The Presidents Who Came to the Hamptons

Eleven presidents of the United States have spent time in the Hamptons. And one tried to get here, but failed.

That was George Washington. He came close, though. But in the end, he turned back.

Washington was president from 1789 to 1797. The people wanted him to continue, but at 65, he thought himself too old and tired to do so. After leaving office, he decided to come out to the end of Long Island and visit the men who had served as his spies.

It wouldn’t be on horseback though. He could no longer handle that. Instead, he came out in a horse-drawn carriage and met some of them at a tavern in Setauket. But then, rather than go on further to meet those living in the lighthouse he’d ordered built at Montauk, he turned back.

Ten years earlier, in the summer of 1791, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who both became presidents later, went out together on horseback to visit patriots in Connecticut and Long Island. Their travels took them to Southold on the North Fork where they spent the night, then to Flanders in Southampton for a second night. The next morning, Jefferson met with three Unkechoug Native women in Mastic who were among the last to still speak their Eastern Algonquin language. To save it, Jefferson wrote down the word translations in a notebook.

She spoke. He wrote. Returning to New York, Jefferson went by steamer home to Virginia, his notebook in his luggage. But the luggage never arrived. After he learned a stevedore had thrown it overboard after finding nothing worthwhile to steal in it, Jefferson wrote that he hoped this man would be shot. He wasn’t, and Jefferson, thinking better of it, never repeated the demand.

John Tyler, one of our least favorite presidents, visited East Hampton to meet the parents of Julia Gardiner, who he courted and subsequently married. Julia was 23. John Tyler was 53. This was in 1843 when Tyler was president.

Earlier, his first wife, sick and dying, lay in bed upstairs at the White House. Meanwhile, downstairs, at a party in the west wing, Tyler met Julia and fell for her. Julia’s parents were skeptical, but after Mrs. Tyler died, the couple eloped. For the last year of Tyler’s term — his party wouldn’t renominate him to continue — Julia Tyler was the beautiful young First Lady of the U.S.

In 1879, James A. Garfield, a senator from Ohio, visited friends in the newly established summer resort community of Southampton.  Elected president in November of that year, he knew about the corruption scandals in the Port of New York. He was, however, elected to end them. But he never got the chance. Just nine months in office, he was assassinated in Washington, D.C., by a man who’d hoped to work for Garfield but got turned down.

New York’s Chester Arthur then became president, and it was he who got laws passed to end the corruption. His summer home in Sag Harbor on Union Street was the Summer White House for his one term, and still stands today.

President William McKinley visited Montauk in 1898 to thank the 32,000 soldiers of the United States Army for their service during the recently concluded Spanish-American War we had won. A popular photograph of him in the newspapers at the time shows him sitting in front of a military tent with Col. Teddy Roosevelt, the leader of the Rough Riders who charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba.

Teddy Roosevelt became president just three years after his month-long visit to Montauk in 1898. He had been celebrated around the country for what he did, ran for governor of New York and won, then was chosen by McKinley to run as his vice president in the 1899 election. They won, and in 1901, McKinley was shot and killed by an assassin in Buffalo and Vice President Roosevelt became president. He’s considered one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had, the others being Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson.

John F. Kennedy, who served for three years as our president beginning in 1961, 1961, visited East Hampton before that as a senator while courting Jackie Bouvier, who was spending  summers with her parents here at the family mansion. Kennedy was assassinated in an open car by a gunman in Dallas in 1963 with his wife Jackie Bouvier Kennedy by his side, who survived him.

Richard Nixon loved vacationing in Montauk at Gurney’s Inn with his wife Pat during the 1950s when he was vice president. Nominated to run against Kennedy in 1960 (Nixon lost) he had retreated to Gurney’s to write his presidential nomination acceptance speech. Later, as president in 1968 and beyond, he continued to come to Gurney’s.

Thank you letters that Nixon wrote to the owners of Gurney’s hung on the walls of the inn for many years. They were taken down after Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, but then later, when much seemed to be forgiven, put back up.

Bill Clinton, president from 1993 to 2000, has, along with his wife Hillary Clinton, rented a summer home in the Hamptons off and on for nearly 40 years. His first summer might have been in 1987 when, still the governor of Arkansas, he umpired behind the mound at East Hampton’s annual Artists and Writers Charity Softball Game. And he’s umpired many games since.

Donald Trump, president from 2017 to 2021 and now again since 2025, has on occasion visited friends in the Hamptons while raising money for his candidacy. He was also involved with a plan to build a golf course in the Hamptons. It would have been in Shinnecock but eventually it didn’t work out but led to a rival party creating the course — today called the Sebonack Golf Club.

That’s 11 presidents who came. And one who wanted to but didn’t. Know of others? Write me at dan@danspapers.com.