star, reporting on a girl’s sleepover atop the steeple of our very church. The following appeared in the East Hampton Star on November 17, 1960, during its conversion from a two steeple church to a single steeple.

When the workman were demolishing the south tower, which had an open top from which the whole village could be viewed, they found names of half the youngsters in East Hampton, past and present, scrawled on the sides of the rickety winding stairway.

One young matron recalls how she and another girl, when they were Girl Scouts, actually carried their sleeping bags up that south tower and spent the night there, for a great thrill.  The girls were unnamed. I wondered if it would be possible, all these years later, to find out who they were. But then by chance, I overheard one of our church members repeating the tale. There it was…mystery solved…..our steeple sleeper was none other than Elly Ratsep!

Rev. Francis Kinsler was the minister of the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton from 1942 thru 1954. Back in the war years of the 1940’s, as the story goes, he and his wife decided to take their two sons camping on Montauk. Hardly believable today, the minister’s daughter and a group of her friends were left, without adult supervision, to have a sleepover…..alone in the manse! The girls were Helen Kinsler, Carol Ann Walthers, Geraldine Gould-Webb, and our own Ann Pierce-Roberts and Elly Osborne-Ratsep. One of them came up with the grand idea to sleep atop the steeple of the church. The girls headed over to the church, climbing through a series of doors and up a series of ladders to reach the top of the south tower. Prior to 1960, the church had two steeples. One had a flat roof, with an iron fence around its perimeter. Elly says the fence was very secure, she knows because she tested it herself. After a while, one of the girls had an allergy attack, the other girls escorted her back to the manse, leaving Geraldine and Elly atop the steeple. Geraldine and Elly thought they should leave but realized the other girls had taken the only flashlight. It was now dark, and too dangerous to descend the ladders to get back down. They would have to spend the night. Elly says the best part of the adventure was when they awoke in the morning to a glorious unobstructed view of the ocean. Back during this time, there were hardly any trees. In the morning, the girls had an unobstructed view all the way across the village to the ocean at Main Beach. Elly says she has carried that memory of the ocean, on that morning, in her mind’s eye, her entire life. “I still see it like a slide, the view was incredible”, she says.

-–Hilary O Malecki

Collection Boxes

Q. Most churches have collection plates; the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton has collection boxes, why?

-A Curious Churchgoer

A. Great question Curious Church Goer. As we are a community that loves our history, there is quite a story behind the collection boxes. When the church was reconstructed in the early 1960’s, and redesigned from a two steeple church to its current one center steeple design, a church member was motivated to donate a treasured possession. The member was local builder Frank Eldredge (1885-1965). In his obituary, Frank was reported to be an expert on Long Island History especially East Hampton buildings. He was a charter member of the East Hampton Historical Society. A lifelong member of the church, Frank was an Elder on the Session for 27 years and taught Sunday School. He presented the church with some old wood, but not just any wood. It was wood from the first church building constructed in 1651 near the South End Cemetery; wood from the second church constructed in 1717 that stood near where the Guild Hall is today; and wood from the church on our current site constructed in 1861. With help from Courtland Mulford, and George Schulte, Frank constructed the offering boxes from this wood, as a gift for the newly reconstructed 1961 church. The design of the boxes was copied from two original collection boxes of the 1717 church. One box is in the collection of the East Hampton Historical Society, the other was in the private collection of Mrs. Raymond A. Smith, Sr., at the time.

Morristown, NJ to East Hampton, NY

Rev. Samuel Buell

It is a year this October that our new pastor, Reverend Scot McCachren arrived from Morristown, NJ to be the 21st pastor of the Presbyterian First Presbyterian Church in East Hampton. Turns out something else made the same journey from Morristown to East Hampton over 230 years earlier….a letter from the 1st pastor of the Morristown Presbyterian Church, Rev Timothy Johnes, was sent to East Hampton’s 3rd pastor, Rev Samuel Buell, in 1783. The letter was recently discovered by the Morristown church’s archivist Jan Frazier and forwarded to Rev McCachren.

The letter, now faded brown with age, is written in flowing script and of a colonial style now foreign to today’s reader. It is not easy to interpret. In the future, letters like this will be more difficult to decipher as most schools no longer teach cursive handwriting. Several lines of the letter are illegible, worn away by creases in the paper. The letter, addressed to “Rev and very dear brother”, was sent to Rev Buell over the loss of Buell’s second wife, Mary Mulford-Buell. Rev Johnes, who had also lost a wife, writes: Tis a theological maxim, that meditates on prayer and temptation makes a divine, a character, most to be desired by a minister of the glorious gospel of a crucified savior, who thereby is furnished to speak as an interpreter one among a thousand a word in person to the weary, & to comfort others with the same consolations with which we ourselves have been comforted of God. Throughout Rev Buell’s 82 years, he had three wives and nine children, only one living to old age. He was noted for his piety in preaching at his children’s funerals, that their deaths might serve as opportunities for his congregation's spiritual enrichment.

Rev Buell’s wife Mary died on May 15, 1783, at the age of 47, leaving two children Mary, age 15 and Samuel, age 12. Rev Johnes writes: But oh little did I think faithfulness that God is chastising, & that it will work out for you a far more exceeding & eternal weight of glory. And I doubt not you, stand guarded against excessive sermon that unfits for the service of god and man. Though your dear consort has been taken from you, she yet lives in your dear offering, the partner of your loves & in the hearts of your grieving friends. Rev Johns ends the letter with a message for Buell’s children to keep their faith: Know to that god who styles him, a father to father motherless children & now after to put them among his own children now therefore to remember their creator, & from their time to cry My father, My father that has been thy guide of my youth shall be the governor of my days, and follow their dear Mother as she followed Christ. And remember Doc. Young’s remark: for the spirit walks of every day deceased, & smiles an angel, or a fussy frown. Rev Johnes’ signs the letter: My D. T. M. Johnes joins in sympathetic affection & present our best loves to yourself & to your Dear Children.

Born in Coventry Connecticut in 1716, the son of a wealthy farmer, Rev Samuel Buell graduated from Yale in 1737. Rev Buell was headed on a journey south when he was lured to East Hampton during a divisive time in the church’s history and the subsequent retirement of Rev Nathan Huntting. After preaching several sermons, Rev Buell received a unanimous call and was ordained on September 17, 1946. He successfully reunited the divided church and preached for the next 51 years. One biographer quoted years ago: “Few have stood so long or been so eminently successful in the vineyard of the Lord”’. Imagine Rev Johnes thoughts upon mailing the letter in 1783, if he were to have known that Rev McCachren, a member of the Morristown Presbyterian Church, would follow the same path as the letter, from Morristown to East Hampton, and be ordained in the East Hampton Presbyterian Church in October 2016, over two centuries after Rev Buell.

Rev. Samuel Buell Letter to Rev. Timothy Johnes June 16, 1783, p.1

Rev. Samuel Buell Letter to Rev. Timothy Johnes, June 16, 1783, p.2

Given in Memory of...the history of the chancel table’s silver candlesticks

Looking around the church, there are items of worship that were given as a gift to the church in memory of a departed loved one. Each Sunday, our service begins when we invite the light of Christ into our worship thru the lighting of the candles atop the tall silver candlesticks on the Chancel table. The candlesticks were given in memory of Herbert Garretson (1906-1996) by his wife Elsie and children, Jane Kiembock, Susan Winkler and John Garretson, in 1996. Elsie was famous for impressing everyone by singing in the our chuch choir till she was 95. She passed away in 2013 at age 101. The candlestricks were spotted in a local shop by Pastor Emeritus John Ames and his wife Jillian. After Elsie gave them them her stamp of approval, they were purchased for the church in memory of her husband. Herbert Garretson was an accountant who handled the stock and portfolio concerns of a warehouse buiness near the Brooklyn Navy Yard - Beards, Erie & Basin. The family lived in Malverne, NY and was active in the Grace Luthern Church there. They started spending summer vacations along the bay in Springs in the 1940’s, eventually buying a home on Harbor View Lane. Hard to believe now, in the the Hamptons of today, but at the time they purchased their summer home, it had no running water, an outhouse, and a hand pump in the kitchen sink. The Garretsons retired and moved here fulltime in the 1960’s. They attended the Springs Church, which at the time only held services during the summer months , in the early morning, led by the East Hampton Presbyterian Church minister. Jane Kiembock has fond memories of looking over Accabonac Harbor thru the church windows during the summer days of her childhood. Eventually the Garretson’s became active members of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, Herbert was a Trustee and Elsie lent her voice to the choir. Fond memories of Herbert and Elsie’s faithful church service, kindness and compassion continue to be memorialized today in our chancel candle sticks. -Hilary O. Malecki

Jane Garretson Kiemboack