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Graveyard History Lesson

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Do you know how headstones got their name? Or that Judge Harold Medina (1888-1990) paid Westhampton Beach students to capture tent caterpillars because the pests were killing the village’s trees? Westhampton Beach Elementary School fourth graders learned the answers to these questions and more during an annual trip to the Westhampton Cemetery on Sept. 27. 

The students, who have been studying local history in class, were given a robust lesson on their community’s past from members of the Westhampton Beach Historical Society. Divided into groups, the fourth graders visited several gravestones, where historians discussed the prominent residents who were buried there and shared interesting facts about their lives as they pertained to Westhampton Beach.