Who lived in Montauk in 1930? The U.S. Census of that year shines light not only on who lived here but also what they did and where they came from.
Tuthill, Grimes, Joyce, McDonald, Syvertsen, Paon, Pfund, Duryea, Burke, Martell, Pitts, Tuma, Gilmartin, Briand – many last names reverberate locally almost 100 years later. A number of people are remembered for their professions: Ted Cook the postmaster, Richard White the drugstore operator, Elisha Ammon the commercial fisherman, Loftus and McGunigal of the general store, Richard Webb the architect, William Belber, owner of the restaurant Bill’s Inn, Thomas Ringwood, general manager for the developer Carl Fisher.
The 1930 census was taken during the Depression. As is still the case, year-round residents tended to have blue-collar occupations. Quite a few men – few occupations were recorded for women — are listed as laborers or as doing “odd jobs” for a living, or fishing, or doing masonry, painting, plumbing, or carpentry. Other, almost-only-in-Montauk job titles include lighthouse keeper, steamboat line agent, dredge operator, Hither Hills State Park supervisor, and various Coast Guard ranks and roles. One man worked as a private chauffeur, and another was the captain of a private yacht. Two Japanese servants were recorded as living at a private estate on Ditch Plains Road; the census notes that they did speak English.
As the census illustrates, many of Montauk’s early settlers came from Canada and Northern Europe, or their ancestors did. The count distinguished between immigrants from Northern Ireland and the “Irish Free State” and between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians (Montauk had lots of the latter). Sweden and Norway are particularly well represented, which may reflect the historical preferences of U.S. immigration policy: the Quota Act and other laws passed in the 1920s favored immigrants from Northern Europe.
These days, Europe still accounts for the highest number of foreign-born residents in Montauk, with Latin America a close second. Overall, a relatively low portion of the year-round population, about 10 percent, was born outside the U.S. Almost 90 percent of those counted in 2024 were described as White.
There were 4,223 year-round Montauk residents as of that count, with a median age of 44.7 and the most highly represented group in their 60s. The population was evenly divided between the sexes, the birth rate, education, property values, and income were high relative to the rest of the state, and, perhaps all that not surprisingly, 65 percent of household units were described as unoccupied.
More “quick facts” from the U.S. Census can be found here.
This post was originally published on October 18, 2023.
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