From the Vineyard Gazette edition of Jan. 17, 1958 by Joseph Chase Allen:

Of late there has been evinced more than usual in the building of the house for Lester H. Dana, on Manter’s Hill, so called, in Chilmark. And if the public was and is interested in the house, the interest by legal lights in the land and its title, has been no less.

Not that the securing of the title and establishing boundaries has been more involved than in many another case, and not that the complications involved through purchase, sale or inheritance have been greater. But the search for the title has uncovered facts pertaining to ownership, which were probably unknown to any living person, and quite possibly who lived on or near this property.

It becomes increasingly difficult, as time passes, to understand how such curious complications came about, because of the absence of value in tradition which stamps a name upon a piece of property as “So-and-So’s Place,” or the use of first names in identifying an ancient owner. These things have happened again and again on the Vineyard; they happened in and about the old “Manter Place,” a part of which is now owned by the Dana family, and it is to be supposed that the same things will come to light in future examinations of title, to confuse and confound those who delight in tradition, place names and the history or genealogy which they suggest.

Yet there is nothing very mysterious about this area and its ancient owners (except one) and the information which has come to light and which is contradictory to some of the tradition which has attached itself to the land and surrounding territory. There is one question yet to be answered. Perhaps someone can do this, and if so, such information will be appreciated. The question is this: “Who was Wimpenney?” And what? The query arises from the fact that some of the land was recorded as “Wimpenney’s Common.”

Now the fact is that people who lived in Chilmark fifty years ago and previously, usually called this field the Common, except that one section was known as The Locust Field. The understanding was that the Common had been public land, back in the day when the township of Tisbury extended somewhat westerly of the eastern town boundary of Chilmark, and that it was eventually discontinued as common and land and sold to Capt. Granville Manter, from whom the name of Manter Place arises. Some portion of this property was owned at one time by Shadrach Robinson, Revolutionary commander of the Tarpaulin Cove batteries.

There is much evidence that the tradition pertaining to the common was based on fact. Actually, no one would be apt to dispute it were it not for the mention in records of Wimpenney, associated with Edgartown but no other Island town. Whoever Wimpenney might have been, the land record would appear to indicate that he was an individual, who had, at some time, owned the Common, yet such ownership by any of that name does not appear. Hence, it is concluded that Wimpenney is or was a place name, and might allude to an Indian who once held this land, his name distorted by speech or spelling as the case might have been.

For the land was certainly used as a common, for pasturage of livestock. It was reached by drovers and their herds by what was probably the first “hie-way” on the Island, namely the eastern portion of Middle Road. And from this beginning of a land development effort, the patter of estates in this section together with the greater art of the highway system, actually sprang.

Settlers of Edgartown went up to Mill River to grind their corn, Mill River being at the dam in what is now West Tisbury. Eventually, another mill was established on Look’s Brook, or New Mill River, and sometime after that, the King’s Highway started, so far as may be established, in “the Goat Pasture,” which is the large lot between the State Highway and the old mill dam of Capt. Benjamin Church, now confining what is best known as “Jonny Mayhew’s Pond.” This King’s Highway roughly paralleled the South Road, and ended somewhere on the Windy Gates estate or reduced to a trail wound its way into what is now the township of Gay Head.

But all or most of this took place after the establishment of the actual heart of the settlement, which was eventually to become the town of Chilmark, in other words, Mark’s Valley. Mark’s Valley cannot be accurately defined, though that its beginning was somewhere in the vicinity of the end of Music street in West Tisbury and of the Panhandle Road, is probable. Incidentally, Panhandle referred to a field originally called “The Panhandle Piece” and was later attached to the road itself.

So Mark’s Valley began somewhere about this point, and so far as can be established, it continued westerly, almost in the present layout of the Middle Road, to an unknown point which must have been as far west as the foot of Peaked Hill, but certainly past Tea Lane.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com