Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.Nomans ChurchThe small building on the left served as both church and schoolhouse for the residents of Nomans Land as late as the early 20th century. Nominally part of Chilmark, this quiet isle — more than a mile and a half long — once held some 20 homes and fishing shacks, together with a store, grist mill, sailors’ boardinghouse, and graveyard. Nomans was home to about 40 seasonal working families and a few hardy year-round families throughout the 1800s, and was divided into two villages — “Jimmy Town” and “Gull Town” (sometimes called “Crow Town”). In addition to cod fishing, many residents raised sheep –— as many as 800 Chilmark sheep pastured on this little island.
Nomans is believed to be the isle “full of wood-vines” which Gosnold named “Marthaes Vineyard” — it wasn’t until later that the name was conferred on its larger neighbor three miles to the north. Its current name is conjectured to be a corruption of “Tequenoman’s Land” — a reference to the Wampanoag sachem who may have had jurisdiction over it in the early 17th century.