There’s a lot of history packed into this little island, going all the way back to before it was even an island. Martha’s Vineyard, and its sister island, Nantucket (which is really mostly a sandbar), were formed from glacial moraine –– i.e., the rubble left behind by a melting glacier. Or so say geologists. The Wampanoag, who were here much earlier, say that it was formed by the legendary Moshup walking across what became Vineyard Sound –– water filled the depression of his moccasins, rendering an island, called Noepe, which is translatable to “the island amidst the water.”
Things were relatively quiet for thousands of years, and then, during the most momentous field trip since the Roman Empire, Europeans discovered America. In 1602, a fellow named Bartholomew Gosnold (possibly a friend of William Shakespeare’s) landed on the Island. Legend says he found wild grapes growing here, and back in England he had a baby daughter and a mother-in-law named Martha, so he named it after one of them. (Since the elder Martha helped to bankroll the expedition, my money’s on her.) He claimed the Island for England and went home again.
A generation later, white colonizers had followed his path and were here to stay. Possibly first among these was Thomas Mayhew, from Tisbury, England, by way of Watertown, Mass. Some time around 1671, he got himself appointed “Governor for Life” by the governor of New York, who also named the Vineyard and some small surrounding islands “the County of Dukes County” to get in good with the Duke of York (and the Redundancy Department of Redundancy).
Mayhew’s son Thomas purportedly converted some Wampanoags to Christianity largely by doing “good works.” Thomas Jr. died young, his ship lost at sea, but Thomas Jr.’s son, grandson, and great-grandson continued his quest to convert the Wampanoag. Perhaps (in part) as a result of this, Martha’s Vineyard has a reputation as the only place in Colonial America that suffered no actual physical violence between Indigenous and settler populations, even during King Philip’s War. This does not imply a utopian coexistence, however. The distinction between the threat of force and the use of force is small consolation to the person being robbed, and the Wampanoag ended up dispossessed of their land.
While there were a few shenanigans in the early years (particularly involving the spirited Athearn family), things proceeded calmly enough all the way to the American Revolution. The Vineyard resented being plundered mercilessly by British warships, and boasted multiple examples of overt resistance early on. Most celebrated: Three young girls famously blew up a local flagpole that the British were planning to use as a sailing mast; their deed was commemorated in a huge white “Liberty Pole” on Main Street, Vineyard Haven, in front of what is now the Sail M.V. building. (Sadly, Eversource decapitated the pole a couple of years ago, claiming it was endangering the power lines.)
Otherwise, however, the Vineyard continued generally unscathed by the war, although the white people continued their inexorable pushing-the-Wampanoag-off-their-land until, by 1720, the only major pieces of the Island still in Native hands were Aquinnah and Chappaquidick.
Most racially European Islanders were either farmers or fishermen, but the whaling industry was evolving, and soon Edgartown would be bursting with wealth and attitude. The stately white Federalist-style whaling captain’s houses were built starting in the early 1820s. Among the Vineyard’s famous whalers was Tashtego, a character in Melville’s classic “Moby Dick.” Most of our other famous whalers are nonfictional.
The 19th century was also notable for many other things, of which four will get a nod here:
First was the economic boom in the first half of the century. Holmes Hole (now Vineyard Haven), which rivaled whaling-centric Edgartown as a deep, safe harbor, became an important stopover point for coastal and transatlantic ship traffic. Ships from all over the world called at both harbors to rest, resupply, make repairs, and (if they were making their first American landfall) clear customs. Whaling, fishing, and merchant vessels often picked crew members from the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, and so gradually, the “white” stock of the settlers developed a little variation, along with still-common Island names like Silva and Medeiros. West Tisbury and Chilmark prospered agriculturally, and developed small-scale factories that processed Vineyard wool into cloth and Vineyard clay into bricks and paint pigments.
The second development of note was the doubling of Island townships from three to six in a period of just over 20 years. In 1870, Gay Head went from being a Wampanoag reservation to an incorporated township of the Commonwealth (meaning residents gained voting rights but lost tribal sovereignty in the last place on the Island they’d still enjoyed it); in 1880, the residents of Oak Bluffs, fed up with providing much of Edgartown’s tax revenue while getting almost no services, convinced the state legislature to let them separate; and in 1892, West Tisbury and Tisbury, having been functionally estranged for a hundred years but living together for the sake of the kids, finally made it official and became two separate towns.
The third notable was a high rate of hereditary deafness among the English settlers. Up-Island, particularly in Chilmark, the deaf community was fully integrated into the hearing community because everyone knew sign language, whether or not there were deaf members in their households.
The fourth notable of the Victorian Era was the robustness of the Methodist revival meetings. While there are precious few Methodists left on the Vineyard, relatively speaking, their summer revival meetings, starting in the 1830s, created the most colorful (literally and figuratively) town on the Island: Cottage City, now Oak Bluffs. They would come in the summer from off-Island by steamer and stay in tents, which were erected seasonally on permanent platforms. Over time, the Methodists grew well-heeled enough to indulge in building little cottages on these platforms, of a color and style one hardly associates with the word “Methodist.”
Then somebody –– and we’re not pointing fingers –– invented the concept of summer vacations, and then somebody else noticed what a great place the Vineyard would be for just that kind of excursion. Actually, we have to blame the Methodists for this one. Their enthusiasm for the Vineyard got post–Civil War developers thinking that non-Methodists might enjoy summer on the Vineyard, too. They were right! As a result, Oak Bluffs developed a reputation, which it holds to this day, as the town in which it is easiest to obtain liquor and other secular entertainments.
Those post–Civil War visitors were the ones photographed frolicking in the waves along the shore. White frolickers favored the area called “Pay Beach,” with its bathhouses and other amenities; by the early 1900s, affluent African Americans began buying summer homes in Oak Bluffs and formed the beginning of a summer colony that persists to this day. They gathered at the beach farther to the south, which became known as the “Inkwell.” From that segregated beginning grew a sense of pride and ownership. The Polar Bears were (and still are!) a group who gathers at the Inkwell each morning all summer for various recreational activities including socializing, swimming, and yoga.
For much of the 20th century, the Vineyard was content to fish, farm, and poke fun at the summer people behind their backs. Then a couple of big things changed the vibe. First, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge. We’re really tired of talking about that, though, so let’s just move on to the next big event: “Jaws.” We never get tired of talking about “Jaws.” Actually, after a summer dominated by the movie’s endless 50th anniversary celebrations, we’re tired of talking about that, too.
“Jaws” gave Vineyarders a sense of our place on the map. Literally. That may be why, in 1977, when Massachusetts announced a “redistricting plan” that would change the political map to the detriment of Island interests, there was born a lively movement to secede from (a) the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and/or (b) the U.S. A flag was created, an anthem composed, and proposed passport designs were available in shops. Walter Cronkite (a beloved summer resident) even mentioned it on the evening news. It was very exciting. Then we got distracted by “Jaws 2,” and sort of forgot about seceding.
In 1987, the Wampanoag were federally recognized as a sovereign tribe, and 10 years later, Gay Head was renamed –– or rather, was restored to its original name –– Aquinnah.
Within a decade of “Jaws” coming out, the rest of the world wanted a piece of Martha’s Vineyard, and suddenly the price of real estate skyrocketed. Wealthy people began to buy summerhouses all over the island; investors began to build hotels and businesses. Painters and writers had taken a fancy to the Vineyard’s scenic quietude decades earlier, and it was already a well-established mecca for creative types, so it was unsurprising when Hollywood’s elite discovered it. Clinton’s deciding to vacation here definitely did not hurt the real-estate market, and Obama’s continuing that practice kept us in the news.
Different towns were affected in different ways by the real-estate boom. Chilmark, for example, already had three-acre zoning, so the possibility of overdevelopment was pretty much nonexistent. On the other hand, in West Tisbury –– a town inhabited by white people for 300 years –– the number of extant dwellings doubled between 1980 and 2000.
Here’s a fun fact that will win you points at cocktail parties: Dukes County (i.e., Martha’s Vineyard) was the poorest county in Massachusetts in 1980, and today remains among the poorer counties. The summer folk with their sumptuous homes bring a lot of money to the Island while their homes are being built, and the vibrant tourist industry keeps money coming in for a good four or five months of the year, but the rest of the time, this is a largely blue-collar community. What makes it special and endearing is that so many of the “regular Joes and Jills” who struggle to make ends meet through the winter are here by choice, because they are drawn to the same things that the celebrities are drawn to, that the writers and painters of the past hundred years have been drawn to. They are willing to do whatever they need to do to remain here, taking whatever work they can, including writing up summary histories of their beloved homeland for a local newspaper’s “Vineyard Visitor” magazine.