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: a town settled by dozens of Martha’s Vineyard families in...
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 look at the state of schools on the Vineyard, which...
‘She Who Speaks with the Ocean’
Marion Wilson engages our senses and intellect in her new, immersive exhibition at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum that, through sights and sounds, beautifully interweaves art, ecology, and science into a thought-provoking experience.
COVID gave birth...
This Was Then: Hiram and Tom
Hiram Dunham was 3 years old, and his older brother Tom was 15, when their father’s seizures began.
Ralph Dunham, a 41-year-old Edgartown native, had been working as a cooper (a barrel maker) in New...
What we weave
The new exhibition “Woven: Art and Industry on Martha’s Vineyard,” at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, is sure to get you thinking about the historic importance of weaving here, beginning with the ancestors of the...
This Was Then: The Scarecrow and the Confectioner (Part Two)
The North Atlantic Ocean, 250 miles west of Bermuda, October 1841. The whaling brig William and Joseph of Holmes Hole is heading back to the Vineyard with a disappointing haul. “We put away for...
This Was Then: The confectioner and the scarecrow
London, England, January 1830. A tall, very slender, and considerably deaf 40-year-old man was badgering the acclaimed English author Mary Russell Mitford, bringing her huge stacks of American magazines, and trying to talk her...
This Was Then: Shrinkage
By 1870, it was an open secret that things would sometimes disappear into Holmes Hole (soon to be renamed Vineyard Haven.)
Like nearby Woods Hole, Quick’s Hole, and Robinson’s Hole, the word “Hole” refers here...
This Was Then: The Holmes Hole skyline
Behold Vineyard Haven — or as many of the locals still called it, Holmes Hole — as it appeared in the late 1870s. This photograph was taken on two plates from what is now...
Safe harbors
Beacons on hilltops have guided mariners to safe harbor since the dawn of recorded history, and when Martha’s Vineyard was an important port for whale ships and other seafarers, lighthouses showed the way safely...
This little pipe
Come Thanksgiving, Gregory West Drake thinks about “the pipe,” a hefty little metal object said to have crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, been smoked by Myles Standish in the Plymouth colony, and subsequently...
This Was Then: Turkey Land
Former President Barack Obama summers in a quiet part of Edgartown known as Turkeyland (sometimes spelled “Turkey Land”). Edgartonians were long mocked as “Old Town Turkeys” by our neighboring Nantucketeers. Our modern Island is...
This Was Then: MacNeill’s Grocery
At the edge of downtown Oak Bluffs, on the corner of Pennacook and Circuit Avenues, stands a building with a long and colorful history: 82 Pennacook Ave., owned by the town of Oak Bluffs...
Eye-opening exhibit
History is typically written by those in power, and museum exhibitions often focus on people at the top of the social pyramid with the ability to be the master of their own fate. The...
This Was Then: Forgotten films
Obie Tower liked his toys. Basil Welch reminisced about him in a 1982 conversation with my grandfather, Stan Lair, in a recording made about a year after Obie’s death: “Obie always had a sporty-looking...
Preserving an era
"This is an account of one citizen's attempt to engage his government during a particularly troubled time of our national life ...1965 to 1974." So begins a remarkable, community-built book that's part memoir, part...
This Was Then: The Sanitarium
Martha’s Vineyard was widely promoted in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a place of healing. The ad-packed 1932 booklet titled “Martha’s Vineyard: The Isle of Dreams and Health” gushes over the Island’s...
‘Freedom dreams’
As you walk down the hall on the second floor of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, the vibrant, 30- by 42-in. photographic portraits in the large, light-filled Hollinshead gallery straight ahead beckon to you. There...
A tale of two villages
What does a medieval church built between 1180 and 1200 have in common with Martha’s Vineyard? St. John’s parish church is located in Tisbury, U.K., and the village’s name, along with the nearby village...
