Chris Baer
This Was Then: So — where are the vineyards?
When people first learn about Martha’s Vineyard, they ask us some obvious questions, like, “Who was Martha?” and “So, where are the vineyards?”
After dancing...
This Was Then: Parachutes and peacock plumes
By the mid-1890s, Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) was a resort town in decline.
Massive fires had claimed the two largest landmarks in town — the...
This Was Then: Boundaries
Before 1870, Martha’s Vineyard was divided into just three towns: Tisbury (named after a village in Wiltshire), Chilmark (an adjacent village in Wiltshire), and...
This Was Then: Dr. Leach’s Marine Hospital and Poor Farm
In late 1857, a new doctor arrived on the Island. His name was Dr. Leach, and he would set the course of hospital care...
This Was Then: Frog Alley Hospital
On July 19, 1855, Ferdinand Weinreicke, a 19-year-old Newburyport resident and Prussian native, was working as a crewman aboard the schooner Chas. H. Rogers....
This Was Then: The Jetties
Until a major storm reconstructed our coastline around 1725, Cape Poge and the whole northern tip of Chappaquiddick — the landmasses we sometimes refer to...
This Was Then: Tallman’s octagon
Henry Beetle Hough, in his 1936 book “Martha’s Vineyard, Summer Resort,” listed the Island’s five most colorful, outward-facing characters of the late 19th century:...
This Was Then: Mephitis mephitis
Updated 1-5-2024
Skunks have lived on Martha’s Vineyard for at least four or five hundred years. (Except, that is, for about 50 of them. We’ll...
This Was Then: Dave Curney
At 3:45 am on Friday, Jan. 18, 1884, the 275-foot steamer City of Columbus, bound for Savannah from Boston, struck Devil’s Bridge off Gay...
This Was Then: Here and there
The English settled Martha’s Vineyard from the outside in; early colonial settlements clustered around natural harbors and mill-powering streams, mostly near the periphery of...
This Was Then: The Tisbury School
Welcome to the new Tisbury School!
It’s 1930. Students, staff, and teachers have moved into the new school on West William Street, to pomp and...
This Was Then: Francis Lewis
Deborah Lewis was born about 1730 in Yarmouth, the daughter of John and Thankful Lewis. She came to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard with...
This Was Then: KaBLAM!
It’s Labor Day, 1929, at the New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket Steamboat company wharf in Oak Bluffs. The last steamer has departed for...
This Was Then: Jane Wamsley
In 1859, two writers for Harper’s Magazine visited Gay Head on a day trip “to see something of the Indians.” One of them was...
This Was Then: Rollo Wigglesworth
The Island has had its share of colorful names. There was Major Pain, the Chilmark lawyer who fought unsuccessfully to move our county seat...
This Was Then: The joys of Oak Bluffs
The area we know today as downtown Oak Bluffs was known as “Squash Meadow” for longer than it has been called “Oak Bluffs.” The...
This Was Then: Charlie Bell
He was known by everyone as “Charlie Bell” (and in his Vineyard property deeds as “Charles A. Bell”), but that, it turns out, was...
This Was Then: Laura Johnson
She dressed in men’s clothing. She was openly gay. And she ran this town during the 1930s and ’40s.
“Laura Johnson the real, real...
The New Vineyard
My son and I took a trip up to New Vineyard, Maine, a few weeks ago. New Vineyard is exactly what its name suggests:...
This Was Then: Attendance required
In October 1837, teachers and officials from around the Island gathered in Edgartown for the first-ever “Dukes County Common School Convention” — a public...