What’s in a Name?

Now that the weather invites strolling, and tourists have yet to arrive, the coast is clear for exploring Island towns. In summer, there will be too many scurrying visitors to allow carefree strolling. Walkers then will be purposeful. But just now, the pedestrian can enjoy studying the architecture of houses — peering up at the widows’ walks atop Edgartown’s Federal houses, at the fanciful gingerbread designs in Oak Bluffs and the balanced Greek Revival facades of Vineyard Haven. And then there are the street signs, too.

How did Edgartown’s Pent Lane and Pierce Lane and Cooke street get their names? Oak Bluffs’ Circuit avenue? Vineyard Haven’s William and Franklin streets and Crocker avenue?

Francis W. Pent lived in Edgartown in the days of whalemen and worked in a clothing store where he was called upon to fill the sea chests of captains and sailors with all they would need for their voyages. He was also an accordion musician and drummer who played at Edgartown dances in post Civil War days. His father, who was also Francis, was Edgartown’s first undertaker. Presumably, it was for the son, not the father, that Pent Lane was named.

Dr. John Pierce, Edgartown physician and partner of Dr. Clement Shiverick, built his handsome Federal design house in 1840 above Sheriff’s Meadow Pond, and the lane on which his house still stands bears his name.

It was for Squire Thomas Cooke, Collector of Customs for Massachusetts from 1784 to 1786, that Cooke street was named.

Oak Bluffs’ Circuit avenue was the “circuit” around the old Camp Meeting Ground.

In Vineyard Haven, William street was named for William Daggett Jr., a merchant mariner, abolitionist and teetotaler whose Aunt Polly was one of the three young Revolutionary War heroines who blew up the village flagpole to prevent its becoming a mast for a British warship.

As for Crocker avenue, it got its name from Rudolphus Crocker in whose Crocker Harness Factory the Great Fire of 1883 began that destroyed much of the town. Presumably, he was honored by having a street named for him before the fire.

As for Franklin street, it was Franklin Cottle, mid-19th-century developer, whose name it bears.

And so it goes. It’s worth taking the time now — when one still can — to look up at Island street signs and investigate their origins.