Ralph Lauren on Main Street in East Hampton, New York. Photo by James Kirkikis / Shutterstock.com.
Ask people to name famous figures connected to the Hamptons and the first names that come to mind are often celebrities who bought a mansion after they were already famous. That is not what this list is about. The people here were actually from the Hamptons: they were born in one of its communities, raised there, or both. Some remained closely tied to the East End throughout their lives, while others left Long Island and became famous somewhere very far from home.
The Hamptons occupy the South Fork of eastern Long Island, principally within the Towns of Southampton and East Hampton. The region’s history reaches far beyond its modern reputation as a wealthy resort. The Shinnecock and Montaukett peoples have deep ancestral ties to the land. English settlement in Southampton dates to 1640, while East Hampton was established several years later. Farming, fishing, whaling, maritime trade, and later tourism shaped communities including Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, Westhampton, Montauk, and the surrounding hamlets.
That history produced an unexpectedly diverse collection of people. The Hamptons can claim an Academy Award-winning actor, a Baseball Hall of Famer, a First Lady, an astronaut, professional athletes, artists, poets, Indigenous writers, a pioneering librarian, an explorer who reached Japan and Antarctica, and many others. Here are 25 famous people you may not have known were actually from the Hamptons.
1. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Southampton and East Hampton)
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born at Southampton Hospital on July 28, 1929, and spent important parts of her childhood in East Hampton, where her paternal grandparents owned the estate known as Lasata. Long before she became First Lady of the United States, Jackie Bouvier was an accomplished young equestrian whose East Hampton childhood helped establish her lifelong love of horses and the East End.
2. Carl Yastrzemski (Bridgehampton)
Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski was born in Southampton and raised in Bridgehampton on his family’s potato farm. A three-sport athlete at Bridgehampton High School, “Yaz” went on to spend his entire 23-year Major League Baseball career with the Red Sox. He won the American League Triple Crown and Most Valuable Player Award in 1967, accumulated more than 3,400 hits, and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.
3. Rod Steiger (Westhampton)
Academy Award-winning actor Rod Steiger was born in Westhampton in 1925. Although his family moved away while he was young, his birthplace places one of the most intense actors of postwar American cinema squarely on the South Fork. Steiger starred in films including On the Waterfront, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, and In the Heat of the Night, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
4. Sailor Brinkley Cook (Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor)
Model Sailor Brinkley Cook, the daughter of Christie Brinkley and architect Peter Cook, grew up as a full-time East End resident in Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. Unlike many celebrity children who simply spent summers in the Hamptons, Cook has spoken repeatedly about being raised there year-round and about the small-town community that shaped her childhood. She later followed her mother into modeling and appeared in Sports Illustrated and on Dancing with the Stars.
5. A.J. Pierzynski (Bridgehampton)
Former Major League Baseball catcher A.J. Pierzynski was born in Bridgehampton in 1976. He went on to play 19 seasons in the major leagues, collecting more than 2,000 hits and earning two All-Star selections. Pierzynski was the starting catcher for the 2005 Chicago White Sox team that won the franchise’s first World Series championship since 1917, and he later became a prominent baseball broadcaster.
6. Mary Cleave (Southampton)
NASA astronaut and engineer Mary Cleave was born in Southampton in 1947. Although she grew up elsewhere on Long Island, her life began on the South Fork before taking her far beyond it. Cleave flew aboard two Space Shuttle missions, STS-61-B in 1985 and STS-30 in 1989, and later became the first woman to serve as NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.
7. Tim Bishop (Southampton)
Former United States Representative Tim Bishop was born in Southampton in 1950 and came from a family with generations of roots in the community. Before entering Congress, Bishop spent nearly three decades at Southampton College, eventually becoming provost. He represented New York’s 1st Congressional District from 2003 through 2015, serving the same East End region where his own life began.
8. Pyrrhus Concer (Southampton)
Pyrrhus Concer was born in Southampton in 1814 and became one of the most remarkable maritime figures in Long Island history. After working aboard whaling ships out of Sag Harbor, Concer joined Captain Mercator Cooper aboard the Manhattan on its historic 1845 voyage to Japan. He is believed to have been the first African American seen by many of the Japanese people who encountered the ship. Concer later returned to Southampton, where he operated a boat on Lake Agawam.
9. Perry B. Duryea Jr. (Montauk)
Perry B. Duryea Jr. was born in Montauk in 1921 and graduated from East Hampton High School. After serving as a naval aviator during World War II, he entered his family’s seafood business and then politics. Duryea served in the New York State Assembly for nearly two decades, rose to Speaker of the Assembly, and became one of the most powerful Republican political figures in New York during the 1960s and 1970s.
10. Amanda Clark (Southampton)
Olympic sailor Amanda Clark was born in Southampton in 1982 and grew up nearby on Shelter Island. She became the youngest female sailor to join the U.S. Sailing Team in the Europe class at age 15 and later represented the United States in the women’s 470 at both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics.
11. Clarence “Foots” Walker (Southampton)
NBA point guard Clarence “Foots” Walker was born in Southampton in 1951 and attended Southampton High School. After winning collegiate championships at Vincennes University and West Georgia, Walker was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1974 NBA Draft. He played ten NBA seasons with Cleveland and the New Jersey Nets and became known as a quick, aggressive guard and gifted passer.
12. Paul Gibson (Southampton)
Major League pitcher Paul Gibson was born in Southampton in 1960. The left-hander pitched in 319 major-league games from 1988 through 1996, appearing for the Detroit Tigers, New York Mets, and New York Yankees. Gibson finished his career with 22 victories, 11 saves, and more than 550 innings pitched.
13. Quincy Davis (Montauk)
Professional surfer Quincy Davis was born and raised in Montauk, where she began surfing at only seven years old. The Atlantic Ocean was effectively her backyard, and she developed into one of the best-known surfers to emerge from the East End. Her career took her to waves around the world, but Montauk remained central to her identity and her approach to surfing.
14. Peter Browngardt (Sag Harbor)
Animator, writer, producer, and director Peter Browngardt was born in Sag Harbor in 1979. He became known in television animation as the creator of Cartoon Network’s Uncle Grandpa and Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, later working extensively on Looney Tunes Cartoons. His career eventually brought him major roles as a writer and director within one of animation’s most famous franchises.
15. Pamela Council (Southampton)
Contemporary artist Pamela Council was born in Southampton in 1986. Their multidisciplinary work uses sculpture, performance, writing, installation, and unconventional materials to examine Black American culture, identity, memory, and power. Council has exhibited widely and received major recognition including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
16. Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock / Southampton)
Jeremy Dennis was born in Southampton in 1990 and was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation. An enrolled member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, Dennis became a fine-art photographer whose work explores Indigenous identity, land, memory, colonial history, and cultural survival. He also founded Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio on the reservation, creating an artist residency and community space rooted in Shinnecock land.
17. George Sterling (Sag Harbor)
Poet and playwright George Sterling was born in Sag Harbor in 1869. He later moved to California, where he became a central figure in San Francisco’s Bohemian literary circles and helped establish the early artists’ colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea. Sterling was a close friend of Jack London and was admired by writers including Ambrose Bierce, Theodore Dreiser, and H.P. Lovecraft.
18. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks (Sag Harbor)
Poet, dramatist, editor, and journalist Olivia Ward Bush-Banks was born in Sag Harbor in 1869 to a family of African American and Montaukett heritage. Her poetry and writing frequently drew upon race, identity, nature, and her Indigenous ancestry. She served as a historian for the Montaukett people and later became active in the New Negro Movement, establishing the Bush-Banks School of Expression in Chicago.
19. Annie Cooper Boyd (Sag Harbor)
Artist, feminist, and diarist Annie Cooper Boyd was born and raised in Sag Harbor in 1864. Beginning as a teenager, she kept detailed diaries and created hundreds of paintings and drawings documenting the village, its architecture, landscapes, waterfront, and daily life. Her surviving work has become an invaluable visual and written record of Sag Harbor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
20. Ernestine Rose (Bridgehampton)
Pioneering librarian Ernestine Rose was born in the Hayground area of Bridgehampton in 1880. At the New York Public Library, she became director of the 135th Street Branch in Harlem and helped build the collection that developed into the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Rose’s career placed a woman from rural Bridgehampton at the center of one of the most important cultural institutions of the Harlem Renaissance era.
21. Nathan Cuffee (East Hampton and Sag Harbor)
Nathan Cuffee was born in East Hampton in 1854 and grew up in the Eastville section of Sag Harbor. A member of a Montaukett family, Cuffee later co-authored the novel Lords of the Soil: A Romance of Indian Life Among Early English Settlers. His work made him one of the earliest published Native American novelists connected to Long Island and preserved an Indigenous perspective on the East End’s colonial history.
22. Mercator Cooper (Southampton)
Sea captain Mercator Cooper was born in Southampton in 1803 and sailed from Sag Harbor during the great era of Long Island whaling. In 1845, while commanding the Manhattan, Cooper returned shipwrecked Japanese sailors to their homeland and became the captain of the first American vessel permitted to enter Tokyo Bay under those extraordinary circumstances. Several years later, while commanding the Levant, he led the first documented landing on mainland East Antarctica.
23. George Rogers Howell (Southampton)
Historian, genealogist, and librarian George Rogers Howell was born and raised in Southampton in 1833. His scholarship included The Early History of Southampton, L.I., New York: With Genealogies, one of the foundational works on the history of the town. Howell later worked at the New York State Library in Albany and became an important figure in the preservation and study of New York history.
24. Carole Terry (Southampton)
Internationally known organist and harpsichordist Carole Terry was born in Southampton in 1948 and began playing the organ while growing up there. She later became a distinguished performer and teacher, serving for 40 years on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Music. Terry has performed, recorded, taught, and judged competitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
25. Grenville Goodwin (Southampton)
Anthropologist Grenville Goodwin was born in Southampton in 1907. After moving west for health reasons as a young man, he developed a deep interest in the Apache peoples of Arizona and spent years conducting fieldwork in their communities. His posthumously published study The Social Organization of the Western Apache became an important work in American anthropology.
For more stories about the people and history of Long Island, read 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Suffolk County, New York, 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From the Town of Brookhaven, New York, The Battle of Sag Harbor in the War for Independence, History of the Hamptons’ Grey Gardens Mansion, and When Summers Beach Club Was the Hottest Place in the Hamptons.
