Dan's Papers - December 7, 2007

The Bridge Hampton Historical Society (BHHS) has decided to change its name. Founded in 1957, it was incorporated as the Bridgehampton Historical Society (BHS), but those in charge decided that if it was going to represent something from the "old" times, then it ought to have an old fashioned name. So they began to refer to it as the Bridge Hampton Historical Society. Now it is going to revert back to how it was originally incorporated. And when they run out of Bridge Hampton Historical Society stationery, they will print new stationery that reads Bridgehampton Historical Society.

The name changeover was recently decided upon by the board because of the inability of people interested in contacting them to find them on the Internet. If you Google Bridge Hampton Historical Society, the first entries are often about bridges. It takes a bit of digging to get to where you want to go. Bridgehampton Historical Society gets you there like bingo.

The confusion about how to spell the names of our towns came about in the mid-19th century when the railroad tracks came out this way and the various stations were set up.

This was a very big deal for the East End at that time. Before the railroad, there were no paved roads, the only way to get around was by stagecoach, on a horse or by boat, and all of that was very slow. A trip to New York City, for example, could take a day and a half before the railroad. Now, suddenly, the city was just three hours away.

The railroad was, of course, the Long Island Rail Road or LIRR. You might note something interesting about that. All across the country there were railroads being built, and they all had the word "Railroad" as part of their names, as in Pennsylvania Railroad.

Apparently, when the LIRR was formed, there was some accountant somewhere who thought it might be nice to perk it up with a slightly different name. And so it is the Long Island Rail Road, LIRR, not Long Island Railroad, LIR.

Keeping in the spirit of things, as the LIRR built further and further east, they came upon little villages that, in numerous cases, had in the early days, I'm talking back in the 1600s, names spelled different ways in the town records. Why this was I am not sure, but eventually, when these towns and villages were incorporated in the latter part of that century, everything settled down. We had Southampton, East Hampton, Westhampton Beach, Southold and, well, a place called Good Ground, which later changed its name to Hampton Bays. The alternate spellings in the town records got relegated to the dustbin of history.

In any case, when the LIRR came out this far 200 years later, they decided to perk things up a bit by following in the tradition they had set out. If Railroad could be Rail Road, then Westhampton could be West Hampton, Southampton could be South Hampton and East Hampton could be Easthampton. Therefore, they called these stops by these old names. And they put these names in their printed schedules, put them on the signs over the platforms and waited. What were these local farmers and fishermen going to do about it?

Well, for a long time, they did nothing, except maybe complain to LIRR executives that this was, as it had been 200 years earlier, very annoying. Eventually, future generations of LIRR executives, noting the confusion, decided enough was enough, and today the names of the stations do correspond correctly with the names of the towns.

Except, of course, the LIRR has remained the same. Don't you forget it. It's the Long Island Rail Road, not the Long Island Railroad.

And so, when you come out to the Eastend or to the Ham Tons, keep it in mind.

But if you want to get a hold of the Bridge Hampton Historical Society, you can look them up on the net as the Bridgehampton Historical Society. And when the stationery runs out, every reference to the name will be the correct one - i.e. Bridgehampton Historical Society. Although, in their initials, they still intend to refer to themselves as the BHHS.

Incidentally, why did the Bridgehampton Library, which was only founded about thirty years ago, decide upon its founding to call itself the Hampton Library? Delusions of grandeur? Spiteful behavior against the East Hampton Library or the, er, Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton?