From Gazette editions of March, 1985:
The Square Rigger, a well known Edgartown landmark located at the entrance to town, will be sold at the end of the month to William Holtham of Chilmark. Mr. Holtham is the owner of the Home Port, a family-style seafood restaurant in Menemsha. Mr. Holtham said he plans to turn the Square Rigger back into a full restaurant; the establishment was formerly a restaurant but has become better known as a tavern in recent years.
Formerly a home, the Square Rigger has a long and interesting history which spans the lives of its many owners over the years. Built in 1800 by Capt. Thomas Marshall Pease, the house was originally located on the plain on the Edgartown Great Pond. Captain Pease was a whaling captain who sailed square-rigged ships.
Captain Pease died in 1892. He had been active in community affairs, and according to an obituary which appeared in the Vineyard Gazette in March 1892 the captain was a very sober man; “Captain Pease was a well-informed man, having been a great reader during his long life. Throughout his life he abstained from the use of liquor and tobacco in any form.”
Many years later the house was bought by the Thomas J. Wilson family, and in 1949, after the Wilson property had been turned over to the state for a wildlife preserve, the house was bought by Manuel S. Duarte of Vineyard Haven who moved it from the Great Pond property to its present location.
In 1949 the Gazette recalled memories of an old tragedy evoked by the removal of the Captain Pease house: “It was in this house, on the night of July 29, 1883, that Chester A. Pease and his brother Julius, sons of Capt. Thomas Marshall Pease, were sleeping in the same bed in an upstairs room. One of the most terrible thunder storms the Vineyard has known reached extreme violence between nine in the evening and midnight. Lightning struck the house, made a hole through the headboard of the bed and killed Julius, apparently without waking him, and left Chester unharmed.”
The story later noted: “The old house now being moved is not a memorial of tragedy alone, for it recalls also the days when the plain was a populous community. Edward T. Vincent recalls that, too, and says that whenever there was a Christmas tree or party, the host’s home would be filled with merrymakers from the houses ‘round about on the plain.”
Under the ownership of Mr. Duarte the house later became known as the Hitchcock House and was used as an upholsterer’s shop. In 1963 John D. Donnelly acquired a liquor license and opened a restaurant in the house called the Square Rigger. He died in 1983 and his sister Anne has been running the Square Rigger since then.
The unemployment rate for Dukes County for the past year was 4.6 per cent, just below the state average of 4.8 per cent, says a report released this week by the Massachusetts Division of Employment Security. The state average was the lowest since 1970 and well below the national average of 7.5 per cent. Of the six Island towns, the highest unemployment last year existed in Oak Bluffs, at a rate of 7.1 per cent, followed by Gay Head at 5.6 and Tisbury at 5.3 per cent. West Tisbury reported 1.3 per cent unemployment. Chilmark was determined at 2.2 percent. The Edgartown figure was 3.9 per cent.
The conch pot is one of the few products made entirely on the Island. To those not expert in the ways of the sea, the conch pot looks like a relative to the lobster trap. But to Edward Prada there is no mistaking the difference. Mr. Prada has been making conch pots for seven years, and the demand for his traps increases with each year.
From the soft pine laths of the main box to the hard oak door, the wood that goes into Mr. Prada’s pots comes from Tom Robinson’s saw mill in West Tisbury. The wood is trucked to Katama Seafood, the wholesale fish outlet off Herring Creek Road in Edgartown. There Mr. Prada and Robert Hathaway cut the wood. Only the rubber hinges and the steel nails are imported. In the matter of one cold winter all the wood is transformed into 400 new conch pots. With the conch fishing season less than a month off, both men work feverishly to complete the new traps. To these fishermen, part-time carpenters and part-time conch pot builders, there is not a dumber animal than the conch. The conch has a suction foot, and they climb up the pot, move towards the hole, fall in and that’s it.
Despite the growing popularity of conch on the mainland, no one on the Island eats conch, according to Mr. Prada. He says all the conch bought from the fishermen is shipped off-Island. “Last summer we sold seven pounds of conch to the Wharf Restaurant. They never ordered any more. I guess no one liked it.” But conch does do well in Rhode Island, where it is a popular ethnic food in Portuguese and Italian communities.
Compiled by Cynthia Meisner
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